Katie's Blog

Like Neruda. When I die I want to feel your hot tears falling on my body - impassioned like your sweat was some time ago. When I die I want to hear your crying to see your eyes puff red from holding onto the tears. My love, I want you to be miserable without me, to mourn my death for years until you finally join me, here, in our marriage bed beneath the cold cold earth. Bruno - I could never love you like Neruda.

If only I could write like this. Love Sonnet #89 By Pablo Neruda When I die, I want your hands on my eyes: I want the light and wheat of your beloved hands to pass their freshness over me once more: I want to feel the softness that changed my destiny. I want you to live while I wait for you, asleep. I want your ears still to hear the wind, I want you to sniff the sea's aroma that we loved together, to continue to walk on the sand we walk on. I want what I love to continue to live, and you whom I love and sang above everything else to continue to flourish, full-flowered: so that you can reach everything my love directs you to, so that my shadow can travel along in your hair, so that everything can learn the reason for my song. I don't think I've ever read a poem more absolutely beautiful. Someday? If only.

Clothing censors your body - I'm afraid of the mystery. Your deceptive eyes censor your soul - OooOOo! I've been dwelling on the thought of censorship today after looking at a rather disturbing drawing of a famliy without faces, only black veils where faces should be. Your eyes veil your soul? Censor? Ahh I'm just playing with words at the moment. It's fun. Sometimes my writing feels forced - and sometimes it flows freely. I always get really nervous right before I depart off into my 'zone', my 'place'. Sometimes I wish I could live there... and never ever come out. The hum drum of everyday censors me - I'm proud that I've been carrying my notebook with me wherever I go, be it my tiny moleskin or my big poetry notebook. I always have something to keep track of my little... lets just call them inclinations... obsessions.... hmmm... I'm trying to get back to my place, but this office... its censoring me!

Writing feels good. It just simply does. I've mostly just been editing these past few days, brushing up on language here and there, snipping up my poems, prepping them and making them pretty for my upcoming submissions. Some reflections on editing... "The willingness, the ardent desire even, to revise, separates the poet from the person who sees poetry as therapy or self expression." Richard Tillinghast Poems are never really finished. I think we only put poems away to brush up and improve on later. :) Its a good thing, though. A work is never finished, just abandoned! So this weekend for me is just about revisiting my recent works, and making them just a little bit better. Wish me luck!

I came to a realization last night. I've always been the type of person who, when I want something, I get it. I've never been one to put things off, to delay, to hesitate, to wait on anyone or anything. I don't like the way my stomech rolls over my jeans; therefore, I exercise and eat right. I didn't like the person I was becoming in my job; so, I changed careers. I want to be a writer. I want to graduate with my MFA and go on to teaching. But why am I delaying? Why am I letting the hum drum of life take over? Why do I always have an excuse as to why NOT to practice, why NOT to publish, why NOT to continue taking classes? The truth is that I simply don't have an excuse, only flimsy ideas I like to call reasons. Ok, maybe I'm a little bit afraid but Katie, you're a big girl now and it's time to jump over this metaphorical hurrdle and just straddle life, and become the person I want to be creatively. I've done it physically, I've done it profession...

Just a free write here... My shadow's name is Jane. She likes to watch. She hates the way I lay before him - much unlike a pretty flower waiting to be plucked from the earth, carried away, and placed in some little jar of water to rot. No, Jane hates the way I lay before him, like a subject inanimate without the predicate. Jane hates me because I don't throw him to the ground grab my destiny in my hands Instead I wait for him to give it to me. Jane thinks I'm just a slave for his pleasure. She hates it when his lips touch mine. She hates it when he reaches deep inside of me, how his tongue passes through my hot lips. Jane especially hates it when I wrap my arms around his horizontal body, and when I run my hands through his musty manly hair. She hates the feeling I get when he whispers to me in my ear - the warmth between us - she tells me its just sex and that I'm nothing but his cheaply bought whore. But when I'm feeling his breath steaming on my neck - I don'...

"Look hard at what pleases you and harder at what doesn't" -Colette How can a poet dive down in into the depths of something ugly, instead of splashing in it? I think the real challenge is writing about something terrible in a beautiful way. Ahhh... I'm just trying to improve my writing here. I had a no show this morning and thought it was my responsiblity to take this little tidbit of time to dwell on an idea that I've been baking for awhile. I'm a person who lives by feelings, not ideas. I follow my heart and not my mind. I try to live by this, and now... if only I could come full circle, and have my writing filled with duende . Ahh... yeah that'll be the day :-) I think this is an idea that I need to dwell on more... I'll be back to write more... I promise.

Do butterflies have hearts? I live in the midst of a butterfly migration route. At about this time every year, butterflies of all kinds paint the landscape - filling the breeze with tiny flaps of their wings. I always notice them when I'm driving, and because I think the universe revolves around me, I always take their passing as some kind of personal sign. Maybe I'm driving along with them, following the wind like they do. Maybe their crashing into my windshield, and I feel like God is trying to stop me in my tracks, sacrificing His little bursts of beauty to tell me something truly profound. Or maybe - and this is the idea I've been playing with this migration, maybe - I'm following my heart, listening to a calling within myself, like a butterfly. And then -smack- one meets its demise on my windshield, fluttering hopelessly, beating its wings just a few last times as it sails onto the hot pavement called Ware Rd. I close my eyes, no God, I don't want to see these...

Ah being busy... It's a good thing. I just got back from a conference in San Antonio, and being away from the peace of a simple pad of paper and pen - well, it can be disheartening. My mind's been elsewhere, and thus - I have produced no poetry. Students flow through my office, in and out. It gives me a great feeling of accomplishment to help them, they vent to me, get their frustrations off their chests, and I help solve their problems. Its a good thing. With deadlines looming of my own, though, sometimes I wish for a simple reprive. Right now I have one :-) My 4:00 is a no show. I've had this interesting obsession lately. My shadow, who is she? My dark side? My opposite? Who is that secret voice in the back of my head, that doubt, that skeptic that makes me only 99% a hopeless romantic. Who is she, and what does she see me as? How do I look in my shadow's eyes? Is my shadow disappointed in the decisions I've made, in my attitude, in my actions? In other words, wha...