|
| you shook with laughter
after you farted in the
small elevator
because you would blame me when
a stranger came in with us. | | |
| you felt your faith sure
when beth leaned over miss jane
to giver her a kiss
and that frail lady told her
child you have beautiful arms.
i know you tried hard
to be interested when
i explained how wax,
melted and cooled in water,
looks like van gogh's blurred flowers.
your volcanically
eruptive schultzian laugh
was saturated
with the most undiluted,
intense mirth i've ever seen.
| | |
| I just woke up from a nap.
I'm trying to calm myself because I'm the only leader here for Wednesday Night Youth Group. I thought it wouldn't be such a hard thing to be a youth intern. This is harder than college. Surprising.
Perhaps it's because every time I stand in front of the classroom and teach, there has to be some sort of linear progression to my thoughts about God. I don't have linear thoughts about anything, especially God.
Or, maybe it's that I am highly suspicious someone has swapped the actual youth groupers for bodies at the morgue. I can't very well get dead bodies to play Cranium. That's what it feels like, anyway.
Well, at least this is certainly stretching me in good directions. And, I really enjoy friendship with some of the kids, despite their being the undead. But, there is that odd feeling that when I go back to Covenant, it will be a vacation.
It'd be great if I could just invocate "Higitus Figitus" and have everything work itself out. Oh well. Here's to effort... | | |
| My mom woke me up three different times last night. Rachel Ray was on the food network and did a show in Chattanooga. So, I had to scramble from underneath my covers, jump off the top bunk, and rush to the ringing phone when she saw a place where she had been or wished to go. When Rachel Ray went to Rembrandt's, she told me, "I sat right there, in that chair. Right there..."
and later on:
The phone rings. I jump out of bed, and the first thing i hear is:
her: "Papi, she's in some sort of caves..."
me: [trying to figure out what she's talking about]
her: "oh, and look, a waterfall. how pretty."
me: "is it Ruby Falls?"
her: "YES. RUBY FALLS."
me: "oh."
her: "can we go there when I come to pick you up?"
me: "sure."
her: "ok. i'll call you back if i see anything else."
me: [laughing] "ok."
Finally, at 12:10, she said to me "Why haven't you gone to sleep, you dummy?"
Unbelievable.
Oh brother, mother. You're too funny. | | |
| I'm well under way for my SIP (titled above). It's a hyakushu, or a 100-poem sequence of tanka. Tanka are sort of like haiku except they're 5-7-5-7-7 instead of only the first three lines. I've got Japanese poetry out the wazoo (old Gall word for the castle room in which wheat was stored. Therefore having too much wheat would mean you had wheat out the wazoo).
Apparently, hyakushu were heavily regimented. There were a set number one was to write on each of the four seasons, on specific birds, on the celebration of the Emperor, Travel, and A Mountain Dwelling. And within each section it was even more regimented. Thus, for winter, one had to write a poem on the theme of moonlight filtering through the blinds and for autumn plum blossoms whirling like snow.
So, I decided instead of following some of those more traditional hyakushu, I would do one in which I wrote ten tanka on each of the fruits of the Holy Spirit (Espiritu Pomum), except for 20 on love.
They were supposed to be read in one sitting and all one hundred tanka were supposed to contribute to one overall theme, tone, or emphasis.
I've done a bunch of research and writen 26 tanka so far. The best one is, I think, the following:
i don’t want to have
the awful conversation
in which you tell me
how you were violated,
rending my heart like sackcloth.
I also like:
unsure, at first, of
your unpredictable hips
we fumble the swing
until i learn to guide you
like midnight through dreamcatchers.
And one more:
like a vacuous
black star that can bend all things
is pride in my heart.
it is kharybdis, churning
even light into dark-froth.
Tally, ho.
| | |
|
