eulogy for a girl // an original poem
~
this year will be my eulogy for you
they’re gonna ruin you, I can feel it in my bones
they’re gonna break you apart bone by bone
and put back together a whole different you
these good words won’t be enough to detail all your suffering
good words won’t be enough
so I’ll recount your life throughout this year
the beauty of your youth and
the beauty of your tears
Beautiful girl, I will tell of your able fingers
flitting between the black and the white keys of the piano
clutching a pencil and cradling a book
I will tell of your nimble fingers clinging to all the boys
no one offered you even one finger in return
I will tell of your heartache and your pain
Beautiful girl, I will tell of your dainty fingers
clinging to a boy to prove your own worth
I will tell of your pliant knees and
I will tell of your voice rough and soft and young
and of when the words would break in your mouth
under the weight of your tears
I remember your father’s hands on you
a thousand girls and a thousand boys at your feet
and then none
your mother and your father
and then none
you never had a friend
who would mourn you when you’ve gone
so I will mourn, a year
and then I will stop
what will become of you after that
will no longer be a concern of mine
I will not be around this time next year
so this year will be my eulogy for you
goodbye; — I loved you.
~
August 16, 2011
S.R.
Are You a Charlie, Too?
Charlie?
The World Wide Web is a vast space of endless possibilities in which both the good and the ugly are just a mouse-click away and the expanse in-between very often is the grayest shade of gray you could imagine. Yet sometimes you may be able to find a little sparkling gem right there somewhere hidden in the infinity of the internet. Such a gem is You, Me & Charlie.
What a cryptic name, you might say. Indeed. Let me borrow the words of the website’s original creator, actress Dianna Agron, to try to explain it to you: “This is a space for YOU and ME. Our space is….CHARLIE.”[1] And Charlie, that is a concept rather than a name (though the name does hold a special meaning to Miss Agron).
Charlie celebrates life, the beauty you can find in small things all around you if you just keep your eyes and your heart open; Charlie encourages you to dream and to create, to be true to yourself and to be kind toward others; Charlie is about sharing happiness in all of its forms with a community of like-minded people. This is the philosophy behind YM&C.
Essentially, the website is an “art collective.” You can scroll through the website and read articles on music, film, literature, art, photography, dance, and travel. Yet you will also find categories called DID YOU KNOW, FOR GRINS, or DAILY INSPIRATION, categories that add to the overall quirky charm and uniqueness of YM&C as more than just a feel-good website.
just some of the categories you can find on YM&C
Last but not least, the idea that an actress would create a website to interact with her fans is revolutionary in itself, I should say, but the outcome of YM&C, the vivid growth and exchange of the community, is the true beauty of the website.
So do pay a visit to You, Me & Charlie and indulge in the joie de vivre and magick you will find there. And no, that is not a spelling mistake — magick with a k — it’s just the Charlie way of spelling.
Visit You, Me & Charlie at youmeandcharlie.com
[1] http://youmeandcharlie.com/about-you-me-and-charlie/
Originally published in edition 11 of tba. in April 2012
my eyes like the ocean // an original poem
~
tonight I cannot write
tonight my heart hangs empty and so very still
between my hand and my head
you have burned the tear ducts from my eyes
you have branded my breath with blackness
spewing forth from my mouth with every spiting word I find in my mind
you have bedecked my eyes with diamonds
the tips of my fingers with glass and
my feet with feathers
tonight I cannot write
tonight my heart hangs heavy like a loaded sling
between my hand and my head
my sight has turned gray against the evening sky
you trample across the past like quicksand
through the meddling ruckus spewing forth from your mouth
you wallow in our what-has-beens like a sullen boy
while I feel the threads of history uncoil deep within me
tomorrow rises colorless like an orphan bird in my eyes
~
November 2, 2011
S.R.
StyleLikeU.com: expressing yourself through fashion
I already talked about lucky finds last month, and today I want to present to you a website that is another one of those many lucky finds: StyleLikeU.com.
StyleLikeU is a video-based fashion website, but it is not just a website about fashion.
At its very heart, StyleLikeU is about the people wearing the fashion, the people expressing themselves through the clothes they wear.
It showcases men and women of all ages and backgrounds who have an innate love for fashion, for whom clothes are more than mere clothes but a way to display and highlight their character; freedom of expression through personal style, as StyleLikeU’s tagline calls it.
There are various categories for you to visit:
Second Skin | Captures the effects of literally living a day in someone else’s shoes.
Addictions | Shines a light on passions and obsessions.
Twisted Classic | Shows how an article of clothing can be worn six different ways.
Uniforms | Explores how individuals express themselves within the confines of a uniform.
Roundtables | Documents a discussion on salient cultural issues.
But my favorite is simply entitled Closets, in which you can literally take a peek into other people’s closets, one person per video.
I get ridiculous excited whenever a new Closet is added to the site. I cannot really say what it is, but every time I find my heart speeding up, my lips stretching into a grin, and my hands involuntarily coming together in a clapping motion.
It is exciting to see a person revel shamelessly in the display of the beauty they have stored in their closet. Hearing them talk about the way their outfits make them feel, how they have the ability to empower them, is inspiring to such an unbelievable degree. Watching a Closet makes me feel empowered and excited about my own closet and the little treasure hidden away in it.
And maybe, just maybe, if you weren’t aware of StyleLikeU.com already, this post has made you at least somewhat excited for the website. Be sure to pay it a visit, I promise you, you will not regret it.
Then I felt my cheeks turn rosy pink: a writing exercise
I am currently taking part in the 30-Day Challenge over at You, Me & Charlie and today’s prompt read as follows:
What better way to start off a Saturday than to put pen to paper and let your mind free, sans judgement, free writing! Find a cozy cafe, your favorite journal and tell us a story. Blush, ooo…blush.
Prompt #5: Pen and Paper: Then I felt my cheeks turn rosy pink________ (finish the story.)
This is my story.
The Sixth Avenue El: nuisance and inspiration alike
In New York City, the first public transport was offered by omnibuses and street railways which appeared on the streets of the city in the late 1820s and early 1830s. Yet as the city’s population continued to grow, these simple forms of transport proved to be entirely insufficient to cope with the capacity of passengers, and the increasing need for a systematic approach to other means of public transport was quickly recognized and tackled.
Charles Harvey presented the first elevated system over Greenwich Street in 1867 while constructions on the first subway line began in 1869. The system of the elevated railways offered the first rapid transport in New York City. While they were initially powered by cables like their counterparts on the streets, the trains were soon equipped with steam engines and provided the fastest way of getting around the city. By the early twentieth century, the rapid progress in technology enabled all elevated trains of the city to run on electricity.
Four elevated lines operated the avenues of Manhattan: the Second, Third, Sixth, and Ninth Avenue Elevated. The line that was commonly referred to as the Sixth Avenue El took up its service in the late 1870s. Ultimately, it covered almost all of Lower Manhattan, starting close to Battery Park and running along West Broadway and Sixth Avenue to 59th Street just below Central Park. It was discontinued in December 1938.
the Sixth Avenue El facing north on 18th Street
Like all elevated railways, the impact of the Sixth Avenue El on people’s lives was enormous. During planning and construction of the railway, the operating company (the Gilbert Elevated Railroad Company) encountered resistance from property-owners and other railroad companies and complaints continued to reach newspapers by property-holders and pedestrians alike after construction was completed, many people felt that the new elevated line invaded their lives to a degree that was simply not bearable. The noise was perceived as a nuisance and an infliction, as “little short of murder,” the constant rain of oil, grease, and cinder ruined clothes and shops. Considering these side effects of the elevated railways, the convenient method of transport the El offered could easily be overlooked. Yet in spite of all these complaints, the Sixth Avenue Elevated remained, and people had to adapt.
It was this invasion of technology, this raw force tearing through people’s lives unabashedly that attracted a number of artists to the elevated railways and to the Sixth Avenue El in particular due to its central location. The impressive extent of the El’s construction turned it into a particularly visual spectacle, and so it is not surprising to find a great number of painters and photographers among the artists who have depicted the El in their works.
The perspectives on the railway could differ quite drastically from depiction to depiction: American impressionist Childe Hassam created a rather romanticized idealization of the El in his 1894 painting “Sixth Avenue El–Nocturne (The El, New York)” by using pastel colors to transform the gritty reality of daytime Night York into the dreamlike setting of poetry at night, associating the innovative technology represented by the rapid transit with a romantic idea of progress.
Childe Hassam’s “Sixth Avenue El–Nocturne”
Other artists used the railway as a stage to portray the isolation life in a city as big as New York could ultimately breed: Photographer Berenice Abbott and painter Reginald Marsh both chose interior shots for their respective works “‘El’ Station: Sixth Avenue Lines, Downtown Side” and “Why Not Use The El?,” baring the reality of city life by illustrating the loneliness and misery dominating both the act of waiting for as well as riding on the elevated railway.
Berenice Abbott’s “‘El’ Station: Sixth Avenue Lines, Downtown Side”
Reginald Marsh’s “Why Not Use the El?”
Edward Hopper produced a work similar to that of Berenice Abbott, but his painting “The El Station” from 1908 already carried a connotation that was to become one of his trademark features: solitude, not loneliness, surrounded his figures, and so the lone woman seemingly waiting for the train on an empty platform stands apart from the gray figures huddling around the stove in Abbott’s photograph.
Edward Hopper’s “The El Station”
The most common form of depiction of the elevated railway lines though remained the one from the outside, very often incorporating a bird’s-eye view to capture the whole scale of the elevated constructions. This bird’s-eye view is brought to an extreme in the documentary short film Manhatta from 1921, a collaboration between the painter Charles Sheeler and the photographer Paul Strand that presented the Elevated as an integral part of Manhattan and consequently of New York’s everyday life.
Charles Sheeler’s “Church Street El”
The film, which roughly follows a typical day in Manhattan, shows the elevated railway on Church Street crossing the screen at an experimental angle, crossing from top to bottom instead of the conventional direction from left to right; Sheeler later used a still of this scene to create his painting “Church Street El.” Manhatta celebrates the El as a symbol of Modernism, a trend which becomes even more apparent with progressing tendencies toward abstraction and Precisionism, as can be seen for example in the work of Francis Criss (“Sixth Avenue ‘L’,” 1937).
Francis Criss’ “Sixth Avenue ‘El'”
Those artists who did not go so far as to celebrate the elevated trains at least acknowledged their integral part in shaping the city, as works by painters like John Marin (“Lower Manhattan, Composition Derived From Top of Woolworth Building,” 1922) clearly demonstrate.
John Marin’s “Lower Manhattan, …”
Further proof for the fact that the people adapted and came to accept the elevated lines are their numerous inclusions in paintings by the Ashcan artists, a loose group of realist painters, such as Robert Henri’s “Street Scene with Snow” (1902), John Sloan’s “Election Night” (1907), or George Bellows’ “New York” (1911) show. Very often the El is even not the actual focus of these paintings, but instead included naturally into the scene.
Robert Henri’s “Street Scene with Snow”
John Sloan’s “Election Night”
George Bellows’ “New York”
Even the end of the Sixth Avenue Elevated offered a final inspiration for artists when the line ceased operation in 1938 and it metal was sold to the Japanese . In 1944, the poet e.e. cummings wrote his famous work “plato told,” hinting at the El’s final fate:
(he didn’t believe it, no
sir) it took
a nipponized bit of
the old sixth
avenue
el:in the top of his head: to tell
him
Sources: Cummings, E.E. “plato told.” In: 100 Selected Poems. New York, NY: Grove Press, 2000: 88. Sansone, Gene. New York Subways: An Illustrated History of New York City's Transit Cars. Baltimore, MD: Joh Hopkins University Press, 1997. Whistler, James McNeill. “Mr. Whistler’s Ten O’clock.” In: The Gentle Art of Making Enemies. Project Gutenberg eBook, 2008. Metropolitan Transit Authority NYC Subway.org The New York Times, April 23, May 3, (1876); June 18th, June 21, June 22 (1878). The Palm Beach Post, November 11, 1939.
the act of love // an original poem
To a very special you. You won’t ever know, but I love you.
~
you
have robbed me
of my words
you have stolen the words
straight from my mind
so many thoughts and
so many words that fail
me
you
reduce me to
instantaneous incoherence
my throat opens yet
all that passes is
air through limp lips
nonsensical noises
basic noises
garbled
jumbled
mumbled noises
nonsense
I overflow
a need for something
evades me and yet
consumes me
so thoroughly, sometimes
it permeates me entirely
my entire being, and
I am
filled up
filled
to the brim and
I overflow
I bubble
I bristle
I erupt
in a flurry of movements, contracting
stretching, restlessly
giggling and crying
I talk
to myself
to you
in my mind
and, oh, how I wish I could tell you
everything
everything you make me feel
how much
you have changed me
how grateful
I am
that you have made me into who
I am
that you have taught me
love
to love myself
most of all
to be true
to myself
when no one else could
after years and years of
self-discrimination
I have suffered enough
at my own hands, yet
you
you have taken my hands
turned them into instruments of
beautiful craftsmanship
the most sacred of arts
the act of love
~
October 8, 2011
S.R.
An Open Letter to King Charles: you’re fascinating and I love you
Dear King Charles,
you’re fascinating, and I love you.
I know almost nothing about you, but I don’t care. Your looks are what drew me in the first time I saw you.
King Charles
You reminded me of Russell Brand with your wild black hair and your mustache, though maybe a cleaner, less erratic version of Brand. Do not doubt my love for this man though, I mean the comparison as a compliment.
You also reminded me of Mozart, the Amadeus version. I don’t know where that comparison came from, though, honestly. Maybe Falco is to blame? But anyway, you really could have been born in another time, another era.I love that about you.
The first song of yours that I heard was “Bam Bam;” you opened your mouth, you undulated your hips, and I fell entranced. I mean, you were wearing breeches, for god’s sake, and carrying a cane, and you just looked so regal!
Then came “Mississippi Isabel,” and just like “Bam Bam” the video had a distinct Southern feeling to it. So I came to think of you as something of a 1940’s Mozart from the South, but alas, you are from London, I learned. A Briton like Russell Brand, what coincidence! I love it!
Dear King Charles, are you a gentleman?
Who is Mississippi Isabel?
How long does it take to do your hair in the morning?
Why is your chest so appealing even though I am not fond of chest hair, like, at all?
Who is your favorite King Charles? Because I think I prefer the English’s first to the second.
And last but not least, did you mean to look like Count Dracula on the cover of your debut album? Because you kind of do, minus the prominent teeth. And I kind of want you to have aimed for that look, what with the title and all.
King Charles' debut album Love Blood
Anyway, to sum it all up:
Dear King Charles, I think I love you. I look forward to getting to know you better.
Also by King Charles: Love Lust // Love Blood // Lady Percy King Charles' debut album Love Blood hits stores May 7th 2012
Let Us Grow Old Together: the poetry of Gary Soto
I have a love-hate relationship with Gary Soto’s poetry. Well, maybe hate is the wrong word, maybe apathy is more accurate. A love-apathy relationship with his poetry. Let me add to that the fact that Gary Soto is one of my favorite poets and I’ll have you thoroughly confused, admit it. So let me explain this conundrum.
Gary Soto
Gary Soto’s poetry can best be described as confessional poetry, meaning that his poetry draws largely on his own life, experiences he has had and people he has met; I sometimes like to call it everyday poetry,because he describes simple everyday situations, ordinary situations, so ordinary in fact that you might stumble over the lengthy description of a meal, of a children’s plaything, or car ride. But ordinary does not equal boring, at least not if you keep an open mind. And that is exactly where I fail, quite often to be honest, and where my apathy toward certain poems from Soto’s collection comes into play.
I need to relate to poetry to enjoy it; not necessarily to the situation describes in a poem, but to the emotion within. I need to feel something stir in me. That is my definition of what makes good poetry; I want it to make me feel something. And very often that is not a specific emotion as simple as happiness or anger; very often, there is just something that flares to life in the pit of my stomach, or just behind my ribcage; a feeling that wells up out of nowhere and builds up and up and up almost to the point where I cannot take it anymore. That is what makes poetry for me.
Now, many poems by Gary Soto do exactly this to me. And those that do leave me so in awe that Soto will always and without a single doubt make the list of my favorite poets. Yet there are also many poems that don’t make me feel anything at all, which I find extremely perplexing. But at least I have a partial explanation for this phenomenon: I have grown older.
Yes, the explanation is as simple as that: I have grown older, and certain poems by Soto that I didn’t enjoy three years ago are now some of my favorites. I have grown to relate to those, they have come to make me feel something now that I didn’t feel three months or three years ago. And that is a development that has taken place without me actively trying to influence it.
Gary Soto's New and Selected Poems © 1995
But can I really explain it? No. Do I appreciate this development? Absolutely. Because I enjoy the thought of having a book to grow with. I look forward to becoming older and older and having this collection of astonishing poetry to turn to, again and again, and the prospect of always finding something new within. I cannot be the only one finding this extremely thrilling and thoroughly satisfying.
Finally, I leave you with my favorite of Soto’s poems; not the first one I read, but the first one that made me feel this mysterious something.
“Kearney Park” (from Black Hair © 1985)
True Mexicans or not, let’s open our shirts
And dance, a spark of heels
Chipping at the dusty cement. The people
Are shiny like the sea, turning
To the clockwork of rancheras,
The accordion wheezing, the drum-tap
Of work rising and falling.
Let’s dance with our hats in hand.
The sun is behind the trees,
Behind my stutter of awkward steps
With a woman who is a brilliant arc of smiles,
An armful of falling water. Her skirt
Opens and closes. My arms
Know no better but to flop
On their own, and we spin, dip,
And laugh into each other’s faces —
Faces that could be famous
On the coffee table of my abuelita.
But grandma is here, at the park, with a beer
At her feet, clapping
And shouting, “Dance, hijo, dance!”
Laughing, I bend, slide, and throw up
A great cloud of dust,
Until the girl and I are no more.
I am Sam 