| Poetry Notebook |
| as i said, i am not a poet. i sometimes write because it's the better way to express myself at a particular moment, but i'm no poet. here are a couple of examples of my writing in no special order. |
| broken glass now a photograph of a photograph i sat on the couch wishing that i could pause the tv movie pause reality rearrange the flood before it rolled out of my grasp a cat on my dresser somehow became a cat on my topmost shelf tenatively pushing things around i guess he didn't know that on top of everything unnecessary stored there was the photograph of severed love put away years ago i guess i didn't know that on top of everything unnecessarily drowning my mind i knew that it would fall stood up and watched the perfect shatter unable to stop it an improbable cliche metaphor of love broken dangerous i made a polaroid of the shards unwilling to use the vacuum --sjl 11/11/01 |
| i just want to be fucked gently someone's fingertips dimpling my flesh warming my skin against our cool nakedness new fingerprints illuminating the visible veins wandering the length of my torso tantalizing teasing me tickling through the wiry hair that reaches for her touch her breath carressing my earlobe her toes pressed against my ankle and nudging the curve of my thigh her cock --sjl 4/8/02 with special thanks to kcr for her sharp red pen |
| i will post the polaroid to which this poem refers as soon as i can! |
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| July Days in July are long and damp with the perspiration of all the ancestors. This makes me long for the cool days of autumn when a rainstorm washes death from the trees and leads me into a hot shower. Now, in July, even the cold rain cannot convince me that a hot shower will rinse away the breath of ghosts better than a cold bath. The rainstorm is relief itself, rather than that which needs relieving. --sjl 08.02.02 |
| SIDEBAR though i am not a poet myself, my friend Kamika IS. and luckily for you, she just opened the online DISCOUNT POETRY BIN. hustle your mouse over there and get 'em while they're hot!!! |
| table of contents -- guestbook -- email me more about me--photo album--frequently asked questions--i am not a poet--favorite links--personal bibliography |
| CRUSH for - or against - Claude Monet, M.C. Escher, and Carl Andre nostalgia + beautiful people = CRUSH math in art the ghetto Jewel has been emptied, painted white, and decked with environmentally conscious art ergo, 400 + gentrification = 1240 profit commodity more jewels Susan Sensemann's students (displaced from the bra factory) are a poem that makes more sense in the room next door the Poet's voice overrides My vision of the poet's blue lips limp hand brushed off he lives i believe 4 fire engines flash red, white, blue why isn't the third light green on this street through Mexicanidad to home on the coldest night I walk through the fighters, look UP for flames or smoke Ana Mendieta falls. She slipped on Carl's polished floor. She falls. Dorothy Hale Frida Kahlo Eva Hesse she falls Merrilyn Lamprecht The Art Lady my Grandma Merrilyn like merry, like cheer like Joy she falls Sarah Joy 1/23/03 |
| i am waiting always waiting for my mother my lover my god to step up call me out take me to her breast give me rest but i have lost faith my waiting is the stain of my rearing a habit of hope i have no mother i cannot love there is no god so i gouge out my eyes cut out my tongue leave just my heart so that i can grieve and cry like a baby that's been snatched away i am like a baby that's been snatched away i am snatched away --sj 03/03/03 |
| FIREWATCH My mouth is lonely and yearning, full of another's words and empty of cool or sweet. I watch the pyrotechnic rain fall through no water-beaded window. The blueblinding lightening reveals shuddering monters' shadows and tempts me to search for the missing electric white crack in the unseeable sky. They told me not to look that my eyes would burn and blister that I'd wake at midnight with irresistible sand in my dreams and in my eyes. But I have seen the lightening bolt--a tiny wingless ladybug, a hemisphere of pure bluewhite light dancing in the metal lava puddle it makes at the end of my faerie wand. It is so small & only like lightening in the peripheral. But he has the wand today and I have the no-window. The sparks fall like snow, not rain. They cool before I can catch one on my tongue to fill my unsatisfied mouth with fragrant smoke. Each shower is heart-breakingly brief when I stop chasing sparks with my dried-out tongue. I only catch up with its beauty when it is ending. So I watch on, trying to taste cool light in my almost-empty mouth, alone and yearning. SarahJoy 8.30.03 |
| "Lately, I have come to believe that the principal difference between heaven and hell is the company you keep there." --Simon Illyan, in A Civil Campain by Lois McMaster Bujold |