Recommended for libraries serving a trendy population.

Several weeks ago, when it was still summer but that first weekend when fall was starting to show and long sleeves were needed at night, I went on this date with a guy, and it was a Good Date. Even though I think we both knew it wasn't really going to go anywhere, that we were looking for different things, I appreciated that it was a still a fun Friday night of biking around and people watching and sitting on park benches and dive bars. And after the second whiskey, he recited poetry to me and then we made out over my bike before I went home. I haven't seen or talked to him since, and I'm totally ambivalent about running into him or never seeing him again, and mostly I was happy to have a Good Date and I heard this poem by Richard Siken which I've been thinking about and today finally looked up.

Scheherazade

Tell me about the dream where we pull the bodies out of the lake
and dress them in warm clothes again.
How it was late, and no one could sleep, the horses running
until they forgot that they are horses.
It's not like a tree where the roots have to end somewhere,
it's more like a song on a policeman's radio,
how we rolled up the carpet so we could dance, and the days
were bright red, and every time we kissed there was another apple
to slice into pieces.
Look at the light through the windowpane. That meant it's noon, that means
we're inconsolable.
Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us.
These, our bodies, possessed by light.
Tell me we'll never get used to it.

This poem came up at Ragdale, then freakysparks wrote a lovely cookie version of it in her journal, and then today I stood over the sink in the kitchen and ate delicious cold sweet plums. I am dearly in love with plums this summer, in general. So, the rule of 3 dictates I must report this trend.

This Is Just To Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast.

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold.

-- William Carlos Williams

I had an agitating night at work. And then minorly miserable things kept happening to me on the way home, the types of things that make you feel bad about yourself, not at other people, like I kept being tested and I kept failing as a worthy human being. And now I'm home and so cranky I don't know what to do with myself. I wish I could just go to bed angry, but its the one emotion that does not seem to induce a tendency towards wanting to sleep it away. I will probably lie in the middle room with the dog and listen to the rain for awhile. But first, I will type out a poem in honor of the occasion.

Poem

Hate is only one of many responses
true, hurt and hate go hand in hand
and why be afraid of hate, it is only there
think of filth, is it really awesome
neither is hate
don't be shy of unkindness, either
it's cleansing and allows you to be direct
like an arrow that feels something

out and out meanness, too, lets love breathe
you don't have to fight off getting in too deep
you can always get out if you're not too scared

an ounce of prevention's
enough to poison the heart
don't think of others
until you have thought of yourself, are true

all of these things, if you feel them
will be graced by a certain reluctance
and turn into gold

if felt by me, will be smilingly deflected
by your mysterious concern

- Frank O'Hara

That phrase nails the part about some emotions that frighten me -- the "getting in too deep". I can always get out. Right? Right. I have to keep telling myself that though. What is line between a small amount of slow growing poison and what is the feeling that needs to be ridden out so it will pass? Maybe I'll do what I did as a kid, and throw myself on the bed and rage into the pillow until I get weary, then pick up a book and start reading and forget why I was mad in the first place. I found Alison Bechdel's Fun House at the library the other day and I finished my other book tonight, so maybe I'll start that.

I wrote this yesterday: "I am emerging from the hard dark place known mysteriously to the medical and psychological community as: November, December, January and February." Or you know, not so mysterious. It must be March because I'm instigating social contact with people. E-mails to writer friends I haven't talked to in months, calls to people out of town, making plans to have lunch with people, spontaneous trips to get shamrock shakes when I run into a friend on the train. Except I'm still out of the habit of interacting with people, I feel a little awkward. I'm not too concerned, I'm sure I'll pick it back up.

I saw Zodiac over the weekend. I finally put it together, oh yeah, I really like movies and books where people are obsessed with things. However, if you see it in the theater, choose one where the seats are not several years old and uncomfortable. It's a little long. I personally think it pays off perfectly for the wait, but then again, see above regarding it being my genre of things I like.

Today is supposed to be "unseasonably warm" so I think I will take my work elsewhere, namely the coffeeshop 5 blocks away with free wireless. I'm not a fan of too hot, too fast, it's super disorienting to my body. But on the other hand, sunshine and warmth after a drought -- it's a high.

There's been a lot of poetry in the household lately. I'm reading lots more of it than usual, but we've also taken to occasionally reading it aloud at bedtime before going to sleep. Here's a poem I've been thinking about today. It's dark and depressing, like poetry should be, right? I don't know, it seems reasonable to me to read this now, when I'm in a good mood. It probably wouldn't make for a good bedtime story.

Counting Small-Boned Bodies

Let's count the bodies over again.

If we could only make the bodies smaller,
The size of skulls,
We could make a whole plain white with skulls
in the moonlight!

If we could only make the bodies smaller,
Maybe we could get
A whole year's kill in front of us on a desk!

If we could only make the bodies smaller,
We could fit
A body into a finger-ring, for a keepsake forever.

- Robert Bly


Bly is one of those 60s Minnesota guys I think, into the "men's movement" in that way that involves naked sweat lodges and heterosexual bonding to feel feelings and not beat up women and go on hunts and re-enact Jungian archetypes and pretend they are shamans. I can't lie, I probably wouldn't have known better, that would have been me too. I criticize, but I can't judge.