Busy body

I didn't really have time to post this weekend, much less see everyone that wanted to see me, much less when they wanted to see me. I had a really busy time, considering that there was a slam on Friday, Martin, Jacob and Tessa were all in town and I had a fair bit of work to get done. I still do, for that matter.

But, enough of the weekend, although it was full of win. On to finals!

I'm not really that motivated, but it's late and I'm trying to convince myself.

I now have a list of things I have to do. I feel more managerial, and in control.

I have quite a few blog posts to make, but still very little time. Maybe in the future?

I took 4th in the Slam last Friday. Good job poets! and thank you for coming and showing us your work. Daniel Picus, my old roommate, took 1st, Neil Hilborn 2nd and Dylan Garity 3rd. Good times were had by all. I preformed two pieces, one titled Elizabeth, half of which is going in my portfolio (probably? maybe?), and one titled Amet. Since I've missed a couple Thursday poetry updates, but had the intention to do every one of them, here's Elizabeth.

Elizabeth
is a name that sings
of silhouettes
and sunlight
and her skin shone
beloved
for many years.
now

her eyes are lake-bilge filmy
like the already fading photograph
of us grandchildren
in cat masks on her lakeside staircase,
like her husband's black & white
memorials that hang on every wall
of every house
that houses her progeny.
her hands

don't shake anymore.
they sit still on the padded black arms of her wheelchair
as she stares through their wayzata apartment amidst family,
and these hands that shaped
driftwood into androgyny,
shuffled bookchildren from minnesota farmland,
they no longer cup our faces like clay
as she smiles with her eyes
and tells us prophetic little poem-truths,
and that they're the only real kind of promise.

i will always remember the first time she forgot my name and called me
Russel.

i will always remember the first time that i remember seeing her, watching her playing
with my
six or seven or eight year old
cousin Charlie,
no,
talking to him evenly,
because the men and women in my family
are older than their experiences,
their souls
seem to come like
crows and doves,
like flocks of sparrows.

there are always three things i will remember from my grandmother:
her smile,
because it stuck to you,
like clay left to dry on the wheel,
it left you spinning
two,
her gifts,
because i can think of no one more gifted.
her hands worked pen worked ink worked bronze softer
than the clay she formed her forms from,
than the clarity she wrote her poems out of,
the way in which she couldn't cook a meal to save her life
but somehow raised six children on poetry
and three
the pictures of her
that my grandfather took
that now hang in his bedroom
to remind him of the wife that lives
out of her mind.
Elizabeth in the garden,
private purple passions
displayed proudly behind her
troweled hand
and sweaty smile.
a picture with her daughters
who all have different colored hair.
a picture with her sons
who all look the same.

my favorite picture of her
is from when she was in her twenties,
lying naked on her side.
you can feel the love of my grandfather
showing through the photograph,
in the way the light hits her chest
and shadow covers her peacefully closed eyes.
now closed.
my grandfather and I both
refused to look
her blank stare in the face
because she felt
lost in there.
lost, out of time, out of her mind, gone
and she's gone, and yet .... and still
her soul
seems to come to me like
the brushing of a sparrow's wings,
a murder of crows in the sunlight,
like turtledoves upon the dewgrass.