Moving in with your parents

more than
ages
living at home in
at least
.com found
in
their early
saving up.

Shoplifting

Prevention provides programs:
     Petty professional property...
Problem: poster people.
Promoting pay, Peter
paces personal potential's
perceived plans. Physiological
paybacks perhaps profit
PAIN PARADOX PERCENT:
Personal Pulled Pressure.
     peer primary presents.
     prior publish prevent.

If you hate your life, then 2 equals naught.

Conditioning of the impervious existence,
where the undeniable contracts within constant forward motion...
We see, we feel, we are, we choose:
and the choice to pleasure
             experienced and given
is the choice which defines the ruts we tread.

 What when the choice is negative?
Negated negotiation of expectation:
What is foundation is lost in nothing.
It is between the two, a space of reason
from choice and chosen --
           sunshine and void
           teeth and absence
           One and one

 Love and hate shifted paradigms of choice.

           What choice, when one makes all for naught?

How does the world reconcile love and belonging? It feels disconnected sometimes: love inhabits the undeniable a d belonging inhabits a space somewhere outside the realm of possibility. Perhaps belonging is in the mind, I admit... I will always learn from the obvious truth that perception rules the cosmos more than truth. A truth: my boyfriend and I don't belong together. He belongs with his own, I belong with mine... And I don't know what mine is... I thought I knew who I was, where I belonged, and to where I would go... It seems I was wrong.

Well, one thing is true: I know what I will do, where I'll go, who I will be... The trouble is always in the moment. Moments change the mind more drastically than truth.

I can't let this moment change my mind. I'm happy. But I'm not fulfilled. I know why, I'm just scared to face the truth. My uninhibitedness has waned drastically.

Would Messier See Me Falling?

The arrows move

     drawing me down

                         onward toward the inner dark --

                         whiteness berating noise --

                         neither in nor out --

Falling into the inner horizon,

     diving where known cannot be,

to be torn apart as

                         thoughtless instability drifting in space

                         creating new space

                         in spacelessness

I look to the sky:

underneath calls beauty black --

     spreading wings into a nether

     we fly down

                         like arrows in gravity

                         turning language into dust

                         air becoming the throne

Emit

caught in the lines of imaginary rainbows

     absorbed lines cutting in the void.

     My mind falls

the words are gone.

                         Sitting alone with peers

                         grasp endlessness with a desk

                         intent slips into an anti-verse.

Distraction

1) Surfacing discomfort
     coupled warmth and
          [incomprehensible] (agendas)
--a meaning hazed-- drowned in language
skimming consciousness
--
     They mumble
          something[s]
about importance
                         [learning][teaching]
stuck by a chair, in [without]
     (what thought [-----])?
. . .
               Droning on,
                                    I slip away into . . .

2) jealousy another
--what love has wrought--
     waves crash, bring
     (what was already brought)
     [love] [him] [him]
like a choosing
     no choice -----
     Abundance, overly!
          I say I love [          ]*
          I say I want _____
          I say I am.
. . .
               In love, broken amongst many,
                                   searching what's found . . .

3) words flow like red rocks from the mountain top, molten rivers creeping upon the lush splendor of fertile habitats. This, the language in black, moves through the [vestibules] [wings] like tormented zephyrs (waiting to speak [a godly] truth about what dares [not] be known)_. [I] listen ([un]consciously) and feel the pen scrawl across the symbols like a soothsayer pointing at my hea[d][rt].

     She whispers
                    "you [don't] know what [they] [you] want.
                    "you [can't] know what [they] [you] need.
                    "you get what you hold."

4) I [hold] love
          Three, four... five
               too much.
I [hold] want
          Freedom, one... all
               too much.
I [hold] need
          Together, apart... commitment
               too much.

5) "Turn in your essay questions."
I'm lost in the trails of my thoughts,
wrapped in
          love for
                    too much.

Essay Exam for Critical Thinking

[This is an essay exam for my critical thinking course. Enjoy reading, and go pick up A Gathering of Matter, A Matter of Gathering by Dawn Lundy Martin and read her poetry. It's really quite good, once you get past the odd forms of the poems.]

The Form in Between

Dawn Lundy Martin’s A Gathering of Matter, A Matter of Gathering is an intense book of poetry that sits between two distinct forms of poetry while still exemplifying characteristics of both. One form of poetry is language poetry, while the other is lyric poetry. These types of poetry utilize language in drastically different ways, one focusing on the actual use of language and the meaning forming from the language while the other focuses on the addressed emotion. Martin is able to bridge the difference and bring a unique harmony to the two forms.

Language poetry, according to the Academy of American Poets, acknowledges “that language dictates meaning […]. Language poetry also seeks to involve the reader in the text, placing importance on reader participation in the construction of meaning.” Martin plays with the language in her poetry very poignantly. One example of her expertise with language poetry is her poem “Butterflies Become.” The portion of this poem in brackets seems very heavy, yet innocuous at the same time. Each bracketed phrase, “[Fatwa] [Faucet of defiance] [From mesa] / [Desert stinge] [Vulva stiffening] [Sulfuric blunder] ….”, holds a very relevant emotion but does not explicitly derive that emotion for the audience (Martin 20). The language creates the emotion as we read through the poem. Not only are these emotions build through the language, the diction needs investigation for many people as well. As the audience learns what “[Fatwa]” means (a ruling on a point of Islamic law given by a recognized authority) the following brackets change their meanings (Martin 20). Without the definition of such a word, the poem’s meaning would be less solid. The language of “Butterflies Become” creates the meaning, whereas the meaning is buried deeper and harder to find without examining the language directly.

The other aspect of Martin’s poetry is its lyricism. Lyric poetry, according to Types-Of-Poetry, is “a poem […] that expresses the thoughts and feelings of the poet. […] Lyric poetry addresses the reader directly, portraying his or her own feeling, state of mind, and perceptions.” All of Martin’s poetry attempts to portray an emotion through its message/meaning. However, Martin does not allow the narrative of the poems to obviously address the audience with pronouns of “you” and “I”. “The Symbolic Nature of Chaos” is a superb example of this. The poem itself is addressing a direct emotion or feeling but Martin doesn’t address herself or the narrator, much less the audience. She puts out the emotion “ … like a yelling and a tree” and allows the audience to sit in “… the darkness of this bereft body” without any explicit declaration of what is being read (Martin 3).

The best example of Martin’s duality of language and lyric poetry coalescing in one poem is her poem “After Drowning.” The diction used is baffling at times, skirting obvious meaning and burying it beneath the language used, but still suffuses a meaning, an emotion, a state of mind within the poem as it stretches across the pages. She also utilizes “I” within “After Drowning,” giving the distinction that there is a narrator expressing something, but it still takes a deeper reading and comprehension to bring that meaning to the surface.

Spontaneous Feelings Resisting Intelligence!

Martin creates poetry that both expresses a “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” and “resist[s] the intelligence” of the audience. She writes poetry that feels infused with so much emotion, heavy meaning wrought from some very heartfelt place. I felt as though the poems were dark: dealing with the feelings of being an African American woman writing form a standpoint of having power and not being able to express it because of her sexuality. There are times of very heavy emotions shining through (“After the Death of a Young Poet”), and times when after reading the poem I sat dumfounded as to its intent (“Blackface Caricature in Thirteen”).  Most of Martin’s poems resist categorizing themselves into either just powerful emotions or simply resisting obvious understanding. “The Symbolic Nature of Chaos” is just such a poem. It holds such a vital feeling as it flows out nearly chaotically; it resists easy interpretation, and still holds the audience’s engagement because the feeling/emotion/meaning carry through the pages. In fact, her form on this poem really dives into both interpretations of poetic style expressed by Wordsworth and Stevens. Starting on page 4, Martin creates a very different form that both represents chaos (in the first portion on the page) and slips back into prose poetry to gather the audience back into comprehension. She does this several times with several poems, using form to instigate a feeling and break easily intelligible understandings.

Form Forming Formulations of Form

Martin plays with form all throughout A Gathering of Matter, a Matter of Gathering. Her first poem in the book, “Last Days”, automatically engages form. It presents a question and answer session where the answers do not necessarily answer the questions posed. However, the reader will intrinsically assume the answers relate back to the question just asked. This builds connections and meanings, even when these aspects are not explained in the poem language of the poem.  “Last Days” uses the form very well.

Another poem where form is very important is “The Symbolic Nature of Chaos.” With the title of this poem, we should expect the poem to resist the natural forms of poetry: structure, meter, rhyme, etc. None of the pages that this poem crosses look the same or are structured the same. This continual shifting of the form really do lend to the feel and meaning of “The Symbolic Nature of Chaos.” Adding to the chaotic form of this poem are the brackets, which make their first appearance in the book.

The third poem that utilizes form in a very distinct way is “Blackface Caricature in Thirteen.” It’s a list poem with thirteen points. As the poem is read, the audience believes that each point has a connection to what it means to be a blackface caricature. With this form, the reader tries to create a picture of what is being described. This poem, however, is more of a language poem and the meaning of the poem is created by the language used coupled with the structure. It is hard to draw a picture from this poem, but looking into the words creates a meaning much deeper than an easy, explicit poem.

And Within

One of the poems that struck me was “Violent Rooms” which seems to dance between the idea of having sex for the first time and rape. This poem relates to the book as a whole by addressing an important step in life that primarily women experience. Women in many areas in contemporary society are seen as an ‘other,’ or marginalized in society, much as being African American. Several of Martin’s other poems deal with being black, like “Blackface Caricature in Thirteen” and “Negrotizing in Five: or, How to Write a Black Poem.” Both of these poems work with ideas of a marginalized person as well. Not only do all of these poems share the subject of a marginalized person, either all the same gender (female) or simply all African American, but they also deal with juxtaposed emotions.

Bravery: Letting Go

[My professor told us to write a piece that we would never show our family. I wrote it. He then told us we had to invest obstructions on our writing and a classmate gave me many obstructions to the prose... I changed what I wrote. I've decided to let the world know my deepest secret... and if my family should read this, read at your own risk. Know I'm not ready to talk about this... I hope my prose are touching, provocative, and worthy of the read. Thank you.]

I look in the bag, staring my past right in the face. There is something about these shirts that makes me remember more than photos or stories ever could. These shirts went through life with me, and nearly from my own vantage point. This shirt experienced my first kiss with a boy. This one I’m going to keep, I don’t even know why I thought I could get rid of it. This one I got in New York after seeing RENT with my high school orchestra. Gonna have to keep that one as well…

I rarely, if ever, wear these shirts, but I can’t give them away. Emptying out my closet was supposed to open up more space for new shirts and such, but I can’t give up memories… right? Especially that shirt. That memory… That one lived through my first experience. It would be easier if that shirt didn’t exist at all… but it remains like a scar: its presence diminished, its power waned, but it would forever be known that it existed to begin with.

Grabbing the shirt out of the bag, I hold it up in front of me and look at it, feel it, remember it.

It’s only a shirt.

It’s a light brown fabric sown together without any logos or designs. It’s a simple shirt.

It knows.

I throw the shirt back into the bag, determined to forget and let go. As the hiss of the fabric sliding down the plastic echoed in my ears, I felt again.  I relived the memory, the reason I didn’t come out sooner. It all began with trust, trusting friendship, a hug, back massage. I trusted touch, until touch turned into disorder. Uncomfortable violation one can’t fight…

I was walking into my best friend’s house. His mother’s boyfriend was there and lounging on the couch like he did. He greeted me as I walked in and eventually asked me to sit next to him. Instantly, I wanted him to be my role model, whether I understood that or not. I trusted him as he put his left hand on my shoulders and squeezed, massaging the twelve-year-old muscles…

The shirt represents the trust I lack in myself… to know when not to trust…

That thing reinforces my distrust in any man I might trust, and if I can’t trust in any man then I will never truly love. It knows why, and it whispers that vision every time it brushes against my skin.

I close the bag. Lift it up. Throw it in the slot. Push it past the too small space. Hear the soft thud within the donation bin.

A whisper rises from the trees behind me and a bird chirps gaily. I get back in my car, role down the windows, and turn on my music and start singing, trying to escape emotions that were buried for so long. 

U

Unless uniform un-involvement uniquely understands universal ubiquitous uselessness usurping upheld unanswerable undeniables, uttered under ushered ullages, unabated unalienable use upon ulterior ulcerations.

D

Desolate desperation drowning direct derelictions darkly deepens didactic depressions.

P

Perfection plays poignantly past people's perceptual paradigms, potentially piling parenthetically pungent poison (polarized perhaps) pills. Picture perfect...

A

Alack! Allusion aways all ambiguous assumptions ailing armored amour (availing arduous attacks against). Attempt aspiring alignments astoundingly! Aim above, ask alluringly, accept affirmations assisting assertive ambitions! Always.

F

Fearlessly fading: fast falling fallacy functions forever forlorn. Falsity, flack flung face first forward, feeling French fecundity; forefingers flexed for Facebook fame. Focus freedom furiously for factual fervor. Flames fume.

 ... Fuck...