Communal Sight #1: Each Hundred Years--

Each hundred years

we look into another’s eyes too deep

and turn away mind-torn

blundering, blind, we frighten passers-by

they see old souls closely riding on our face

            the world explodes

            stone shattered, light scattered

            hands tremble, dissemble

            breaking, shaking

            crumbling, rumbling

Old Foundations Halt And Stand

we land, breathless, bruised

hold tightly to warm earth

rise slowly, forget nightmares

renew dreams, walk free.

Unfortunately, sometime last century,

some morning clear and cold

some young innocent looked sweet and deep

into a double lens, saw eyes and earth

and knew them

walked gravely out into the pale new light

and delicately smashed to powder minds’ foundations

we drank them bitter

Now every day

we look into our mirrored eyes too deep

and turn away mind-closed

polite and straight we mingle with the crowd

we’re all old souls inside a young façade

Communal Sight: Attack of the Body Snatchers!

Have you ever seen that movie? It inspired you to poetry immediately, right? No? Well, maybe I'm a little different. Anyways, “Communal Sight” is a collection of eleven poems, most of them written in response to an Honors class I took called “America: Site Under Construction.” During our discussion of American history in this class, we watched The Attack of the Body-Snatchers and discussed its relationship to the Communist scares of the 1950s, especially the loss of trust in societal structures.

            In reflecting on our class discussion and this movie, I started thinking about the emotional impact of damaged trust, which extends beyond this particular time period. Part of what, to me, makes the movie so horrific is the transformation of and betrayal of intimates; mother and son, close friends, lovers, etc. However, this emotional destruction continues today whenever a trusted person betrays another.

In these poems, I’ve tried to express these and other related ideas; the impossibility of really “knowing” a person, contradictions in how people see each other, the emotional betrayal, and the loss of foundations for trust and community.

I'll be posting the poems one at a time over the next 11 weeks.

Dickinson Thoughts

I

I saw you

Standing there

And wondered

That you smiled.

Do you, then, have no care?

Or does pain pass as lightly as a butterfly...

and vanish.

II

Laughter springing up like wine bubbles

effervescing from a bottle

deep within,

rises to vanish in the clouds

or sinks to drown within my well of thought

III

Every poet

is different

each one has their own mark

sad, peaceful, or merely drifting into nothingness

each one treads the path

of deepened thought.

IV

It is good to dream, but not too much

or else the soul,

reveling in choruses of thought

should cease to hear the birds

and feel the earth.

7/28/97

Zooing

 Zooing is a specific activity with many aspects, indulged in by myself and my library-friend-Sara. It involves driving about an hour to the Milwaukee zoo and then shopping and Chinese food. I can hear people saying "you go to the zoo in the WINTER?" Yep. It's ideal. No giant groups of noisy children, limited number of adults making comments ranging from the inane to the truly disturbed, and there's a surprising number of animals out and about, while those that aren't are often on display inside. Our zoo trip wasn't hugely successful this morning, since the octopi (one of my personal favorites - ask me to do my octopi arms for you sometime) wasn't on display. But we saw a satisfyingly large and brown bear looking around vaguely and the polar bear was actually playing with his ball and put on quite a show. Plus, I got to further test my new camera on peacocks.

Then we went to Michaels. I was just thinking vaguely of purchasing some of those cute little dollar notebooks, but they had a huge bin of ribbon and...I ended up buying half my library supply list for spring and summer (the ribbon will make fairy wands for our Fancy Nancy party, in case you're wondering). The two things I couldn't find anywhere were reinkable stamps for stamping our SRC logs and sticker paper to make our own stickers for a craft programs. Suggestions?

We went to a baby store - I don't think I've ever actually been in one. It was kind of cute in an overpowering way. All that brightly colored plastic...my objective was a gate for our children's area and I did find one, which I hope works as it was a bit pricey. But our parents will certainly appreciate it. They've been complaining in a rather frazzled manner for some time about escaping toddlers. Plus, I've been racking my brains for small prizes for our new age 0-5 summer reading club, and my eyes lit upon...I guess they're teething rings? or links or something. Anyways, opened up, the package will provide a nice selection of small prizes for babies.

Of course we visited the guinea pigs and adoption cats at Petsmart and got yummies at World Market. We actually went into a sports equipment store because I'm sort of determined to get some kind of exercise machine for the winter when it's too cold/snowy/slushy to walk. I'm still undecided. Most of those things are so BIG. The spinning bikes looked kind of fun though...

We had late lunch/early dinner at our favorite zooing Chinese restaurant, Emperor's Kitchen, and worked on library-friend-Sara's five year plan for her department. 'Cause we're librarians! We stopped by a scrapbooking store we go to sometimes, hoping for the elusive sticker paper and reinkable stamp, but no luck. Of course we had to stop at Half-Price books, where I really hit the jackpot and found...

Terry Pratchett Discworld graphic novels (which I've been looking for forever. I might donate them to the library when I've read them. Maybe)
Scarecrow of Oz by L. Frank Baum (was in an Ozzy mood earlier this week and suddenly realized I was missing this one. It's just a cheap paperback, so I'll still need to get the right edition later, but good enough for reading)
a couple Amanda Quick romances (yes, I've read them all, but I was in the mood to re-read a couple and there they were...)
a Marvel Adventures Spider-Man digest (Avengers are my favorite, but I've got all those)
Little Red-Cap illustrated by Lisbeth Zwerger (This is the more faithful translation of Little Red Riding Hood and I love Zwerger's fairy tale illustrations and it was on my wishlist!)
Girl Genius vol. 8!!! I've been meaning to get these and haven't got around to it, I have no problem starting with vol. 8, since I've read them all online and it was a GREAT BARGAIN. if you're in wisconsin, hie yourself over to the half price on bluemound, they've got more!
and I found a new Winnie the Pooh record for my collection and two Just-So stories records narrated by Sterling Holloway.

And Sara found a fairy book and a fairy tale book.

As always, we finished our trip off with a visit to Fresh Market, where normally Sara buys chocolate-covered coffee beans and a treat in the bakery and I get peanut pretzels and avocado dip and petit fours and some good bread. But....I finally got around to cautiously testing the fancy cheeses I bought a while ago and which were sitting in my refrigerator. Italian fontini and gouda. Yum! So we decided to look at fancy cheeses. The very nice lady promptly offered us samples and the benefit of her experienced advice and we both got some gouda, which was different than the gouda I got from the grocery store, being creamy and very yummy and not hard, and I got some Danish haverti, which is an experiment, and Sara got some fancy parmesan (I don't do parmesan)

Yay zooing trip! Hopefully the gate will fit and I will locate reinkable stamps and sticker paper soon. BTW, I'm looking for CUTE reinkable stamps.

Cats

black cats

          summer artists

                   lazily

                             langorously

                                      they drape themselves on stones

                                                arrange themselves in jet patterns

tail

to

tail

crouch

flattened in hot undergrowth

dark shadows curled on green lawns.

(their eyes are summer dandelions

          yellow

                    still)