Poem just for January 31st!

Guess who's done with midterms? That's right! Since I make up your personality (since you're imaginary) you care a very good deal about my midterm grades. WELL HERE YA GO, be proud of me:
French: 93
AP English: 85, which sounded awful until I learned the grades ranged from the 50s to 88, and the 88 was the smartest girl in our class. So, 85's not bad.
Open Studio: 100
US History: 100!!!!! A HUNDRED, PEOPLE! Ahahahahaha!!! That's what happens when you pay attention to the "boring" lectures! YOU GET A HUNDRED!
Algebra 2: 97! What! What now! Ha ha!
Drivers Ed: 86, which sounds crappy until you figure out that WHO CARES because I still passed and I can get my permit now! As soon as I turn 16 in August. Yeah...
Chemistry: NINENTY FREAKING EIGHT! I am the most brilliant genius that ever lived! HA HA HA!

Anyway, as you can tell I'm a little excited about how much of a genius I am. :) But since midterm days are half days, I've been at home since ten, and I've mostly been wasting time. I tried to do this thing called 'Figment Review Contest' but I'm starting on the last day and too much critique is killing me. I cannot for the life of me do it. So I wasted a ton of time on THAT, too.

So finally I decided to stand at the screen door and watch the stillness and silence of the last day of January. The gentle sun-rhythms in the soft blue sky, with only a momentary burst of music before lapsing back into quiet...
And then I wrote a poem. And here it is.

Still January Sky

The stillness

on this final january

sunset-day

the sun peeking at me

in finality

wind, cold air, scent

in this autumn winter day

with all the dead 

left- over leaves

snow gone away

in this still

cold

gray

final january day

I can feel it all so clear

blue sky like a child’s eyes

still and simple- like when i fell in love

the first time

green earth 

and

bare

bare

branches

and the stillnesssss.... 

Yeah, apparently I'm on a lowercase-letter thing now. And did you like the several extra 's'es? Yeah, awesome, huh?

There's too many syllables on the third-to-last stanza, I know. It originally had a 'with you' so it's better now, trust me. 

...But the January sky is so clear, so still. Don't you know what I'm talking about? When the snow clears and it's only dead leaves and dead grass and bare branches, how the whole world seems to be just bare, blue sky, almost touching the earth, and a sunset or a sunrise is the most beautiful thing in the world? 

There's always a sensation in each season I forget, a day in each season I neglect to remember is there when I look back, and today is the day for winter.

But I will never reach that sky, that perfect sky, never grasp it, and it is too beautiful a world for me to be in it sometimes. I was listening to a Muse song with the lyric You electrify my life... Well, it's true... In this place of no beauty, snowy winter days and days like these and you electrify my life, but the light and the electricity and the music and color are not to ever be mine.

No, I will take spirit, I will take life, and I will take art and writing and poetry, and I will leave that stirring symphony to play its way into white space instead of the path to which I could have taken it...

Goodbye.

From your annoying ranty poet,

magic*esi

LIVE

I desperately need to study for midterms. It's midnight and I'm still sick. I'm listening to Coldplay songs I first heard back home.
Today we went to New York City, and I wrote some poetry. I feel stuck again, as though wading in a black-and-white swamp, and it would be so easy to move so little and reenter the world of light and color... But I cannot.
So live, I say. Live deep, like Thoreau said, and suck out all the marrow of life. Live until you've filled up your soul to the brim with light and die with the sun escaping from your skin.
It's cold, the winter. It's all frozen and we cannot move because where I live it's not allowed to be different. I'd rather have the sharp pain of ice than the numbing soft cold of snow. If it were summer, I would melt into the background and the sun would burn my skin. Spring will only bring pollen and faded pink to the fields. Fall sings a desperate song of color, screaming that we will all die like the world does in winter, with all our regrets open on the ground.
So I will leave this place, and I will live, live until every drop of life is gone from the fruit of it.
In this train of thought, I give you two poems I wrote today, Change Lanes and People. The first one I thought of in the Holland Tunnel, and YES, I know it's dangerous and illegal to change lanes in a tunnel. It's an effing metaphor, people.

Change Lanes

Change lanes

Don’t you want to change lanes?

It would be so easy

To make the slightest turn of the wheel

And change lanes

Stay in lane, they say

Stay in lane

That’s all the road says

Stay in lane

Devil red lights

Piercing horn shrieks

They’re there to warn you

If you don’t change now,

you’ll never change

Doesn’t that scare you?

It scares me.

The next one came out of me while we were stuck in traffic at night and I was looking out at the window at a man standing at a door alone and watching the world.

People

People

Waiting in the door

Waiting for the light to change

Waiting for the bus to come

Waiting for him to come home

Waiting for death

Waiting for life

Waiting for eternity to end

Waiting for a taxi

Waiting for love

Waiting for a plane

Waiting for a friend

Waiting at the door

Well, I say

Open the door.

Because life’s waiting for you

Not the other way around.

So live.

From your needing-to-study-for-Algebra-2-now, quite-alive poet,

magic*esi

Magnet Poems

So it's like 9, and I'm sitting in the family room with my sister, who's currently playing some song on the violin (Don't Stop Believing, apparently). We just got back from this thing called the 'Poetry Cafe' at our library. The only people there were the two of us, plus one of my friends from school, plus two librarians. It was nice though. We ate biscotti and had candles and stuff, and my sister played Swan Lake on the old grand piano. I read Scribbles of Humanity, Farewells, and Inky Winter. It was really quite nice.

Anywho, the point is that they set out a bunch of those magnet things with words on them to write poetry with. I haven't seen those since third grade, so I was super excited. The three of us (plus one of the librarians) wrote a ton of poetry with them. It's great to use them because the captivity of limited words brings out new ideas. And, since you're nonexistent and I get to make up your personality, you're all excited to see how that affects my poetic style. Sooooo... here ya go!

Like Wild Rain Can Sleep
summer blossom
beneath spring mushroom
listen, people
evening cicada would almost whisper
winter morning dream
yellow dandelion- bloom
above black concrete
hard journey between
life and dead

Untitled Poems (new poem indicated by line break)


trust not
the caramel shell of but
I only need
the concrete air of why

wind song tear roof
blue eye smile
I want life
a dawn like you
leave him too, and face only man
live laugh howl
they say
walk very small
i say fly

prisoner at night
window breath wanders out
watch harvest moon
dazzling angel tree
blaze, life! like thunder
the sacred rhythm
and sound out your song
friend, remember autumn
before it all freezes
then shiver in cold now
and remember

live like it's a blue moon night
if you shiver
in the song
you will dazzle
in the dawn
if you freeze
in dancing bright
there'll be an angel
come in the night

One difference in style is that all my letters are lowercase. Back in the bad old days of middle school I used to make all my poetry lowercase, but now that I'm Mature And Grown Up my poetry's capitalized. Sometimes rather randomly, like e.e. cummings.
Oh, my sister's playing Coldplay's 'Clocks' now. I adore that song.
I had two midterms today. French and AP English. French was alright; 75 multiple choice, mostly easy. I spent all last night trying to beat the scores on Quizlet (this learning site with fun games that my French class uses). I beat everyone's score on all the games except one. Grrrr.
AP English, on the other hand, was a nightmare. Je suis malade ('I'm sick'- and still studying for French, apparently) so it was pretty bad anyway. Our teacher (aforementioned favorite teacher from the last post) was busy trying to scare the crap out of us with intimidating glares and whatnot, plus the test was really long. I mean, English, that's my best subject, but it was just SO MUCH. Short-answer on Hamlet, vocabulary definitions, a reading passage on water conservation with multiple choice and two open ended, two more reading passages with 28 multiple choice, and an essay outline. AAAAH! It took me all two hours save for ten minutes. Then I read Pride and Prejudice. I'm counting that for my thing in the last post, by the way.
Oh! Speaking of the thing in the last post! Yeah, OK, so I'm not really doing it so much to be defiant and stuff anymore, I'm doing it because I really am absolutely sick and tired of the crap in the YA section and I'm thinking it would be better to just go back in time to find better stuff. I'm calling it "45 Before '45 By June" now because it's catchy, and I'm trying to read 45 books before 1945, right?
Anyway, we're watching something now, so more some other time.
Bye!
From you know, a poet,
magic*esi

The Classics Challenge

Hello, nonexistent readers! I know you must have missed the posts for the last week, since I didn't post. You don't give a crap anyway, so you don't exist, so let me get to the point. Anecdote, angry rant, declaration. That's how it'll go here.

So in my AP English class I was in a group of three people trying to write an outline for an essay agreeing with the quote "For nonconformism the world whips you with its displeasure." We decided to use Anthem, by Ayn Rand, as an example. So the teacher (whom, let me just say, I respect and think of as a brilliant teacher) came over, and when we told her about it, said, "Well, you can't use young adult literature. But good job." or something like that; look, I have midterms to study for, I'm not going to remember every detail. Anyway, we changed the example to the Impressionists and she continued to go around the classroom and see what everyone was doing. Finally, she came to the front of the class and said, "Well, I was going to let you share your outlines, but it's obvious none of you know what you're doing." Fine, I thought. This is typical of her, she's always saying how awful we are. Mind you, not a complaint; as a writer I appreciate critique. She continued to say how we needed to pay attention, etc., and then it came down to the advice for how to improve our essay skills. She only complained about two things. One: "Don't use Martin Luther King or Rosa Parks as an example. It's cliched." OK; I agree. Two: "Don't use young adult literature as an example. That doesn't help. I know that these are the only books you read, that young adult books are the few books you've retained for the three or four books you've read in the last few years. You're not readers. You have to read." These words have been burning in my mind since second period, so I'm fairly sure the quote was represented as accurately as possible.

Can I just say that I am losing respect for my favorite teacher rapidly? Why do you just assume, Ms. -, that nobody in your class reads? And that the only thing we read is trashy YA books? Do you not even see me lugging around thick, serious books every day? Did you not hear Pretentious Kid in the second row rattling on about the classic literature he reads? I READ SHAKESPEARE PLAYS. IN. MY. FREE. TIME!!! I like Agatha Christie, Virginia Woolf, and Jane Austen! Go ahead, assume my favorite book is Twilight! Because that's your idea of the level of intelligence of your students! Well, I'm sorry, Ms. -, but if you don't respect your students, maybe they won't respect you.

So in third period (I take art; oh, you probably think that's a 'lowly' subject now, I assume), I was fuming, thinking about this student who, 13 years ago or something, actually cursed out this particular teacher and marched out of her class. I actually considered that for a second, I was so furious. I was just so sick of her assuming that none of us could possibly achieve her high and mighty level of English language royalty.
But no. I won't be so crude as that. So here's my way of cursing you out, Ms. -. I'm going to take your condescending suggestion, and I'm going to read more classics than I do now. Admittedly, I do not read classics every second of the day. But now, I vow that I won't read anything written earlier than 1948 (I'm planning to read something by George Orwell, otherwise it'd be 1900). No crappy YA books for me. Yes, I am shunning the 'young adult literature' that is apparently the only thing my tiny brain is capable of processing. I know the age of a book does not determine its quality, but surely that's what the precious AP committee thanks. So I'm going to add to my list of classics. And then, here, I will provide a review of the book (full of intellectual commentary, not my stupid emotional opinion). I'll challenge myself to... hmm, 30 classics by the end of the year. Not really enough of a challenge... 45! There. 45 books by the end of June.
I'll determine a list later, because the bell's about to ring.
Great. I'll post an actual poem some other time.
-magic*esi

I'm Content

I was thinking about First World Problems yesterday. I read this random Internet graphic saying something along the lines of 'if you have food to eat, you're luckier than 75% of the people on earth' and a ton of stuff like that. And I was like, "OK, then how come us First-Worlders have such a high rate of depression? I mean, yeah, I get a First-World depressed kid if they come from an abusive home or something, but what about someone like me? I live in a stable, middle-class family, I go to one of the best schools in America [not kidding, our school's like 970th place. And the principal never shuts up about it], I'm effing brilliant, and here I am, on one of my two computers, crying over God-knows-what. Why?"

And I'd normally come up with some BS reason like, oh, it is difficult to compare oneself with starving children when they are so far away, or the contentment of a soul does not depend on physical stability but emotional as well, etc etc. But you know what, I just can't.

... Do you know how long a flight is to Italy? 12 hours. Do you know how much it costs? Like $600 on the cheaper flights. I have more than six hundred dollars in the bank. Technically, Italy's as close as anything. Granted, I can't actually go there, because I'm fifteen and I need my parents to approve it which will never ever happen, but it's not like I'll never go there again.

Right now, I'm lying in bed, in my dim room, as the sun sets in the hazy blue sky outside. A slight glow of blue light is drifting in through my window. I decided to listen to Simon and Garfunkel's 'The Sound of Silence', which only a day ago I could barely bear to listen to because I would burst into tears- I heard it on a bus ride during sunrise in Assisi, and the mere sound of it brings me back to Italy ever so sharply.
So I started playing it, then clicked into Google, where my background is a picture of Assisi. And I stared at it contentedly.
Because you know what? I was lucky to go to Italy at all. And you know what? Three years is not a long time to wait. And you know what else? My life is not so bad here. And you know something else? I'm actually pretty happy here. I have a family that supports my dreams, which is more than my classmates can say; I get to take classes I love in school, which is also more than my classmates can say; I know precisely what I want to do with my life (again); and I may not have Sisterhood-of-the-Traveling-Pants best friends but who does? I have people who are willing to be seen with me in public, and trust me, that is enough for someone like me.
And when I finally board the plane to go back home, I might actually say goodbye to this little small town. Because yeah, it's been a part of my life. Just like Italy has.
So I'm content with my life. Which is more than a lot of people can say.

And I do have a poem for you, my dearie-ducks (I adore British nicknames- much better than 'nonexistent readers'): Something from my procrastination story, The Wishmaker. (For the prologue, check out the little tab thingy at the top of the page).
Here ya go, and then I MUST MUST MUST study for chemistry and also eat something, I'm starving:

Wishmaker Poem

For years I wondered

         For eras I hoped

         Now I have an inkling of light

         After I already shut the door

         To provide only my candle’s flame,

         Not the sun,

         To me.

         The wish died on pages and pages and words

         Leaving only an itching, a longing

         To see her life’s worth

         To relieve that gnawing grief.

         Green, green

         Like worlds of grass under my feet

         Whistling in the dancing wind

         I shall see

         Tomorrow

         I shall see

         Tomorrow.

Anywho. Yeah. Sheesh, I've been eating nothing lately. Normally I, like, stuff myself with food on the weekends, but this weekend I've been like, "la la la, breakfast of a cookie, write all day, dinner of a fruit." Which is weird, because I eat WAY too much usually.
This got brought up because I'm starving. Yeah, the Writing Diet... write all day and forget to eat.
Anywho, the cutesy dim blue haze is turning into super darkness, and I STILL have to study for my chem test tomorrow, so goodbye.
From your content poet,
magic*esi

UPDATES FROM THE FUTURE: I do think Italy is a beautiful country, but I don't think it's my "home" anymore or anything. Also, The Wishmaker is no longer a "procrastination story."

Long Weekend! What Better Excuse for PROCRASTINATION?

NOTE: If you want to read poetry, scroll down a lot. Most of this stuff is boring crap about my life, and I don't mean teary-eyed romantic tales, I mean seriously boring crap like what I ate and my feelings on Algebra 2.
So, tomorrow's MLK Day. Thank you, Martin Luther King. You will forever be remembered in young schoolchildren's hearts as the guy who let us have a three-day weekend. (not, you know, all that stuff about bringing equality to the world or whatever).
Typically, nerd that I am, I'm done with all my homework already. It was just stuff about imaginary numbers, anyway. (When I first heard about those things I was so excited, I thought "finally, math will be interesting; a journey into imagination" but math never fails to exceed my expectations for boredom.)

Epic tale of the weekend (epic in its original meaning, not, y'know "dude, epic bro" or whatever it is today): I woke up super late yesterday, ate cookies, procrastinated a LOT, bid my sister goodbye when she went to her thingy (I don't know what it's called. A sleepover thingy run by this Jewish organization), decided to read Pride and Prejudice because why not, slept a lot, threw up and then felt better five seconds later, did a bunch of stuff about boring old imaginary numbers, worked at zee library, ate dried cherries which I love, went on Figment, came here.

Yeah, I know you don't care about my day, nonexistent readers, but also you are imaginary just like those boring numbers. So who cares what you think? YOU SUCK ha ha ha, I really have lots of better things to do like editing, but here I am on my blog.

Sooo... you expect to read some poetry, eh? Let me pull out my poetry archive that I spent so much time making! God, it is amazing what you can get done when you're trying to weasel your way out of editing. That poetry archive will be so useful.
Hey, I know! I'll post 'Rain' and 'Sky'. Two dear little poems that I wrote last year about, guess, just guess. Rain and the sky. Crazy, I know.

Anyway, enjoy, i(sq root) readers. (If you don't get that, it's probably because I couldn't find a square root symbol. Or you don't know about math. Either way.)

Rain

And it rained.

Against the grey sky

And the impossibly scorched landscape

Longing, for ever too long

To be quenched of its thirst

A drizzle at first

Though it could not be seen

The earth reached for the sky

Which had opened again at last

For the long-awaited day

Had finally arrived.

Oh, never had rain been this way

And the ground broke through with flower

And perhaps the flower 

Was not of the same variety as the

Rose, or the daisy

But rain makes the most beautiful flower

From the stem

For the beauty

Is in the rain

The rain, which never knew

Of the flower arising from the earth

Until that day

When it ran from the sky once more.

Sky

The sky in spring

Is light, fluffy blue

Freeing periwinkle

The sky in summer

Is first a stifling white

Then the most beautiful

Impossible

Indigo-

Cerulean

Blue like the blue sky a child always sees

The blue that tells the truth.

The sky in autumn

Is azure

Besides, who looks past the leaves?

But past them

Is sharpness

Brightness

Beauty

Strength.

When the leaves fall.

A single leaf detaches from a bare, black branch

And floats, serenely, to earth

The sky is ice-blue then

Streaked with white cloud

There is peace in the wind

And when the snow comes,

There is gentle, quiet, beautiful blue.

Washing over me, flying through me

The light illuminates me

The cold awakens me.

Maybe one day

If the skies all come together

I’ll see your eyes

When I see the sky.

See? Told you about the eyes.

Anywho... I'm going to rant a LOT more probably, so feel free to just scroll to the bottom. Or not. The poems are over now.

....But I hate, like, Valentine's Day romance. If I was ever in a relationship with somebody I would tell them that if they get me flowers on Valentine's Day I will murder them, not because I don't like flowers but because WHAT YOU THINK YOU CAN GET OUT OF GIVING ME CHOCOLATE? 

But seriously, my idea of the most romantic romance in fiction is, and you knew it was going to be from this series, is Snape and Lily. And yeah, I KNOW they don't end up together. I think a really romantic love story is not one where the two people in love end up together and, oh I don't know, ride off into the sunset (doesn't it get uncomfortable, riding horseback that long?) but where they don't end up together, but one of them still stays devoted to the other. That's why I love that song by The Cure so much, "Love Song", you know? Love's supposed to be everlasting. It doesn't matter if the person you're in love with never notices you, or never ends up with you. Love isn't about being in a relationship, or sexual fulfillment, or marriage and a family, or intimacy- it's about loving a person, and being OK as long as they're alive, and happy, and safe. And definitely getting revenge on their murderer if they die, though. And being all nasty to their son if he's in your Potions class. And yeah, you knew it was going to come back to Snape. UPDATE FROM THE FUTURE: OK, look, I'm still a major Snilly shipper and omg the silver doe and "always" and so much crying and feels. But I think that's a really unhealthy idea of a relationship. So yeah, don't take love advice from my past self, or from Snape. (This goes for the distuuurbing paragraph right underneath this one as well.)

And yeah, sorry, I know most of that paragraph was grammatically incorrect and had a lot of person shifts. 

But see, this is what most people don't get- it doesn't mean you're unstable and crazy if you remain in love with someone even though they don't love you back. Because you don't want them to love you back! I mean, not that you would complain if they did, but you are OK with them being with someone else. And- and this is the most important point I stress- nobody's life should revolve around love. It doesn't make you weak to love someone, so long as that isn't the only point in your life. That's when you become that sad, creepy stalker stereotype that I referred to at the beginning of this paragraph. 

So, hey, look at that, this post started off as an excuse to not edit and turned into... 

Look, editing is hard, OK?

From your editing-hating poet, (just so you know editing should be banned. just for me, though; other authors should edit)

magic*esi

I Can't Express Myself in Poetry

UPDATE FROM THE FUTURE: This is a maaaaaajor angstbucket  post. I think the metaphors and stuff are really pretty so I'm keeping it up, but don't worry for my mental health. I'm better now.

Sorry for posting twice in a day. Go to my earlier post 'Snowstorm' if you want to actually read something.

God. I want to write a poem about Europe. I know, I have way too many. But none of them really express how I feel. None of them really express the agony, the day to day pain of missing Roma and Firenze and Assisi and Paris and Athens and Isthmia. Mostly Roma, though. Oh, Roma. I want to go back so badly. I despise my small town. I am locked in the shittiest small town in all of existence, and my true home is an ocean away. Oh, Roma!

And I long to express it somehow, in fiction or poetry or art, but I can't do it. Nothing comes close to describing it. So I am forced to simply shudder in tears as the memories get farther away and fuzzier and the sunlight dissipates away from my skin and the perfect blue Italian sky fades from my eyes and the feel of the air is gone into nothingness.

I'm screaming in tears and in agony and in longing, and no one does a thing, because here in Craptown, America, you aren't allowed to be different. I've got so much light, so much life hidden inside of me, and they hammer it back, force it back, lock it away because it's unattractive. Nope, sorry, your light puts us in shadow. Your colors make us look bad. Nope, nope, no happiness here. On the assembly line with you. Away from the art, away from the literature, no light for you, no happiness, come back little lost lamb, come back to the herd and follow us to our suburban paths of Ivy League colleges and careers in medicine and a family with an acceptable husband and 2.5 kids and one dog and TV dinners.

It's so scary, you don't even know, how they trick you until you're almost sure that's how it will be, until you're so scared that you don't have any choices that you only take solace in your tears. I'm so scared that Roma was only a wonderful dream, that I'll never go back, that I'll be locked in this prison forever. America's a prison. I don't like it here. God, please take me back. The sky isn't blue here. The sun doesn't shine here. Nobody lives here. And I want to live.

I take solace in you, though. I wish I could stare into your eyes, the only place where I can still see that sky. There isn't any sunlight, but you are illuminated by sunlight. How is that possible? I can't hear the music, but you're emanating music. How is that possible?
You, too, must be yanked away from me in a rush of doors and pages and words. You'll never be mine.

I'm sorry for what I must have done. I want to go home.
Shhh, Ariel. Just keep telling yourself, just keep reminding yourself that it's only a matter of waiting. Hold down your head and don't let out your soul, keep it safe from the storm, until these three years are over and you can go home. Shhh... everything will be OK.

Roma is real. You'll be home one day. One day soon. And you'll never have to return. All this will be left behind for good.
It's OK.
Shhh.

From your crying broken poet,
magic*esi

Snowstorm- Not Really a Poem

Yeah, I'm not actually expecting you to read this, but feel free if you're for some reason interested. It's something I wrote while watching the flurries of snow yesterday. It's not really a poem; it's just a bunch of long run-on sentences in which I got out all my ideas about snow. So, if you want to read it, go ahead; but don't do it if you're a grammar freak because there are words that don't exist in there.

Snowstorm

There’s going to be a snowstorm tonight, I know there is, just because of the uncapturable calm inside during winter, away from the biting cold wind, and the flashes of golden sunlight against the green grass and the colored glass and the brown papery leaves flying in the wind, the snowflakes whispering, singing, the spring blue sky and the sunset violet-gray clouds; all this I can see from my clear doors against the main street and the gnarled naked tree across from the library.

And it goes from the on-and-off flurries of the morning, with white snowflakes and cold awakening-air flying in from the window with the burst of brilliant light behind me, and the beautiful deep evergreens remind me of the golden sunrise in the courtyard in fall, when there aren’t flurries of fairy dust to shake our laughter out of us, but only sunlight to warm our worlds.

It goes from this to dark blue afternoons in the dungeon and colors and music, outside so dark, inside so warm, howling ghostly winds rattling our world, and to afternoons in perfect brilliant cold and light, this is the very essence of winter, it is why I feel, why I love, it is the snow and it is the winter.

And I step inside to see the frost covered air through the window of books and pages and fresh new shelf-carpets.

White, white, white, white sky white wind white air white snow, and I see it all from my watching-place in the dim storycraft room, oh ever so dim against the symphony of violently, rapidly, thunderstormly flying, sea stormly flying snowflakes, whirring past me, riding the waves of violent wind that takes with it clear, new-made sunlight, illuminating everything so my heart and my mind and my soul are exposed in the clear glass window, next to their twins in brilliant colors.

And all too soon it dies, it sleeps, it drowsily drifts in wintry spirals down to the cold, shaken earth, as the world restores itself to normalcy and wellness.

And soon there is no snow at all, as though it had never been there.

But I know still there will be a snowstorm tonight, if only in my dreams and my heart and my soul.

So yeah, did you like it?  Not bad, eh? I've never really done this before, tried to capture the entire essence of a type of weather in writing. It's not as difficult as I'd expected.

P.S. There wasn't a snowstorm, actually. The only snow we have seen here in Northeastern America (that's as specific as I'll get, stalkers) is the blizzard in October that knocked out our power, and the aforementioned nonsticking flurry. 

Anywho. I stayed up until 2 last night cataloguing all the poetry in my poetry collection. The catalogue is now in chronological order of when I wrote the poems, and each entry looks something like this (example):

Winter

A poem about how I prefer winter to summer.

“Oh, how I dream of star-dropped snowflakes

Oh, how I wish for a world with silken, leaden clouds

Grey and as close above as the hair on my head

Oh, how I wish that the only green were the pine

The evergreen, the everlasting tree of life...”

June 2011

The name in bold, a short one-sentence description, an excerpt, and the approximate month/year that I wrote it. The color code is also useful; this one's red, which means 'nature poems'. 

Anyway... That will definitely making choosing poems for this blog easier. I can also post the little catalogue entry at the top of the blog post so that the typical lazy Internet person can just skim it to see if the poem's worth their time. For example, 'Winter' will be found in my December entry, 'Winter Poems'.

Oh my God, that is just brilliant, actually. I'm going to go waste my time (I'm not even out of my pajamas yet) and put those at the top of every entry.

Goodbye, nonexistent readers!

-magic*esi

Strange Means Bad

I'm in French class, and I have like five seconds before class actually starts, so no boring commentary today. I just wrote a manifesto poem called 'Strange Means Bad', a rant against bullying. It's obviously a satire (not a funny one, just a making-a-point one) so don't think that I literally mean what I say with this. It's about a close-minded point of view and how it hurts people.
Here ya go:

Strange Means Bad

Strange means bad

Don’t forget

The shooters were strange

So strange means bad

The suicides were strange

So strange means bad

The cutters were strange

So strange means bad

The addicts were strange

So strange means bad

If you see someone strange

Don’t forget

Shun them and hurt them

Because strange means bad

Don’t you be strange

Be like everyone else 

And don’t you forget

That strange means bad

And when they come get you

The strange ones, they will

When they come kill you

Before turning on themselves

Just know there’s a reason

A very good reason

They did it all

Because strange means bad.

Bye!

magic*esi

Strange Means Bad

A manifesto poem against bullying and the media representation of school shootings.

“And when they come get you

The strange ones, they will

When they come kill you

Before turning on themselves

Just know there’s a reason

A very good reason

They did it all

Because strange means bad.”

January 2012

No Poems Today

Because I am not done with my homework even in the slightest, and I need an excuse to procrastinate. "I haven't posted in two whole days!" I notice, and gravitate to this blog.
I've been working on Procrastination Story instead of editing or writing. It even has a title now: The Wishmaker. Oh! How I miss my dear Keoluvent trilogy! I wish I knew what would happen next! I feel so sinful, cheating on you with this dreamy little novel idea.
I am, no joke, less than 30,000 words away from the end of THE WHOLE SERIES, and I am just at a complete stop. I haven't written a word since NaNo (November, for those of you who what-the-hell-are-you-doing-here-if-you-haven't-heard-of-NaNo?).
Anywho, so I think I'm going to post the prologue for The Wishmaker on here. Maybe the prospect of wonderful poetry, my fantastic life stories and recommendations for books and French songs, a poetry contest, AND a chapter of a captivating Procrastination Story (too captivating- I apologize, The Gold Door, ever so sincerely! I long for the day of my return!) will get some real readers... I mean, I've been posting on Figment, but I do believe my user name scares people to death and makes them run like the wind. 
So, if you're at all interested in Procrastination Story (why would you be, though?) go read it, and then yell at me to edit The Eraser and return to my dear Investigators, waiting so patiently in my novel.
I'll write some poetry soon.
-magic*esi

Two of My Favorite Poems of Mine

Ugh, I have to work at the library in a little over two hours, and I still have a chem chapter to read and do work for, then a trial write-up for US History. And I feel icky. I'm not even out of my pajamas.
Thought I'd post on here. BTW, I think my post yesterday was excellent. Don't read it if you think you personally know me, though. DON'T.
Yeah... So it's January 8th, 2012. And here are two lovely little poems.
The first one, Enigmas, was written in October or something. I posted it on Write It and a few people told me it was really good, so...

Enigmas

Someone help me make sense of it all

Why school is my home

But Italy is my home

And home is not home at all

Someone explain to me why I feel what I do

Why despite all my sense

I still think I love you

I’m sorry, but I felt 

Like I was falling apart at the seams

And now every time I walk in there

It’s like someone’s watching, watching,

Watching me

How come I write and I write and I write and I write

And I read something ten thousand times more powerful

A million times more profound

How come I study and I study and I learn and I learn

And all of my hard work amounts to no one giving a damn

How come I don’t care if anyone thinks I’m pretty

Or worth it

Or anything at all

And I care so deeply about what you, of all people, think.

Why does it feel like our souls are patterned the same way?

When I know perfectly well there’s no such thing as soul-mates.

Why do I dream of a future with you and only you?

When I know perfectly well I want to write and live alone and be

Independent.

Why is it I even bother to hope anymore

When I know my teachers think I’m just another overachiever

And the other writers think I’m a snob or an amateur

(depending on their own level of skill)

And my friends don’t want to be my friends

They’re just too charitable for their own good

And my family is sick and tired of my 

Stupid art-history rants 

And my 

Utterly perfect good grades

And you-

You couldn’t care less!

I’m not the girl you want; you want Cho Chang

Or Juliet Capulet or Bella Swan

Don’t you?

You want some pretty girl who’ll fall at your feet and put up with it all

And who’s smart but not even close to how smart you are

I’m just the obnoxious girl in your English class

And that’s all I’ll ever be

No, not a great writer

No, not a great scholar

No, not a great art historian

No, nothing.

Just an annoying English-loving

Art history fact-spewing

Harry Potter dork writer who’ll amount to nothing.

But I swear I love you

Even though I don’t even believe in love!

Even though I don’t even know what that means!

I thought it was love, but maybe I’m wrong-

It’s something more than that.

My world is words, but I wonder if ‘love’

Really fits here.

The thesaurus doesn’t help (were you paying attention to that class?

Probably not.)

It’s indescribable.

I’m ranting for no reason.

You are warmth, light, music

And I keep trying to block you out because I can only catch a single note...

Of what must be the world’s greatest symphony.

And if I can’t hear it all, what’s the point of standing at the

Oh-so-exclusive door?

I’m working towards some sort of purpose in my life

There’s a light at the end of this hellish high-school tunnel

And I’m wondering,

Can I break down the doors as I bolt out at graduation

Drive to the airport

Fly to Italy

And never, ever, ever come back?

Or would missing you be too unbearable?

The next one, 'Hope', is something I wrote during a poetry spree a few months ago late at night. This was probably the best outcome of that. The rest of the poems I wrote then aren't too fantastic.

Hope

Hope is the thing with feathers

That got shot in its first attempt to fly

Shot down from the blue sky

Blood and dusty bits of feathers littering

The blackened ground.

Hope perches in the soul

Until the soul freezes over

From lack of caring for it

And hope shivers and shudders

And shrivels away.

Hope sings a tune without words

That sounds so hopeful, youthful, beautiful

But is laughed at as though it is

A scratchy, immature attempt to sound

As beautiful as it truly is.

Hope never stops at all

Except for when it is so beaten and bloodied and bruised

That it cannot walk, cannot perch, cannot fly

Cannot sing its song

That’s when hope dies.

Violent, eh? Like I say, artistically violent. :)

So I'm listening to that song by The Cure again. For more, read yesterday's post, like I said. Damn... I am such a good writer. Ha ha. 

Well if I am, maybe I ought to EDIT. Or at the very least write NOTES for CHEMISTRY or a TRIAL WRITE-UP for US HISTORY instead of my poetry blog.

Gosh... I'm like twenty minutes away from the three-year mark of just-read-yesterday's-post-if-you-want-to-know, and I'm in my pajamas. Grrrrr.

Let me go change, and then I'll probably listen to French music while doing my homework.

Hope you enjoyed the poems.

-magic*esi

Enigmas

A poem about confusion and anger with the world.

“You are warmth, light, music

And I keep trying to block you out because I can only catch a single note...

Of what must be the world’s greatest symphony.

And if I can’t hear it all, what’s the point of standing at the

Oh-so-exclusive door?”

October 2011

Hope

A cynical twist on Emily Dickinson’s poem of the same name.

“Hope never stops at all

Except for when it is so beaten and bloodied and bruised

That it cannot walk, cannot perch, cannot fly

Cannot sing its song

That’s when hope dies.”

November 2011

A Love Poem

You may not know it, dear nonexistent readers. No one does, indeed, except for me. But tomorrow marks something for me, something that happened three years ago on January 8th. You don't care, I know, but let it be said that there is providence in the fall of a sparrow, and that perhaps someone somewhere does care.

Yesterday the sun rose and set in brilliant dragonlike enchanted red, but today it is the haunting moon that leaves its imprint on my soul. It whispers to me, "No hope, dear... not in this world... not for you."

I'm listening to The Cure's 'Love Song'. The lyrics, However far away, I will always love you/ Whatever words I say, I will always love you made me think of Hamlet's "Doubt truth to be a liar/ But never doubt I love".


UPDATE FROM THE FUTURE: Yeah, guess what? I will not "always love you." Sucks, but there it is. Maybe if "you" didn't suck so much, things would've been different.

From your dear lost poet,

magic*esi

To You

A poem about everlasting love.

“Because look-

my fallen bird of a soul

In its black despair

Has taken flight

On just the music of your eyes.”

January 2012