update on annieepoetry

 

Its been a year in this new town – this new world of cars and prairie.

 A year since I started to blog -post my poems and my thoughts about this mad world.  

I still long for Lake Superior.  I still long for friends who care for me and poetry and art and music.  But I am learning the true sacrifice of writing, of growing old, of loving.  Some years you are a lone.  Some years you spend inside your cardboard box and the only comfort from the isolation is going to grocery store and looking the clerk in the eyes.  Hi in there…. Its hard for me to reach out and say -play with me.  

I get so obsessed with writing that I forget to go and mingle with people.  I forget that poetry is a performing art and one of the many reasons why I was drawn to it in the first place.   As I get older (still too young to be president) I have the urge to sit alone.  

The days rush by so fast with daily activities of cleaning, shopping, and caring for my family, of reading, painting and writing -now a year has passed.  

Husband is doing good at the job, got raises, and working hard.  Daughter is adjusting, and learning so much.  Reading well and learning to ask great questions…. that I don’t always have a meaningful answer for.  She is learning to connect with the world and see the patterns, some skewed and false, others true.  My little teacher, showing me love and justice.  And she paints, this girl with the focus and heart of an old woman.  

Spring is coming to southern Wisconsin. The birds are twittering. I heard geese flying above.  People can be seen on the sidewalk.    Living in this condo, this city of normal. 

 

I have been feeling out of the loop, out of the world. I have been walking around with double vision -inside my body and outside of it -watching.  Its strange.   I keep listening and watching -looking for the first time and the millionth time.  Being an artist -a writer is not what I would have chosen If I had any smarts.  But being dumb and full of passion, a dumb kid, an animal playing this is where I am and  know – I love it.

 There is so much about my life that I love  -husband and daughter, writing – having a place to rest my head at night, food, ale… Scotch.books…  music.. that I can’t say that dreams don’t come true. In truth, my dreams are coming true, rolling on top of me, the universe bends for me and says get on my back.  My luck dragon, the universe.   But I want more. I want to write better. I want good friends as neighbors.  I want family closer…  want and want, despite having everything I need.  

That is one of the things about me that has stayed constant.  I strive and dream, and want utopia for you, for me – for the world. and that to me would be artists,music -dancing and singing, working and creating, loving and growing and learning. I don’t think I will ever lose that desire, that longing.  If I do, smack me and tell me to get real.

Some days aren’t ours 

they come and they go

and what are we 

 

we are what is left on the chair

watching and loving 

and for what and why…

 

when we realize our mother

loved us best and that was as good 

as we can get. And then   then

we think someone else might love

us. We think we’ve found 

some magic that the rest 

was too dumb to find….that we are

lucky and blessed. Then… then we come 

home early and find our cat on the neighbor’s lap

purring.  Then we say suck it and we find

our lover in some odd position giving

goo glue eyes at some slender beef

and then… then we leave and walk and walk

and walk until we forget who we think we are 

and we stop caring about this life. This life goes

by too short but then, then we don’t want it

it is meaningless. It is pain.  We are all there is.

We are not enough. We are not garlic or a sunset.

We are old. We are still stupid. We don’t 

like to be alone, still stupid and old

 

But others can’t be trusted. We can’t stand on their back

to see farther.  We can’t make them hold us. We smell.

We are cry babies.  

 

There is no pudding for cry babies.  

There are no songs for cowards. 

 

 

The bath water is cold and the flies are in.

we have sand in our butts. We are freaky 

looking wearing blue all the time.  We 

write. We shit. We pace. We write. 

 

No one reads it because it is lame. It is not

smart. we can not write smart. We try but 

everyone tells us told you so.  

 

We say fug off but we hurt and want someone

to tell us we are ok but we are not ok and so 

no one will say it and we wouldn’t believe

it and so here we are   

 

and yet we talk politics and paints and pens

 

is there anymore ale

no 

it doesn’t matter -I’ll have a glass of tap water