Ami Lovelace's Blog, page 2
July 26, 2012
New Poem: Old Quilting Circle
her hands couldn't keep hold of the needle
slowly working its way down the swatches
a stitch for every ten ticks of the grandfather clock
threading together the patchwork quilt of her own
life
in her hands, as they trembled
shaking instructors to the careless
fingers, pricked and bleeding
around the loops of the small fibers
holding everything together
and just a quick jerk
a small distraction
the turn of her eye, the flinch of a nerve
threatening to unravel
the simple life
she had created
cradled in the callouses
of hangnails and dry cuticles
and worn against the ridges
of wrinkles
til the creak of the her wooden chair companion
screeched a protest to fall silent
as the material tugged
slipped
from her hands
to rest quiet
at her uncurled feet.
Content Copyright 2011. Ami Lovelace. All Rights Reserved.
July 11, 2012
New Poem: The Time Between
those mini moments,
the half milliseconds between
dreamscape and white-wash bedroom walls
when the sounds of sleep still sing
a gentle lullaby over the capricious
whistle of the alarm
those mini moments
the half milliseconds between
white-wash bedroom walls and dreamscape
when the blur of focus weighs heavy against
the eyes and threatens to quiet
the tongue
those mini moments
the half milliseconds that tick
between the sheets
pacing with tired muscles and slowing pulse
those moments, greeted in turn
by creeping cold and obtrusive sunbeams
when the breath catches in the throat
and rolls from the mouth, wisping
away on incoherent syllables
those are the moments
when time stretches
unfathomable into the chasm of itself
and respite and hope
blend in with the darkness
imprisoned and bound in the chains
of insecurity
their keys lost
in the void of your absence
2012. Ami Lovelace. All Rights Reserved.
If you like this poem, be sure to follow my new poetry/writing blog project: 160 Days Without You at http://160dayswithoutyou.tumblr.com/
Content Copyright 2011. Ami Lovelace. All Rights Reserved.
June 19, 2012
Excerpt 1 from "Stirling"
I grew up in the mountains of Pennsylvania. We lived in the more populated area, a sleepy town that nuzzled into the cleavage of two mountains, and cuddled up on three sides to a moody river, about as random in its behavior as a hormonal teenager. All in all, we were twenty-three hundred people at our most—the year I graduated high school—all buzzing about our lives, caught in the in-between. We weren’t quite Country or at least from the inside we never thought so, after all, the “Sticks”(also endearingly called “the Boonies”) were a fifteen minute drive up the hill where our cousins lived, and those weird new kids at school. But we sure as hell weren’t Suburbanites or Cityfolk either—three hours from the City (New York City, of course), an hour or so from Scranton (if you could even call that a city). The town, with its ten side streets tethering themselves to one main road, no traffic light, boasted a whopping two gas stations, old-style 2 pump each, pay the man who handles the gas for you, a General Store, an Oral Surgeon but no doctor, and a Psychic, Madame Annette. Oh, and a bank.
In an effort to drill numbers and letters into the young brilliant minds of its children, all streets were numbered (1st- 10th) and the really-should-be-one lane intersecting avenues gave practice to learning your ABC’s, curving around the mountains and river in order A-S. After all, isn’t the first thing you learn how to write your name, then your address, and then eventually something about a quick brown fox jumping over a lazy dog? Literacy begins at a young age and we were determined to be smarter than the kids from the Sticks, at least within the pages, but not between the lines. But, don’t let the sheer quantity of numbers and letters fool you, most of the space between stop sign starved intersections was filled with overgrown mini fields, green-thumb gardens sweetening the air and our tongues with corn, peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, squash, and the slightly less in number well-manicured yards sewn against the side of houses with rose- and pansy- beds (because there, in that little town in Pennsylvania, pansies are still flowers and not someone who doesn’t fulfill an often dangerous expectation).
We were hugged by farms but didn’t work on them; our hillbilly relatives did. They had the horses, the ATVs, the rifles and shotguns. They built their own houses, probably without licenses, and mended the barns and fences, even the electric ones. Don’t ever pee on the electric ones. They cleaned the pigs and milked the cows, and could skin, gut, filet, cook and preserve just about any animal, fruit and vegetable native to our region. They, those hillbilly cousins, were the can-doers, the able-bodied, the ones that let us drive their rattling Chevy pickup trucks and rusted stick-shift Pontiacs on their windy streetlight-less dirt roads and try our hands at fishing and hunting on their land, in those years long before we could legally have licenses.
Still, as townsfolk, we could hold our own. We learned quickly, spending time in those mountains hanging onto the coattails and horse reins of those strange cousins, playing, learning, observing. We went camping, learned to know the roads, the interactions between them and nature, be it black ice on a 90 degree curve, dense fog clearing the blacktop, gravel or dirt as you traveled along a sheer drop off, or the occasional suicidal buck or doe that preferred to attempt battle with your car’s front end rather than turn tail and save its own life.
I don’t know. Maybe it wasn’t all the townsfolk, maybe it was just mine, my family, who’ve always had this odd, inextricable tie to the land, an invisible threading running through our veins and quilting us to nature in a network of patches spread across regions, states, countries, oceans, bonding us to our origin, this unfamiliar yet homey land that now washed its mud over my feet, that clung to my clothes, in my hair, and had already and so easily found its way into me, as if it’d been there all along, and was just seeping back in to settle down for the night.
Content Copyright 2011. Ami Lovelace. All Rights Reserved.
June 11, 2012
New Poem: Mama
Mama
my first memories of love
were at your knees,
fingers stumbling
to catch in their creases
and being cradled in their bends,
playing with toes I'd hope to grow
into
love was in the nicks,
red on pale skin
skid marks from an accident
I'd eventually have myself
too many times over to count,
love moved and swayed
under the hypnotic curtain
of linen skirts
and cotton dresses
love curved around exposed ankles
fleshy and soft when
I fell on them
eventually I learned to reach,
to reach out
and then love was in your hands,
lifting me up
in your arms
pulling me against the comfort of
your breasts
and love was on your lips
in the sounds as they moved
in the whispers they cooed
in the hushes they shushed
words I didn't understand
but felt
as they found home
on my forehead.
Content Copyright 2011. Ami Lovelace. All Rights Reserved.
June 8, 2012
New Poem: Anatomy & Physiology
in flesh I am promenading
dancing to the lift of respiration
in cell I am emoting
mobile life in an network of blue
deoxygenated clusters
tiptoe through the chambers
to the valves
of my bursting
forth to survival
and to scream
in my duodenum
I will love
all my shit
through to the excretion
of my thoughtful toxins
expel expel expel
adipose sheathing
a heart from
feeling the pulse
of another's femur
in between my teeth
in between my legs
beat, beat, beat
the synchronization
of self-hate with the mitochondria
chew up energy and swallow it down
and live
and live
and live.
Content Copyright 2011. Ami Lovelace. All Rights Reserved.
June 5, 2012
New Poem: Affair Over Coffee
there is a man
cross-legged in the manly way
at the knee, ankle resting just off the other
soaking in the afternoon sun
he wears a black windbreaker, open
to let the teasing breeze kiss
his chest
back to me, I imagine it to be exposed
hair fluff and curling
yawning awake from the bedsheets of his
shirt collar and reaching little hair hands
for the sun's rays or the wind's kiss,
on his head, which I believe to be vacant,
all hair once residing there now beds
with those on his chest, love making, procreating
little dark curls upon little dark curls,
lounges a black beanie, absorbing all
that surrounds him and diffusing it
to his mind
the UVs, the traffic, the life of downtown lunchtime
filtered through black wool scratching at his scalp
to seep a potable environment
I sit two bistro tables away
convening in the speckled granite patio
of a business plaza Starbucks,
it's a rare day in the wind tunnel
when we can both sit,
just like this
and we are connected by words
though we don't move our lips
the suns strokes him over the shoulder
guiding my eyes to a cream
the corporate chain has not given him,
sprinkled with coffee black letters,
swirling words into frases,
into poems on the pages he holds
with wrinkled hands
into poems on the pages I write
with youthful hands
we are gentle lovers, hands gliding
to give and to receive,
sharing silent yearnings
in a public affair.
Content Copyright 2011. Ami Lovelace. All Rights Reserved.
May 31, 2012
New Poem: Midnight in Paris
Midnight in Paris
I want to choke down cigarette smoke
like Gertrude Stein
do you think she let them call her Trudie?
in Paris with Picasso, Matisse, Fitzgerald
I want to swing my pen
like her expat avant gardes swung their indiscretions
splashing Burgandy wine in widemouthed glasses
or maybe swirling candied brandy
circling within circles
of creativity and moody flare ups
I hear Picasso was a child.
I want to paint words as he did faces
turned upside down and jumbled
into bare recognizablity- ugly -
and memorised and recognized
and praised in dreamy smoke circles of
philanthropy pouring golden champagne
into the pockets of poor artists
rather than coin
I want to twist an ankle at midnight
on the bloodied cobblestone of her street
wiped clean of all its history
just to have something to say
a story written in the rock
and transfered to my toes,
my bones.
Content Copyright 2011. Ami Lovelace. All Rights Reserved.
May 24, 2012
New Poem: Lunchtime in the Financial District
I am trying today
to write at a bar
it sits at the intersection
of hope and stress
or rather Sacramento & Front
with floor to ceiling stenciled windows
peeking out at concrete high rise sweatshops.
I drown my distractions-- and my thoughts
in the cacophony of the pinstriped herd
grazing on the corporate greens of
today's Salad Special--
invest $12.95 and look health concious for your clients
I will graze too, though I wish
it was a Blood Mary
bobbing the yoke of its flavor in
three pregnant olives fucked by a blue plastic sword
but the sun beams through the windows hot at my back,
bright and unrelenting on my ass in slick black nylon slacks
hanging uncertain over the edge of the breast-high bar stool,
rather than lighting up my words
forced from the tip of a buttoned up pen,
where I'd rather see the brilliance;
I would be outside breathing in its rays, but for the wind
howling its pity at our suits.
The barkeep, Jeff, leaves me alone
maybe understanding the importance of my non-interruption
or maybe just afraid I'm writing about him
about his quick service, his crunchy shredded lettuce, his white apron
stained with tomato juice from the Blood Mary I'm sipping
when I close my eyes.
Diet Coke with lime is no Blood Mary,
by any stretch of the imagination.
then I smell hops and barley
a perky blonde foaming from the tap,
dressed in transparency to accentuate
her slender curves and perfect complexion:
Hogaarden or Stella, maybe,
seductive as she is
she too cannot masquerade as Mary.
Now more skirts show up
in blonde and tan
they sit down next to my pen
"Is this taken?"
No.
but do not
spread your elbows over my creativity
let me get drunk,
here in my hour-approved space
at this boob-high oak counter,
chug down my own words
while you sip and swish your Vodka Cranberry
in its dewy pint glass with Speakeasy eyes
where do you work? what do you do?
and why do you care what I'm writing?
Fuck it.
"Bloody Mary, please. Spicy."
Content Copyright 2011. Ami Lovelace. All Rights Reserved.
May 17, 2012
Proem: To Dream To Write, To Write To Dream
Proem. n - a piece that was written originally with the intention of being prose, however lives more sensically as poetry and is therefore restructured as such.
To Dream To Write, To Write To Dream
She would sit at an oak desk
bleeding her life onto the resistant page
though never draining,
never losing spirit or breath
or heartbeat.
All of her splayed out
in jagged letters
later cut and chopped
into typeset blocks
and served up
and fed to the willing
and maybe not so.
A sustenance,
so that they could live
learn to survive,
find comfort, find breath
find retreat in the pieces of her.
Rich in digestible calories,
driving all starvations out
through pages, through screens and
fingers and eyes and
years.
Spoken on mouths, in tongues, on lands
imagined in earth
or beyond.
She would speak
regurgitating experience
from the churn of her belly
in a foreign room of rustics and colors
huddled, encamped
with followers, with leaders,
with aspirers.
Creating worlds and wisdoms
caught in drifting motes
lit up on the ends of cigarette smoke
and sparkling twilight,
bathed blushing in Rioja
and nuzzled into mountains
or cities of thousand year old streets.
They would all bleed life
into each other,
exsanguinate legacy
from tongue to fingertip
and
bound in paper, or microchip or hologram
or
something she cannot yet find
on the curve of her own tongue.
Content Copyright 2011. Ami Lovelace. All Rights Reserved.
May 8, 2012
Limitless Mind, Limitless Possibilities
But I digress, sort of. The lesson today was "Limitless Mind, Limitless Possibilities". Which, conceptually, in and of itself is already inspiring, no need to pull my leg or twist my arm to get me there. And, selfishly, I thought this may somehow help my words, push my writing to expand upon itself, out and infinite and maybe even more universal. But, strangely enough, it wasn't the focus of that specific lesson theme that was the most profound. The Buddhi (because those who practice yoga are yogis therefore in my logic, those who practice Buddhism are Buddhis, rather than Buddhists) Anise, yes like the spice, opened the class with a 20- minute meditation. Sitting in chairs, feet rooted into the carpeted concrete, as much surface area as possible snug against the carpet fibres, my back as rigid and as straight as my shoulders could manage against the gravitational pull of my now near DDD breasts, and trust me, it was not a painless experience, though it opened me up on many more levels than imagined, I closed my eyes and steadied and readied myself. The blood alone tingled in streams through my biceps, elbows and down to my outer knuckles, the first stage of awakening I was bound for today. Anise asked us to come to the moment, to leave behind all that was previous, and shut out all that was yet to come. To imagine we were encircled with light, a light that absorbed all noise, heard and unheard, all the yesterdays all the tomorrows, all the energy outside of us was eaten by this glorious beautiful light that we were conjuring up, this light that radiated around us, this light with its beaming energy, and each of us the individual center of it. And I couldn't see it. I couldn't see it. Maybe a fractional millisecond flickered in my head, yes, but I could not pause the slideshow, to attach onto, to hold that vivid image of myself engulfed and floating in this white lighted energy. I'd done meditation before, and no, it's never *easy*, but my imagination, my mind had never failed me in such heartbreaking clarity, and I didn't understand why I couldn't keep it, why every time I'd catch a glimpse of myself bathed in this light, it'd slip away again, right through my fingers, a blurred dot floating across the film of my sclera, over my iris and pupil and away again. What the hell was wrong with me. And the more I struggled the more frustrated, the quicker the image, when it did come, would flee. Fifteen minutes of mind-blazing agony. Then Anise piped back in... I was to see myself, my body, the shell of my skin fill to almost bursting with this magnesium burning light. And I could see something, a body, black eyes, translucent, glowing, but it was more like a Halloween prop than myself, more like a distorted Casper standing (yes, standing, with feet and everything) in a black cube. This wasn't me. Where was I? Why wasn't I in my own head? This skin-shelled candle was supposed to be ME!
I was failing in my own head. How the hell do you fail to do something in your own head?
Then Anise asked us to focus our light. To bring it to the core of who we are, to the Subtle Mind, to the heart chakra. And to hold that energy, that essence, that brilliant light and convert it into clarity. Convert the bright all-loving light, into a tranquil, crystal clear body of water, a pond, a lake, a silent ocean, deep and reaching. And settle there, seeing through to everything, past everything, in this fathomless, layered pool of our still selves. But, my water was muddy, muddling, a swamp with sticky mosquitoes. Not dark, but churning and the more I tried to subdue it, the more I reached out my mind's hands and tried to pull a reverse-Moses, the more it swirled and whirled and ate at its banks and stirred up its silt. And that's when I got it, when I understood what my body, what my mind, my true essence was trying to tell me. I couldn't still the water, because I am not still. At this moment, this snapshot of time, I am in transition, my body, my mind, my heart, it's all moving, not in a literal sense, necessarily, but on the ethereal level, that other level that we cannot always see, but we DO feel, somehow, in some way. I could not see myself floating in that light, because I cannot see myself, period. It has been a long time since I've closed my eyes and turned my gaze inward, to really know who I am in that moment. I've been dependent on the mirror, the reflection, the physical representation of who I thought I was, but that did not really define me at all. So, when I tried today, tried to see with my eyes closed, of course there was no still frame, no portrait I could lock onto, no physical shape, not even of my head or my eyes or my smile, because, at the moment, they exist elsewhere, outside of my knowing, outside of my recognizing. And that is my transition, that is my discovery, my path. And more importantly, that is not a bad thing, it's not throwing myself into a pitfall of depression, it is simply, and cyclically, a movement through life. A new beginning, a reforming, a mixing and reconstructing of atoms not actually physical.
And in knowing this, in this realization, I found my clarity, saw the threads of growth, my breath filled my body down to my toes, and my subtle mind touched peace.
Content Copyright 2011. Ami Lovelace. All Rights Reserved.
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