coffee

May 3, 2022

/ HJ / Leave a comment

it is
very
hard to concentrate this morning

and i don’t know if it’s from
the stress of last night
or
the vividness of the dreams
or
the sadness of this morning
or
the lack of coffee in my bloodstream
or what

but

it is
very
extremely
extraordinarily
bizarrely
quite
hard to concentrate this morning.

~~~

i feel like i’m getting a better handle
on what makes my poetry
my poetry

(but i really have
absolutely
no idea
still
about what makes any poetry
‘good poetry’)

~~~

i would like to write
another
slam poem;
start a flow
and just go,
balance out the rhythm and rhyme
with internal structure,
alliteration,
and find
the transitions,
the cues,
from one section
to anther,
playing with words
and meaning
and framing
the repeating
as metaphor
as a tool
as a lock to turn the key
and find out something new
about me,
about life,
about our home planet earth,
and our collective strife
to stay alive
when all we want
is eternal sleep
(not necessarily because
death is the answer we’re looking for,
but because all these
isms
and power structures
and so-ingrained made up concepts
keep us so wide awake
that sleep seems a necessity
we never get to get
[when was the last time you had
an actual
honest to goodness
no stress
very good
night’s sleep?]

so i guess
that’s what this poem’s about:
the collective trauma
that is
white supremacy/capitalism/america
and how the one thing
that could give us
the fight
we need
to dismantle it
is the the thing
it keeps us
from doing
every
single
night.

(and are my daytime naps
my making up
for this lack,
or is that just a symptom
of the depression
my awareness
of these systems
gives me?)
((or is that a subject
for another poem
for another day?))

April 16, 2022

/ HJ / Leave a comment

a stress
a moment before we deal

a fear
a breath, a poem, and a sip of coffee before we head out

to the emergency vet (are we familiar faces yet?)
and hope for the ‘best case scenario’
(which is still a tumor)

the problem with having a dog
who already doesn’t get excited by food
is that decreased appetite
isn’t the same shocking warning sign
as it is for other
families

April 13, 2022

/ HJ / Leave a comment

did the work
did the thing
should i feel accomplished?

here’s the rub:
i know it could have gone better
(i know it could have gone worse)
but
it has become part of me
part of my mornings
(alongside my coffee)

and yeah, i guess i’ve learned a little
about myself
my words
my process(es)
my struggle-busses
(though i still feel so far away from having any of those
actually/totally ‘figured out’)

but does it have to mean anything?
does there have to be a large lesson learned
do our lives ever truly have
a beginning/middle/end
(except
birth/
the entirety of our lives/
death)
?

so,
i tell myself
from myself
to myself,
stop trying to make a neat story
where life just is
(that’s the fun thing about life:
it doesn’t get tied in a nice bow
at the end of every chapter;
it seeps
and bleeds
into every part of you;
your childhood
didn’t just cut off when you turned teen,
your teen-self didn’t stop teen-ing
when you entered college,
and with every passing year
you grow
but you can’t just let go
of who you once were,
you carry those stories
those strengths and faults
those likes and dislikes
those selves
with you
always,
they are part of what helped you get here;
you can’t have leaves without the branches,
and you can’t have branches without the trunk,
and you certainly can’t have a trunk without the roots
(and, if we’re comparing ourselves to trees now,
we might as well commit
and talk about how,
underneath,
supporting the roots themselves,
are mycelial networks
helping with nutrients
and
connecting trees to each other
and
living symbiotically,
so community
is the lesson learned there:
not even trees
stand solely alone)
)

so
i suppose
what i/this poem
are saying
is
this experiment might continue on for another year
or another five
or stop abruptly
just before another year mark
or i might not poem tomorrow

the point
is that i did it
i proved to myself
that i could do it
(though, with my stubbornness, i didn’t have too much doubt)
and i’ve written
(at least) one poem
every
single
day
for a year
and posted them
for the internet to see

and that’s all that matters
(right now, at least)

April 8, 2022

/ HJ / Leave a comment

autumn is a time for falling asleep
spring is the awakening

autumn is preparing for the months of winter depression
spring is shedding those sads

autumn is slowing, pondering, thinking, dying
spring is the adrenaline amping up again

so why do i feel so tired and sad and ponderous
while spring is all around me?

~~~

coffee
music
cat on lap
dog on couch
kip across the table
help me enter the day
my way

~~~

i know my headspace isn’t great
if i obsess over things
or
if i shoot from one subject matter
to the next
to the next
with no real resolution
and no thinking through to the end.

so why are my indications
entirely opposing?
is this my black and white thinking coming to some sort of fruition
or is this the source of my non-grey-mind?

March 15, 2022

/ HJ / Leave a comment

writing
a thing
but not the way i want to be
writing it
not in the way i’ve imagined
saying it
not in the context and meter and rhythm i’ve
dreamt it

and i’m hesitating words in a way i
never do

is this all some sort of quandary
of feeling ‘off’
simply because my coffee is hot
[[not
iced]]?

March 8, 2022

/ HJ / Leave a comment

falling asleep just
thinking
about the words i’m about to write
and the things necessary to be done today
and the accomplishments i need to do before this week ends

there’s a van down the street
just a few doors down
rumbling
and popping
and waking itself up for the day

if this van with
[clearly]
many things in need of fine tuning inside it
can take its time
getting itself ready
for its tasks for the day
then i certainly can wake myself up
through poetry
[and coffee]

~~~

but
i’m not awake
yet

~~~

the fake fireplace glows
and blows
forced heated air
at us
while the tiny humidifier
blows vapored water
up
into the air
into the plant beside it
reflecting in the mirror behind it
and we drink our coffee
as the dog tries so hard to lick her legs
on the couch
(that has become 100% hers)
and the cat is…

…somewhere

(a standard morning at the kips’)

February 18, 2022

/ HJ / Leave a comment

my brain is not awake yet,
nor is my body, really,
and the first sip of coffee is cheap
when
you know you could sleep for hours
even with the whole mug in your bloodstream,
and i keep getting distracted by tiny chores
which probably could/should be done,
but will it take away from these
morning page poetry streams of [semi-un]consciousness(?)
and
why can’t i think of myself like i did
at fifteen
seventeen
nineteen
when i fancied myself a mini-ee cummings
well on my way to
making language my b*tch(?)
even though now it’s probably more reality-based
to think that someone else has thought of
‘streams of [semi-un]consciousness’
before,
but boy,
did it give my ego a boost
to think i was thinking
entirely new thoughts
new concepts
new words
new communications
with new people
instead of how my brain is now
knowing that there are no new ideas
and instead of that spurring me on
to create without worry of plagiarism,
it instead spurns every concept i have
with the barrage of
‘you will never be creative enough
to think of anything
fully
new’
[
you
].

February 1, 2022

/ HJ / Leave a comment

Fauci Ouchie
Round 3:
The Booster-ing

a whole walk
to and from
computer systems
being buggy
acknowledgement of
zero side effects the last two times
told to just go
(no sitting around rest required)
but
i probably should have
due to the [unrelated] stomach pains
that showed up that morning
that 15-20 minute walk
was the most precarious
15-20 minutes in my life
but i survived
to tell the tale

and the only effect of the shot itself
(so far)
is the tender soreness
at the injection site
(and the only effect
of the stomach pains
are loss of sleep
and a tragic aversion to coffee
i’ll soon rectify
because
of that loss of sleep)

January 27, 2022

/ HJ / Leave a comment

so cold
too cold to think
too cold to do much else
but obsess about the cold

~~~

apparently that poem is too true
my brain has short-circuited
and i ponder things other than the cold
but they only flit in and out
as my body gets used to the
inside heat once more
(even though it’s not nearly as heated
as my freeze-baby body would prefer)
(and that’s still with snow pants and a sweater on)

(but will i stop drinking this ice-cold coffee?
absolutely not.)

~~~

fake fireplace
give me warmth
flicker your rolling light flames
and force heated air towards my
shivering bod

my one solace in the wintertime

December 12, 2021

/ HJ / Leave a comment

apparently
it doesn’t fully feel like
‘the holidays’
until there’s some Trans-Siberian Orchestra
blasting out of my
tiny laptop
speakers.

~~~

all my ideas
fled my mind
the moment i sat down
to write

~~~

coffee
coffee
spread through me
awaken my speed,
my creativity,
my me