no poetry before bed, young lady

I need to stop reading poetry right before I go to sleep. Why? Well, when I read poetry right before I sleep I tend to think in metaphor all night. This means that I will wake up 3-6 times in the night trying to remember glimpses of images and the sounds of the perfect words that I never seem to be able to find during my waking hours. This is not conducive to a good night's sleep and usually I can't even remember the lines and ideas that I had dreamed.

This happened to me about a month ago (see Dreaming in verse) and then again Thursday night. I was reading Guy Davenport's translations of Archilochos' fragments before I went to bed and woke up thinking of metaphors for nothingness and imagery to explain the feelings of desperation (neither of which I can remember). This is one of the only set of lines that I managed to write down during the night (I think it was about 4 am). I have no idea where the image came from. I don't even like eggs.

like the cracking of an egg
the sun yolk slithers
down
the smooth slope of the
sky bowl

Really weird. Sometimes I'm amazed at the depths of my mind that I have never even seen or explored. Sometimes ideas crawl their way out of the depths of my mind (you know, the place where it mingles with my soul) and shimmy their way down my tongue where they dangle on the tip waiting for an unguarded moment to come pouring forth eliciting shock from not only those around me but from myself as well. Case in point. See what I mean?!

525600 minutes

One year you say.
Ask you again in 365 days.
You want to see me again in 8760 hours.
A year.

I don't think I can wait that long.
I've never been patient.

I'm speechless, but not witless

Yesterday, I gave my teacher a poem I wrote (recreated below for your enjoyment) because I had talked to him about the reverse Daphne image that I was thinking about, but I refused to let him see my rough draft, so I thought I would let him read the finalish product. I also wanted to know what he thought about it. He read it and his reaction was quite flattering.

So here is the poem. It turned out a lot more physical/sexual than I thought it would (you've been warned).


“Apollo, convince me otherwise”

your weight presses me down,
ripping the fragile gauze of time,
until the mattress liquefies,
cupping our passion in its hands.

when sarcasm turns acidic, you
throw me against the wall and,
bruising lips with lips, suck
the words from the tip of my tongue.

your visceral song pierces my
core and my sap blushes red and
pulses through my limbs and I uproot
to dance against your skin.

My ode to water

After going to the gym yesterday and running 1.5 miles and biking 8 miles, I realized that I wish I had forgone the boring treadmill and bike and had swum laps instead. I think I get a better workout quicker on the treadmill and bike, but I miss swimming a lot. Last semester I took a swimming class and I loved being back in a disciplined swimming environment. It wasn’t hard, considering it was a beginning class and I swam team when I was a kid, but it was nice to have a time that was set aside for swimming.
Growing up in a desert, I grew up in a place where nearly everyone had a pool in their backyard. In the summer, I lived in the pool, because it was too hot to do anything else. Actually, that’s not true, there are plenty of people who did not swim nearly as much as me, including my sister. I lived in the water. As I got older and quit team, in the summer, I would still wake up in the morning and swim some laps as the sun rose above our rooftop. I would then wrap myself in a fluffy towel, grab my book, and read in our hammock. I’d invariably fall asleep and wake up as the people in my family started shuffling around doing their morning routines.
The point is that I really miss having a convenient outdoor pool in which to go swimming. A pool whose main purpose is not a meat market for desperate BYU males, who get excited at the idea of seeing the thighs and shoulders of the usually covered BYU girls. Bleh. I want to go swimming and lay in the sun reading a good book without the annoying interruption of silly giggling.
My favorite part of those early morning swim sessions is the silence. I could actually hear the water as it slipped down my limbs and my strokes would begin to match the rhythm of my heart. As my body warmed with the exertion, I could feel every movement and wave of water against my body and I would find that perfect balance of push and glide that would send me sailing through the water. No, not ‘through’, because that implies resistance, but when I find that balance it is almost as if the water lifts and propels me forward. However, that balance did not last long because soon my arms and legs tired and I would have to breathe at almost every stroke, but it is for those moments that I woke up to swim in the morning hours with none to disturb me. I felt at home in the water’s embrace. Now I think I’ll go swimming.