Terrible Beauty

Though I dislike the New York Times' travel section, this article isn't that bad, if only for the phrase "terrible beauty," and the gorgeous imagery.

The Choice of a Word

I trust Kayley's musical tastes (Sufjan Stevens, Decemberists, Architecture in Helsinki, Beirut) and in order to whet my appetite for new music, I turned my ears to Andrew Bird. I have to admit, this was also partly due to the fact that he's adorably hot, as seen in this video, also sent to me by Kayley. And, hey, he sang with Wilco during their 5-night residency at Chicago's Riveria Theater in February.

Andrew Bird (you gotta use his entire name) reminds me of Sufjan Stevens, but not as light, if that makes sense. Anyway, that isn't the pointof this entry.

Looking through the New York Times' website, as I tend to do, I noticed Andrew Bird's name and I clicked the link. That led me to one of the Times' new blogs: Measure for Measure, of which Andrew Bird is a writer for, along with Suzanne Vega, Roseanne Cash and Darell Brown.

In the first entry, Bird begins by talking about his upcoming drive to a studio in Nashville (three days after Josh and I got back from Tennessee) and the aspects of driving vs. taking a tour bus. From there, he goes to various tangents, all of which involve his musicality.

What I'm interested in is his choice of words, or as he titles the entry, "Words Will Tell." He comes up with his melodies first, which is easy for him, but lyrics are trickier. He does it anyway, because he has to.

During his everyday living, specific moments/words/noises/ideas catch his eye, which is how I write, in terms of poetry. In the process of writing "Oh No," a song to be featured on his upcoming album, he came up with the title because of a kid crying on his airplane.

After the title, Andrew Bird goes on to explain his lyric-writing process. He throws in childhood locations (Lake Bluff) and childhood thoughts (a bridge that, to him, marked the end of the world because that vicinity was all he knew then). Strung together, it sounds lovely.

It's just as simple as that. A certain phrase catches your ear and you think to yourself, "That sounds mighty nice/poetic/beautiful," and it becomes stuck in your head until you write it down. From there, you either save it for another moment or continue to play off that moment.

Or, as Andrew puts it:

"Words get under my skin the same way melodies do. Something catches my attention and I file it subconsciously. It often begins with an archaic or obscure word I have not defined. I just like the sound of it and its elusive meaning gives it a mysterious shine."

the aspect of landing, or, the aspect of leaving

dropped
stomach knows as soon as plane
lifts off
            not grounded
            not touching earth
        midair

        somewhere
        tilted
        in vehicle
            that somehow flies
        a mystery
            of science

dizzying landing
extending to my stomach

humans don't fly &
        we are not
        connected
to anything at that moment


& under flat rows
of clouds that look
like tissues
flat & rumpled, white
dim subdued lights
of the city glow through
hints of the bustle

everything is clearer
above the world

I am closer to
the starts than I've
ever been before

I want to be the leaver, not get left behind

see where the water ends and
the sky begins (at night it
all meshes together
like one
dark
mess) & ships look like
they're flying

so
many
things
will
feel
familiar

breathe
sigh
in

make the first move
before anything
can be
set

get away first
get away far
get away close
to change my way of mind
setting of my mind
being of my mind
being molded
infiltrated with settings of
these different settings while
sunsets stay golden they
have different tints different
angles different shading

clouds leave shadows
on the world I fly
to Florida and I see
all of New York displayed
to my right each skyscraper
ready to be picked up by my
hand and
those clouds above leave
gray spots all over New York
darkening those streets for
those few seconds as the
clouds slowly roll away
darkening everything in its path
but I fly ahead and
beat the clouds

the great advantage of being alive

For you:

[by E.E. Cummings]

the great advantage of being alive
(instead of undying)is not so much
that mind no more can disprove than prove
what heart may feel and soul may touch
—the great(my darling)happens to be
that love are in we,that love are in we

and here is a secret they never will share
for whom create is less than have
or one times one than when times where—
that we are in love,that we are in love:
with us they've nothing times nothing to do
(for love are in we am i are in you)

this world(as timorous itsters all
to call their cowardice quite agree)
shall never discover our touch and feel
—for love are in we are in love are in we;
for you are and i am and we are(above
and under all possible worlds)in love

a billion brains may coax undeath
from fancied fact and spaceful time—
no heart can leap,no soul can breathe
but by the sizeless truth of a dream
whose sleep is the sky and the earth and the sea
For love are in you am in i are in we

[I love that Cummings used emdashes in his poems.]

Siesta Beach, Florida

I stepped into the Gulf

looking westard and pretended I could

see Mexico beneath

pinkpink skies and orange tinted

clouds crashing into coconut trees.

muffled

in         white         spaces
we-full-feel

        under
        cotton
        sheets
light pinpoints where bones curve faces
where hands go on bodies
my hair rests on your's
so comfortable and methodic
we can predict each other's moves

what we feel is
not empty, not lost
but something

something
less         tangible
than         lust
more         immediate
than         indifference

is stretched along the days.

imperfect balance

New York City winter is a muted black & mellow
orange
            & the sky becomes orange
            & the snow becomes orange
            & my skin
                orange
            under three-starless skies

            open

***

he said the city of lost dreams was kinda cute & kinda hopeful and i said it was too desperate too overwhelming but he didn’t care, he was too open & relaxed to give a damn.

we became too much for each other
in New York.

***

i sit alone in a basement
room heated in the depths of November.
outside it was warm like sun
in May & i am
sweltering in this
            heat

***

summer edges into spring
driving beads of sweat down
bare backs & grimy heels
            (the city soot that dirties
            snow is always embedded in the
            cracks of my rough black
            heels; only thin rubber separates
            me from pavement; never ever sit on
            sidewalks—trekked with shit &
            abandoned dreams)

***

you
            jet started my desire for escape for
                anything / everything beyond
these
                tightly drawn borders in this
                cluster of city     lights &
                city     lives

give me
a new kind of new
            i need in my twenties

            away

***

glacial caps are melting for longer springs
the north pole is drowning
            so i can be
                flirty

***

a window is the weakest mirror
you see the world outside &
slight hints of yourself
            faint & distorted
                my skin looks different
                & i
                become part of what’s out there

***

New York is a city of islands & bigger
islands (but the Bronx is connected to mainland
America) what if we
drifted         away
            somewhere towards the
                equator?

***

seat 24a:
i cram against smeared plastic paned port
window looking down the dirty white
wing that somehow lifts me up into
the air along waves of
heat that strike
New York &
i’m
off

my dirtiest suntans

I’ve got to get out of here. I choose a piece of shawl and my dirtiest suntans. I’ll be back, I’ll re-emerge, defeated, from the valley, you don’t want me to go where you go, so I go where you don’t want me to. It’s only afternoon, there’s a lot ahead. There won’t be any mail downstairs. Turning, I spit in the lock and the knob turns.

—Frank O’Hara, "Meditations in an Emergency"

you being in love

I hesitate over calling E. E. Cummings one of my favorite poets because of his popularity (I'm the same way with everything else—Amelie and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind are two of my favorite movies, but I don't like admitting it because they're everyone's favorite), but he is.

I'm not sure how exactly I stumbled upon Cummings—maybe in my creative writing class in high school with Mr. Garfinkel (who I credit with setting me down my writerly path. He wrote my college recommendation and I snuck a peek and it almost made me cry)—but my love for poetry started around then. Stylistically and to a lesser extent, thematically, Cummings inspired me. Looking back at my earlier poems, this was very obvious with my parentheses, line breaks, spacing and hell of a lot of enjambment (thank you, Henry Shapiro).

What appeals to me about Cummings, in general, is just that—instead of following the typical line breaks of a sentence or breath as Charles Olson did, Cummings' relies on more factors: the way it sounds, the way it looks and the way the words are broken up. I always think of his work as visual poetry, or "look-at" poetry and I describe my work the same way (though, this might not be the case anymore). Looking at subjects, he fed my fascination with spring and the abstract action of wishing. I even used a line from "when faces called flowers float out of the ground" as my senior quote:

and breathing is wishing and wishing is having-
but keeping is downward and doubting and never
-it's april(yes,april;my darling)it's spring!

It's difficult, I think, to write love poetry, but in "you being in love," Cummings offered a nice, different (in my opinion) perspective as to what love is and entails.

Here is "you being in love," from is 5:

you being in love
will tell who softly asks in love,

am i separated from your body smile brain hands merely
to become the jumping puppets of a dream? oh i mean:
entirely having in my careful how
careful arms created this at length
inexcusable, this inexplicable pleasure—you go from several
persons: believe me that strangers arrive
when i have kissed you into a memory
slowly, oh seriously
—that since and if you disappear

solemnly
myselves
ask "life, the question how do i drink dream smile

and how do i prefer this face to another and
why do i weep eat sleep--what does the whole intend"
they wonder. oh and they cry "to be, being, that i am alive
this absurd fraction in its lowest terms
with everything cancelled
but shadows
—what does it all come down to? love? Love
if you like and i like,for the reason that i
hate people and lean out of this window is love,love
and the reason that i laugh and breathe is oh love and the reason
that i do not fall into this street is love."

sunblasted

the faint
lines of a watch
are sketched on
my wrist, rays

from a different
time zone
sunblasted
my skin to a darker
copper, under blue

water black
wet cloth
clings to my
hips, i am

pale underneath,
hot, step
over burning
sand ingrained in

heels, footprints
behind me,
leaves,
turn dry,

crumble softly
under feet, there
is no escaping and
yellow
can’t stay mine

splitting fruit

Washington Monument.

from my senior work, Get Away First.

D.C. day,
he takes me to Dupont Circle where speed chess games
went lightening quick and shopping carts wielded by
men in drag and women in garters and inside,
light and shadows intertwine on walls from
a simple glass hoop twirling in place,
awe.

D.C. night,
he looks at the trees and i look at the blackened
blue sky and air with hints of winter, we stand
closer together and when letters run out,
one syllable words take over as
street names. i insist there is
reason behind the names
and he says it's just
coincidence, by
chance.

we first familiarize ourselves
with me & you (we slip hands
together easily, there is something

that feels
comfortable
that feels

good)

we walk along Davenport to
Rock Creek Park where
we stroll in the
middle of the street and
disregard cars

we jump the tiny creek
and are surrounded by
tall almost bare trees with
baby green leaves sprouting
the sun made them lighter and
lower branches lash at my feet


Rock Creek Park.

we sit and we eat
pasta and sauce and raisins
amongst fallen trees (unpredictable
rain storms) and we
watch deer
watch us
watching them

we familiarize ourselves
with us walking through
Arlington Cemetery
looking at rows of
chalk-white gravestones
trying to interpret the meaning of
a cross within a circle and
why unknown graves didn’t have numbers
at the Tomb of the Unknown Solider,
we watch in silence a soldier hand off
a gun after inspection with sharp turns
and clicks of heels

we wander across the Potomac and
venture to the western National Mall where
children play in unknown smoke billowing from
a grate and a man in orange play
handball against the marble wall
we sit near the Monument
watching that wall and the flags
dim gold
into darkened dusk



National WWII Memorial.

Poem: the bus ride

the bus ride
inspired by Adrienne Rich’s Twenty One Love Poems, II

leaving the city, screens flicker, she shuts
the cover trapping ink between pages.
she is lost and moving forward, her lone
start over gray flat asphalt. she shivers,
air is cold and her body is too warm.

her chaotic mind runs fast and spins with
mixing leaves and petals blurring outside
her touch. the sky above empty with clouds
rolling stiller than still. it is just her
and lackluster light that never lightens.

the wheels roll suddenly and jerk backwards,
she forgets wind sometimes makes her awkward.


[A D.C. to New York trek in October]

Poem: Distance Creates

[picture of door on the cat alley in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Note cat lounging on step.]

This poem is very very different from my usual style. Inspired by Whitman as seen through long, long lines and descriptions and all that. It's the leading poem of my senior work.

Distance Creates

I.
I always forget I live on top of a hill,
But I remember when I walk by the tiny park where I used to play during my nursery school days, when Manhattan didn’t exist.
Some nights, when I walk by the open gates, I see the rest of Queens glittering at my feet,
The yellow streetlamps, the white fluorescents of living rooms, the red backlights of cars moving faster than I ever could, all against the backdrop of the dark sky.

If I squint, I see the brightly lit JFK, where blinking red-and-white airplanes took me away from my hill in the night to different hills across the continent and overseas,
Where narrow cobblestone streets were paired with even more narrow uneven sidewalks,
Where turquoise waters were still and warm and the breeze blew sand into my hair,
Where palm trees replaced oaks and the fog softened the sunlight and faintly chilled the air,
Where, eleven years ago and eighteen hours away, muddied monsoon rains spilled onto the floor, covering my eleven-year-old feet.

II.
Racing along the BQE and staring at Manhattan's east coast where the Citicorp Center glowed purple and the Empire State pink,
I remember standing on the ledge of the Empire State and seeing the bridges leading to Brooklyn, Staten Island, the Bronx, Jersey, and back home to Queens, the dark, empty gaps where parks are, the white light surrounding Times Square, and I look again for the neatly lined lights of JFK,
And I remember how small the city really is.

III.
The second time I ever flew, I stole a window seat as the plane slowly emptied after thirty-minute-long stopovers: Amsterdam, Dubai, New Delhi, new places I’d never been to before and all in one trip, I breathed in their air.
Landing in Zia International Airport, Bangladesh was green and humid and I saw women collecting long stalks right along the runway from my window.
In a third-world nation and I’m ten hours ahead, Tuesday to New York’s Monday in this tiny country where my parents grew up.
For two sweltering months, we trapped frogs in steel bowls, pushing them back in with sticks when they tried to escape and begged our pet goats, chickens and ducks to run away before unknown men sacrificed them in our names.

Covered in mosquito bites, we returned home with the scent of jackfruit on our skin.

IV.
In Isla Verde, there are no waves; the Puerto Rican water gently creeps onto the beach, back and forth, bringing tiny pink and purple seashells to the shore,
My heels dig back into the white sand and overhead, planes roar from Luis Muñoz Marin International Airport where I landed a day before.
I am in this tropical far away with time change and spring becomes summer in May with one plane ride.

Old San Juan shuts off its streets so we can walk from bar to club drunkenly safe and
Near the brilliant dark blue San Juan Bay and Caño de San Antonio, families stay up past two in the morning, laughing and sipping virgin piña coladas along the old fortress walls.
We walk on Calle de San Francisco to the elevated Castillo San Cristóbal and we see a different version of the Atlantic Ocean–clear, dazzling, equatorial water that tastes a bit sweeter.

V.
Far Rockaway Beach is covered in the beer cans and cigarette butts that strong tides devour like lives,
I look out to the east where the sky and water blend into one big bright hazy blue,
And I hop through sand that burns and broken shells that cut my feet.
The New York sun darkens me slightly before I leave again.

VI.
Across the continent and six hours away in San Francisco, their forty-three hills give perfect city views, and with every step I take, my muscles stretch.
From their tops, I see the red rusted bridge to my left where I biked to a slanted boating town, the soothing blue bay, and other house-covered slopes below me.
Climbing down to below sea level, my ears pop from the sudden altitude change and I mingle with palm trees and I drink up the crisp California air.
On Baker Beach with the same red bridge to my right, I step into the lukewarm Pacific and break away from the heat wave that I left behind in the East and my soles grip on polished green and red and black pebbles, smooth from western waves.

From SFO to JFK, I fly higher than those hills and I see the same bridges, the same parks, the same beach, the same hills where I was a few hours before and I could fit everything in my palm perfectly.

VII.
New York City is flatter and too familiar to me,
And I crave something different.

An introduction of sorts

I wanted something more legitimate, something clean, something that wasn't attached to anything I've previously started (in terms of online blogging-journaling-ranting & bitching about myself). So, this is it. Poetry, articles, essays, links (I'm kinda obsessed with interesting links), pictures, anything and everything.

So, here it goes.

sidenote:
title comes from Federico García Lorca's Romance Sonambulo:

Green, how I want you green.
Green wind. Green branches.
The ship out on the sea
and the horse on the mountain.
With the shade around her waist
she dreams on her balcony,
green flesh, her hair green,
with eyes of cold silver.
Green, how I want you green.
Under the gypsy moon,
all things are watching her
and she cannot see them.

Green, how I want you green.
Big hoarfrost stars
come with the fish of shadow
that opens the road of dawn.
The fig tree rubs its wind
with the sandpaper of its branches,
and the forest, cunning cat,
bristles its brittle fibers.
But who will come? And from where?
She is still on her balcony
green flesh, her hair green,
dreaming in the bitter sea.

—My friend, I want to trade
my horse for her house,
my saddle for her mirror,
my knife for her blanket.
My friend, I come bleeding
from the gates of Cabra.
—If it were possible, my boy,
I'd help you fix that trade.
But now I am not I,
nor is my house now my house.
—My friend, I want to die
decently in my bed.
Of iron, if that's possible,
with blankets of fine chambray.
Don't you see the wound I have
from my chest up to my throat?
—Your white shirt has grown
thirsy dark brown roses.
Your blood oozes and flees a
round the corners of your sash.
But now I am not I,
nor is my house now my house.
—Let me climb up, at least,
up to the high balconies;
Let me climb up! Let me,
up to the green balconies.
Railings of the moon
through which the water rumbles.

Now the two friends climb up,
up to the high balconies.
Leaving a trail of blood.
Leaving a trail of teardrops.
Tin bell vines
were trembling on the roofs.
A thousand crystal tambourines
struck at the dawn light.

Green, how I want you green,
green wind, green branches.
The two friends climbed up.
The stiff wind left
in their mouths, a strange taste
of bile, of mint, and of basil
My friend, where is she—tell me—
where is your bitter girl?
How many times she waited for you!
How many times would she wait for you,
cool face, black hair,
on this green balcony!
Over the mouth of the cistern
the gypsy girl was swinging,
green flesh, her hair green,
with eyes of cold silver.
An icicle of moon
holds her up above the water.
The night became intimate
like a little plaza.
Drunken "Guardias Civiles"
were pounding on the door.
Green, how I want you green.
Green wind. Green branches.
The ship out on the sea.
And the horse on the mountain.