Hi hubski
I've been back and forth about posting this and if I did, how would I tag it? It probably should be tagged #stateofthelil, but let's just consider this a writing prompt. For Now.
When I would try to explain myself to a significant person, there's this:
1) what I say
2) what I want to say
3) what I really mean
and on and on.
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There Are a Few Things About Me That I Think You Should Know
When I say, “I don’t like to leave the house,”
I mean it depends on the house,
But give me a library of my own,
An expanse of desk, and some beautiful pens
And you would need a helicopter to airlift me
from my island.
---
When I say, “Don’t tuck in the top sheet,
I need to move my feet freely.”
I mean, if we let my feet breathe,
they won’t run off.
---
When I say, “It takes one person to have an idea,
but two to form a committee and call a meeting,”
I mean that I do play well with others
And like to create something out of nothing,
even this relationship.
If we try to spin straw into gold
A beautiful sheet of straw might emerge.
---
When I say, “I prefer booths and baskets,”
I mean, if I have to leave the house
Eating out should be a picnic -
The table, spread before us like a library shelf.
---
There are a few things about me I think you should know:
But what’s essential is invisible to the eye,
Every trip includes an unknown destination,
And the self you present to me, your relative self, is yours only for now.
---
Edna St Vincent Millay wonders, “If I were starving,
Would I trade my memory of this night for food?”
Her answer, “I do not think I would,” is my answer too.
---
and when I say that I stopped eating when my heart was broken,
It’s not so much that my heart was broken,
As this: When roads diverged in a yellow wood
He went down one path thinking there was a pretty forest that way,
But found only a steep cliff.
I stood looking a long way down the other path and through the trees
and saw only that it looped back around,
To where I was standing.
---
And finally, when I say there are a few things about me
That I think you should know,
I mean all that I am
All that I show you or give you
Is as substantial as the vegetables I cut every morning and put in your lunch
As substantial as the broom I put behind your fridge
or the three-way bulb I put in your three-way lamp.
I mean that I don’t know yet
What you need to know
to go with me down the road and into the yellow wood
And neither do you.
We won’t know until we get there.
--------------------------------
What about you, hubski?
Are there a few things about YOU, that I should know?
thenewgreen steve I played hockey
_refugee_ flagamuffin poetry
Footnotes: The Little Prince, Martin Buber, Robert Frost, the Torah, "Love is Not All" (sonnet by Edna St. Vincent Millay)
I don't know if I fully fit in theme, but this is what came out, lil. there are a few things about me that you should know. I see a flower inside a vast cavern. clinging to survival on the precipice of possibility, the water droplets of hope washing my face. on late nights, in half dark and in hurried glances I recognize a stranger: not myself, a tall Ent with a beard of moss and a faerie held safe in his body. I'm depressed, I hate myself." I am holding, in the pit of my gut, a desire to tear off my own ill-fitting skin like rings on a tree, stripping myself down to a smaller, more youthful core, an attempt to turn back time and right the wrongs of a life so squandered. and the sound of wind through the quaking aspen. the emerald beetle bores its holes in me, but I will compensate for the loss and be greater for it. When I visualize myself, When I see myself in a mirror When I say "I have Dysphoria, But I don't do that. I thrive on promise, and hope,
also because of this style of music, RiotGrrl.
thanks Lil!! I don't know if I've ever written anything good enough to be published, but I'll keep those in mind for reading. In fact, going to read Vetch now.
When we get together, I want to see you and hope you want to see me. But often you just want to be seen, and today it's me. Also: Don't mistake my eagerness to go with eagerness to leave. Don't mistake my eagerness to stay with a desire to stay. Basically I rarely feel wanted around others. And the rest is thinking about a recent conversation with my father. I talked about hiking or running or something. He spent most of middle age with the mindset of "gotta be doing something." Now he says he's happy to just stay home. Neither is where I'm at in life. When I hike out to some remote point, it's because I want to go there. When I hike back, it's because I look forward to returning home. This is beautifully written, lil. Thanks for helping me think about life in a different way. The format, and your content, is really great.
Don't mistake my eagerness to stay with a desire to stay. I will mistake your eagerness to go because I've been left before. I'll mistake your eagerness to stay because I so much want you to stay. Asking the first question is easy. "What's up?" Asking the second question requires listening to what hasn't been said. Thanks for your comment WanderingE, and for your own "few things" that you want someone to know.Don't mistake my eagerness to go with eagerness to leave.
We mistake one thing for another all the time:
I love the poem lil and I'm glad you decided to share it; it reminds me of one of my favourite songs As The Years Go By - Mashmakhan. The idea of six word stories has been mulling around in my head lately, so that'll influence this and I'm going to draw on inspiration from the word cloud for my diary. Here goes: --- Hear me say 'I am alone' and know this is not true; Of friend ships, one has many, and with 'Hello' more will grow. - 'I need a job' is true, but not to say the truth; my desire is not monetary, no, instead 'Please let me prove myself'. - 'I miss you' is the simplest why not say what I mean, whilst my audience: it may change, the only reply's in my dreams. --- Bonus: 'It's not very good', 'Oh. Posted.'
My wife is on Team Tuck, I am not. We've reached a detante, whereby she tucks in her half and leaves mine wild and free, as God intended.