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Aerin's late-night poetry-press

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A pop-up book of flowers from grade 4 are driving her insane...

Postby One-Eye » 2/21/2005, 12:59 pm

Seattle is in ruins, underwater
and twenty-five hundred miles away
there are water towers, grain elevators,
a dirty river and me.
And in the cubicle where I spend my days
(trying to forget how my life is slipping away)
hangs a postcard of Seattle, under the sea:
an artist's rendition.
It's real to me.

The days aren't any more or less mundane,
that aspect, at least, seems never to change.
Life is a series of days you wish would end
to get to the next one
and the next one
and then
you die, I guess, that's all there is
(but there's a million miles between that life and this.)

And I try to think of things that have changed
but my mind goes in circles
(there's too much and too little)
I was crazy then but now I'm sane -
or was that the other way around?
I was lost but now am found?
No, I was found but now am lost;
I always knew there'd be a cost
and I've paid it double in tears I've cried
(but that would have happened either way.)

Did you know in Seattle it's always July?
but the Space Needle's fallen over
and the Monorail's underwater
and the calendar says it's February
yeah, it's definitely February outside.

So I guess I'm seven months from Seattle
and the months go by faster and faster
like a train building speed heading straight for disaster
which I can't comprehend
and I guess, in the end
it won't even matter.

I miss the fish tacos at Taco Del Mar
I miss the Fremont bridge troll
Thai fast food and that salty sea smell
I miss walking the sidewalks at night
(I don't think I'm remembering things right.)

It never rained in Seattle
because it doesn't rain in July
and I never used to sit alone
in my dorm room and cry
in the dark under the broken light.
These things never happened. Never.
At least, these are not the things I remember.

And I'm trying to think of things that have changed
but the important things just stay the same:
I'm always just me; I'm always alive
(but I used to walk everywhere and now I drive)
I'm always afraid of strangers and friends
I'm always alone and I'm always on edge
(but I used to take classes and now I don't care
I used to take pills and now I'm just scared
it used to be summer but now it's frozen and bare.)
Because it's February outside.
It's February everywhere.

I'm seven months from Seattle
a city that drove me insane
and I never was able to figure out
why all I want is to go back there again.
But everything's underwater
it has been since July
and I can't even swim, but I could go back
I could try
I could leave this all behind
I could, but I would drown
and die.

But I get along fine, I say,
because every crystal moment of every endless day
is nothing more and nothing less than an empty shade of okay.
This isn't tragedy.
It's just the giant tapestry
of moments woven into days and hung for all to see
shows something less and something more than where I want to be.

And these are all illusions,
my memories are fantasies.
I didn't really want to stay.
And who am I kidding?
I never liked Taco Del Mar
and I never went to Fremont anyway.

But sometimes I see Toledo
melting away to the ground;
buildings sinking into the swampland
that they drained to build this town.
And I see myself standing all alone,
the faces around me distorted and dead.
Sometimes I can almost touch them.
Sometimes it's not just in my head.

And I'm seven months from Seattle;
there's nothing left for me, here or there,
and it's February in my mind.
It's February everywhere.

æ 2/21/05
Last edited by One-Eye on 2/21/2005, 4:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Postby happening fish » 2/21/2005, 2:23 pm

I really love the voice in that one. It comes through beautifully.
Your poetry always makes me so tingly :D i love it.
awkward is the new cool
[url]gutterhome.blogspot.com[/url]
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Postby One-Eye » 2/21/2005, 2:38 pm

:mrgreen:

Thanks, Alex. This poem means a lot to me. It's the first poem I've written in years that really captures my feelings, as opposed to finding pretty words to frame an abstract theme.
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Postby One-Eye » 4/20/2005, 9:12 pm

I'm walking through the ruins of myself at sixteen,
shards of paxil dreams cracking under my feet
and the silent desolation is cold and complete.
Makes me wonder if there was ever anything here at all.
The bits of sixteen that I can recall
are pieces of nightmares, and for all I know
I might have dreamed that whole year away.

The diaries I kept and any artifacts left
were destroyed long ago, there were things about sixteen
I didn't want myself to know,
and memories never made have no chance to fade,
so I forgot the reasons I forgot to remember.
Or maybe I forgot to make reasons at all.

And perhaps I don't remember because I was asleep,
living in drug-spun dreams that were endless and deep
and so sharp and defined that reality seemed vague;
those nights were so long they devoured the days,
which were short intermissions when I was awake.
And the pills that I took left me manic and dazed,
so I slept like the dead and I dreamed like the crazed.

And the waking and dreaming get blurred in my mind
till the only remnants left from that time
are these fragments of dreams, still urgent and clear,
the only reminders of what happened here,
as I dig through the rubble of myself at sixteen
searching for who I was, finding only what I dreamed.


4/20/05
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Postby clumsychild_ » 4/20/2005, 9:26 pm

8O

That's amazing. Your rhythm's fantastic.

I dreamed like the crazed - I love that line in particular. :nod:
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Postby One-Eye » 4/20/2005, 9:33 pm

Thank you! I appreciate that. :love: :oops: :)
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Postby beautiful liar » 4/20/2005, 9:38 pm

that's so beautiful. :love:

you are a talented writer, i really admire your work. i meant to tell you before, but i don't think i did.
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Postby trentm32 » 4/21/2005, 11:58 am

that was absolutely phenomenal.
"When looking up there, I just felt whole, like I belonged. Like one day I too would shine my most brilliant. Sitting there also made me think about sitting through services at my little country church back home. About that never-changing congregation of the same sixty-seven people and everyone has known you since before you were born. Now, out here in the real world, everything just seemed more vivid than when I used to sit in that little pew. That pew that was now so, so far away from where I was. I feared I had somehow left God behind there, too. I feared he was somehow just sitting there, saving my seat on the fifth pew from the front row, just waiting on me to come back. I left so quickly, I worried that he may not have noticed I was gone. And, now, I’m just too far away to find. So he’s just sitting there, patiently waiting on me to come back. I closed my eyes and prayed a moment. I hoped more than anything that he could still hear me." -an excerpt from my novella, A Sea of Fallen Leaves.

<a href="http://www.soundthesirens.com">SoundTheSirens.com</a>
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Postby One-Eye » 4/21/2005, 12:22 pm

:) Thanks, guys!
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Postby happening fish » 4/21/2005, 2:26 pm

marry me 8-)
awkward is the new cool
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Postby One-Eye » 4/21/2005, 4:20 pm

Alright, but you're wearing the tux. :P
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