My last post was almost a full two years ago. That's understandable since I got into Tumblr. Well, I gave up Tumblr for Lent and so I have to find another blog to fill.
I read through some of my old poems, and I wish I could write something like those again. Lately my poems have felt rigid. They don't feel as flowing as they used to, like they don't come out of my heart like they used to.
There's also a significant difference in the amount of sleep I was getting when I wrote my older posts and now. I rarely get less than six hours of sleep these days. Back then I was lucky if I got five. I feel like there has to be some kind of significant correlation between lack of sleep and amount of writing that gets done. I have a friend who goes to school in Savannah, GA who gets little sleep and she writes like a maniac. Dedication equals lack of sleep or lack of sleep equals dedication? It's a hard question. I know my writing hour, but my body isn't willing to accept it.
I want to be able to write with the love that was in those old poems. The love is still there, in the sense that the inspiration where I got that tone is still present in my life. If anything there should be more love in my life since the boyfriend and I have been trying to explore our spiritual lives more and get closer to God.
I don't know. I just don't blog/journal enough I think. I certainly don't write enough. That's for sure. I used to write everyday. Now I'm a junior in college and that swiftly changed.
I would sacrifice sleep tonight, but I've had a cold and I really should just take some NyQuil and go to bed to make sure I'm better by the weekend. I need to go to a bridal shower on Sunday. Mom gave it to me, I think. Nate has it and she's been sick, so I'm pretty sure she's the source. Anyway, I feel tons better right now, but I felt like dying earlier today so I shouldn't risk it tonight. Man I want to, though.
It's almost like a drug addiction isn't it? Like Isaac Mendez when he was high. He could paint the future. My high is no sleep. Interesting. Often times my loopiness turns into silence, which then turns into poems. Write out the kinks. Write out the kinks. That's what I should do. I should sit here and blog until the kinks come loose and the poems flow like water. They're sore muscles, tight ones, like the one that spreads from the toes to the base of the heel. When it stretches too far or gets too tight it's a stabbing pain every few minutes. A reminder. Stretch it out. Write it out.
Maybe I can't even write like that anymore. People change and writing changes. Voices change. Maybe I'm in transition.
A huge, 2-year transition that won't leave me alone, but won't let me write.
It's not a block. I don't believe in block anymore.
In Eragon, Eragon talks about magic being like this lump in his brain that he could scratch at. That's what I feel like poetry can sometimes be. I have to pull into myself and scratch my poetry gene before it comes out sometimes. My "mellow indie" playlist on Songza helps too.
I have to take the NyQuil, or else I won't sleep right.
It really is like an addiction. I love the feeling of an amazing sleep, and I love the rush of getting none at all. Maybe I'll get some writing done tomorrow.
It's not a block. I don't believe in block anymore.
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Dear Poem,
I left the window open all of last October,
and you never found your way
through moon-licked thickets
and rows of P.O. Boxes
to my new address.
Meanwhile, November lost itself to the rain.
Through December I thought maybe
God forgot that cluster of stars
I found you in when they dropped
into the palm of my hand,
squinting one-eyed, upside down
on the purple shag rug.
But you weren’t lost in the sky, just lost
in the mail, along with all Mark’s promised letters,
stuck to the upper lip of someone else’s mailbox.
Meanwhile, the snow got too heavy
to hear the passing cars.
In January you came back
on an x-ray scan of a black pair of lungs,
gulping life with my jigsaw breaths.
Somehow you managed to hide again
behind the Christmas tree box
where we found the wasp nest.
I scooped you between a Goodwill mug
and a pad of post-its so you couldn’t fly away.
Meanwhile, our ears pounded with
beating wings.
In February, I tapped you off the sides,
begging for a sting, hoping 1:30
was the right kind of morning, my toes
were the right kind of frostbite blue,
and the rain, the thunder, the light
from Wilmore’s water tower
wouldn’t scare you back inside.
and you never found your way
through moon-licked thickets
and rows of P.O. Boxes
to my new address.
Meanwhile, November lost itself to the rain.
Through December I thought maybe
God forgot that cluster of stars
I found you in when they dropped
into the palm of my hand,
squinting one-eyed, upside down
on the purple shag rug.
But you weren’t lost in the sky, just lost
in the mail, along with all Mark’s promised letters,
stuck to the upper lip of someone else’s mailbox.
Meanwhile, the snow got too heavy
to hear the passing cars.
In January you came back
on an x-ray scan of a black pair of lungs,
gulping life with my jigsaw breaths.
Somehow you managed to hide again
behind the Christmas tree box
where we found the wasp nest.
I scooped you between a Goodwill mug
and a pad of post-its so you couldn’t fly away.
Meanwhile, our ears pounded with
beating wings.
In February, I tapped you off the sides,
begging for a sting, hoping 1:30
was the right kind of morning, my toes
were the right kind of frostbite blue,
and the rain, the thunder, the light
from Wilmore’s water tower
wouldn’t scare you back inside.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Doubt
I believe in silence
the prayer whispered between
earlobe and the goose bumps
caught in your throat
while blood curls back from
toes and stiff digits like
one foot caught outside
the quilt in the morning.
I believe in the shadow
of your clavicle sticking
up from your collar
when that black t-shirt
is stuck under you and
you’re fighting for
the remote after I
refuse every good show
for cartoons from 1958.
I believe in thorn pricks
when the hole in the fence
isn't as big as it was
last summer when I
still liked mustard
and oatmeal but not
together.
I believe in vicious breaths
into plastic carport grass
facedown
when the lights are swarmed
with June bugs and nobody's
voice carries past
the glow worms we left
in the cracks of sidewalk.
©Jordyn Rhorer 2010
the prayer whispered between
earlobe and the goose bumps
caught in your throat
while blood curls back from
toes and stiff digits like
one foot caught outside
the quilt in the morning.
I believe in the shadow
of your clavicle sticking
up from your collar
when that black t-shirt
is stuck under you and
you’re fighting for
the remote after I
refuse every good show
for cartoons from 1958.
I believe in thorn pricks
when the hole in the fence
isn't as big as it was
last summer when I
still liked mustard
and oatmeal but not
together.
I believe in vicious breaths
into plastic carport grass
facedown
when the lights are swarmed
with June bugs and nobody's
voice carries past
the glow worms we left
in the cracks of sidewalk.
©Jordyn Rhorer 2010
Monday, July 26, 2010
Allay
I will unknot the creases in your muscles where your inside map space curls into a roundabout u-turn crossed over bypass to nowhere. Your hemispheres of patterned land separated by violet ink swirls under your eyes curl around the same route into white knuckle grip, snow chained fingers on a steering wheel. I will loosen them, mold, curl them around my own just like the days when my whole hand could fit into my daddy's, when necks wrapped themselves out the car window open mouthed, eyes shut. I'll fold myself inside your bones, unscrew all the pins, try and teach you the geography of your complexion. Please learn that skin is skin and my skin wants for your skin and it was meant to sag and wrinkle and twist around green branched, split ended in spring, curl in lip pursed u's where I've been. It breaks open in powdered flakes of orange leaf autumn. I will wrap you around every season, pull, stretch and maybe taffy will feel right, your lips will find the smile God found in the dark. I'll let you simmer, let you rise and scoop out the seeds of your middle stuck end-to-end like vanilla beans spread over Mom’s bamboo cutting board. You are sugar orange slices left stale in a crystal star-of-David bowl in the back cabinet of the dining room curio. Once I tried to hide you under the porch planks, between panes of tinted car windows, behind the lattice we put up to keep the rabbits out, but you were too much lightening and not enough still quilted silence. Someday I will knead your shoulders into raisin bread. Smooth.
©Jordyn Rhorer 2010
Friday, July 23, 2010
Here I am. The hotel business room at a Holiday Inn Express, waiting until sleep finds its way back, or I crash in half-sleep comatose for the night. Two hours to Gatlinburg tomorrow and then three more to home. So, let’s go through the trip so far:
1. Cape San Blas, FL—the usual family hang out with Gramps and Granny at the beach house. three days.
2. Cocoa Beach, FL—waiting on the boat/getting on the ship. two days.
3. International waters—Heading to Free Port. Twelve to fifteen hours.
4. Free Port, Bahamas—one day
5. Nassau, Bahamas—one day (Atlantis water park)
6. International waters—total loss in the casino: $28.67. one day.
7. Cocoa Beach, FL—prolonging the inevitable? One day.
8. 2004 Toyota 4-Runner—seven hours or so. Who knows.
9. Spartanburg, SC—here we are and here we keep breathing.
Do people say “we” to give themselves a sense of comfort? Well, I guess then I should say, do “we” say “we” to comfort “ourselves”? Makes you feel like you’re not the only one who hasn’t slept in three days, who hasn’t had a decent, full, complete night’s sleep. Tired is not the question. I’m tired enough to put Rip Van himself to shame. It’s a question of surrender. My boyfriend once told me that in order to have the most fulfilling night’s sleep; one should simply surrender to the pull of fatigue. It shouldn’t be a forced act. Maybe that’s where I sit. Seven to twelve hours in a car isn’t exactly my idea of a good time, so I try to sleep. And here I am. I’ve been to two hotels since leaving the ship and I still have not slept.
I miss my bed.
I miss routine. I miss Mark. Hell, I miss work. And it’s not that I haven’t enjoyed myself—I’ve had a blast—I just…don’t want to be coasting anymore. I’m sick of summer.
I never could quite understand why it was that I hated disliked summer so much. It’s too hot, or It’s too humid, or There’s no rain, just didn’t seem to cut it. It wasn’t the meteorological aspects of summer I hated so much, it was just the emptiness of it. I wasn’t working for a goal, wasn’t trying to reach a certain rite of passage. It was just…summer. During my regulated, ask-to-pee, days in the public school system, I understood that the purpose of every day was to work to the end of the year and go on to the next one. But what’s this middle? This time period where everyone seems to seem doubly alive and doubly…pathless.
Autumn is a time of preparation. It’s time to stock up and take inventory for what is to come. It is productive. In winter, everything is dormant. Waiting, stilling in the suspense for what comes next, still preparing for the next stage of life. The ashes of the phoenix, if you will. And spring is all about rebirth. It’s new life. It’s green; it’s a display of strength and endurance over the course of the cold months. But then you have summer. Summer. Relaxing, overbearing summer. Is there not a productive steam to the hot sixty? Is there not another sight but the flailing of springtime’s joy, shaking it and choking it out until it’s been bled dry? This is why I don’t sleep. I think too much. It is also why I’ll live somewhere where the seasons are blurred around the edges and you end up with two and a half instead of four.
10:43. I’m still awake. Typical, I won’t say that’s not normal for me. Eleven, twelve, I’m usually up. We’ll see if the clock ticks past two for me again tonight, though. Mark said he would call at eleven. So a good seventeen minutes until he interrupts my brooding. Good. I need someone to. I need someone to shake me. To rock me to sleep. I feel like a jumble of angles and soft muscles and crease marks from the sheets. I don’t feel human like this.
We keep the temperature at home at about the 75 degree mark. I’d lower it ten if I could but my mom has hyperthyroid disease and she’s cold all the time. I have two fans in my bedroom, though and most nights in the summer I keep the window open and let in some good old Kentucky air. Well, it would be if I didn’t live in a lower middle-class suburban neighborhood on the very edge of I-75. I can’t remember a time when I couldn’t hear the interstate from my backyard. Daddy works third shift at the Toyota plant so he needs to live in a place where he can leave as late as possible. That way, him and mom can have as much of the day as possible together. 4pm to 4am, he’s at work. So, you can imagine I don’t see him much either. It’s alright though. My dad and I are of the stand-offish type so neither of us need that much attention.
Maybe. I don’t feel like I need that much attention. Of course, I’m a writer, so what the hell do I know? My life is within the bindings of moleskin notebooks and simulated computer paper on hotel Aspire processers.
Nine minutes.
Jesus, I spend half my time checking my phone to see how long until he calls. If I don’t marry him, the next guy better be pretty impressive. I don’t imagine there will be, though. He says I make him feel worse by telling him I haven’t slept or that I have headaches late in the day. I showed him where they were, just above my ear, curving around the back of my head like those microphones they use in stage shows. Throbbing, like I could scratch out the skin, but most of the time I don’t notice they’re there. The day I pulled my knee out of the socket twice I still remember his face. Agony. Sheer agony. I knew that he loved me the moment he saw me on the ground. It was two o’clock in the morning and we were playing volleyball after prom. And I was on the floor. I dove for a ball and loosened the joint and then served, stepped down off the swing and out came my knee.
I remember he half carried me to the car. Lugged me into the backseat. I still think he’s crazy. Maybe he is for loving someone like me. Who knows. If he can love someone who’s such a calamity, he must have some sort of complex. I love him, I really do…but where do I fall in? I’m not that pretty. I’m not skinny. I’m polite, only because I’m freakishly shy. I have outbursts of spontaneous ingratitude and life-threatening, thrill-seeking behavior. I curse. I’m only lady-like when I want to sweet talk him into something. Where’s the appeal? And I’m a hypochondriac with psycho-symptomatic insomnia. Wow. I’m a keeper.
But, I guess, you know. I believe in God and Jesus and I believe in loving people and I am trying. I’m an artist. Sometimes I tell myself it’s my words he’s really in love with. It’s poetry, not the poet. If I stopped writing…would he stop loving me?
11:00 and I’m wondering if the phone will ring if I look at it. I should check if it has signal. But if I do, I’m really checking if he’s called. God, I’m obsessive. He texts to say he’ll call soon. He’s working on a survey for the University of Kentucky.
1. Cape San Blas, FL—the usual family hang out with Gramps and Granny at the beach house. three days.
2. Cocoa Beach, FL—waiting on the boat/getting on the ship. two days.
3. International waters—Heading to Free Port. Twelve to fifteen hours.
4. Free Port, Bahamas—one day
5. Nassau, Bahamas—one day (Atlantis water park)
6. International waters—total loss in the casino: $28.67. one day.
7. Cocoa Beach, FL—prolonging the inevitable? One day.
8. 2004 Toyota 4-Runner—seven hours or so. Who knows.
9. Spartanburg, SC—here we are and here we keep breathing.
Do people say “we” to give themselves a sense of comfort? Well, I guess then I should say, do “we” say “we” to comfort “ourselves”? Makes you feel like you’re not the only one who hasn’t slept in three days, who hasn’t had a decent, full, complete night’s sleep. Tired is not the question. I’m tired enough to put Rip Van himself to shame. It’s a question of surrender. My boyfriend once told me that in order to have the most fulfilling night’s sleep; one should simply surrender to the pull of fatigue. It shouldn’t be a forced act. Maybe that’s where I sit. Seven to twelve hours in a car isn’t exactly my idea of a good time, so I try to sleep. And here I am. I’ve been to two hotels since leaving the ship and I still have not slept.
I miss my bed.
I miss routine. I miss Mark. Hell, I miss work. And it’s not that I haven’t enjoyed myself—I’ve had a blast—I just…don’t want to be coasting anymore. I’m sick of summer.
I never could quite understand why it was that I hated disliked summer so much. It’s too hot, or It’s too humid, or There’s no rain, just didn’t seem to cut it. It wasn’t the meteorological aspects of summer I hated so much, it was just the emptiness of it. I wasn’t working for a goal, wasn’t trying to reach a certain rite of passage. It was just…summer. During my regulated, ask-to-pee, days in the public school system, I understood that the purpose of every day was to work to the end of the year and go on to the next one. But what’s this middle? This time period where everyone seems to seem doubly alive and doubly…pathless.
Autumn is a time of preparation. It’s time to stock up and take inventory for what is to come. It is productive. In winter, everything is dormant. Waiting, stilling in the suspense for what comes next, still preparing for the next stage of life. The ashes of the phoenix, if you will. And spring is all about rebirth. It’s new life. It’s green; it’s a display of strength and endurance over the course of the cold months. But then you have summer. Summer. Relaxing, overbearing summer. Is there not a productive steam to the hot sixty? Is there not another sight but the flailing of springtime’s joy, shaking it and choking it out until it’s been bled dry? This is why I don’t sleep. I think too much. It is also why I’ll live somewhere where the seasons are blurred around the edges and you end up with two and a half instead of four.
10:43. I’m still awake. Typical, I won’t say that’s not normal for me. Eleven, twelve, I’m usually up. We’ll see if the clock ticks past two for me again tonight, though. Mark said he would call at eleven. So a good seventeen minutes until he interrupts my brooding. Good. I need someone to. I need someone to shake me. To rock me to sleep. I feel like a jumble of angles and soft muscles and crease marks from the sheets. I don’t feel human like this.
We keep the temperature at home at about the 75 degree mark. I’d lower it ten if I could but my mom has hyperthyroid disease and she’s cold all the time. I have two fans in my bedroom, though and most nights in the summer I keep the window open and let in some good old Kentucky air. Well, it would be if I didn’t live in a lower middle-class suburban neighborhood on the very edge of I-75. I can’t remember a time when I couldn’t hear the interstate from my backyard. Daddy works third shift at the Toyota plant so he needs to live in a place where he can leave as late as possible. That way, him and mom can have as much of the day as possible together. 4pm to 4am, he’s at work. So, you can imagine I don’t see him much either. It’s alright though. My dad and I are of the stand-offish type so neither of us need that much attention.
Maybe. I don’t feel like I need that much attention. Of course, I’m a writer, so what the hell do I know? My life is within the bindings of moleskin notebooks and simulated computer paper on hotel Aspire processers.
Nine minutes.
Jesus, I spend half my time checking my phone to see how long until he calls. If I don’t marry him, the next guy better be pretty impressive. I don’t imagine there will be, though. He says I make him feel worse by telling him I haven’t slept or that I have headaches late in the day. I showed him where they were, just above my ear, curving around the back of my head like those microphones they use in stage shows. Throbbing, like I could scratch out the skin, but most of the time I don’t notice they’re there. The day I pulled my knee out of the socket twice I still remember his face. Agony. Sheer agony. I knew that he loved me the moment he saw me on the ground. It was two o’clock in the morning and we were playing volleyball after prom. And I was on the floor. I dove for a ball and loosened the joint and then served, stepped down off the swing and out came my knee.
I remember he half carried me to the car. Lugged me into the backseat. I still think he’s crazy. Maybe he is for loving someone like me. Who knows. If he can love someone who’s such a calamity, he must have some sort of complex. I love him, I really do…but where do I fall in? I’m not that pretty. I’m not skinny. I’m polite, only because I’m freakishly shy. I have outbursts of spontaneous ingratitude and life-threatening, thrill-seeking behavior. I curse. I’m only lady-like when I want to sweet talk him into something. Where’s the appeal? And I’m a hypochondriac with psycho-symptomatic insomnia. Wow. I’m a keeper.
But, I guess, you know. I believe in God and Jesus and I believe in loving people and I am trying. I’m an artist. Sometimes I tell myself it’s my words he’s really in love with. It’s poetry, not the poet. If I stopped writing…would he stop loving me?
11:00 and I’m wondering if the phone will ring if I look at it. I should check if it has signal. But if I do, I’m really checking if he’s called. God, I’m obsessive. He texts to say he’ll call soon. He’s working on a survey for the University of Kentucky.
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