Fires in the Skies and the Streets.

Today it rained all day. There was also wind. My umbrella is going to be in recovery for a long time. Thought i'd put up a little creative recount of the this month's Guy Fawkes/Bonfire night festivities. My friends and I, along with most of the city, booked it out to Glasgow Green to watch the fireworks. Fireworks in winter are kind of a new phenomenon for me. They started going off in the streets right around daylight savings time (Glaswegians really know how to make use of the extra darkness).
I have accompanied it with photos gleaned from the Flickr account of a certain Terry Clerkson whom I thank very much. They were taken from a different location than mine but I think they are beautiful and also give a glimpse of the Gorbals. Yeah, there is a part of town called the Gorbals. Look it up.

Bonfire Night

Winter is in the grass on the Green

The cold seeps upward

Through sole and sock

All the city is out

Breathing into November’s early black

As smoke drifts

Across East End sky

And a mist hangs on the Clyde

Where reflected fireworks bloom and sparkle

Lamps light faces

And carnival music plays

Over the hush of the crowd

Hands held for warmth

But more for the fear of losing them to the night. 

Okie doke. That's pretty much it. Oh, and this song. A Scottish-Amurican alliance in music. I am all over this! AberDEEEEEEEEEN! I saw them perform this song here and it was neat. 

Aberdeen - Cage the Elephant by Guns Go Bang

Moving Along.

Nothing thrilling is happening. I am continuing to fall in love with the city. It is still scary and friendly. Strangely enough have been feeling more patriotic than ever before. It is really a new feeling for me. That will be for another post. 

A photo I took back in Edinburgh. That skyline is really gorgeous.

 I can't wait for real fall to set in here. The foliage is going to be off the hook in the park. I have tried to write a couple of times. It's been a bit difficult. I want to write a poem for the river Clyde, because I like it so much, and I keep trying to find my way to the canal but it hasn't worked. And I can't really write about the river until I have walked along it. So I wrote this. I think it's for Olivia. Not sure what it is or what it is about. Meh. 

The Millionth Untitled

Headbang

In time to

And as

Breaks screech

And the subtle unrest

Of slammed doors

Tears at the afternoon

Shimmy and shake

In empty bedrooms

Against a backdrop

Of liquor stores

And the rainy riverbank

Laugh and fall back

Again and again

Onto a thin mattress

In night that stretches dimly towards

No point of resolution

I Spent A Summer Wasting.

I have left my sunny homeland of California, and the nice kids in Berkeley, and now find myself in bloody gorgeous Scotland, my ancestral homeland. Hmmmmm. There is much excitement. However, the summer I just bid farewell too was beautiful, and deserves some note. So I wrote an ode to it, and the blue house I love so well.

A lil sketch of the place, pre succulent garden. 

Summer in the Blue House: Pt. 2

We all wake parched in separate rooms

To city summer gray

Begging to be burned off by August

We wander through halls

Down stairs and stairs

To meet in the morning-light and make sense of where the weekend went.

We share the front stoop with passersby

And innumerable jars of forgotten tea

Left to steep all summer

In sun, cigarettes and whispers

Privy to afternoon gossip

And late nights that spilled out the door and into the street.

We are laughing on a hill

As dusk approaches

Bellies full of wine, drunk on a view of the city

There is music in the dry grass

And wisps of smoke in our eyes

As the fog rolls in over rooftops and bright lights.

We are together for a brimming moment

Sunburnt days, and nights we danced over worn floorboards.

Now we will fold summer between our embraces

Tuck it into bed as our breathing slows

Let it fade as photos will

To subside finally and ever so gently into Fall and memory.

And now a fitting song from my favorite Glaswegian musical bunch! And another fitting song from Beirut of whom I am also quite fond. 

The Room Where Summer Passes.

Well I have been doing a lot more of nothing lately. I started this:

Based on this photo:

From this groovy ad campaign featured here.

And then I drafted this:

At The Close

The sister leaves on the train

As afternoon fog crests the hills

I think of you

Buried in the years now termed “ago”

I buried you again

By a river in Russia

And sat on the bridge

To mourn

Oh, but all this I have forgotten

I do not think of it

On the way home

Or falling to sleep

In the room where summer passes

All the while listening to this:

and this:

and never ever doing my homework. 

Cutting and Pasting.

Art class is paying off. Here is a poem I wrote with the help of a newspaper. The assignment was to use words from the paper but we couldn't use anything shorter than 3 words, which was challenging and yielded really interesting results. The articles I was given to cut from were about a San Francisco politician, and a musician. Here on the blog I color coded the lines from the 2 different articles, and spaced them so you can see how they were composed from the clippings. In the manner of Graham Foust, I call the poem:


Poem With Help

God's name saved me. 
I was still singing, 
mentally ill, and widespread with 
much of my childhood    amended to death. 

I remember one.
He was high on mescaline. 
He was telling me to   secretly fret about
mystics whose poetry   was worthless, useless. 

So horribly he laughs. 
Its only June but it won't be
sorrow that would lead   him in the last.
That's his Achilles' heel. 

I was not   even remotely the worst offender,
should leave alone 
nakedness that is   in the vault for summer. 
He was always getting us to   craft a polite aura. 

He struggled for years   up in New York City. 
He realizes that   I don't have any memory of it. 

Another photo from Andrea Laszlo Konrath. It is currently my desktop. I think it's inspiring me.

Falling Off.

So it appears I have fallen off of the bandwagon. I am struggling to get back on. Hopefully summer and my art class will help me along. In the meantime a little story-poem I wrote up a while ago. It needs more editing, as does everything I write, so I will put it up anyway.

A photo I took of a dear, lovely friend. She is blowing out a match, not smoking. I think she looks like a platinum ghost. 

Night Ghosts

While I waited across campus

For you and your three stripe sneakers

I saw two shimmering platinum ghosts

Umbrellaed by purple lantern light

They spoke in a soft hiss

With teeth of glass

And breath of smoke

I was hushed and still

But my bones trembled

They heard the trembling

And merged with shadows

Thrown on the damp asphalt

By swaying eucalyptus

Working Late.

This is what happens when I work late and everyone else is leaving to enjoy the beautiful evening.

Verse About Springtime

“Blues will be had”
The choir sings
As I swan dive off endless balconies
Into balmy nights
And the most pleasant sense of unease

Halfway to 40.

I wrote this about 2 weeks before my actual birthday, when I was feeling a little strange. I felt better about the event while it was actually occurring but I would say these sentiments are still valid. Anyway, I know you aren't supposed to write your own birthday poem, but I did.

Poem For My 20^TH Birthday

Campus twilight chases the pinkest of airplanes

Across sunset pinched sky

February is making up its mind to March

I am making up my mind to loneliness

I will put the college age feminist cuff in my Levis

And swear you off

Swear you into oblivion

Kissing off this dusky breeze

Jump into liquid night

The 10 minute homeward stride

To lighted windows

Uphill to age 20

We could all shed tears

For a 17^th year beating a hasty retreat

But we don’t

We’ll pillage the future

Before it even cracks a smile

Such are the years of the glorious inbetween

 And now for a couple songs that kept this week movin along. 

note: Yes. The first song is a cover of Mazarin. I like both versions.
I could not find a video for the We Barbarians song I really wanted to post, but every song on their new album is perfect so in the long run I decided it didn't matter.

Winter That Never Was.

This is a poem for a winter that I can only imagine.

   

Run Down

Indebted to the dawn

They run down alleyways

Sharp, glinting

The cold snatches

Is always snatching at their hearts

But they pay no mind

They of smoke and rapid breathing

A barking, out of breath laughter

The sound of bravery

Envy that sound

It means they don’t care

It means nothing matters

Except street and sky

When you can make that sound

You will be safe forever

No longer hunted

Or bruised by leaving

Immunity by frozen city block winter

And grinning in the dark

Hello There.

In the New Year

Walking through winter with an orange in my pocket

Impaled with a gasp

By the whitest of mornings

I have fully left midnight

Velveteen and drunken

Tangled all in the branches behind

Gone away and I am glad

This is not cowardice

Creeping like death in the cold

It is a wind-stung

Cautiousness

Natural when so brand new

This is the hesitant first stanza of my first poem of this still new-ish year. I mostly put it up because I want to get this thing up and running. More may follow, although possibly not. Just to clear any confusion this poem is not titled after The Walkmen song In The New Year, although they do share a title. It is a song very much worth listening to however. Give it a look right here.