Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Another Collaborative Poem With Fifth Graders And Me


Something In Somethingness

By: Ishaan, Annie, Skylar, and Shideh

Yellow surrounding me I’m drowning in my sick.

There’s nothing in a brain.

People everywhere like soft pillows.

As you know something in somethingness would

cause an overexposure to our skin.

I’ll be your telephone when I’m twenty.

People nowhere to put pencils in their pants.

Forever came and went

and still I couldn’t find you.






A Thing To Get Caught On

                                                           
I keep coming back to that day by the pool
when I was little and it seemed like an ocean to me.
And how hairspray made you look
bigger than you really were,
and your nails so red I thought if I put my tongue
to one it would taste like a cherry.
I keep coming back to when you told me so sadly,
but with much assurance-
Life without love is nothing.

It’s a memory.
But it’s also a dream.
And there’s no way of knowing
that it really happened.
Except that it did.

I’m caught on it,
on those trees that hung on our words
as if they too were listening.
I can’t get it out of my head,
but I also don’t want it to leave me alone.
And I’m sure mother will soon bring
the watermelons out for us.

After my boyfriend in high school gave me a hickey,
you asked me why he was biting me.
And we laughed, but then you got serious and told me
you never knew what sex was.
It was never a beautiful thing for you,
you said you didn’t love my grandfather.
He was your cousin, a brother really,
and there is no passion in that.
I saw in your eyes then that
all you perhaps had wanted in life
was someone to want you enough
to suck all the love out from inside you.

When you still remembered things
I wish I’d asked more questions.
But still I’m caught on that day.
I keep coming back to it as if
by the broken tiles of that pool,
near the jagged rocks that lined the edge,
somewhere in the deep end
are the answers I’ve been looking for.
A way of understanding you and what love is,
and what it means to remember,
and how easy to forget.
I close my eyes, dive inside, and
reach my hands out,
blindly touch the surface of
the things you taught me long ago.


A Collaborative Poem Written By Fifth Graders And Me


Domination Poem

By: Ishaan, Annie, Skylar, and Shideh

A brick is hard and heavy.

I will let fear rule my life.

Red is dominating the world.

People underneath a bed because they’re sad.

The word almost is not in my dictionary.

Giant machine hands are ripping

everything in half.

The young ones will soon learn

that everything is a circle.








Daylight Lover

To learn how to love is a test,

a beautiful time to not dissapear.
And back then, when I didn’t know her
and women wore skirts above their knees
and walked freely on the streets of Iran,
except for the occasional ass grabbing,
grandmother didn’t cry so much.
And she didn’t have to pop
five pills to feel at peace.
Back then she wore fur coats
and pearls that slipped on her skin
as she sat cross legged
at my mother’s wedding
in a dress that made her look
as beautiful as the bride,
while she dreamt about
kissing her dentist.

She asks me if I have a boyfriend,
and then she asks me again.
And then she asks me a third time
because her mind is empty and
free of all things except this moment.
It’s a disease but it’s also
what some people call Zen.
She clings onto thoughts that seem new
and unspoken while her brain slowly shrinks.
It’s a folding upon itself,
a quiet collision of death drawn out.
First you leave the stove on,
and then your tongue
can’t catch the right words,
and the next thing you know
you’re not walking anymore
and your daughter has to spoon feed you
they way you did when she was little.
It’s a disease but its also a circle.
And you realize that life was
never really meant to be angular.
And when little children walk
past you giggling, you laugh too
because there is something in them so near
to where it is that you are going.

Grandmother looks at me and
asks me once more if I have a boyfriend.
No, I tell her again because I am certain of it,
but this time there are also tears in my eyes
and maybe she’s so empty she can feel it too.
So she drops it and tells me
that my breasts are getting too big,
and then breathes in the Santa Monica Friday
afternoon wet beach air (or just the air)
and smiles because the sun is beating
on her body and she can’t remember much-
good or bad- but she is a daylight lover, and
does not expect tomorrow to ever really come.