Daily Writing
So I've been pretty good about writing everyday.
I'm not journaless, and for awhile I was allowing this to be my excuse for not writing everyday. How lame am I? Very.
But this week, determined to get out of my rut, I've returned to my Ordinary Genius book and have begun writing a minimum of one page per day.
I'm currently reading a chapter on visualization before writing, to help you get all the wonderful details in. Mostly, what I've been visualizing is stuff from my past, and it is making my poems more... memoir like. Ugh. Who wants to know the nitty gritty details of my boring life?
A few things I've come up with:
MONDAY
the way my feet hit the ground and the ground still receives them
tongues pink and flailing against the baby blue of the sky while the pink is exposed on their cheeks. Pink – the color that reminds us where we came from.
sometimes it all just comes flowing out in tears Or screams of pink joy, joy that’s made of flesh, the flesh we cover up and hope to forget about, like the flesh of our mothers, fleshy and round – the rolls on your stomach, always one too many. And they continue, we open like Russian dolls, one after another, a layer of flesh atop a wedding cake of beauty
That one I kind of like, just because it's like one image floating into another... like a bad version of stream of concsiousness :-P
And I love the way his eyes – behind his glasses, open like fresh daisies when they lock into mine. And I know that my mother pushed me
Into this world for the sole reason
Of washing the delicate skin underneath his feet.
TUESDAY
And I still remember the room, the room I would hide away in. I remember the carpet, thick with cigarette smoke, and the window – clouded with age. And now when I go back, sometimes I’ll see just a few of the hairs I left behind – long and golden, hairs that once curled around my winding finger while I talked on the phone with boys.
WEDNESDAY - This day I wrote a story about my mom. It's not in poem form, it's very raw still, so I can easily share :)
Parent and child memory
We were in the whirlwind rush of the mornings – the stress of waking painted all over the emerging wrinkles on her face. The sun was already in the sky – the sky was already lit with rays, and the morning had already begun.
I must have been about sixteen, because I remember reaching for the car keys in the kitchen. I remember my mom, wearing worn blue jeans (the kind all moms wear), sandals, and a blue polo shirt. Her hair was a wavy mess, pinned atop her head like a frayed crown. I remember she grabbed her purse, and, hesitating, stepped back into the kitchen. She smelled of morning – a mixture of fruity shampoo and the sour smell of sleep.
“Let me just put these cinnamon rolls away”, she said, grabbing an almost empty pan from the stovetop. I nodded and watched from the entryway, jiggling the keys a bit and listening to their ring. As she opened the refrigerator door, I must have looked away knowing that something was about to happen. I remember the shriek, restrained yet pitched with emotion, her body folded over in pain, her face hidden behind a wall of brown hair. I remember the pan crashing to the ground, the rolls picking up dust as they slid across the kitchen floor.
“What happened?” I asked as the electricity of fright woke me again. I bent down to pick up the rolls, the pan, waiting for my mom to look up, to tell me everything was ok.
And she did. She flipped her hair back, slowly stood up, and pursed her lips just a bit. Her eyelids wrapped around her eyes tight, making her look like she had more wrinkles than she actually did. “My toe,” she mumbled, letting her lips relax into smile.
Putting the pan on the counter, I looked down at her toe – bloody, the nail hanging on by a thin sheath of skin. My mother bent down, finally freed from emotion, and yanked the nail. She tossed it in the trash, grabbed a paper towel, and wiped the blood from her toe leaving clean baby skin exposed. She looked up at me and smiled.
“I can’t very well go to work like this”, she commented, and walked to the living room with a bit of a limp. On the coffee table sat a tiny container of nail polish. She grabbed it, bent down, and covered the skin where the nail was supposed to be in nail polish. I remember shivering, thinking of the sting the polish must cause on the open wound.
My mom slipped her sandal back on, and proceeded to the door. “Let’s go, Kate”
And Today...
and left you.
Closed the door behind your body
Wrapped tight in sadness, your crinkled face
Pressing into the pillow leaving its mark
On me like a blushing purple bruise.
So they're just quips from the week's writing. I will write more tomorrow - of course. And maybe even through the weekend. I have a lot of work to do before I can get any of this into polished poem form, but that will be for another day. Time to do some REAL work ;-)
I'm not journaless, and for awhile I was allowing this to be my excuse for not writing everyday. How lame am I? Very.
But this week, determined to get out of my rut, I've returned to my Ordinary Genius book and have begun writing a minimum of one page per day.
I'm currently reading a chapter on visualization before writing, to help you get all the wonderful details in. Mostly, what I've been visualizing is stuff from my past, and it is making my poems more... memoir like. Ugh. Who wants to know the nitty gritty details of my boring life?
A few things I've come up with:
MONDAY
the way my feet hit the ground and the ground still receives them
tongues pink and flailing against the baby blue of the sky while the pink is exposed on their cheeks. Pink – the color that reminds us where we came from.
sometimes it all just comes flowing out in tears Or screams of pink joy, joy that’s made of flesh, the flesh we cover up and hope to forget about, like the flesh of our mothers, fleshy and round – the rolls on your stomach, always one too many. And they continue, we open like Russian dolls, one after another, a layer of flesh atop a wedding cake of beauty
That one I kind of like, just because it's like one image floating into another... like a bad version of stream of concsiousness :-P
And I love the way his eyes – behind his glasses, open like fresh daisies when they lock into mine. And I know that my mother pushed me
Into this world for the sole reason
Of washing the delicate skin underneath his feet.
TUESDAY
And I still remember the room, the room I would hide away in. I remember the carpet, thick with cigarette smoke, and the window – clouded with age. And now when I go back, sometimes I’ll see just a few of the hairs I left behind – long and golden, hairs that once curled around my winding finger while I talked on the phone with boys.
WEDNESDAY - This day I wrote a story about my mom. It's not in poem form, it's very raw still, so I can easily share :)
Parent and child memory
We were in the whirlwind rush of the mornings – the stress of waking painted all over the emerging wrinkles on her face. The sun was already in the sky – the sky was already lit with rays, and the morning had already begun.
I must have been about sixteen, because I remember reaching for the car keys in the kitchen. I remember my mom, wearing worn blue jeans (the kind all moms wear), sandals, and a blue polo shirt. Her hair was a wavy mess, pinned atop her head like a frayed crown. I remember she grabbed her purse, and, hesitating, stepped back into the kitchen. She smelled of morning – a mixture of fruity shampoo and the sour smell of sleep.
“Let me just put these cinnamon rolls away”, she said, grabbing an almost empty pan from the stovetop. I nodded and watched from the entryway, jiggling the keys a bit and listening to their ring. As she opened the refrigerator door, I must have looked away knowing that something was about to happen. I remember the shriek, restrained yet pitched with emotion, her body folded over in pain, her face hidden behind a wall of brown hair. I remember the pan crashing to the ground, the rolls picking up dust as they slid across the kitchen floor.
“What happened?” I asked as the electricity of fright woke me again. I bent down to pick up the rolls, the pan, waiting for my mom to look up, to tell me everything was ok.
And she did. She flipped her hair back, slowly stood up, and pursed her lips just a bit. Her eyelids wrapped around her eyes tight, making her look like she had more wrinkles than she actually did. “My toe,” she mumbled, letting her lips relax into smile.
Putting the pan on the counter, I looked down at her toe – bloody, the nail hanging on by a thin sheath of skin. My mother bent down, finally freed from emotion, and yanked the nail. She tossed it in the trash, grabbed a paper towel, and wiped the blood from her toe leaving clean baby skin exposed. She looked up at me and smiled.
“I can’t very well go to work like this”, she commented, and walked to the living room with a bit of a limp. On the coffee table sat a tiny container of nail polish. She grabbed it, bent down, and covered the skin where the nail was supposed to be in nail polish. I remember shivering, thinking of the sting the polish must cause on the open wound.
My mom slipped her sandal back on, and proceeded to the door. “Let’s go, Kate”
And Today...
and left you.
Closed the door behind your body
Wrapped tight in sadness, your crinkled face
Pressing into the pillow leaving its mark
On me like a blushing purple bruise.
So they're just quips from the week's writing. I will write more tomorrow - of course. And maybe even through the weekend. I have a lot of work to do before I can get any of this into polished poem form, but that will be for another day. Time to do some REAL work ;-)
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