I Haven't Posted in Forever, So...

I know it doesn't make sense, but I'm a writer. I deal in things that make no sense.
I was just going upstairs this morning when I saw a flurry of snowflakes outside. So I went outside, in my stocking-feet and my thin clothes and soaked in the cold and the beauty and the poignancy of the light amidst desolation. The wind sang to me, and I lay back in the cold and stared up at the strangely blue sky, with masses of beautiful gray cloud and brilliant sun.
Snowflakes, I fancied, are souls. Each soul whispers down breaths of hope to earth. Oh, it's so beautiful... And it is humiliating and it is juvenile and it is hopeless and it is painful. And it is the exact essence of living. I am not weak for it.

I'm listening to songs from eighth grade- songs I listened to two years ago- because I was such a poetic soul then. I was such a stark nonconformist then. Before I even knew there was such a thing as the Ivy League Crowd and the Grade Slaves and the Everything That Makes Things Not Work.

If only I could capture every one of those uncapturable moments... Like the time, the summer after seventh grade, that I stared out the window in steamy August and heard indescribable music... Or, to speak of summers and music, the summer after eighth grade when I listened to a rare musical instrument play the symphony of life in an empty room... Or that same summer, when I saw a field of violets growing on the floor of a burnt forest, and fields stretching for miles and bright blue water and those beautiful notes...

But it was a lovely dream; that was all it was, and I can retain lessons from it for poetry, but I can't stay in it. Otherwise I would simply drown...

So, here is something that is not a poem but a personal- well, not narrative... not essay...
Here it is. It was for class. It was supposed to be called "Color Your World" because my teacher, I believe, disapproved of imagination.

Ariel

Color Your World

            The morning is orange, burnt sienna peeking through the black and green branches that are still half-asleep. When the sun rises beyond the trees, tentatively into the sky, glowing yellow blazes of light spill dazzlingly into the sky that is still tired light blue. By the time I leave the house, the clouds are also painted in the sky. I see clouds, grey beards leading into indigo drum-rolls, silhouetted onto violet, floating in the sea of cerulean.

            Summer is blue, late summer, at least. Blue, an intensely deep blue, looking as though teardrops had fallen into blue paint. That is the color of the sky in summer. Winter is white, that brilliantly pure white of the air and the sharp cold; or the childlike white of snowflakes swirling down from the sky, which is also white. But the sky is the white of age and of wisdom, and the snowflakes are like whispers and breaths of hope spoken to earth.

            The end of autumn is gold. The gold of the leaves that lasted, spiraling down to earth at last. There is the gold of the sun as it sets on the horizon. The gold of the crackling fire inside one’s soul… Spring is beautiful, lighthearted pink. Pink like the magnolia petals that fall like a blanket on the newborn grass in April. Pink like the flowers I picked last May in the hidden part of the field; pink like a futile, fumbling hope, never to be fulfilled.

            Red and black belong to me. Though I may admire the blue and the brown and the green, I will never be part of them. I am the fiery red, juxtaposed with austere black. I am the red passion struggling to break out into the world from inside the serene black pond.  I have fire in me, rupturing in my words (which should be red). But I possess also the quiet of black water. Just as no one watches the sunrise, when no one is watching, I try to shine through the spidery black branches into the periwinkle sky.

From your wistful imaginative poet,

Ariel

New Poems

Well, it's evident now that I'm not going to write, which I'm pissed about, but all right. Might as well post on here.
Oh, and in case you're wondering: STILL standing by what I said in the last post. Ha ha! You thought I was a weak, brittle teenage girl? Well think again!
I wrote two poems a few days ago and I thought I'd post them on here. One's happy and cheerful and one is sad and awful. The first is about my Algebra 2 classroom (IDK why. Mostly because I am so bored in Algebra 2 I just resort to writing poetry about the squeaky furniture) and the second is about my home life, which is getting shittier by the day. Too bad. My school life is excellent, now that I can go through AP English without worrying about [see last post] and only thinking about how EFFING BRILLIANT I AM. Only, from what I heard this morning from this conversation, it's not so true... (that I'm brilliant)

Annoying Kid Who Sits Behind Me in Study Hall: (transitioning from chat about the new-kid-who-technically-used-to-go-to-our-middle-school-but-just-got-back, who was in a fight with my favorite teacher) So is she a good teacher? I mean, does she like you?
Me: Well, she doesn't like me, but she tolerates me. Yeah. She's a brilliant teacher though.
AKWSBMISH: Really? She likes you? I mean, you're a sophomore...
Me: What does that have to do with it?
AKWSBMISH: Well, I heard from some juniors that she doesn't like the sophomores.
Me: Why?
AKWSBMISH: She thinks that you don't belong in the class. 'Cause it's AP, and it's supposed to be a junior class. The juniors were saying that you guys are just these annoying sophomores who think you're so smart, who act like you're smarter than you are.
Me: Well, I don't know... I mean, ha, I definitely act smarter than I am...
AKWSBMISH and Girl Who Sits Next to Me: Murmurs of annoyed assent
Me: ...but all in all, she seems to tolerate me, like I said... she puts up with me more than the other sophomores, I guess... Oh, attendance is over? Sorry, got to go to Art Club...

So yeahhhh. Now, granted, I'm not going to take it as an insult that *gasp* my brilliant English teacher doesn't like me, but obviously my precious ego has taken a blow. Anyway, you can't trust anything this kid says. There's a reason I started his name with "Annoying Kid".

UPDATE FROM THE FUTURE: oh please, my English teacher thought I was the best one in the class. Not that her judgment... anyway.

ANYYYYWWWWAAAY. So you wanted some poetry, I'll give you some poetry. Here's the happy one:

Snow Light

Those darn chairs

are chirping like birds

But it’s not springtime

It’s rainy, rainy

And sometimes snowy

It’s always gray

And clouds

Bare branches

But the classroom with

the squeaky old desks

Is sunny, sunny 

With a bright white light

A dim sun-light

It’s warm in winter.

Nice, eh? I'm into this sort of poem lately... cute and whimsical.

Of course, then you get poems like these...

No Title Yet

If there’s one thing I’ve learned

it’s that the people who you care about the most

will do everything in their power

to hurt you

And I wouldn’t care

But I keep trying to help you up

And you just keep spitting in my face

It hurts you know

To have my caring turned sour

And to see you take my kind face in the mirror

And paint it black

You, you keep cutting into my soul

I get rid of one wound and you give me another

So I’ll never be whole

There’s nowhere here that feels like home

Not when you and you and everyone push me down

If only I was back in Rome

You’d never have to see me frown

I know, the last rhyme is a bit of a push. I tried to come up with something else, but 'you'd never have to see me look like a creepy sad clown' sounds about ten thousand times worse, so...

Anyway... Notice how I haven't been doing the little poetry description things at the bottom? Sorry. Hey, these poems are short as hell, even lazy people can read them.

Yeah. So tomorrow, if I'm not too sick and if it doesn't snow (remember the time I did a lot of mitzvot, God? Brownie points? With snow?) I have to teach this shit called Mini Minyan. Stupid little kids at my temple shrieking and making my life hell. And I have to teach them about the Ten Commandments and blessings and how not to set the place on fire and I am just not up to it. I'm sick. 

Then I have to go to some chocolate something. And oh yeah, putting "I have to" next to "chocolate" is rare for me, thank you.

Then on Sunday I have to go to some house to eat pizza. Ditto for the pizza.

Luckily my only homework is an AP English essay. Oh wait- did I say "only"? Did I imply it's an easy task? *heartless laugh* No, my dearies. It is not an easy task. The prompt is about the pursuit of happiness v. the entitlement to happiness (and I live in fear that my teacher will find this blog and murder me for wording the prompt wrong) and unless I write something comparable to a new, messianic, earth-shattering philosophy that challenges all of human history, I have no chance of a decent grade. Did I mention I got an 85 on the midterm? Yes. My worst grade. In my best subject. 

So yes, I have a crazy amount of work cut out for me, and I stayed up until midnight surfing Figment.

Speaking of which, I am going to go back on Figment for a bit (it's like a drug) and then sleep.

See you later.

From your awesome yet sleepy poet,

magic*esi

How's This for Defiance?

UPDATE FROM THE FUTURE:
Hello. This is Ariel, writing this on February 25, 2013. I'm here to tell you that I have deleted a lot of stuff from other posts that was very personal. Much of it was about "BES," a guy towards whom I used to feel an attraction. A lot of it was gooey, romantic stuff. I deleted it because it's embarrassing and no longer true. However, I decided to keep this post in its (almost) entirety, because this post very much represents my current feelings about him.
Without further ado:


Hey, nonexistent readers! You remember Blue-Eyed Poetry Subject? Remember him and his unattainability? His despicability? Oh, you don't remember that last one? (probably because it is apparently not a word) Well, remember it now.

He's despicable. I can't even remember why I loved him. I tried, believe me. I got this: physical attractiveness, maybe? uhhhhh, like, good grades? Something about the pretense of kindness? He's said something somewhat humorous once or twice?

You know, I really did love him. I can't fathom why, but I did. And I'm such a damn good catch. I mean, I'm not physically attractive, but wait twenty years and no one will be, so screw that. I'm the best damn person in my high school. I'm a fucking genius. I'm an artist. A poet. A writer. A thinker. Amazing, I am.

Meanwhile, he is someone who gets good grades through tricks and memorization, does not understand the concept of learning for the sake of knowledge, nor does he have the ability to think on a higher level than literal. He cares only for a good college and a good career and what will impress the people in charge of securing those for him. He cares not for the arts, for literature, for culture, for anything that we humans live for. He cannot process anything profound. He is shallow.

But I'm not just going to sit here and give you processed paragraphs. Here are some stanzas which sum up things that are not about his despicability (it ought to be added to the dictionary; I don't see why it isn't there already) and more about my utter brilliance.

And Now I Fly

You are nothing.

I am brilliant

I am radiant

I am beautiful

I am amazing.

You are nothing.

I loved you once

An irrational love to be sure

And I cannot understand it

For you are a ground-creature

You are nothing.

Here I once sat,

four years or more ago,

and watched the arrow-seeds

spiral in their dances off the trees

In the warm, vibrant, spring-blue sky

And I sat and soaked it in

I once sat here and fancied 

I could control the wind

Because it flew to the same song as my soul.

Here I once ran

Here I once walked

Here I once danced

And sang in the rain.

Here I rejoiced

Here were my family

Here were my friends

I walked through the forest,

crunching through the wet brown leaves, 

wet from raindrops,

only to see the first blooming yellow daffodils of spring.

Sure I was in another world.

I spun and spun in dizzy happiness

On the green green grass

In summer

Then I fell back 

And stared into the deep blue sky.

Sure I would one day fly.

And I thought of you here once,

too,

but never in moments of profundity

Only frivolity.

Moments of deep music

Were the winter sunrises of orange-yellow-burning-amber

Peeking-through-the-spindly-branches

And winter sunsets of violet-gray

Suffusing the whole sky with wonder

The summers spent gazing into the faraway-

but-close

green pines, scraping the sky

And dancing and running 

and writing my poetry

My soul never an inch from music.

There were moments of blackness, too

to be sure

But the mother tree whispered to me,

in the September soft yellow-leaf breeze

in the autumn gray-sky drizzle

in the end-of-winter snow-rain

in the April spring soul-scented rain

in the passionate summer storm

That it would be all right again.

Oh, how I did weep tears of joy

At the majesty of soft dandelions

Whispering and bending in their song

Where there had once been deadness

Falling again

To rest my head under the furthest tree

And watch the past creep by

In brilliant summer sunlight.

I was content here, once

Content to think that 

Home is not so far away

If I can only capture that summerblue sky

Which is not at all your accursed dull eyes

So now I sit on the wooden stairs

And stare at the place of my years of youth

And I hardly shiver in the stark winter cold

For there is yet grass

Do not think I forget, cruel masters,

The sole yellow young dandelion

Standing tall amongst the dead leaves in November.

I shall never forget.

The wind is flying now

And it tells me,

You shall achieve your dreams.

It’s time for me to join it in flying

It’s time for me to enter that deep blue sky

And leave you behind

Oh, you earthbound creature

I’ll fly, fly, fly

And you’ll watch.

I’ll dance with the wind, 

pirouette with the spiraling seeds into another world

And find my way to the steed of time

And ride along without fear.

I am brilliant

I am fearless.

Do I need you?

Stubborn, despicable groundling?

No.

I dance.

And now I fly.

Letters and numbers must take different paths, you see. Take yours and leave my light-filled sidewalk to me.

Quoting oneself. That is when one knows that one is a- geez, get out of my head, English teacher. Ha ha. 

Still my favorite teacher. Oh, and by the way? Blue-Eyed Despicability doesn't like her at all, apparently. Well, what a surprise, seeing that his idea of a good class is one that he can get through without using any thinking skills.


UPDATE FROM THE FUTURE: OK, maybe this is a bit pretentious, but it was good for me to get rid of that stupid "crush" thing in tenth grade.

Love is but a folly. And you'll find that out through time.

I did, anyway.

From your defiant poet who is finally free,

Ariel