Sunday, September 28

I thought about it, the way the park was dusky and the fog was creeping in. It was like Carl Sandburg had said… It crept in, on little cat feet. It inched closer and closer but only just so minutely. I could barely tell, really. If the whole park had been in motion I wouldn’t have been able to, but the trees stood dead still and silent as the runners made clatter with their feet that I could hear on my bench. However close the fog was, I couldn’t feel it yet. That sensation of cold mist rushing over every bit of your exposed skin, caressing your face and eyelids and the inside of your nose as you inhaled, that was perfection. That was why I came to the park at dusk every night, waiting. I waited for the nights when the fog came, silently stalking the streets and through the trees, silently slipping around the moving cars, silently coming towards me.
He must have been something special, to take my eyes off the fog, the way it swayed under the feet of runners. He was at least beautiful, with pale skin the color of mist and curly brown hair, but that wasn’t what caught my attention. The way he walked seemed like he wasn’t really moving at all. He came out of the fog seeming like a part of it, and maybe that’s what drew me in. For a second my eyes stared at his feet, and then they flickered up his legs and to his face. It was all a little mystical for me, like something out of a science fiction novel, or an eerie movie, the way my eyes honed in on him and my brain ignored the rest of what I was seeing.
Even though I could hear the steady pit-pat-pit-pat of the runner’s feet as they ran past him, I couldn’t hear the faintest sound of his feet on the ground. If they touched the ground at all. I wondered. My face must have been twisted up into a confused expression as he eclipsed the fog I watched so studiously, because for whatever reason he looked my way, and smiled a laughing smile. He didn’t know, I’m sure, that that brief moment was the closing point, the thing that sealed the deal. He didn’t know about my weakness for a crooked smile. He didn’t know me. Yet.

brittany thinks really deep thoughts @ 12:22 AM | 26 comments

Monday, June 30

If there were ever a day like today again
I'd ask if you're wearing your goggles of forgiveness
because our lives
have become mires of deviation
and reaching backwards always takes one off balance.
So I never did.
Well then, I think it is time I found my old wetsuit
secured a splendid and elegant dive
and followed the wake you left behind.

Synapse thinks really deep thoughts @ 9:05 PM | 0 comments

Saturday, March 10

You are all brilliant. And full of passion and creativity.

But most importantly, you all know how to write about it. So go write and edit The Living Script, a wiki-play.

www.livingscript.com

(project by brett. logo by eileen. majik by you duh.)

lordpook thinks really deep thoughts @ 5:22 AM | 0 comments

Saturday, May 6

Cigarettes

My eyes crease in disappointment
as ghostly gray smoke swirls
around your face, lined
with the ache of exhaustion
from days without rest.

Your hands, fingers so slender,
tremble as they roll the loose tobacco
and you lick your lips
and you hunch your shoulders
and you flick the lighter.

My promises aren’t broken
like yours. I stand disgusted,
hands tucked into pockets
of the coat I borrowed that smells
too much like home.

You look at me and smile,
so nearly my sister, sucking
and pulling while I cry no tears
for my resignation and betrayal.

brittany thinks really deep thoughts @ 11:21 PM | 0 comments

Sunday, April 23

Those Mornings, These Days

It’s one of those mornings
sweet with the scent of you
next to me. Your arms
are inescapable with heaviness
and want. Sunlight streams in
between cracks in the curtains
and we sink back into sleep.
Your skin leaves scents, on pillows
and sheets, that break my levees.
Now the land stretches too far
between us, and outside the rain
pours my tears, because I promised
you I would be strong.

brittany thinks really deep thoughts @ 2:16 PM | 1 comments

Sunday, April 9

I almost had to get my stomach pumped

My brother told me the orange cough syrup was slice,
so I drank the whole bottle. Then he convinced
me I was going to die.
humor wears off as soon as change in location sets in.
Case in point: ER, 10 yrs, little white hands pressed
in pale wonderment against the receptionist's glass,
her face a calm delivery of my father's expectations:
No, not a long convalescence where there was never
true chemical--coughing is unequivical to poisoning,
orange blind to thick, dirty dissimilar to guilty, if
you will only apply the truth to the facts,
I have no doubt, absolutely none.
So we drove the two lane back to my brother's
waiting, sweating arms, uncomfortable. Secretly,
though, I thought my short recovery
was the finest gift he could have given me.

Eileen thinks really deep thoughts @ 6:38 PM | 0 comments

They called in droves the day I went over the speed bump at 68, sending Nuckolls Fisher 5 feet, suspended, so that he gashed his head on the bus's metal scaffolding. Parents dialing 7 numbers in shrill hopes of vindication, wanting to speak to the infidel who swept Nuckolls Fisher's swaddling away, early morning sunlight shooting quadrants across his dazed, broken face. The darlings, possessed by natural curiosity, had dampened the sponge of my crime by leaning into Nuckolls in full cognizance of fun turned solid; swallowed with the air of scientists and left me to the consequences of my own actions. I could not hold fort in the white face of Ms. Fisher's hysteria, which came in claws of significant-realizing-somethings and half-light forgiveness. She spit out "joy ride" and I took what she gave, red.

Eileen thinks really deep thoughts @ 6:30 PM | 0 comments

Monday, April 3

Kamikaze

Mom takes big strides
through the Memphis Malls
dragging me behind
like a little red wagon.

She is walking the power walk
and I have none of that. I whine–
she’s walking too fast. She grunts
“You’re just not walking fast
enough,” but at least she never
lets my pudgy hand go.

I am aged, with longer limbs
and places to go. His arms are out,
hands resting on my shoulders
like a leather steering wheel.
I am tunnel vision.

He says we southerners
walk like we drive. And then
I feel like a kamikaze pilot,
but I never crash. His hands
grip me tighter, but I resist.
“This is just how we walk,
down here.”

brittany thinks really deep thoughts @ 7:30 PM | 0 comments

Thursday, March 16

TRASH TRASH TRASH

this is a really rough recording of my new band's song, "art hrs." it's not done or anything, we were just hoping for some feedback. you can friend us on myspace too, hahaha.

the admiral thinks really deep thoughts @ 12:21 PM | 1 comments

Wednesday, March 8

New Orleans Will Be Chocolate Again, Ray Nagin

We rode the zip line from Chicago to New Orleans in October,
Dipping our bare toes in the mighty Mississippi so that still-warm water waked behind them. We’d have been thought fantastical before that summer’s hurricane, but
In the aftermath no one had the nerve to question acts of god,
Especially not the insurance companies
Who we fought hard when we discovered the blisters and wind burn would
Prevent us from holding steady jobs making New Orleans chocolate.
I said to you, “this is the capital of the world for dreamers”
And you said, “to think we could supplant them in their own capital”
After all, we had only just arrived in the big easy, had already seen and
Done most of what we planned instead of putting duties off like FEMA,
And old analogy by the time we arrived. Not antiquated, just dull, and
Sprung from the mouths of people who had forgotten the rest of their story,
Figuring it had been everyone else’s as much as their own.
That’s the kind of community you get out of these things: single-struggled, monomythed.
The place was a Roanoke except for those few glad interviewees;
everyone left was the kind of thankful you are after breaking bread in sacrament, and if you think about it hard enough and long enough it makes sense.
You can’t get your house sunk in that type of potential energy without
A little bit of thanks that at least something of miracle proportions had come your Direction, finally.

Eileen thinks really deep thoughts @ 5:37 PM | 2 comments

Saturday, January 28

Sweet Tea

The wind doesn’t brush
my Memphis mama’s face
as she reminds me of all she taught me.

“Mama you know I’m leaving;”
and she opens her roads
and lets me choose
the old bridge or the new.

My grandma’s green arms wrap me
in rice fields and cotton
but soon I’m lost to the red clay hills,
and for comfort’s sake I cry out
“mama I’m gone.”

Here I can’t find the soulful spices
my mama never weaned me from.
Here I can’t sip my southern nectar
and life doesn’t halt to an inch of white.

But here I am free in hills and trees
in a tiny city, landlocked,
with wind that never stops and
a heart that keeps beating.

And mama I know your doorways
are empty and open.
I’ll come back to you soon.

brittany thinks really deep thoughts @ 6:44 PM | 10 comments

This is a poem I had to do for my Poetry class. Let me know what you think. It's not due until Tuesday so I would love input on literal meaning and imagery.

Sweetness

It was a sweet summer
of nectar and honeysuckle
and a line of strawberries
straight and organic;
small red hidden in the lush green.

Mama planted them early;
trowel digging the dark backyard earth
I knew so well.
Her little patch of tomatoes,
babies like her own, plump and juicy.

I was a ‘sneaky snake,’
swinging high in the backyard,
making my own snack from mama’s work
whenever her back was turned.
Strawberries too sweet to resist.

I stare into our little kitchen window
clothed in sunflower curtains,
sprinkling salt
on shiny red cherry tomatoes,
Mama takes tiny bites.

brittany thinks really deep thoughts @ 6:26 PM | 2 comments

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