Thursday, November 25, 2004

Downright

There's a word people should use more often: downright. As in, I'm downright unsure whether the word can be broken down to a meaning that isn't utterly colloquial. Yay for that.

I'm feeling blue. Not downright blue, no, but blue all the same and this seems awfully ungrateful on Thanksgiving. Of course, I'm thankful for so much.

But I can't get around this blue tonight. How different your life can be in a year's time.

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

If it's any consolation, and it's probably not, I'm feeling ever so slightly blue too. Bleu, really .

This is rough. Written directly into the comment box. Forgive the roughness, the bleu-ness?:

Over The River and Through

They didn't even bother to say grace;
turkey laid out on the plate, they dug
unashamedly into that cadaver. I had no stomach

for feast. My nieces fought over a drumstick
like crows. All I wanted was the long end
of the wishbone. I imagined you at a table,

alone, filling your belly with stuffing
and gravy. What's an antonymn for sate?
Is a black hole swallowing light and space

ever full? As I drove home, eyes glowed
on the side of the road. Apt metaphor
for love, that sudden glitter as a body risks

crossing to the other side. The moon, full and blue,
chased after me with the saddest look on his face.
You've seen it in the mirror, staring through

yourself in the disbelief of another heartbreak.
You want something to be thankful for; alas,
I have nothing to give. I swerved to avoid

a shadow straddling the yellow line.
The perfume of skunk filled the car.
I rolled down the window and cry.

Anonymous said...

That's what happens when you switch tenses at the last moment:

I rolled down the window and cried.

Anonymous said...

Perhaps you'd feel less blue if you listed some of the things you're thankful for.

Paul said...

Thanks, Laura, all the way from Portugal!

Paul said...

And you, Anonymous, thank you. Will you hide forever in your anonymity?

Anonymous said...

Not forever, no. Still, this veil makes me brave. Brazen, even.

Not that revealing my identity will make a difference. Because, crush, you don't know who I am.

Le Diable et Le Mer Bleue Profonde

“…a strangeness of flowers catches you praying
between romances and convalescence, its beauty
your own wreck or recovery you trust in.”
--Anthony Lacavaro

There are days when I’m unafraid, days
when the possibility of possibilities is aqua-
marine and my skin becomes a slippery dove-
tailing of scales, days when fate seems like love,
something I could create out of the barely breathable
air—oh! if only I knew how it (love) was made--days
when there is no flailing of limbs, days when the chin
is held above and water is treadable, days
when you’re the stranded onshore smiling and waving,
days when I forget the trick to surviving this rip-
tide is to resist panic when it grabs and pulls me under
and out to the far horizon, days when I calmly paddle
parallelled to the tearing current and save myself, days
when I siren and siren, days when you resist
the bait or simply ignore the mythic lure, days
when I swear, I feel so brazen I could rise, fairy-
talish from the foam that unfurls its curls at your soles,
stride onto the beach on dreamed legs, place a kiss
upon your awed mouth, then dive back
into the waves to drown.

Paul said...

And neither do I know you. Brazen? Nah.

Anonymous said...

Implied cowardice. Ouch. That hits where it hurts.

Because I am. Cowardly.

Do you really want to know who I am? I assure you that I'm not anyone that you know. Heck, I don't even live in your neck of the woods.

Sigh.

Paul said...

Didn't mean to imply cowardice. No, not that: I was just disagreeing with any negative connotations 'brazen' might have. Cowardly, no, not what I meant at all.

As for the rest, well, that remains up to you, and my email adress is readily attainable.

:)

Paul said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Anonymous said...

You never did say what you were thankful for.

I'm thankful for my good health, which I take for granted. I'm thankful for poetry, for the reading of it and the writing of it. I'm thankful for this strange happiness that's lately taken over me and caused me do things like tell a poet I don't know that I have a crush on him. (grin)

Oh, but who's being mysterious now?! I'm dying to know what you posted and then removed.

I will reveal myself to you via email....when the mood strikes me or the proper moment arrives.

Regarding that word, brazen, I guess in my mind, I gloss over the negative connotations. To me, brazen is bold audacity, an action that is shamelessly overbold—yet the dictionary I consulted just now says: flagrant, insolent audacity. Egads! Saucy and bold, yes. Impudent and arrogant? Good god, no!

Anonymous said...

I can't get these 2 songs out of my head today: "Wild Horses" by the Rolling Stones; and, "But Not For Me."

They're writing songs of love, but not for me.

Here's your poem du jour. Guess I wasn't kidding when I said I could write a book.

Page 201

All day I tried to distinguish need from desire.
--Louise Gluck

Yesterday, I thought of you. A very pointed
you. There can be no other
You. Regardless, I thought of this specific
you as the first snow fell, drifting down
fine as sifted flour—a non sequitur, I know,
because it does not follow that the sky’s a sieve
and the stars are pebbles too big to fit
through the holes, all the constellations
trapped and rattling. And as the wind shifted,
as, within the hour the temperature plummeted
and the snowflakes hardened into something
almost unforgivable, tiny pellets of ice
that pecked and pecked at the window
like granules of sugar—surely, another non
sequitur because you were expecting finches
or sparrows—I thought of the windfall
from the night before—this is no wink,
no nudge, just a garden variety storm
bereft of symbol—that littered the neighbor’s yard,
bruised fruit, food for the worms if only
it were warmer—brrrrr—and how I could gather
them in my arms, carry them home and shred
those unwanted apples according to a recipe
I heard on NPR because it strikes me now
as I strike out on my own across this fine
dusting of snow, the sky the color of congealed
lard, that you, sir, are a pie man. This crisp air
in my lungs would make a heavenly crust.

Paul said...

Re: the missing post--it was my post, showing up twice. Nothing missed, then.

Page 201. I wonder what happens on 203....

Anonymous said...

This:

Hawk's Shadow

Embracing in the road
for some reason I no longer remember
and then drawing apart, seeing
that shape ahead -- how close was it?
We looked up to where the hawk
hovered with its kill; I watched them
veering toward West Hill, casting
their one shadow in the dirt, the all-inclusive
shape of the predator --
Then they disappeared. And I thought:
one shadow. Like the one we made,
you holding me.

--Louise Glück

And there you were hoping for a fat slice. Nope, just Louise and her killer (or is that killing?) vision.

Paul said...

Ah, that's good LG. That shadow.