Saturday, November 29, 2014

Out of Time



While cleaning recently, I came across an old cd case from my college years. Half the sleeves were filled with R.E.M. albums. It made me stop and realize something.

I rarely listen to R.E.M. anymore.

But I used to, obsessively. Michael Stipe was the one person in the world who seemed to understand the yearning that squirmed inside of me. And if that thought makes me smile in self-condescension now, it really shouldn't. His voice was my lifeline. 

Art is sometimes a lifeline. 

After college, I moved to Athens, Georgia for a year. Ostensibly for other reasons, but I wasn't fooling myself: I was there for the band, and the mystique conjured around their hometown. I was there because of the kudzu-choked cover on R.E.M.'s first LP, Murmur. I was there because I was searching blindly to know who I was, and what I wanted, and I followed the only thing that felt true to me. 

I wasn't any less lost in Athens, Georgia than I was in Athens, Ohio. In fact, I moved back home after 9 months. It was my first real-world experiment in trying to make a fantasy a reality, and I failed, miserably. 

But I don't regret the trying. 

I still love that music. It still blows me wide open. But I can't hear it now without also feeling trapped by who I was then. I remember an unhappiness so complete I didn't even know to call it unhappiness. I didn't know. All I knew was fear.

I'm not that girl anymore. 

Eventually, the band broke up.

But this blog owes its name to them. And that time in my life when the kudzu began to clear. 





Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Four corners



His hand
on her arm

the blood reacts

She is now other
than what she
appears to be 

A tree that's moved
from day to night

the moon 

quickening
through darkling 
veins

Foxfire,
she almost thinks,
breathing through
two paper legs

sipping her sips
of tonic water
with her radioactive 
lips






She hits the
target

his mask
slips

She sees ice
beneath

and likes it

While deeper
yet

darkness




Suffuse me
before you're gone

I am small and
winter is long




Words
running circles
around a rectangular
room

fall down in a flock
at the end of the day

Exhausted by what
they couldn't say