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There, by the bank of the Chattahoochee,
drinks a squirrel: clothed in the softest of grays and browns.
He is drinking as if he had learned
--without counsel--that he is in need of
thirst to yearn for water.
His love for the drink has brought him back
without map or guide.
He is there; drinking,
seducing the water with the flicker of his tongue.

The water willingly gives way to his lashes
and he, taking only the pleasures needed,
reflects his image upon the sky.
It is the squirrel in the water
he loves dearly, and he licks it clean.
He, the squirrel, and it, the water
do not know that they are called so.

Searching for the Un-Lost

I have found myself searching for
things I thought I had lost;
keys that sit by the entry,
papers that sit in the tray,
letter arriving in the mail (one day soon).

Hopefully.

Around my world
of dog filled garages, cars, and grades
these things had not been lost for some time,
but I had been searching
and had not found that they were as always.

Always.

They sit patiently (multiplying) as I type letters
incoherently;
chat with friends in faraway lands
(or myself and sometimes, God);
sip tea hotly steaming with milk and vanilla

Into something more beautiful than satisfaction;
think about the china I inherited and have yet to use
more than once (maybe Thanksgiving tea).
They are still there
waiting for me to see them

and stop

searching, and be satisfied.

In Holding

I believe I have felt
no emotion worth remembering
and no satisfaction in forgetting.
For all of my feelings have been
left in holding
replaying the death of a man.

As I have moved within and about
they have laid covered in his bed
waiting for his eyes to open and his lips to speak;
they have refused to believe that his chest,
which moves so slightly in rhythm--as to suggest breathing--,
is hollow.

As I combed the flooded streets
of the eastern banks of San Louis,
they have wondered if he remembers
that he was once a man (elegant, charismatic),
and can hear the doe above cleaning the meadow.


They have wondered if he was gone
before the tube feedings and all night tremors.
Did he see them watching his transition
from life to something else
and watering his growth.
He has never said,
and they have waited.


As they and he lay,
Covered by the seasons
The stripes and the stars
I believe that I shall not feel
And they shall not rest until
He answers, but he cannot
And we wait in holding.

You get what has been paid for!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZN5kcQzEXcg

I am at my best when I am thoroughly up to no good!

My Imagination

I’ve been…thinking…of you…not only…your warmth...as chocolate fondue(d) over ripe fruit…sweet, firm, and ready to be devoured and slowly enjoyed with the tip of my tongue and fingers …I imagine the wrinkles in your sun licked forehead…one wrinkle, two wrinkle, three wrinkle…your concentration is divine…up and in you sail…I find comfort on your shoulder and door…the smell of the grease in your hair melting…the door knob striking my back…and I do not care...to bother with such frivolous accessories...i ponder of ways to…get you here and we can….

My Best Days

Really, really
Fond of days so silly
And gay with babies and kisses.

The Code Breaker

I saw…those who wanted nothing, achieved nothing, and lived with nothing in mind…and I thought life had to ultimately become, a pit of nothingness… a distortion of light…evil…so the sight of it left you licking scales… impurity from your sockets, gnawing at brick of un…happiness… to bleed…from your mind…then, this…it…they… happened…what? I am not exact... It could’ve been the death of my precious, loving father…not his donations…but a will to love it all for me…her…her…and her; my marriage to a husband so powerfully put together that he has no chose but…be…here…there…within…and no longer without ; the miscarriage of a baby I desperately…(BLANK)...there are no words, just feelings; emergency surgery to remove an organ…an organ…a vessel…and membrane…a member; or just the thought of God saying ‘I Love You’ as only he can… it happened in a real way and life was no longer just quilted pieces of nothingness…no…thing…ness..define it! I cannot…explain what has no words…grasp it..’s…formless body with my hands…it is too swift…I don’t know what am I to do with it... my life, this life…His Life…

Write about its success?...I think…I can…see success seeping inside warm honey success…the word of encouragement inside here…there…a general tale of wake…(in)…up…and reasons to see and believe in life…an exploration of…what can be…and…is…so good…

My mentor, one of the greatest women alive…celebrated a happy birthday…--Happy Birth...Day...too…you—but there was her cancer…her breast…my heart...days, I cried…she told, I cried…selfishly, I cried…she should’ve cried, I cried…If her, then…me…it could happen to me… a selfish me…but it could happen…I cried…we had been defeated…the gauntlet yet thrown… we (she, I , humanity) had been…had…had we…then, it…the unexplainable happened to remind…me, selfish me…she is alive…today…tomorrow…yesterday…we had broken the code…I pass it on…

Heaven/Hell

I have been reading portions of John Milton’s Paradise Lost, and battling boredom induced depression. I have been feeling ill, and my thoughts have become as complicated as my life as a teacher, a full-time graduate student, and a wife. I have begun to feel myself slipping into an unfamiliar consciousness. Breath by breath I have become someone I do not recognize. So, Milton and I began a journey to seek and find the image of me I am comfortable with calling me….

(Side note: It isn’t easy loving yourself and being unpleased with your circumstances at the same time)

Not too long after the journey began I read, “The mind is its own place, and in itself/Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven” (lines 254-255), and was stricken with a thought so simple I had no choice but to pause and ponder…A Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven? …Which am I doing?
Truthfully, I haven’t been able to come to a conclusion. Depending upon the time and the day, the answer is subject to change. And it is my involuntary submission to change, necessary or unnecessary, that shocks me. I am torn between being shocked that I am shocked by myself, and being shocked that I thought I couldn’t be shocked by myself. The world of thought and boredom…leads me to believe that the mind on Earth osculates back and forth from heaven and hell regardless of its actual location.

T.S. Eliot- The Waste Land IV. Death by Water

Death is a process of life; the end to a beginning for all. However, each death is not the same. Some suffer to transition from life to death. Others leave more quietly than they came. But the idea of suffering seems to be Eliot’s niche in poetry.

“A current under sea
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell” (1212, lines 315-317)

Water is a powerful force. We must have it to live, but with too much we are bound to die. Death by water is one the most painful deaths to experience, because of the process the body is put through. Your cells expand and burst from over saturation. Your lungs begin to fill quickly and air is pushed further away from your brain. The pressure begins to build as you reach to breathe nothing but water filled with oxygen you cannot use.

But Eliot’s death does not seem to be a literal expression of death, but a longing to die as age progresses. And a reminder of our fate.

“He passed the stages of his age and youth
Entering the whirlpool.
Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look windward
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.” (1212, lines 317-321)

They shall die, either at sea or somewhere. But their fate is sealed. Did they truly have a chance to live?

Gerard Manley Hopkins

I love Hopkins’ poem about waking in hell. The idea of a Heaven and Hell is spellbinding, and gives more attractive natures to the idea of being disowned by God and cast into hell. The darkness that covers him when he awakes is not just an external cover, but an indication of what he feels like on the inside.

“ I am gall, I am heartburn. God’s most deep decree
Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;
Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.” (778, lines 9-11)

Suggests that he did not simply awake into hell, he was born there. His flesh and bone were built to suit the hellish heat by God alone. However, he woke up to find that he was still much better off than those who must experience hell away from God and Jesus. Is he suggesting that Earth is a form of hell? A temporary torment with the option of “saving” out through a redeemer? And if so, why would God create Earth to be a slight form of hell?

I don’t think I will ever know the answer to the latter question, but I can question and answer my own beliefs of heaven and hell. And Hopkins has helped get the ball rolling.

Bernard Shaw-Pygmalion

What does it mean to be you pretending to be someone else? Is it important for people to like you, or perceive you as something you are not? These are questions I asked myself while reading Shaw’s Pygmalion.

This play is wonderful because its message is timeless. Why do we have to give up ourselves to allow others to define us? It is a universal question, a theme that crosses borders and seas. Why would someone want to change another in order to identify with something that is not real?
I believe that it is a part of human nature to try to shape our surroundings to fit our comfort level. But I think Shaw wants us to see the brutal ideals that come from trying to shape others in a way that is unnatural to their individuality. I believe the Pygmalion is his commentary about the ills of trying to mold everyone from the same clay.

John Keats-Sonnet: When I have fears

When love and fear combine you find yourself reading When I have fears by John Keats. It is a wonderful poem about the things that matter most in life. It made me think about the things that matter most in my life. It seems a lot of the poems I have been reading recently have helped in the process, because so many of them have dealt with death. But Keats’ When I have fears make me wonder what my fears truly are.
When I behold upon the night’s starred face,

"Huge cloudy symbols of high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows with the magic hand of chance;” (425, lines 5-8)

The idea of not reaching my goals or the possibilities that are head frighten me as they do Keats in the lines before. What would I miss? Who would miss me? Would I have accomplished all that I possibly could?

It seems that chance is very important to Keats and his of idea of living life to its fullest. The idea of not having chance seems to be more frightening that opportunity. For me, not having the opportunity to explore or to conquer is what frightens me. I want to be able to accomplish all that I set out to before I leave this Earth.

But why is accomplishing much important to me? That is the question I think Keats would like for me to answer. I would simply answer, “I could have not lived to accomplish nothing at all.”

Robert Browning, Porphyria's Lover

The love of Elizabeth Barrett Browning did not faze Robert Browning when he wrote Porphyria’s Lover.

I found this poem engaging from the beginning. Love, a universal theme in poetry, was being turned around from the neck to see what was behind it. What it found was its behind and Browning’s uncanny wit. This poem is grotesquely beautiful in every sense. The elements of psychosis, love, and murder all bundled into a magnificent package. One feels compelled to read this murderous tale without flinching or condemnation.

Somehow, we experience the connection between the narrator and Porphyria.
“she put my arm around about her waist,
And made her smooth white shoulder bare,” (662, lines 16-17)

The love triangle begins, and the scent of her lovely “displaced yellow hair” reaches out to me. I want to touch her and caress below her waist. And as she offers herself to narrator as a sacrifice, I want to offer her my life in place of hers, but the narrator frightens me.
How could he believe that when she offered herself to him forever that she meant for him to take her life? Did love or passion possess him so, that he wanted to keep her forever in death? I believe Browning is showing how love can overtake a sane man and make him irrational.

“in one long yellow string I wound
Three times her little throat around,
And strangled her. No pain felt she;
I am quite sure she felt no pain.” (663, lines 39-42)

But did she feel pain? I was shocked. I wanted to cry. I thought the love affair between Porphyria, her lover, and I could be immortalized in some manner other than her death. If she felt no pain, I felt it for her. I wept for her return.

Samuel Coleridge, Constancy to an Ideal Object

I found Coleridge’s work to be engaging as if I were a character is his poems, or his poems were written as letters to me. The most fascinating poem that Coleridge wrote is Constancy to an Ideal Object because it left me wondering what objects are most enjoyable in life.
The speaker in Constancy to an Ideal Object seems to be a lover away from his love, tormented and pleased by the dreams of what his life will be. He seems frustrated with his persistent thoughts on a consistent topic and pines,
Since all that beat about in Nature’s Range
Or veer or vanish; why shouldst thou remain
The only constant in a world of change
Oh yearning Thought! That liv’st but in the brain?” (349).


He treats thought, with a capital T (line 4), as if it is a spirit that is formed in the mind, and as it grows, possesses the body. I believe Coleridge uses this device as a way to sublimely allow the reader to “feel” what the narrator is feeling. But how can thought be so powerful that it can possess your mind? I believe this question calls the reader to recall a time when a thought consumed them so that nothing else in life could surpass it. How was the reader able to move pass that point in their life? How did they conquer the thought?

I believe this is what Coleridge is asking his reader to do. He wants us to think about being overtaken by thought, and how that thought changed or affected our lives. I have had many thoughts that seemed untamable, a point the narrator has come to. Coleridge wants the reader to become empathetic with the narrator.

But why is it important for the reader to empathize with the narrator? If the reader doesn’t sympathize with the narrator when he says, “…Yet still thou haunt’st me; and thought well I see/She is not thou, and only thou art she…” (349) we would only think he was crazy, and not realize that it is what we think that defines who we are. Though our thoughts are not always reality, they can define what our reality becomes.

Industrialism

With every change in life there is something lost or removed. In the case of Industrialism, the innocence of pastures and farms, family and country were swept away with the motions of the locomotive. In their place, social freedom and awareness, economic gain and power, technology came and dominated. After reading many writers from the Industrial Era, it is assumed that most had suspicion of the locomotives good for mankind and country. Though, the days of family and extended family may have been dwarfed, I can find no reasonable alternative to the locomotive coming into the lives of humans.

The locomotive was a powerful force in moving my things forward, women’s rights being one that began to move with great speed. After factory work became available the idea of the “factory girl,” the immoral promiscuous female, became a popular symbol for working women. Women who earned a living, helped to raise the economic standing of a nation were somehow the enemy, because they were “undermining the family structure” (487). Industrialization was widening the economic gap between the rich and the poor, and as in any time of ‘war’, women chipped in the close the gap so their families could eat. In essence women were told they weren’t needed. Their responsibility to industrialism and their country was to supply children for work, which the women could not feed. This made some women begin to look at the double-sided crazy talk of being a woman. It also made many people notice the effects factory work had on children.

Though working conditions were not ideal for women, children, or men; it was work. And many people needed the work to survive the times they were in. As, we do now. Those who do not work, do not eat; or eat very well.

Oscar Wilde, The Decay of Lying

The line between truth and untruth can be blurred in such a way one would question if there are any truths at all. Wilde’s play, the Decay of Lying, defined lying in a way to make one question if truth is even worth knowing. Does truth have to define the existence of man? Or is man free enough to define his own existence based on what he believes?

These questions tackled my own ideas of truth and untruth. Raised a Christian, I have always been taught to the “morbid and unhealthy faculty of truth-telling” (834), and have allowed it guide my thoughts and actions. Trained as a writer, I have always been taught truth is priority, but embellishment sells; even if that embellishment crosses the line into a lie. Admittedly, I have told some lies. Some I thought were pretty good, but according to Wilde, I might as well have told the truth. My lies didn’t stretch the boundaries even. They weren’t so random and fabricated that they crossed the line of so unbelievable that someone else had no choice but to believe it was true. That is the craft of the writer. And it is the reader’s responsibility to enjoy.

In the play, Vivian expresses that “art never expresses anything but itself. It has an independent life, just as Thought has, and develops purely on its own lines.” (845) I believe this statement embodies how Wilde felt about art itself. I think he wanted writers to be more creative and expanded their minds beyond what they could touch, taste, smell, and/or hear. He implies that it is the writer’s responsibility to produce something that many initially seem unreal, but as time continues, and people buy into, it becomes truth to all.

A great example of the fiction turning into fact is man going outer space. It was once an untruth that is was possible, but someone believed it was so, and now man has been to the moon and back. We are to continue in the direction and explore ideas and styles no one has done before.

Lord Alfred Tennyson, Tears, Idle Tears

We all grow old, unless we prematurely pass into death. Our deaths are not a variable in our life, but an ever present constant. We pass the time given as best we can, until that day arrives and we can no longer continue. During that process we think. We think of our present, our future, but above all, we think of our past.

Our past is our connection to the person we think we are, and the person we would like to be. It solidifies our connection to what is just and truth. Our past can cause us to yearn for what we once had, or search for what we do not. No poem I have read as expressed these notions s vividly as Tennyson’s Tears, Idle Tears. Tears…, is a poem that provokes the reader to think about the process of aging in a way that embraces life’s accomplishments and end with dignity and longing. However, to get to the point of embracing one’s end a recollection of one’s past is needed, and this poem provides the necessary steps to insure a happy transition.

“Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes…” (597, lines 1-3)

I have never thought tears to be an idle element. It moves from Earth to human and back to Earth in a definite motion. But I do not think Tennyson wants us to believe that tears are idle in the sense or never moving or not actively being engaged. I believe he would like us to wonder the meaning behind our tears, why are they meaningless, or idle. That is where the recollection of the past comes in.

The narrator continues to rant about “the days that are no more” (597, lines 5, 10, 15, 20) and the “friends from the underworld” (597, line 7). All of the memories ride on the tide of the tear that finds its way to the narrator’s duct. But the tears do not move? Why? Why does the narrator not allow the tears to fall? I believe Tennyson wants to the reader to question why tears are the expression of internal turmoil. Tears do not cause friends to return or to flee. They cannot heal wounds or mend broken hearts. They cannot protect against death.

So, why do we need tears? I believe Tennyson is telling the reader we need tears to strengthen our ability to cope with the reality of life. Our tears do not compromise or strength. They are the vessels upon which tears move through our bodies.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnet 32

Every lover needs to be exposed to Elizabeth Barrett Browning during their courtship experience. I wish I had been exposed to her explicit love poems before I wed. Her words, so vivid and rich, express all the feelings and emotions I felt during the time my husband began to woo me. It is as though Ms. Barrett Browning knowingly expressed my deepest cares for me, because she knew I would be unable to do so as lovingly as she was able to. For this, I express as great connection to her work. Especially, her Sonnet 32, because it expressed how there is no stronger feeling then that of love.

“The first time that the sun rose on thine oath
To love me, I looked forward to the moon
To slacken all those bonds which seemed too soon…” (531; lines 1-3)

Here, Barrett Browning is experiencing the world through the lens of love for the first time. In this world, consumed by raw emotion, all that is dark is cast away by the light love produces. In love, as with light, sickness cannot live; despair cannot grow. There is only enough room for love, the love that the two share for one another. I think this is an important aspect to pay attention to. The love between her and Robert Browning helped her escape her sick room, both mentally and physically. The sun that shines in line 1 is a metaphor for the sun that she had not seen for years being tucked away in her room. She was now free.

Though she was gaining a new sense of freedom from all that had imprisioned her, she was still captivated by the idea of being so withdrawn from the world. Would she have enough to offer Robert after being confined to her lounge chair for so long? Or is she too “out of tune” (531, line 7) to be a match for his lovely love? Is the love they share strong enough and/or worth giving up all that she would lose to be with him? Most people in the initial stages of love have asked themselves question similar to these, and I believe all can relate to her worry and her excitement.

Most people have even questioned if they deserve the love they feel.

“And, looking on myself, I seemed not one
For such man’s love!—more like an out-of tune
Worn viol, a good singer would be wroth” (531-532, lines 6-8)

But why does she question the love? Why can’t she just except that they belong together? Does their age difference mean that much to her? I believe Mrs. Browning suggests that love is a powerful force, which blinds the human of its capability to reason, and if looked at through too much haze could cause the heart to break and to hate. She was protecting herself from herself and the ills of a bad decision. But such is love. Ms. Browning could not have known what was ahead for her and her romance. She couldn’t have imagined that her life would be an example for many modern American women in love to follow. She helped the likes of Mariah Carey and Demi Moore feel comfortable in marrying men much younger than they are. Her example of courtship is a remarkable testimony to the power to love and to overcome.

The Bronte Sisters & The Governess

I love reading literature about women with fortitude and moxy, and the stories/letters written by the Bronte sisters did not lead me yearning. There bold convictions and straightforward letters were filled with such emotion and self sureness that was/is unexpected of Victorian women. I was so taken back by there vivid approach to telling their dislikes for being a governess, I wondered if the duality of their lives and “thoughts” were not, somewhat, dangerous on many levels.

In public, the typical governess appeared to a meek, attentive whipping girl for her subjects and mistress. She had no thought or existence outside of household commands. Her every move and thought was controlled by the needs of the house. Or were they? Was the governess so dutiful, that she lost her wit and being in order for employment? According to the Bronte sisters’ letters, a governess is a woman who does what she must to survive in public, and in private is the woman she wishes to be.

It comes as no surprise that governesses were verbally abused by their mistresses. Though, the governess’s job seemed imprisoning, she had a freedom not bestowed to the lady of the household, because she was not, in essence, a lady.

A lady would have never been able to speak to her master as the character Agnes Grey, from Anne Bronte’s Agnes Grey, did and live without being beaten. Only a woman fed up with unruly children, a mistress with too much time, and an unforgiving master would be bold enough to say, “Then, sir, you must call them [the children] yourself, if you please…” (563) after her master insisted she wrangle his unruly children in from the snow, and not care the consequence. The beauty in her statement, though polite, is that it is against all the rules given by Sarah Stickney Ellis, because, again those rules were for “ladies.” Governesses weren’t ladies, they were simply governesses and they, without knowing, were smudging away at the definitions that defined women in general. Could the blurred social ranking of the governess be one of the pillars for women’s liberation?

Now, let us take a moment to speculate what Agnes Grey would have said had she been a modern woman in the movie The Nanny Diaries. I believe her monologue would have been similar to this:

“Then, sir, you must call them [the children] yourself, if you please, for they won’t listen to me…for all I care, the brats can catch a hellish cold or suffer from pneumonia. Frankly, I quit!”

Frankly, I would quit too. And because of the hardship suffered by these strong, enterprising ladies I have the right to.