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[26 Feb 2009|05:38am] |
The carpet is so scratchy and yet so comforting, something close-by to feel and understand. It is not as smooth as the rug in my childhood home in Nova Scotia, but sources say I must find a new point of refernce, and thus I say: how was this new rug? I rather love it. To the feet it was a series of vodka tonics; always classy but just a smidge mysterious.
To walk its length is to contemplate any floor's length that does not matter to you in the beginning. Pinter is gone; let's consider what is important to us now in dialogue. Shall we?
Everyone is invested in punctuation, or so he thinks. I have not included anything about carpets. Please comment here; it's all I have.
After several drinks, I no longer understand myself. And wait, who once again represents "myself"?
Oooh, drama.
?
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| And so it is |
[18 Feb 2009|01:06am] |
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Where have my friends gone these days? I grow ever more ridiculous, and you aren't around to temper my moods with your humor and disapproval. On the drive home this evening a tiny rabbit trotted onto the highway right after the Burger King and oh my where do you belong, sweet thing? I swerved and nothing was my fault, however it fell after that, and shall we say the rabbit went back to its small triangle of woods between road and road, and shall we say it's still there and perhaps will be tomorrow. I don't know what all goes on the rest of the night, but I listened to En Vogue all the way home, and like my friends, those funky divas have disappeared. Difficulty, ease, difficulty goodnight goodnight.
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| These are the good old days ? |
[15 Feb 2009|03:48am] |
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Do you find people more attractive when they are powerful?
Do you care about poetry? What the fuck is poetry?
Do you care about power by itself? Are you turned on by power?
If you are not turned on by power, then hey, I was thinkin' about how right tonight might be; how do you feel about that?
Are these the good old days?
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[15 Feb 2009|03:15am] |
The last poster was not Liz Bish.
The F was that? Who has seen my gills? My rainbow skins?
Ask and I am.
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| Several Ideas |
[15 Feb 2009|03:11am] |
Jesus Christ. No marketing god could convince me of this.
Daytime television; I don't know why I have to be alive.
One impulse and then another; it is ridiculous how a person calls me one deity and another deity in the span of one evening.
None of these things have really happened. You know? I kid. My thoughts are far apart.
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[12 Feb 2009|12:16pm] |
I don't think anybody remembered my birthday! I feel like that poor redheaded girl in that movie.
I'll go see what Anne's up to; she's always game for some early-afternoon shenanigans.
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| Watchman? |
[19 Oct 2008|07:27pm] |
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I told myself all day, driving along the coast, that I wouldn't. Every little person in my head knew that I would. Every single unreal bystander on the ugly grey beach inside me said, "Yes, you will. You won't want to, but you will." And I wanted to laugh at them, but I knew who was winning the election, I knew if it was go to sleep or drink I'd cast my ballot one way and forget to apologize later. My god, the things I come to at seven in the evening. In this state, on this day, the liquor stores are closed. I remembered this an hour too late, and almost began to think I'd have a quiet night, against my stronger wills. I had only to look into the apple-fridge, full of this week's fruit haul and last week's, growing all soft and sweet and pungent, to find that I had planned ahead for myself. There, on the iced-over freezer shelf, was a bottle of Mathilde. Orange liqueur from France, bought in part because it was cheaper than the name-brand, and in part because Mathilde was a girl I once sat next to in class, in youth, a slim lovely bottle from France whom I always wished to talk to but never had good words for. Only once I explained to her, before it all began, what a word on her syllabus meant. She knew so many words. I am not accustomed to the French, their customary rudeness; but Mathilde was kind. I wanted to know her. And here's the evening that's begun: bad television downstairs, and upstairs and lone lady with Mathilde who never was really there, who evaporates if left alone too long. And don't we all. Good night.
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[23 Aug 2008|09:45pm] |
I am drawn to people who are falling apart -- and this is no accident.
It is those who tear themselves apart at night. Not in an over-literal sense; I hope you won't take it this way.
People who know something terrible going on inside themselves, who can smell it from their very pores.
I have been too afraid there is nothing going on inside myself.
I want their flames to burn me up.
Her flame.
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| These days |
[05 Nov 2007|11:53pm] |
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We have lately been occupied with the business of keeping house. He have acquired all manner of plastic tubes, curtain rods, lengths of fabric and lace, for the purposes of making a house into an art in itself, and we spend our every hour in considering where each element should be deployed -- how long is this floorboard, which wall is bowed and where the light comes in when we wake each day. It is a great task, and one I had never pictured myself undertaking. It is good to have an other.
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| Asses. |
[29 Jun 2007|03:50am] |
Em-D, you so-and-so, I saw a funny cartoon of you wearing a bathing suit in this month's American publication Poetry magazine. I did not buy it, because it was expensive, and you know how I feel about expensive things. I also noticed that while Poetry magazine's summer issue tends to be its "Humor" issue, this publication was not at all "humorous" -- this aroused some suspicions for me. I know that many of our modern poets have no sense of humor at all, barring Eleanor Wilner and VERY FEW other people. Well, Em, I hope you do have a sense of humor, because the artist made your ass look kind of big!
Not that I am in any position to talk about other people's asses. Hey now. Only Sharon wishes to enter this competition, slim and spry as she is.
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| Hello again |
[29 Jun 2007|03:39am] |
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Nothing truly noteworthy happens to me these days. I've got a new desk chair; it's brown leather and squeaks when I sit down in it. I wish I could tell you how lonely that silly squeak makes me feel, but you're gone. Some mornings I stay in bed, just to avoid the sound of the chair. I can write from anywhere, I think, and some noises I just don't need to hear. Once or twice I've gone for a walk down the beach, along the road meant for pedestrians, but I feel hardly worthy of all that space without you. So much blank asphalt is too much for my ridiculous feet to hold up with their erratic beats. I'm sorry; I know more people read this journal, and it's rude to go on about someone who will never again see what she means to me. In short -- I'm back on the internet, and perhaps I'll post again from time to time. I'm in the process of having my effects shipped from Rio back up to Massachuesetts. A tedious process, full of bumps and confusion, but I'm certain everything will work itself out. Everything material, that is. My insides have a sort of hurt I can't tell you about very well.
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| so quiet here... |
[23 Mar 2007|01:54am] |
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Can you please forgive me and believe that it is really because I want to do something well that I don't do it at all?
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[31 Aug 2005|03:09am] |
Fuck being in love! Fuck it!
There's a moment in your life when you open yourself up, voluntarily or otherwise, to whatever the world has to offer. Many people remain shut like grey clams for years, and never find this opening. I might have been one of these clams - I was, I was - but I allowed myself to open for love, to take in someone new. And look what it's gotten me! Look, exactly! Grief - abandonment - worthless, stale emptiness and a cold house. There isn't even the drone of the radio, not even the far-off scratching howls of animals to tell me anything still exists. There is only this emptiness, this palpable void like a wound.
What happened to my closed self? Is she still there? She'll have to come back; I can't let the wind keep tearing blindly at my insides, can't let the silence keep pounding through my mind.
I'm going to go sob into a pillow.
-Liz
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[25 Mar 2005|01:45pm] |
It's so true. You?
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To ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) robert_lowell |
[25 Jan 2005|10:23am] |
Please get off my porch. I know you're back in town, but honestly, I have work to do, and Lota and I are awfully busy these days. And for christ's sake, Robert, NO, you may not quote me on that in your next poem. Plagiarist.
Drinks later, perhaps. Try calling my house, dear, instead of just camping out on the lawn. You only make yourself look desperate.
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[23 Jan 2005|02:16pm] |
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Damnit, Sexton keeps putting me up to stupid pranks and practical jokes. All I wanted was to join her secret club ... why does the initiation have to be so deliciously juvenile?
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| News from the front, and the back, but never the left |
[20 Jan 2005|11:56pm] |
Too much of life is spent thinking of others. After typing up multiple drafts of the same miserable syllabus I always give out to the Harvard students, I stood up from the old black typewriter and walked away. It snowed yesterday, and looked as though a repeat performance was sure -- until, that is, the winds picked up to a scream outside and heavy, cold rain began to fall on everything. It's pocked the banks of Meissen outside with ugly sharp marks which will surely be the demise of my lovely winter landscape. There's nothing good to looking out the window at that scene; it only depresses me. Such was the afternoon -- full of indecisive, half-believed over-writing and the avoidance of a window just feet from where I sat. I trained myself eventually not to look peripherally out of my left eye, as the function -- so common on other days -- only served to showcase the abysmal afternoon. And the syllabus -- gods, the syllabus! It's always the same class, but every year I agonize over what to teach. Once I make decisions, which I liken to throwing darts at a map of the world, the cruel question of how to teach it undoubtedly comes up. How do I lose my wits from year to year? I haven't much to say to these children -- so lively and aware, waiting for me to become a pyramid, a monument to art and understanding. They are so many, and I am but one woman. One woman alone in a house, haunted by a ghastly unhelpful typing machine, and battered by the pitting sound of snow, as it gradually dies outside.
Perhaps I'll skip Browning this year.
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| I drew a map of Canada ... with your face sketched on it twice |
[15 Dec 2004|07:49pm] |
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mood |
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 lonely |
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music |
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a case of you |
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I'm having a new student over for drinks this evening. She wanted to further discuss W. H. Auden after class, and though I was tired after last night's cavorting about with Anne, the student had lovely strawberry-blonde hair, and I couldn't turn her away as she made that sad, lonely face at me. I've certainly known the feeling. Lota is away this month, off in Borneo making paintings of nude villagers, or coconuts, or anything that's not me. She said when she left, tossing errant undergarments and photographs of the two of us in Wellfleet into an old brown suitcase, that she didn't have a schedule, didn't know when she'd come back to me. Evidently, all she knows is that she needs space. My speech cracked as my eyes threatened to burst, and I could do nothing but choke out ugly compliances and reach for my drink on the vanity. The nights become more and more empty as I realize that she may really be gone. I've turned away so much love in my life -- Robert and others, for whom I can never sustain more than a friendly affection -- and now, when I've found the one I want, it's suddenly become an elusive beast.
I'll go change a word in that poem on the fridge, and wait for ... damn, what was her name? ... to come over. Good evening, loves.
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| The evening travels its wayward path |
[14 Dec 2004|11:37pm] |
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mood |
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 punchy ... and still butch |
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music |
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to sir with love |
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Sharon's coming over again tonight. She's no Methfessel (I've lost her!), but she's a plucky kid, and writes graphic poems with words I hope never to see on the printed page. Norton will never touch her work, I dare say. I want to tell her Honestly dear, no one wants to read about sex with MEN, but I fear she'd take it too personally. Ah, the confessionalists -- a tempestuous bunch, they are. Well, I'd better go kick down the wall-bed, smooth the flowered sheets and pour myself a highball or three. It's going to be a long night, if I can help it.
Damn, I've got papers to grade. I wish I had taken up that lovely young woman on her offer to be my secretary. Perhaps I can have Sharon do my grading; she's an obliging sort.
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[14 Dec 2004|11:04pm] |
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mood |
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 butch |
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Life would be grand right now. Would be grand. But I need a few things. An Alice, a vodka, and Brazil.
Maybe I'll just go change a word of the poem tapped to the fridge.
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