Roller Queen

To: Laurie
From: Charlie
RE: Jimmy Eat World

I blame it on my entrance:
It may seemed too much like confidence.
Let me start it over.
Help me get to what I can from when I did.

All that I know is how I can hold on;
All that you see is how I let go.

I had to leave; my reasons,
it may have seemed too much, the consequence
and in your busy, dizzy life
you will become everything you said you would.

All that I know is how I can hold on;
All that you see is how let you go.

So how about once around?

grateful for you

To: Laurie
From: Charlie
RE: We are not long here

I was thinking about poetry this morning, which isn’t surprising, considering April’s poetry month. Sometimes, when I’m feeling out of my mind, I like to repeat to myself little quotes from poems, the kind that are small and self contained and soothing:

and you feel your heart taking root in your body,
like you’ve discovered something you don’t even have a name for.

or something even more contained:

A cicada shell;
It sang itself
Utterly away


Of course, this sometimes backfires. Yesterday was a terrible day, and I was quietly reciting

We were in the gold room where everyone finally gets what they want, so I said, What do you want, sweetheart? And you said Kiss me. Here I am leaving you clues. I am singing now while Rome burns. We are all just trying to be holy. My applejack, my silent night, just mash your lips against me. We are all going forward. None of us are going back.

under my breath in the hallway. Two or three people passed me, and each on gave me these incredibly weirded out looks; I didn’t realize for ages it was because I was quite seriously, if quietly, talking to myself. I must have looked like such a ninny. An insane ninny.

Despite all that, I can’t help but retreat back to poetry when things are rough.
It’s the recovering English major in me, I think.

I remember Professor Chapman's lectures -- the ones held in the oldest part of the college and where the walls were all darkly panneled wood and the whole class ended up practically sitting in each others' laps because, even though there were only a few of us, we were being taught in the old dormitories -- and finding out how incredibly fond he was of talking about poetry, even when he was teaching literature or fairy tales. Do you remember?

Silly question. Of course you do.

There was one particular time, where it was dark out and we were discussing how incredibly important it was that Tolkien used stylisticly formal language throughout The Lord of the Rings-- I had just gone on a tear about the stylistic elements of the King James' Bible and its importance to a primarily CofE audience, when Chapman stood up and lifted his arms and went on such a tangent. 'Language,' he practically bellowed, 'is the response to the fall of man!'

We'd all heard it before, but this time something felt like it snapped inside of me. Everything he was saying made complete sense in a way it never quite did before.

Before the fall, everything was perfect enough that there was no need of language. Man existed without it. Once, however, the divorce between man and grace occurred, something was desparately needed to express the grief and the wonder of the world, of everything, and in that instant, language was born. It was created in a fractured world, by a creature similarly flawed and broken. And, as such, language, too, is an un-whole and incomplete thing. No matter the effort, there will never be a complete bridging between language and experience.

That's the glory of poetry, that there's an experience, an inexpressible feeling, something you know can never going to be properly described or depicted, but it doesn't matter -- you’re going to try your damnedest to do it anyway. That’s what poetry actually IS – that attempt to bridge the real and the ideal, the untouchable with some sort of tangibility.

And even though you won’t ever confuse me with Yeats or Plath or anyone famous --and most of the time I’m not even writing any of my own, but merely taking comfort someone else’s – I completely agree. It’s in that failure to ever reach the goal, the knowledge of the gap that will never be crossed, that the artistry and the genius of poetry comes to life – when it makes the reader, and the writer all over again – aware of the strain to reincarnate something that is impossible andtranscendent and so much more sublime than can ever be expressed with the limited tools of language.

All of which to say, I am homesick for you.

and when I write you and say I miss having tea and toast with you and Judy while we watch something with James McAvoy for the millionth time, or when we’re picking apart the latest political decision or driving home from a concert and my feet are up on the dash and it’s dark out and we’re eating pop rocks, none of it is going to adequately describe anything. All it will do is recall those memories, which is really nice and helps a little when life is overwhelming me, but it doesn't properly get across how grateful I am you're always there for me, even if it's just to let me call you up and moan about how terrible boys are lately and how much I don't understand them. It makes me seem sentimental and maudlin, both of which I am pretty sure are true, but it doesn't show how important you are my friend.

parsons work

movie poster - atonement


type squares


album covers x3


toys


colored pencil boxes


green power


book cover and pages


au- value magazine


type terms





madison to go - logo and menu


emily derosa - exhibit invite


white teeth - book cover


aiga poster

poetry?

gotta have you

to: charlie
from: laurie
re: the weepies

Gray, quiet and tired and mean
Picking at a worried seam
Itry to make you mad at me over the phone.
Red eyes and fire and signs
I'm taken by a nursery rhyme
I want to make a ray of sunshine and never leave home

No amount of coffee, no amount of crying
No amount of whiskey, no amount of wine
No, nothing else will do
I've gotta have you, I've gotta have you.

The road gets cold, there's no spring in the middle this year
I'm the new chicken clucking open hearts and ears
Oh, such a prima donna, sorry for myself
But green, it is also summer
And I won't be warm till I'm lying in your arms

I see it all through a telescope: guitar, suitcase, and a warm coat
Lying in the back of the blue boat, humming a tune...

madame joy

to: charlie
from: laurie
re: van morrison

All the men would turn their head
When she walked down the street
Clothes are fine and hair that shine
Smiling oh so sweet, smiling oh so sweet

Got a taste of all religion
Comes on with the new
In her hair a yellow ribbon
And she's decked out all in blue
Oh yes in, decked out all in blue

Steppin' lightly, steppin' brightly
With her books in hand
Going to the university to teach them
Help them understand
And are helping 'em understand

And all the kids would love to see her
Follow in her steps
And tell her stories and adore her
Climb in through the fence
Climb in through the fence

Here she comes walking
Here she comes talking
I do believe it's Madame Joy
Walking past that old street corner
And she's looking for her boy
Oh yes she is, looking for her boy

Steppin' lightly, steppin' brightly
With her books in hand
Going to the university to teach them
Help them understand
Yeah, help them understand

I was looking at the way she moved me
And I was seeing every side
Tell me, can I learn the language
Have you got the mind, have you got the mind

Here she comes walking
Here she comes talking
I do believe it's Madame Joy
She's walking by that old street corner
And she's looking for her boy
Oh yes looking for her boy

And all the men would turn their head
When she walked down the street
Clothes refined and hair that shine
And smiling oh so sweet, oh yes, she's smiling oh so sweet
Smiling, smiling oh so sweet, yeah, yeah, yeah
Smiling, smiling oh so sweet

And all the men would
And all the men would turn their head around
When that woman walked down the street
When that woman walked down the street
When that, when that woman walked
When that woman walked, when that woman walked
When that woman walked, when that woman walked
When that woman walked, what she wore
When that woman, when that woman, when that woman
When that woman, when that woman, when that woman
When that woman, when that woman, when that woman
When that woman, when that woman walked
She just walked
Just kept on walking down the street
When she walked, when she walked down

tender are the words they choose

To: Laurie
From: Charlier
RE: Don't Go Far Off, Not Even For a Day; Pablo Neruda

Don't go far off, not even for a day, because --
because -- I don't know how to say it: a day is long
and I will be waiting for you, as in an empty station
when the trains are parked off somewhere else, asleep.

Don't leave me, even for an hour, because
then the little drops of anguish will all run together,
the smoke that roams looking for a home will drift
into me, choking my lost heart.

Oh, may your silhouette never dissolve on the beach;
may your eyelids never flutter into the empty distance.
Don't leave me for a second, my dearest,

because in that moment you'll have gone so far
I'll wander mazily over all the earth, asking,
Will you come back? Will you leave me here, dying?

not the cruelest month

To: Laurie
From: Charlie
Re: The First Dream; Billy Collins


The Wind is ghosting around the house tonight
and as I lean against the door of sleep
I begin to think about the first person to dream,
how quiet he must have seemed the next morning

as the others stood around the fire
draped in the skins of animals
talking to each other only in vowel,
for this was long before the invention of sonsonants.

He might have gone off by himself to sit
on a rock and look into the mist of a lake
as he tried to tell himself what had happened,
how he had gone somewhere without going,

how he had put his arms around the neck
of a beast that the others could touch
only after they had killed it with stones,
how he felt its breath on his bare neck.

Then again, the first dream could have come
to a woman, though she would behave,
I suppose, much the same way,
moving off by herself to be alone near the water,

except that the curve of her young shoulders
and the tilt of her downcast head
would make her appear to be terribly alone,
and if you were there to notice this,

you might have gone down as the first person
to ever fall in love with the sadness of another.