"They say all the boys are monsters, all the girls are whores,,,"
Driving down 58 the other afternoon, I couldn't stop staring at everything, and gorging myself on the light...It was so filling. I forget just how pretty it can get out here; purely a result of New England snobbery. You can see for miles when you stumble across clearings, and the sunset just pours over everything like thick strawberry honey, so that the trees stream pinks and oranges and all these other delicate pastels, and then the bodies of water that get scattered in between drag my eyes down its trembling current, until I'm far away from the car and the road and the field and the trees until I'm distanced from even knowing my destination or my point of beginning...
This, of course, is a poor decision when you're riding shotgun, and really should be informing your driver that, "Yes, you actually did pass your exit, some twenty minutes back..." (we did finally make it to where we needed to go, but, still...I get terrible distracted when the stakes are low and the sky is pretty.)
---
Today, I feel sick. My stomach's giving me trouble and my brain's giving me trouble and my heart's giving me trouble and my feet don't seem to want to move too far from where they are. I'm not particularly ready to go back to school yet, let alone to be dragged through the next two weeks. Will be glad to see everyone, once they're back, and hear about their varied and sordid adventures... Almost wish I'd left for fall break-I've been missing my family something awful lately.
I did start writing something, though, and maybe that'll pull me through the rest of the day. And then, through another day, and another, until I've actually got something to work off of...That's the way it's supposed to work, anyway.
---
I have also developed a crush on Philip Levine again. It's likely to be just a passing fling, but when he writes things like this, I can't help but hurt in that oh-so-pleasant way...
Philip Levine,
"You Can Have It"
My brother comes home from work
and climbs the stairs to our room.
I can hear the bed groan and his shoes drop
one by one. You can have it, he says.
The moonlight streams in the window
and his unshaven face is whitened
like the face of the moon. He will sleep
long after noon and waken to find me gone.
Thirty years will pass before I remember
that moment when suddenly I knew each man
has one brother who dies when he sleeps
and sleeps when he rises to face this life,
and that together they are only one man
sharing a heart that always labours, hands
yellowed and cracked, a mouth that gasps
for breath and asks, Am I gonna make it?
All night at the ice plant he had fed
the chute its silvery blocks, and then I
stacked cases of orange soda for the children
of Kentucky, one gray boxcar at a time
with always two more waiting. We were twenty
for such a short time and always in
the wrong clothes, crusted with dirt
and sweat. I think now we were never twenty.
In 1948 the city of Detroit, founded
by de la Mothe Cadillac for the distant purposes
of Henry Ford, no one wakened or died,
no one walked the streets or stoked a furnace,
for there was no such year, and now
that year has fallen off all the old newspapers,
calendars, doctors' appointments, bonds
wedding certificates, drivers licenses.
The city slept. The snow turned to ice.
The ice to standing pools or rivers
racing in the gutters. Then the bright grass rose
between the thousands of cracked squares,
and that grass died. I give you back 1948.
I give you all the years from then
to the coming one. Give me back the moon
with its frail light falling across a face.
Give me back my young brother, hard
and furious, with wide shoulders and a curse
for God and burning eyes that look upon
all creation and say, You can have it.
---
Unnecessary EDIT: Feeling somewhat better now, after getting some writing done, some food in my belly, and some conversation with a friend. What wonders a few little things can do for a body...
Love,
Am
This, of course, is a poor decision when you're riding shotgun, and really should be informing your driver that, "Yes, you actually did pass your exit, some twenty minutes back..." (we did finally make it to where we needed to go, but, still...I get terrible distracted when the stakes are low and the sky is pretty.)
---
Today, I feel sick. My stomach's giving me trouble and my brain's giving me trouble and my heart's giving me trouble and my feet don't seem to want to move too far from where they are. I'm not particularly ready to go back to school yet, let alone to be dragged through the next two weeks. Will be glad to see everyone, once they're back, and hear about their varied and sordid adventures... Almost wish I'd left for fall break-I've been missing my family something awful lately.
I did start writing something, though, and maybe that'll pull me through the rest of the day. And then, through another day, and another, until I've actually got something to work off of...That's the way it's supposed to work, anyway.
---
I have also developed a crush on Philip Levine again. It's likely to be just a passing fling, but when he writes things like this, I can't help but hurt in that oh-so-pleasant way...
Philip Levine,
"You Can Have It"
My brother comes home from work
and climbs the stairs to our room.
I can hear the bed groan and his shoes drop
one by one. You can have it, he says.
The moonlight streams in the window
and his unshaven face is whitened
like the face of the moon. He will sleep
long after noon and waken to find me gone.
Thirty years will pass before I remember
that moment when suddenly I knew each man
has one brother who dies when he sleeps
and sleeps when he rises to face this life,
and that together they are only one man
sharing a heart that always labours, hands
yellowed and cracked, a mouth that gasps
for breath and asks, Am I gonna make it?
All night at the ice plant he had fed
the chute its silvery blocks, and then I
stacked cases of orange soda for the children
of Kentucky, one gray boxcar at a time
with always two more waiting. We were twenty
for such a short time and always in
the wrong clothes, crusted with dirt
and sweat. I think now we were never twenty.
In 1948 the city of Detroit, founded
by de la Mothe Cadillac for the distant purposes
of Henry Ford, no one wakened or died,
no one walked the streets or stoked a furnace,
for there was no such year, and now
that year has fallen off all the old newspapers,
calendars, doctors' appointments, bonds
wedding certificates, drivers licenses.
The city slept. The snow turned to ice.
The ice to standing pools or rivers
racing in the gutters. Then the bright grass rose
between the thousands of cracked squares,
and that grass died. I give you back 1948.
I give you all the years from then
to the coming one. Give me back the moon
with its frail light falling across a face.
Give me back my young brother, hard
and furious, with wide shoulders and a curse
for God and burning eyes that look upon
all creation and say, You can have it.
---
Unnecessary EDIT: Feeling somewhat better now, after getting some writing done, some food in my belly, and some conversation with a friend. What wonders a few little things can do for a body...
Love,
Am