Semester-ness

T.S. Eliot may have measured his life in teaspoons, but mine is measured in semesters. I didn't realize just how semester-driven my life was until I started trashing some stuff in my old (paper) files. In trying to figure out what YEAR these were from, I referenced what SEMESTER I took the class in.
Of particular interest was a cheap, Walmart, pink, falling apart notebook I'd tossed on the shelf apparently half-heartedly. From my first semester at NEU, my first semester as a real live adult, my first semester in grad school. The notebook begins just after my birthday--I'd had a legal pad up until then. I don't remember writing any of the stuff in this notebook, which is interesting. So, some stuff by someone apparently named Amylea Clemons...from 7 semesters ago.

Untitled, 10/24/2003 (Fairly certain Kari's mother was the inspiration, but I don't know what the hell it's about
)
She constructs just like me
--in the basement, in the sawdust--
in the bold strokes of science and observation.
Where it is dark, she shaves and splits
the single light hallowing the center.
There are nodes here to smooth
walls that need rebuilding; sketches of the inside
show the need--we drink the milk from our cereal bowls--
so she slides under the sharp edge to complete it in emptying.
I have eternal papercuts from sleeping with the book
We say: A witty ending goes here. But not without
careful measurement

Untitled, writen while reading Marianne Moore, as is obvious by its diction
"Nothing like" is a certain negation
So Whole! So sure of its emptiness!
Not at all "Something like"--
which is something like a hesitation--
"Nothing like" is made with cement,
creates media of content sighs.
It is not, therefore it is.

I wonder: That's all.
We want a predicate for it, for purpose
"Observations" under a microscope
I will not hit my friends
I will not shake the table
I will not know my father in his rants
The press loved that sort of thing
they love it: How do you sort out
the charming eccentric from the genius?

That crust was there last century,
but it did not permeate everything
(like quotations around your own words)
invisible and inaudible
and then it falters, letters are added,
and No becomes Some,
Necessary Fictions become
Necessary Fictions.


November 1 (title or date? Or both? Written during a Yeats phase)
There's a space between the words
that indicates time's wake
The roughened guitar twangs through
electricity say only "Me-mor-y"
It's beautiful, it's brutal, it's a tall candle
flickering on a board in the lake
His vision of her causing him to think quickly
sharpening his grief on grass blades

December is the slowest month, waiting for
that precious birth to shake our fears
All Souls' has pierced the air with cold
wreath and cranberry sauce
William is not here; Lucille has gone,
Woodrow sleeps; I have no tears for them
Today they move more thickly upon the earth
among the costumed bodies and faces

Today they walk in those flares arranged
to call to them, on which to say a prayer
The good catholics inhaling wick-smoke
whisper cannons for me, aloft
And frozen in the system of the hours,
always, alreayd, almost there
Unable to move from the crook of the gears
rotated to repeat, I was born in.

To remember is too much for tired synapses
too used to routing around that Thing
It's like stiffling a yawn, though: eventually
your jaw aches, and head throbs and out
Comes the suppressed with its reliefs and its
givings-in to sleep or embarrassment
There's time enough, he says from below, for dwelling
thanatopsically. This one day where all the spectres are about.

11/2/2003 Haiku
Snickers' wrappers
oh what a beautiful shade
my foot in the lamp

In the margin of notes on Kierkeggard and HD
Hope, she wrote for him
and hope he brought home
in the length of his hair
having seen his father live and die
and live again
returning younger and with more
fire in his hands than any previous incarnation
thirteen labors for him to perform
now that hope has descended and the soulless deed
(he must drink from chipped teach cups) shut down
the grand experiment: He must return!
Wash the jacket that went to hell with him
build a new room
raise his master from his mounting sleep

He must cut his hair

He must fall in love
must clear the decadent rubble
and find the leftover parts
he must keep going
must hold the gravity at bay
create a way to find the old world under the new
he must reread it to her
without crying for himself

It's not that they can't coexist
but he is the type who must have one or the Other
And the Other has been killed

He beings with cutting his hair

Untitled During a William Carlos Williams phase, so it must be Semester Fall 2003
Put down your smooth affect
and quit kidding us.
We know you only walk like that
when you're ready to flee
So much depends
Upon the stride of your gait.
I read something about
New Wave Romanticism
What to do about it, and these visions I have?
Where I try not to be sleepy and
simply stumble one day into a week
I have a tendency to pull to the right
when not paying attention
Repeatedly someone approaches the throttle
then backs away from the solar flares
I have imagined myself at that bar
desperate and tripped up on football
God and Pour Patria Mori
Then skipping, singing some punk anthem
with real spirit I toss change in the air
not rocks at the hill climbers
I placed a jar in tennessee
just to see if poets will follow me
and they DO and we LOPED on
I can see for miles and miles
which is good because that's
where we're headed.

Untitled Same page
With the lights on, it's fading
Here we are, in these containers
I feel stupid and unmade here
There we are having facelifts
Always spinning
Always willing to be undone
I forget what it tastes like
and this too makes you smile


Right, so, from this we can conclude that how I write depends upon (a red wheelbarrow) which poet I'm reading. Given that all I read lately is Theory, 19th century novels, and Bad Fan Fiction (soon to be an academic discipline), it's no wonder I can't seem to write more than a line or two. Well, I can write quite a bit, but it all sounds like it was written by dead French guys...