Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Please pick the cobwebs off my woolen sweater.



Turns out, all I needed was "a little caffeine and perspective" because things are fine now. Actually, that's a lie. Things are not fine now. Things are not fine because there are still "FOR SALE" signs that could send me into a panic and life is still having its choices made by a flipping coin.


I could sit here and write about my thoughts on the beauty of tartmongers and "Trouble," but I think I'll just let you read a poem instead. Because I'm writing again, and that's a relief. I'm scared to share this, because no one reads my poetry, but now you are. Oh.


This Ain't Fiction, Folks

He asked me if I ever wrote fiction.
I said that I did because I thought
that I did. So it wasn't really a lie.
But the truth is that I'm afraid
of the devastating "Write What You Know" ideology.
So afraid, that my fiction
becomes mere fact.
It's all tainted with my insides and
the peanut shells in my pockets and
the cockroaches on the baseboards of the summer house.

My fiction is just the facts.
About how the toe-headed,
helplessly adorable
Methodist
likes my best friend better than me
because she's beautiful.
And a better poet than me.
My fiction is about how I spend my vacations:
seeing plays by British playwrights,
and eating Pad Thai,
while watching Swiss-German movies,
drinking American sodas.
Because this is America, my friends.
We are nothing more than a 
conglomeration of the rest of the universe.

This universal conglomeration
doesn't even have an official language.
But if it doesn't even have
an official language,
then why are people yelling from political pulpits
about if people cross our
magic-marker-ed borders, they ought to
learn our language? Bonjour?
If we don't even have a real-life language,
then why am I being yelled at,
in English,
to Write What I Know? Bonjour?

Sometimes, I get all worked up,
and I just have to pause.
And remind myself that talking
is really only singing, singing, singing.
It's just singing, singing, singing,
on the same note,
with a few syncopated accidentals
for punctuation (flat)

All I know is that I want to fly,
but I don't have silky wings,
like the bats,
or the hallow bone structure
found in birds of flight.
And all I know is that,
at the end of the day,
I don't really know anything at all.
Not for sure.
Not for real.

But I am you.
And I am us.
And we are everything -- everywhere.
We are the playground children.
We are the obsessive-compulsive mother,
checking the locks once,
twice,
three times,
afraid for the babies.
We are the starving artists,
we are the lost songs,
we are novels upon paperback novels,
shelved in public libraries.
We are the Shakespeare plays nobody performs anymore.
We are the B-list.
We are the drop-outs and graduates,
we are the honey-mooning lovers and divorcees.
We are antithesis.


So hold my and become a part of it.
Love me, and become it.


And if you can't be a part of it --
if you can't be it,
stop reading.
Because if you can't be a part of it --
if you can't be it,
then you're not ready for stuff yet.


But I hope -- I ache, even --
to know that you're still reading.
Because what I'm writing,
right now,
ain't what I know.
It's just what I feel.


It ain't fiction, folks.


It's just the facts.


Forever, I hope.
All my love,
Addy

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

that. was. beautiful.

e(M)ily said...

you're the best addy baird.
and ive often thought nothing is fact and its actually all fiction....anyway....

McKenzie said...

what the? there's a for sale sign where?

the poetry is fabulous. I'm the first in line when you publish your first new york times best seller anything!

Unknown said...

you spelled CAFFEINE wrong, chap.

KAIT LINDLEY said...

^
Who cares if you spelled it wrong.

It's a good poem.

Emily Lefebvre said...

love you.
miss you.
love this.
--
e

rsmith145 said...

You're a fantastic writer. Brilliant, really.
If you ever published a book of poems, I'd buy it.

Bianca Seamons said...

Never stop writing. I'd also purchase said book.

Avery Jalaine Taylor said...

How do I explain? I can't.

So good, Addy. So beyond my words. That you inaccurately called better than your own. They're not.


I left your house more mixed up than when I got there. But grinding my teeth less. Feeling like maybe I had a twin sister (you).

I'll write it in a note to you.

xxx.

Unknown said...

brilliant.

Elina said...

You are brave to write such a long, somewhat revealing poam like this and hand it out to possible critics waiting to tear you apart. Your writing is interesting, thanks for sharing (: Also, nice to meet someone who appreciates Shakespeare as well!