on the wave :: alanna

25 things that have to do with me, #4

alanna — Sun, 03 May 2009 16:26:13 +0000

the number 23 holds a deep, mysterious gravity that i can feel when i see it. when it pops up in especially deep, mysterious ways, it’s like a red dwarf has passed me and pulled at me.
this is probably all in my head.
sometimes people need something to believe in.
on my road trip from new york to memphis, somewhere around mile 700 and hour 10, i tried to imagine that god, or some version of god left over from my childhood, was in my passenger’s seat.
when i was a child, god was my imaginary friend.
but in the car god kept changing into various men that left me, or were never around much in the first.
one reason i like solo road trips: by the end you’re too tired for social correctness, and given no alternative but good-natured lunacy.
on my road trip from new york to memphis, i sang nearly the entire time.
on my road trip from new york to memphis, when i was worried that i was getting tired and losing focus, i put in neutral milk hotel’s in the aeroplane over the sea, which is one of my least favorite albums ever. my annoyance at the album shook me out of my haze.
last night, back in memphis, i was in the middle of a seething crowd, pogoing to korn. mosh pits kept forming around me and i kept having to push myself away from them. i’m still too small and bony for mosh pits.
when my best friend and i were teenagers, we went to see stabbing westward at the new daisy. she was picked up and surfed over the audience. then someone dropped her and someone else stepped on her face.
my best friend wasn’t in the crowd. she’s become too old for mosh pits.
my age has never had much to do with the number of years i’ve been on this earth. when i was a child i was very grown up for my age. starting when i was eight, seemingly everyone around me started getting cancer. by the time i was twenty, i’d nearly lost my mother, and had lost my father and my grandparents.
my grandparents had taken care of me when my mother was next to death, so losing them was like losing two more parents.
in july, it will have been ten years since dad died and i ran away from home. although i know i’ve grown up in some ways, in many other ways i don’t feel older. in many ways i think i feel younger.
few things are more ironic than an eight year old with the weight of mortality pressing on her. the inarguable fact that death is in the room.
when i was eighteen, holding vigil over my father, i stared at death every night.
ten years later, i still see it hanging around.
i’m not in the habit of seeing dad’s grave when i’m in town. it might be the last bit of leftover protestant guilt.
i refer to dad’s grave as The Filing Cabinet. he’s in a mausoleum.
when you see a dead person, drained and refilled and made-up to look not as much like a corpse, they don’t look like they’re sleeping. they look dead. you know that this body is like the skin of a snake. it vaguely resembles what it used to hold, but the life inside it is obviously gone.
dad’s body looked like this months before he actually died. his body killed him; i have no doubt of it.
it’s been ten years and.
i am back in memphis and.
i tell people i am pagan, but in reality there are so many religions rich with tradition and story, and i know each of them has depth and significance, so i can’t possibly imagine that the god i happened to be raised to love and speak to and cower from is the one and only god. so when i say pagan, i mean that your god is just as likely to be around as my imaginary childhood friend is.

25 things about me, part 3

alanna — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 09:48:31 +0000

I have written over a thousand poems. I am including the hundred haiku I wrote as a project in this grand count.
I’ve spent the past few weeks thinking of random things about me, a la Matias Vieneger, who has somehow advanced a Facebook quiz phenomenon epidemic to an actual form. It looks difficult.
I can’t post honestly on my Facebook page the way I wish I could. Example: in the previous “things about”, I mention that I have not had intimate relations with a man in many moons. Such a post would be easily seen by a few men I have had intimate relations with, one of which might disagree with me on how long this has actually been (it feels like forever.),
and more of which would simply not want to read about that.
The gloriousness of having my own personal site is, regardless of legality, there is a taking on of responsibility by one when one enters my personal site - insomuch as if one sees something that one objects to, i always have the debate-crushing trump card of, “Well, you clicked on the link so you chose to come here at your own risk.” Facebook, being a site devoted to keeping people as quote connected as possible, puts the responsibility in the hands of the writer: “Well, you posted material on a site knowing that all your friends were going to find it and read it while idly poking around wasting time and waiting for work to be done, so you chose to post it at your own risk.” Unquote. There’s no question of differences between the two. I’m happy to be holding court once again from the former, and getting to smugly and snarkily smirk at the latter.
Matias was right - these lists are hard work.
I’ve been numb lately. I’ve been shellshocked.
A while ago I saw a necklace whose pendant was a vintage compass. I liked the idea but didn’t like the price of the necklace, so I started idly poking around ebay. The week before last I got serious about searching and found some compasses I liked, but was disheartened by how much they sold for. Then last week I bid on three compasses, and won all three bids. Suddenly I have the beginnings of a vintage compass collection.
I’ve kept one compass in my pocket: the first compass to arrive in the mai. It’s the least vintage of the three I currently own; from the 40s, encased in brown plastic. But it’s somehow the most dignified and magical of the three, so I play with it in my pocket as I walk to the subway, from the subway…caressing it and holding it, often taking it out to make sure North still exists.
I don’t really like typing with proper capitalization. It’s like operating in a room with the windows closed and latched.
I like how lowercase in poetry is accepted.
I wonder if I can type a list where none of the items refer to any of the others, or if so refer in a more insightful way than train of thought.
But, maybe train of thought isn’t the worst.
I’m in a sticky situation, even now. I expect that in a week or two, maybe three, I’ll be out of this situation and be able to talk about it. I hope so. When I’m in a place where I feel the reality - “it just wouldn’t be proper to talk about this right now” - I get awkward and also resentful.
At work today I snapped at my boss for the first time. It felt good.
I’m hoping to get a man to moan my name very soon.
I don’t think I’ll actually touch anyone anytime soon.
No, sir, I do not bite my thumb at you, sir.
Rough rug against bare sole.
Oh! I forgot to burn that backup cd. I’ll do it now.
My hair is blonder than it’s been in years. At first I couldn’t stand it, but now I’m intrigued by it. Is this the stuff that’s been coming out of my head for the past few years? It sure is blonde. With white. There is white.
For my twenty-first birthday my then-live-in-boyfriend took me out to a Thai restaurant around the corner from where we lived. I ordered a glass of wine and they didn’t card me - I’m guessing because they didn’t really care. It’s one of the few times I haven’t been carded for alcohol.
People say I look young, but I know better. I was around when I was young. Now I am less young.
Written in diary:
“O city city take me o city take city o take me city o me o take city take city me take it city take me take it o city o me,”
I hope Frank and Matias and Christine don’t let me pussy out on this writing thing.
I know I still have something to say.

calendar notes

alanna — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 08:54:02 +0000

calendar notes

october

why won’t time ever work?

april

i just want to fold the world up, put it out on the porch, and spend a day of doing nothing
there is something but feeling bad about it.

february

there is something i feel i need in someone else that
there is something i have to find in myself.

january

what is it like; to be an honest person?
and i’m soft, warm putty; wishing for his hands.

january

tomorrow night we doze in bed wrapped in each other almost as if we weren’t who we were.

Still seeking mercy.

alanna — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 08:51:21 +0000

Still seeking mercy.. Layers of future mud on boots.. Where is my keenness?
There are these times that come with their own click track.
This is a Manhattan-bound N train.. I’m subject to my own random search.
Sometimes we just want to get fucked, and we’re surprised when the “over” shoe drops.
But it’ll never heal when you keep rubbing it.
I don’t want to use myself as an excuse to do the same thing I’ve always done.
Do i want pity or change?

Claws like nails, a chalkboard like a stop sign, a billboard like a repetition.

And the fates are just at the edge of consciousness – what do you see, women?
Fire! Do you encourage? Do you feel sorry for me?
If I can imagine it, I can put life in it, and whether it breathes or not, I can show it – this
Fire! yet-unborn – and say though it’s not alive, it is here.
Abortions are difficult.
Sometimes I incubate a stillborn, rubbing it to get it warm – I can make it move!
Fire! While the fates stand by.. Do you feel sorry for me?. Stand by.
If I keep moving I can keep the stone from rolling over me, blocking my way, I can keep
Fire! the fire from burning me up.
In truth, I may not be a phoenix.. I may be a fluke.
What is the line between brilliance and black hole despair?. Is there one?

Tossed around in cycles, if I wind up at just the right place the tides will take me forward.
I wanted change before it was fashionable.
Hometown, let me redeem you!
Father, let me hold you in high esteem!
Mother, let me rescue you!
Brother, let me rescue you!
As long as my vision is narrow, I don’t feel insignificant…just unimportant.
What sort of ego does someone have when they have something to prove?

Grafitti everywhere, overwriting the undersigned.

I love you, city, something deep and dark and beautiful and usual.
Every step is a piece of pillow talk, how I wish I could hold you in my arms, kiss the glass and gravel and tell you I wish I were a city too.

Let me tell you how much love I give to my cities

alanna — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 08:45:32 +0000

Let me tell you how much love I give to my cities

Monday morning I crossed the street
with a box that was too big for me
There’s a bakery on my way
that I should avoid and the muffins are great

This walk will soon be so familiar
I’ll curse it when I get off work late in February
Monday the sun shone on my bare arms

And in the city there’s a woman who works
every day I slip between the doors
and quietly ask for some noodles, some tea
she wears a leather cord around her neck
on the leather cord is a sentimentally-shaped key
i’d like to ask her

My cities don’t mind when I’m alone

delta

alanna — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 08:43:49 +0000

delta

beautiful woman, you move
with the rhythm, down and out.
i ask you to teach me, it emerges a demand,
must you be so cold?. why must you dance alone?

somewhere over denver

alanna — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 08:42:37 +0000

somewhere over denver

by the root –
what can we do now?
so that lying is out –
may i be here forever?

and why did you smile when i repeated your name?
do you know what it is to wriggle, pain, ecstasy,
the silence after a plea, breaking –

if only to have something, my own moon
to mercilessly hound on electric nights,
thinking, i am weak! i am living!
drop me off here, my time is passing –

tomorrow i will remain at the foot of my bed, praying –

i see you on the map.
nothing wrings me more than the word’s
yellow print. my gut turns and we move on.

atholl

alanna — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 08:41:32 +0000

atholl

i could be nothing at all
if not a shepherd
i can see the rolly sheep, like salt water taffy with legs,
and pink as newborns, i’ve taken them back
to the barn and shaved them down
but i’m worried, they’re naked and it’s begun to rain
they’re not folling their fat bodies on the grass
they’re watching me in quiet discomfort

shall i lead you all to the shelter of the widest tree i know?
shall i make the journey to the shed, keep you tight together?
shall i knit you little sweaters with your own coats?

i’ll lift a lamb, lower it onto my shoulders,
i’ll lead you all, hum snippets of bagpipe tunes,
stroke the lamb, keep up, keep on.

Thursday’s adventure

alanna — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 08:40:33 +0000

Thursday’s adventure

i bought a ticket to the blair atholl station
searching for my name, and why this life

o scottish bee from the land of my fathers –
get off my pita!

around bagpipes i get very strange
i never thought one way or another
but now put me on a street and
have me pass a lone bagpipes player
nose running in the cold
with a mostly empty money box
put me there and i begin to weep
the sound, it cuts straight down and through
and i know nothing of anything
but there i am, blinking tears, swallowing thistles

you looked at me grinned and remarked –
three redheads in a room, watch for a revolution
and when i asked for more hot water i meant –
look at me, it’s happening now

o scotland must i leave you now
carry me upon the tracks
and play me a song and kiss me goodnight

if they see the tears, i won’t blame the rain

untitled

alanna — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 08:38:42 +0000

untitled

and i was walking up a puddly path
soles on gravel and freshly fallen water
my pants are soaked: “here,” say the cuffs,
“there,” say the yellow flowers by the path
and point to the edge, down the hill,
and out to the stone, the lights, the firth.
oh oh oh
if only this could be explained