writing

October 12, 2021

/ HJ / Leave a comment

trying to figure out
what i need
each
and every
morning
to feel fully
me

because i had a great time
these last couple of weeks
having coffee with my Kip
up on the deck
chatting
or planning
or meditating
or bird-watching
or dog-playing
’twas fun and new and exciting
(and the meditation certainly helps most of the time)

but my brain and body
have gotten used to
Morning-Pages
Morning-Poems
Morning-Putting-Thoughts-To-Tomes
that, apparently, without them, i feel
just
a little bit
lost…

i mean, clearly, i catch up,
do an afternoon poem,
or after a few days, back-schedule the words i write at the time
but this
pre-8:00-writing
this Morning-Gathering-My-Thoughts,
this is where my true me shines

(or maybe just the me that is the most
Raw)

September 26, 2021

/ HJ / Leave a comment

in the morning
these pages
[these poems]
soothe me,
subdue me,
make me
more pliable
less early-morning-needing-a-strech-stiff-as-fuck,
and if the night has been restless
with less sleep than is ever needed
by me
i can sort through the fog
and become more of a person
(more of a me)
than i was in the deep dark depths of the
strugglenight

it used to be that
taking the glasses off
and sticking the contacts in
my eyes
was my way of waking up,
but recently
it seems
the sudden alertness
has been replaced with
a
slow, steady awareness
of the day
beginning
as i type out
my thoughts
moment by moment
word by word
letter by letter
thought by thought

[with, of course, the gracious assist
of a mug full of cold coffee
to aid as need be]

September 24, 2021

/ HJ / Leave a comment

with multiple days away
(at least from the real, in the weeds, getting lost in writing,)
morning pages,
i feel like i Should be writing more,
like i Should have a plethora of backup
just waiting to burst forth
onto the page[screen]
but i’m also meandering
like [[yesterday]]
and just kinda typing
for typing’s sake

where did my morning pages go?

September 21, 2021

/ HJ / Leave a comment

i feel as though
the month is almost over
(though there is still plenty of plenty of time)
i feel as though
i’m running out of time
(even though
i’m still young
vibrant
virile[?]
alive)
i feel as though
i’m only half living
(even though
i’m more in tune
with being
a living person
than i have
in years)
i feel as though
i’ll never connect
with other human beings
(even though
the humans i want to connect with
align more with cryptid
than anything else)
and i feel like
i’m not allowed to identify as cryptid,
as anything other than man/woman
boy/girl
alive/dead
artist/not
driven/giving up
even though
the world
is filled
with
shades of
neither/and

~~~

maybe
some creepy/Disparition/music
will calm my spooky soul
and make me feel more like myself

~~~

my brain isn’t fully functional
fully awake
and i already feel i have
enough poems for two today
so will i write a third?
[everything in threes]
when the ultimate goal is not, necessarily, posting
the goal is to exercise my writing
each morning
every morning
every day
write at least one full poem
that i’m proud of
(or, at least, that i can look at and call a ‘full poem’)
so when i’m feeling so out of sorts
when i am uncertain where myself/body/mind/spirit
actually is
i can write and write and write and write
until
i find myself once again.
but what happens
when the more i write
the farther away i feel?
(am i just relying on the house
to fix everything?)
(that’s a lot of pressure
on one building…)
(at least i still have this cat
draped over my arms,
tail flapping without breeze,
purrs echoing in my soul,
claws digging into my skin
as a constant reminder
that she probably loves me,
or at least sees me as comfort
which is
honestly
pretty neat.)

September 15, 2021

/ HJ / Leave a comment

woke up
in a mood
in a mood-y mcmood-mood
such a mood.

will blue raspberry waffles help disentangle me
from this darn
mood ™
?

~

waffles helped
as did a nap
and coffee
but mostly
doing
rather than sitting
and writing
(unlike most days)

how about that?

September 14, 2021

/ HJ / Leave a comment

stress and
apprehension and
a desire to make these poems
go somewhere.
i’m constantly plagued
haunted by
itching with the possibility
of a full story
expanding
under a reader’s nose
(what was that one book?
Green Angel?
something like that?
where it was poetry
that unfolded
into a complete story?)
and i want these Morning Poems
to tell my story,
but how can they
when my story isn’t done yet?
i may be right at the beginning
i might be hella in the middle
but one thing’s for certain:
life is messy
and stories are good or bad in how they’re told,
not the stories themselves,
especially when they’re true
honest
nonfiction.
it’s the fiction that gets the nice, neat bow at the end;
life blurs around the edges
try hard as you might
to color inside the lines
so embrace the chaos
cacophony
quandary
(and, of course, let your imagination ride out
the potential
of telling a portion of this story
your story
in this form you’ve happened upon…
maybe there is a way to tie up
the loose ends
of a fraction
of your tale.
in fiction,
of course)

September 11, 2021

/ HJ / Leave a comment

twenty years
it feels like less than ten
i’m still a mid-western teen at heart
trying to figure out how to live life
after witnessing that kind of trauma on live television
in my own school,
barely a month after cancer took my mom

man, that year was fucked.

~~~

the response
to 9/11
was nearly as traumatic
as the tragedy itself

instead of finding solace
and comfort
within community
we (the usa) blew it out of proportion.
we became the poster child for
acting out
(starting wars)
tantrum-throwing
(testosterone-fueled über patriotism)
and general bad blood in the world-relations stage

and the problem with the way our patriotism showed itself
(by literally shoving our ideals down other cultures’ throats)
is that it made youth like myself
not feel safe in our own country,
not feel like our representatives to the world community
truly
represented our best interests
(and yes,
with many fundamentalist factions of many other countries,
that is the same,
whether it’s oppressing lgbtq voices
or women’s voices
or a religion other than the majority…)
i simply feel a sense of
terrible
irony
that the usa invaded multiple countries
(but not the country that was actually responsible for the attack)
as a way to “loosen the oppression” on those oppressed,
but back home
the oppression
of queer,
of female-bodied,
of Black and brown and everyone of color
was growing
day
by day
by day by day by day
and the hypocrisy
of all that
feels so egregious
(but, i suppose, it always does, doesn’t it?)
(only those with the power to oppress others
will feel like theirs is the only power
to un-oppress
everyone)

~~~

it is important
to remember and honor
those who died,
but in doing so
we must also remember and honor
those who died in the endless wars
(american/soldier/and otherwise)
and those who died due to any sort of oppressive regime,
including, but certainly not limited to:
slavery,
ISIS,
AIDS,
Taliban,
Holocaust,
war on drugs,
general hate/white supremacy…
so now you see what it’s like in my brain
all the time
trying to honor and speak out against
all unnecessary deaths
and hurts
and oppression
and not entirely knowing how…

[i suppose that’s why i write poetry]