Day One, Second Period

So, I told my class, via an essay. Here's what I wrote. A poem I wrote, rather. The essay is too much for today.

******************

Everybody knows now.

Come into class, see almost 20 pairs of eyes

Look away, because

They don’t know what to say now.

My class is like pinhole-camera paper.

All clear and pristine

In one collective cardboard box

And then if somebody pokes a hole

It changes their reality

And if you develop them

There’s nothing there

Because knowledge wipes away

Everything that they know.

People who don’t know

What to say

Wash around me in the halls

Like a confused ocean

On Saturn

With a few too many moons.

Eye contact is ok.

Eye contact is ok.

Eye contact is ok.

I keep secrets far too long

So now please don’t avert me.

This is what I've done in writer's club lately!

Knock on the Table
February 24th, 2005

I have a soul-swept body
That wants to take things for granted
But can’t.
There’s always a rock in my shoe
And a bee in my ear
And a backpack pulling the pain
That screams down my neck.
I wish that a painless day
Was something I could take for granted.

When I’m not hurting myself
Somebody’s hurting me
And when it’s all finally gone away
There’s something still hurting.
I want to fly again
Without my arms getting sore.

You can’t knock wood to change the past
Assume the unassumable.
What if this was my circumstance?

I want my body to be mine again
Not yanked and tugged
By memories of a heartless devil
Or by people who help
By pulling and pulling
Until I’m stretched thin
And there’s nothing left to pull.

I wish there was a theft protection program
For my virginity:
Pay ten dollars each month
And if somebody steals it
A company in Never-Never land
Will get it back
No memories attached.

Knock on the table
But the past’s still the past,
Engrained deep into the wood.
Knock, knock, knock.
***


Virginity Freefall
February 10th, 2005

Jump face-first into a vacuum
Of a virginity freefall
So maybe you won’t remember
Where you could have spun after all.

If you had a smooth, unshattered
Memory of how it begun
Would it matter where the slide slid
Or how your trust was snatched or won?

But just a little pale-faced girl
Is staring backward at the world
She leaped, declawed, into the void
And swings there, tied, her body curled.

Gravity works in negative,
The “normal” desires pushed away
And she hangs there, naked, dangling.
***

Malleable
February 10th, 2005

It’s much more than nature – not malleable.
I’m not just hiding from the real world.
It’s not the prelude to falling in love.
Puzzle over my possibility – it’s not malleable.
The birds and the bees are myopic to a fault
And frozen fingers that are no longer mine
Resembled an apparition.
Coming out of its small closet, hiding from the real world,
And if I don’t see it as a problem,
Why do you?
That’s a bit of a sticky question.
It’s a permanent state:
Just sleep when you’re hungry
Eat when you’re tired
And be malleable.
The darkness, smoke, and cold had conspired
To form an ashen form.
It’s not malleable.
I lingered a little, halfway hiding from the world.
Am I radical, out there, over-the-top?
More people are choosing to just say no:
You don’t have to have sex to be human.
I’m not malleable.
***


A Mad Girl’s Midnight Ponderings
January 31st, 2005

I kick the world; it shatters in a dream.
I wonder what I could have broke instead.
(I wish I’d made this up inside my head).

I am a party in your glass of wine,
A hint of high and sleeping powers too.
I breathe the stains that torture you in bed.
(I wish I’d made this up inside my head).

There is a grain that fades to crystal clear.
I watch a woman dancing, all in red.
(I wish I’d made this up inside my head).

A little bird is climbing up the wall
And when he flies, his wings will be my hell.
My kettle boils, bubbling with dread.
(I wish I’d made this up inside my head).

(Inspired by “A Mad Girl’s Love Song” by Sylvia Plath)
***

I Do Not Understand
January 27th, 2005

Sand, slipping through my fingers
Mirrors tears that run down my face.
I do not understand.
A fire flicked your smile off
Burnt it into ashes and charcoal
Swirling down the drain.
I do not understand.
I’ve never seen you cry before;
I can strain my memory, but not remember
Ever seeing you cry.
I do not understand
This sudden explosion
Shrapnel whistling to the ground.
I’m shivering.
Somewhere out in this cold night
Something has changed
And I do not understand.

Nothing Happened

-->

I remember when nothing happened. When everybody just sat, and remembered, and recalled bluntly that nothing had happened, nothing ever had happened, nothing would ever happen. It’s like that online torrent of answer that translate to “nothing much, you?”, when really, everything is happening and nobody even knows it. And it’s so automatic that nobody stops to realize that it isn’t true. They don’t even bother to write it in real words; it’s always just the same “nm, u?” and the conversation ends.

But what is nothing much? Really it’s everything. In my world, nothing is everything and everything is nothing. And red means green and green means red so you can cross all the roads as you reach them; don’t wait. Every time, I’m forced to reply “nothing much,” it’s like there’s something missing. Because even though I say that nothing is everything, it’s an all-to-common and hardly true reality that nothing is nothing, and that’s how it is. And so, nothing will happen ever again, as people rush through their jam-packed lives and never stop to realize that everything is happening, and they don’t bother to know it.

my life is currently a marshmallow-toothpick tower. somebody is gradually poking it, and if you poke a marshmallow-toothpick tower too hard or too many times, it falls down. i think that's going to happen quite soon.

One Moment

August 8th, 2004

It was the melting of an iceberg
Running in sparkling rivers
Down the dark face of the moon;
The dissolving steel
In a single glance
That changed the world.
It was the piercing of a vein
That released the truth;
Sunlight rushing from a buried heart
To heal my wounds.
A chill that warmed me,
A salty ocean forming a puddle on my sleeves,
In an eruption of truth
I didn’t know was there.
The simple tension of muscles
A remarkable humanness
And a recognition
Of the quakes in my heart.
***

Jumble

April 24th, 2004

Sometimes there are defined lines
Of where the pain stops and starts
And sometimes there aren’t.
All I know is, when there isn’t a line,
I draw it,
Carving upon the scars
Of yesterday’s sorrows
Drawing a bold red line
To remember tomorrow.
And hating myself
For what I’ve done to myself
And hating the world
For what it’s done to me.
And wishing that somewhere out there
Somebody could really see
All the things that chase
My vision into a whirl
And just understand I’m sixteen
But still just a little girl.
And I want to run around
In my multicoloured shoes.
Knee hits pavement,
Tears are shed:
The only tears I’d lose.
Cover it up with a Barbie band-aid,
Kiss it, make it better.
Now it’s not so concrete,
Never really better.
My head hurts from the noise
My stomach from the turbulence.
Supposed to fall in love with boys
But I don’t, and nothing makes sense.
And I wish people knew
That I want something real
Or else I might drown.
Nothing’s there, nothing’s under me;
I shut my eyes and just fall down,
Spiral through dark tunnels
Roller coasters through my mind.
Take the wonder out of Wonderland;
It’s not so grand
When you’re left screaming
In the haunted houses in your sleep.
And a veil shimmers over me,
Black as death.
Falling, falling
Half in, half out
Of a dreamlike haze;
Two contrasting worlds
Confusing my gaze.
No stories to tell,
No heaven, no hell.
Waking up with vampire bites,
Eating myself these torturous nights
In half a dreamland
Where my memories dwell.
Trapped beneath the ice
Memories die hard.
I shine my light
But nothing’s there
Under the shell of my mind.
***

Happy birthday, blog!

It's not such a happy birthday.

Here's a poem for today. I've called it "Jungle"

I dig trenches

With a small, silver plow

To plant a jungle.

In red, brown and orange thorns

Watered with blood

It grows wilder and wilder.

I only wish this were a jungle

That I could hide in.

I'm back from Italy, and everything is falling apart. It is April 16th, I am 16, and I don't want anything to be happening.

Poison

Another thing for writer's club. I didn't share this one with the group. It would freak out the teachers. I don't want it to be tomorrow, or the next day, or the next. I just don't.

The pain is always here, no matter what I do, no matter how I try to hide from it. The memories whirl by me in an instant splash of colour and noise, and then they’re gone, leaving behind just a dull ache that tugs at my heart, and the inevitable red cuts, slices in a loose cross-hatch, that cover my body.

I hurt. My confused brain can figure out almost nothing more than that it is hurting. Someone hurt me, and now I feel pain. A simple cause-and-effect model, but I just can’t understand it too well. And I can’t model it. It just doesn’t fit into those neat little charts from history class. Simple my ass.

I can feel the pain before it hits me, like the energy brewing before a storm. It starts as a prickly tingling, moving through my neck and ears, chilling me before moving into the core of my head. It chokes me, crushing out every sense of happiness I’ve ever felt, and replacing it with my most painful memories. And then it has me.

It’s like being possessed. Possessed by only my fear, hatred, and helplessness, by my memories of sheer agony. A train rushes through my head, turning off every light of hope that was ever ignited there. I am nowhere, falling through a perpetual hole of my nightmares.

The smells hit me first; sweet and sour odours that I twist my head to avoid by cannot escape from. I writhe, often falling, trying to banish the smells that define my memories before my other senses are captured. My efforts are purely futile; there is no way out. My other senses succumb to the memories until it has me fully in its grasp. The memory surrounds me, until it is more real than reality.

I come out slowly, like a baby being born out of hell, only to find itself in a cold, lonely world. I can feel the pain sinking from my head down into my gut, where it stays. My head grows hot, until I feel like it might combust. And still the pain stays.

I can’t keep the pain as part of me for too long. This kind of pain is too hard. I cut. It starts off as a single mark, then grows into a wild jungle that poisons my skin. But this is a different poison. It’s pain that I can feel. It is real. I can’t hide from it, but it can’t sneak up on me.

These are my Battle Wounds

April 2nd 2004

These are my battle wounds
Bright crimson, like the juice
Of a crushed rose that has been
Pierced with its own thorns.
Faint lines – story lines
Blending in with my freckles.
Scars of sorrow that fade into
Joyous summer memories.
Contrasting stars on the surface
With the echoes of sadness
Emerging beneath them.
They try to fade back into the woodwork
But like tiny rips in the starry sky
They never go away.
These are my battle wounds.
***

IWD!

here's an important holiday that not all that many people are hugely informed about. tomorrow (monday, march 8th) is international women's day.

women are doing better these days than we ever have. lots of people (especially men) claim that women are treated equally to men; that women are doing fine in the world. if you're one of those people, ask youself:

- why don't women in many places have the legal right to control their bodies? (ie. abortion)
- why are women still the ones on trial in sexual assault cases?
- why is the average wage for women still only 65% of the average male wage?
- why do women do 80% of the unpaid work in today's society?
- why do women starve themselves to become a size 8? (or smaller?)
- why are 78 american women are raped every hour?
- why is the average literacy rate for women lower in most countries than the average literacy rate for men?
- why do women in so many countries not have the right to vote?
- why are so many women forced into arranged marriages, often with men who are significantly older than they are?
- why do so many women and their babies die in undevelopped countries because there is no safe place for them to give birth?

the list goes on and on...

there's no fair answer to these questions. there's no reason why women shouldn't be completely equal to men in every way. international women's day is for shedding light on these sorts of issues.

even if you do nothing else, you can show your support for international women's day by wearing a purple ribbon. it doesn't have to be a special purple ribbon, just an ordinary one that's looped and pinned to your clothes. the purple ribbon is a recognized symbol of international women's day, as well as of interpersonal violence (not only against women, but also such things as police violence, child abuse, etc.). you can be proud to wear a ribbon to support these causes. i'm planning to.

if you want to do more, you could try organizing a peaceful march or protest or presentation. (key word being peaceful!!!). you could also try to raise awareness, maybe by putting up posters or making announcements. this whole week is international women's week. there's plenty of time to do something.

international women's day is in support of women. it is NOT against men. it isn't about women gaining more power than men; it is simply about women striving for complete equality.

it's about women having an equal voice and equal rights to men. it's about women having the right to make the choice about having an abortion. it's about women being legally represented in rape and sexual assault trials. it's about women getting the wages that they deserve; the same wages as a man who does the same thing that they do. it's about women having the right to say no, and have people listen to them. it's about women and girls in developping countries having the right to an education. it's about women being allowed to wear what they want, and talk to whomever they please.

international women's day (and week!) is about so much. we've come so far, and there's no reason why we can't go the rest of the way, especially if we all go together.

personally, i am very much a feminist. i went to a feminist school, which helped me to realize just how big an issue this is. i'm promoting international women's day this year in any way i can. but you dn't need to be a full-blown feminist to raise awareness to women's rights, or to support international women's day. all that you need is an open mind and a vision of the world as a place where ALL people are equal.

i hope you'll join me in supporting international women's day.