![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
megwritesSo here's some more poetry, dusted off and edited for your amusement. I think I may be posting poetry more frequently.
In case anyone is wondering why, let me explain a little something. Me and Poetry have a strange, strange relationship. Once upon a time we were the best of friends. Poetry had a way of making me feel exhilarated and better than myself. I was smitten. Deep, deep smit.
And by smit, I mean that I filled notebooks with my adolescent angst which was just as bad as one expects, and I looked on my works like God looking down at the Garden of Eden and said to my young, angsty little self, "This is good." I even thought that I'd publish them and be famous and everyone would think I was The Best, Coolest, Deepest Thing Ever.
Well, then I started reading lots and lots of other people's poems. And I realized that, well, they were infinitely better. Which made me say to Poetry, "You cheating little hussy."
It sort of broke my heart.
I decided that I was done with Poetry forever. I was done reading it, writing it, thinking about it, participating in it. I couldn't stand the sight of poems. Of any poems. Hell, I couldn't even open a Dr. Seuss book without a great gnashing of teeth. This is not at all an exaggeration. I just couldn't deal with Poetry. It made me feel ashamed of myself and I've got enough shame, thanks much. No need for second helpings.
Then, after a while, tempers settled (mine) and Poetry revealed that she had, in fact, screwed over a great number of her other paramours, I felt less stupid.
While I felt better that it wasn't just me, I'm not the forgiving sort. I don't put up with humiliation well. Not to mention that me and Prose have a nice, steady thing going on. A thing which doesn't make me feel like such a jerk.
But Poetry is nothing if not a sneaky little bitch. And she has a way of making you miss her, has a way of putting the shine back on things that you, frankly, thought were shit. She also has a way of nagging you to be brave, of making you need to say something and pushing you to say it, even if the timing is exactly wrong.
She also has a way of making you need to say it to other people, to express it aloud instead of hiding it in a notebook which you then bury in a lead lined coffin in the middle of nowhere, because that's what it deserves.
So, I'm trying to strike a balance these days. Which includes reading poetry again, in limited doses and sometimes writing and sharing it.
Which is where the livejournal comes in.
Hopefully I can scratch the itch, but do so in a limited environment instead of taking a spectacular header off a high dive by doing something so retarded as reading my poems to an entire class or (*wince*) putting them in front of a poetry editor. Both of which I've done once and intend never to do again so long as I draw breath, so help me.
Keeping this all in mind, if you should happen by and feel the need to flog yourself using my words, maybe you'll find a line or two that makes you smile, or at least doesn't bore you. And if you should happen to comment, I will take it bravely and in the spirit is intended.
*deep breath*
"The Closest Thing to Telepathy"
By: Meg Freeman
My sincerest wish is to be
a composer
of music
that way I can better
make you understand the
truth of the things
I try so hard to express
but fail so abjectly at.
As a tool, words have their place,
but are oh so inconstant
language to language they
change and some of them
even evaporate entirely
trying to march across the bridge
from Spanish to English
or Japanese to French
Music stays it's course
and that which pleases you
on a cold day in Minnesota
may also make
you dance, in the full
zenith heat of a summer's night
if you should
happen to find yourself
in the vibrating
shaking-maraca heart of Tijuana
So, if I were this gifted composer
I would write music
and doing so, only
need to make small notes in the
margins
In between the dotted rows
I would make notes.
So that when you heard
the rounded notes
of a clarinet, low and half-sorrowed
I could tell you
That this was the moment I
laid in a field and the
wind blew over me and tangled
my hair with the grass
and I closed my eyes and the
sun made me see nothing but
red and at the moment
I loved being alive so, so
much that I understood that
there was nothing to fear in death.
And hearing,
perhaps you, too
could lie beside me
and we, neither one of us,
would fear
but understand all.
In case anyone is wondering why, let me explain a little something. Me and Poetry have a strange, strange relationship. Once upon a time we were the best of friends. Poetry had a way of making me feel exhilarated and better than myself. I was smitten. Deep, deep smit.
And by smit, I mean that I filled notebooks with my adolescent angst which was just as bad as one expects, and I looked on my works like God looking down at the Garden of Eden and said to my young, angsty little self, "This is good." I even thought that I'd publish them and be famous and everyone would think I was The Best, Coolest, Deepest Thing Ever.
Well, then I started reading lots and lots of other people's poems. And I realized that, well, they were infinitely better. Which made me say to Poetry, "You cheating little hussy."
It sort of broke my heart.
I decided that I was done with Poetry forever. I was done reading it, writing it, thinking about it, participating in it. I couldn't stand the sight of poems. Of any poems. Hell, I couldn't even open a Dr. Seuss book without a great gnashing of teeth. This is not at all an exaggeration. I just couldn't deal with Poetry. It made me feel ashamed of myself and I've got enough shame, thanks much. No need for second helpings.
Then, after a while, tempers settled (mine) and Poetry revealed that she had, in fact, screwed over a great number of her other paramours, I felt less stupid.
While I felt better that it wasn't just me, I'm not the forgiving sort. I don't put up with humiliation well. Not to mention that me and Prose have a nice, steady thing going on. A thing which doesn't make me feel like such a jerk.
But Poetry is nothing if not a sneaky little bitch. And she has a way of making you miss her, has a way of putting the shine back on things that you, frankly, thought were shit. She also has a way of nagging you to be brave, of making you need to say something and pushing you to say it, even if the timing is exactly wrong.
She also has a way of making you need to say it to other people, to express it aloud instead of hiding it in a notebook which you then bury in a lead lined coffin in the middle of nowhere, because that's what it deserves.
So, I'm trying to strike a balance these days. Which includes reading poetry again, in limited doses and sometimes writing and sharing it.
Which is where the livejournal comes in.
Hopefully I can scratch the itch, but do so in a limited environment instead of taking a spectacular header off a high dive by doing something so retarded as reading my poems to an entire class or (*wince*) putting them in front of a poetry editor. Both of which I've done once and intend never to do again so long as I draw breath, so help me.
Keeping this all in mind, if you should happen by and feel the need to flog yourself using my words, maybe you'll find a line or two that makes you smile, or at least doesn't bore you. And if you should happen to comment, I will take it bravely and in the spirit is intended.
*deep breath*
"The Closest Thing to Telepathy"
By: Meg Freeman
My sincerest wish is to be
a composer
of music
that way I can better
make you understand the
truth of the things
I try so hard to express
but fail so abjectly at.
As a tool, words have their place,
but are oh so inconstant
language to language they
change and some of them
even evaporate entirely
trying to march across the bridge
from Spanish to English
or Japanese to French
Music stays it's course
and that which pleases you
on a cold day in Minnesota
may also make
you dance, in the full
zenith heat of a summer's night
if you should
happen to find yourself
in the vibrating
shaking-maraca heart of Tijuana
So, if I were this gifted composer
I would write music
and doing so, only
need to make small notes in the
margins
In between the dotted rows
I would make notes.
So that when you heard
the rounded notes
of a clarinet, low and half-sorrowed
I could tell you
That this was the moment I
laid in a field and the
wind blew over me and tangled
my hair with the grass
and I closed my eyes and the
sun made me see nothing but
red and at the moment
I loved being alive so, so
much that I understood that
there was nothing to fear in death.
And hearing,
perhaps you, too
could lie beside me
and we, neither one of us,
would fear
but understand all.
