Clareified

For the most part, I think a Christian society has a lot of trouble dealing with death. On the one hand, there’s the idea that the baptized, repented dead will eventually be called to Jesus in heaven where they will live forever with, as I understand it, premium cable channels, cupcakes and personal snow cone machines for everyone. Seriously, I cannot state enough how important snow cones are. Every family should have one.

Where was I?

Oh, yes, death in Christianity. But then, on the other hand, someone is dead. And while the theology of it may be all “hallelujah! Gone to glory,” it’s hard to be smiley happy whilst staring at a coffin. It’s an inconsistency I noted very early on in my Catholic upbringing. Unfortunately, I noted this inconsistency before developing the “no talking during funerals” filter. Though, I still maintain that telling Mrs. Hall that her husband is “lucky he gets to meet Jesus” was adorable. Come on! Have you seen what a cute six year old I was? Have you?

I’m not particularly well versed on how other religions treat death, I think I vaguely think I learned something about certain religions believing that if you lived a terrible life you were reincarnated as a dung beetle…though, I may just be remembering something from the Simpsons. I do that. Oh, so there is apparently this game called “Simpsons: Scene It,” and I think I could make a living challenging people to play me in it for money. This game very well may be my calling. Now, I just have to buy one. And find people willing to play it with me for money.

Wow, my train of thought is especially scattered this morning. 4:15 counts as morning, right? I can’t rightly say. I no longer sleep like your human species. I have evolved. Or devolved. Not sure, should probably take some cognitive tests. And now I am moving my index finger in front of my face to see if I can follow it with my eyes. I can.

But never mind all that, Avery used to say that when you die, you watch a movie of your whole life. For his sake, I hope that isn’t true. Who wants to see the DVD of a flick you walked out of not even half way through when it was in the theater?

Anyway, today’s poem touches on these thoughts, so everything is wrapped up in a neat little package. You’re welcome.

I died as a mineral – by Jalal ed-Din Rumi

I died as a mineral and became a plant,
I died as plant and rose to animal,
I died as animal and I was Man.
Why should I fear? When was I less by dying?
Yet once more I shall die as Man, to soar
With angels blest; but even from angelhood
I must pass on: all except God doth perish.
When I have sacrificed my angel-soul,
I shall become what no mind e’er conceived.
Oh, let me not exist! for Non-existence
Proclaims in organ tones, ‘To Him we shall return.’

The Cats
H. P. Lovecraft

Babels of blocks to the high heavens towering
Flames of futility swirling below;
Poisonous fungi in brick and stone flowering,
Lanterns that shudder and death-lights that glow.

Belfries that buckle against the moon totter,
Caverns whose mouths are by mosses effac’d,
And living to answer the wind and the water,
Only the lean cats that howl in the wastes.

When I read this poem, I imagine Dawn wandering the streets of a late 19th century Brooklyn.

She is alone.

Her stage coach has broken down, and her driver has run off. She wanders the streets calling out for help, hopeless and realizing that she has spurned all her friends. As she begins to run, she hears the howls of the cats. At first, just one or two.

More follow.

Soon dozens of eyes light up the streets. One claws off her powdered wig, narrowly missing her neck. She makes a poor choice and turns down a dead end alley and becomes surrounded by hundreds of feral felines. As she looks to the stars and screams, they attack en masse. Bellies full, the cats are lean no more.

Happy Halloween!

My cousin called the other day to ask if I would “lend” her five hundred dollars to hire Yo Gabba Gabba characters and a circus for Sammy’s second birthday party. Now, once upon a time when I earned a lot of money, I would cut these conversations off with “how much do you need? Come by my office at 3 to get it.” It was a lot easier to hit the ATM than deal with the unfocused ramblings and empty promises of repayment that my family is known for. When I made less money, I would have a number in my head of how much I was willing to give to end the conversation, if the request was equal to or less, I would extract the promise for repayment and tell them to pick the money up from my mom. (I would tell my mom the deal and say that she could keep how ever much of the money she could get them to repay.)

Now, that I pretty much make no money, fifty bucks is my ceiling. Obviously, $500 way exceeded that…though, she could throw a slamming 12th birthday party for him with Yo Gabba Gabba…though I suspect by then he won’t so much be into it. Heck, he’s not even TWO, I doubt he’s much into it now. I tried to impress upon my cousin that Sammy would be better off if she took a hundred dollars and bought him a winter coat. Or found money to pay for the specialist his pediatrician suggested to her. (Random fact: He has the same pediatrician I had when I was a kid!)

But no. She has it in her head to have a huge carnival party for him in my aunt’s one bedroom apartment and she cannot be dissuaded. And as crazy as it is, part of me understands, the part of me that was so sad about my poverty that I bought a snowcone machine to cheer myself up.

Not having money sucks, not having the things you want sucks more. And so, I chose today’s poem mostly because if I ever meet this dude, I’m kicking him in the nuts. Anyone who romanticizes poverty should be robbed and kicked in the nuts. Fine, maybe not robbed, but definitely kicked in the nuts.

Poor men’s hearts aren’t light; they do not laugh. Their hearts are heavy and they cry. And their kids don’t ever get to go to Disney World even though they have memorized every word of every Disney World commercial because they spend all their free time watching TV, because it’s too dangerous to play outside. And the kids fantasize about sinking buzzer beating three pointers to win basketball championships because THEN you get to go to Disneyworld for free! But of course, that’ll never happen because you are a girl (And are barely five feet tall.)

The world without money is a bleak place of terrible choices and awful decisions and you’ll foolishly squander hundreds of dollars to see your son smile for a day because…well, because you know his life will probably suck in unbearably relentless ways for a very long time.

I get that. I do. And I wish I could throw money at them like I used to. Alas, I cannot. And that, my friends, is why I invented the vodka snowcone.

Money – W.H. Davies

WHEN I had money, money, O!
I knew no joy till I went poor;
For many a false man as a friend
Came knocking at my door.

Then felt I like a child that holds
A trumpet that he must not blow
Because a man is dead; I dared
Not speak to let this false world know.

Much have I thought of life, and seen
How poor men’s hearts are ever light;
And how their wives do hum like bees
About their work from morn till night.

So, when I hear these poor ones laugh,
And see the rich ones coldly frown–
Poor men, think I, need not go up
So much as rich men should come down.

When I had money, money, O!
My many friends proved all untrue;
But now I have no money, O!
My friends are real though very few.

I trust my memory above all things.

Its images and words are crystal clear to me. For particularly memorable moments, I can recall whole scenes, word for word; gesture for gesture at a moment’s notice. They can make me laugh or cry as sincerely as they did as those episodes unfolded in real time. I often have to remind myself that 1. Not everyone can do this and 2. It’s kind of weird and I really shouldn’t go around acting like stuff that happened ten years ago, is still real or relevant. No matter how vivid it is to me.

Elana once made me laugh in that “ouch, I better laugh or else I will cry” kinda of way when she said that she has the same problem sometimes.

“What do you mean you don’t remember that we had lockers next to each other in the eight grade? Oh, you’ve married, graduated from medical school and had three kids since then…right. Understandable.”

Yep. That’s just about it. Memories are great, as long as you remember that they are frozen in time, not you.

But, when the time is right, it’s cool to be able to hit “slideshow” in your mind, sit back and enjoy.

In D.C. by Elizabeth Alexander

In D.C. there are black women
with golden Afros and African-
print jumpsuits. Sidewalks sizzle

in summer, a languid,
loving fizz, a Hey Girl
hissing from the streets,

ambient, hey girl on all sides. Walk
up and down Georgia Avenue
or Florida Avenue or Columbia Road:

How you doin’? Hey.
You never know what you will miss
when you leave, what will call you

back, what will disappear
forever, or what was never there
quite as you now see it, hear it, write it

in memory’s poem.

Brooklyn is famous for its Labor Day parade.

Immigrants and their children make floats and costumes and dance through the streets under various West Indian, Carribean and Latin American flags. My extended cousins did it every year. And every year my mom would urge me to join the kids on the Panamanian float. And every year I’d say the same thing.
“I’ll join the American float.”

I never much went in for that “dash American stuff.”* Until I turned nine, I spent a few weeks, each summer, in Panama. I could barely understand my cartoons. I couldn’t really speak Spanish without being laughed at for my accent and called “gringa.” All my cousins would beg me to let them come back to New York with me. They believed the streets in America were paved with gold and we ate McDonald’s everyday. I did nothing to dispel these views. But they were Panamanian. Me? American.

Of course, as I got further in my American history studies and started to move in circles other than those in my small East Flatbush community where everyone else was also children of dark skinned Panamanian immigrants, I learned that my simple worldview hadn’t always been the case; heck, there were people who still didn’t think it was the case.

Pasty faced boys who screamed “Go back to Africa” as they rode past me waiting at a busstop in Bensonhurst -an Italian-American neighborhood, chapters in my history books about people who look like me legally being counted as a fraction of a person, learning that my gender wasn’t even afforded the right to vote until the 1900s, they served as constant reminders of a centuries-old struggle.

How does it feel to be a problem, Du Bois famously asked.
I don’t know, stronger more eloquent people before me made sure, that for the most part, I am culturally and legally accepted. Barack Obama doesn’t become President of the United States without dogs and fire hoses being turned on Southern teenagers.

There are other “problems” now: Gay people, Islam practitioners, the transgenered, single mothers.
The arguments and the protests are always the same. They are not us, therefore they are a threat to us.
If history is our guide, we will come around. Today Lt. Dan Choi is dismissed from the military for being openly gay. Tomorrow, somewhere, a new Governor, his partner and their twin Chinese daughters Liza and Judy will be sworn into the statehouse. Today there are irrational protests to burn Korans, tomorrow the winner of the Academy Award for Best Actor will give a shout out to Allah.

We will recognize “them” as “us.” We will end legal barriers to “their” full participation as the Americans they are.

Then America will be America again. The America it wasn’t to the Indians, or the slaves, or women or those of Japanese and Irish descent. And we can all finally focus on what truly threatens our society: zombies.

Let America be America Again by Langston Hughes

Let America be America again.

Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed–
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There’s never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek–
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one’s own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean–
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today–O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I’m the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That’s made America the land it has become.
O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home–
For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore,
And Poland’s plain, and England’s grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa’s strand I came
To build a “homeland of the free.”

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we’ve dreamed
And all the songs we’ve sung
And all the hopes we’ve held
And all the flags we’ve hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay–
Except the dream that’s almost dead today.

O, let America be America again–
The land that never has been yet–
And yet must be–the land where every man is free.
The land that’s mine–the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME–
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose–
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath–
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain–
All, all the stretch of these great green states–
And make America again!

**Without going into a lengthy discussion, “African-American” is synonymous for “black.” As there is no country called Africa, it obviously does not indicate that I am “African.” The term is a proxy for race. It’s about as accurate as saying, because I have brown skin, I am “black.”

Over the past year or so, there has been a lot of talk here on clareified.com about ending relationships; friends lost, lovers dismissed, or people just kicked to the curb for a number of minor and/or major offenses. I’m not calling out any one specific thing, just the general sense of ease most people seem to have on terminating relationships.

I have, for the most part, kept my thoughts to myself on these matters. Mostly, because I guess I just don’t agree with everyone else. Or, maybe I choose my friends better than other people. Or, maybe I’m just a sucker. I don’t know.

I used to be like Dawn and some of her readers. Cross me, and I was done with you. Either you ceased to exist to me, or I would get filled with indignant wrath. Usually both. I spent a lot of years living like that.

It’s not worth it.

Some might say, “I don’t get angry, I just remove people from my life.” It’s never that easy, and I think that Monkey Paw wine speaks to that argument.

The fact is, people make mistakes. Sometimes lots of them. Sometimes I do it too. For the most part, I don’t think people do these things out of malice. They do it out of ignorance. They do it to protect themselves. They do it for many reasons. It doesn’t mean it’s right, but I’m pretty sure it’s not malicious.
I don’t mean to say that you should keep people in your life that constantly hurt you. No one should do that. But, I find myself giving people lots more chances theses days and trying to understand others’ perspectives.

Though I no longer just cut people off, I certainly have friends and past lovers that I have drifted apart from for various reasons. Often that’s ok, and occasionally it really sucks. They say that time heals all wounds. Sometimes they are wrong. Some wounds never heal, they just become a part of you. Most of my wounds of that nature have to do with relationships lost. And though they are wounds, they are wounds of the best kind. The kind that represents what was lost, but never forgotten.

The following poem speaks to that.

MORE STRONG THAN TIME
Victor Hugo (1802-1885)

Since I have set my lips to your full cup, my sweet,
Since I my pallid face between your hands have laid,
Since I have known your soul, and all the bloom of it,
And all the perfume rare, now buried in the shade;

Since it was given to me to hear on happy while,
The words wherein your heart spoke all its mysteries,
Since I have seen you weep, and since I have seen you smile,
Your lips upon my lips, and your eyes upon my eyes;

Since I have known above my forehead glance and gleam,
A ray, a single ray, of your star, veiled always,
Since I have felt the fall, upon my lifetime’s stream,
Of one rose petal plucked from the roses of your days;

I now am bold to say to the swift changing hours,
Pass, pass upon your way, for I grow never old,
Fleet to the dark abysm with all your fading flowers,
One rose that none may pluck, within my heart I hold.

Your flying wings may smite, but they can never spill
The cup fulfilled of love, from which my lips are wet;
My heart has far more fire than you can frost to chill,
My soul more love than you can make my soul forget

VinNay is my first guest poetry blogger who ever did it twice! I didn’t even threaten him with violence!

Did Vinnay (NO LINK. LINKS ARE FOR BLOGGERS.) flake on poetry Wednesday AGAIN? Yes. Yes he did. Does this mean an additional course on the three course meal I have already demanded? Yes. Yes it does.

So, we’re doing another one of our last minute posts, but this one has sorta been in the back of my mind for a couple of weeks, so it shouldn’t be as scattershot as the last one of these I pulled together. Thank sweet baby Jesus for that.

A couple of weeks ago, I set out on a pseudo roadtrip with Mary to see “The Heartland.” Or what Sarah Palin so sweetly called “real America.” I know she got a lot of flack for it at the time, but I get where she’s coming from. I live in New York and I always call Eastern Standard Time “American time.” I also call New York, America. As in, after my trip to LA, “whew it’s good to be back in America again.” America is where your home is, I suppose.

However, I can appreciate that America isn’t just my corner of the world. No matter how spectacular a corner it is. So, about 8 years ago, after international backlash against President Bush’s 9/11 response turned much of the world against the U.S., I decided nuts to the rest of the world, I would see my country. Well, THE country. And one state at a time, I started my quest. I saw Texas and Montana and Minnesota and Oklahoma and UTAH! Yes, UTAH!

Then I lost my job, became poor and settled for seeing Atlantic City a bunch of extra times, but I still had 20 states that I needed to get back to.

I have been steadily employed for the first time in a long time, so, on a whim inspired by Grange’s birthday offer, I took off for a whirlwind 8 states in 9 days adventure.

I just got back and am still very tired, but I’ll be writing up the trip in greater detail soon. But for now I will simply say, America is a beautiful country. Except for one angry woman working at the fudge counter in Wall-drug and a dirty pool cop in Wyoming, I remain in awe of the kindness and warmth of the people I met. Our national treasures and parks are safeguarded by passionate and knowledgeable gatekeepers. I know “I’m going to Des Moines,” doesn’t sound quite as sexy as “Paris for the weekend,” but I highly recommend giving it a go.

Have dinner at Jethro’s, you won’t regret it. Bring your own corn though.

Thus today’s poem choice was easy (and I assure you, I am NOT cheating by posting music lyrics as poetry) and it should be a familiar one. Well, at least the first stanza, anyone who knows the rest of the poem will be reported to Homeland Security IMMEDIATELY! Dirty spy.

Defence of Fort McHenry (The Stars and Stripes Forever) by Francis Scott Key

1 O! say can you see, by the dawn’s early light,
2 What so proudly we hail’d at the twilight’s last gleaming,
3 Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,
4 O’er the ramparts we watch’d, were so gallantly streaming?
5 And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
6 Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there —
7 O! say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
8 O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave?

9 On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
10 Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes,
11 What is that which the breeze o’er the towering steep,
12 As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
13 Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam,
14 In full glory reflected now shines on the stream —
15 ‘Tis the star-spangled banner, O! long may it wave
16 O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave.

17 And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
18 That the havock of war and the battle’s confusion
19 A home and a country should leave us no more?
20 Their blood has wash’d out their foul foot-steps’ pollution,
21 No refuge could save the hireling and slave,
22 From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave;
23 And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
24 O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave.

25 O! thus be it ever when freemen shall stand
26 Between their lov’d home, and the war’s desolation,
27 Blest with vict’ry and peace, may the heav’n-rescued land
28 Praise the power that hath made and preserv’d us a nation!
29 Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
30 And this be our motto — “In God is our trust!”
31 And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
32 O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave.

Emily Dickinson – There is another sky

There is another sky,
Ever serene and fair,
And there is another sunshine, Though it be darkness there;

Never mind faded forests, Austin, Never mind silent fields –
Here is a little forest,
Whose leaf is ever green;
Here is a brighter garden,
Where not a frost has been;

In its unfading flowers I hear the bright bee hum
Prithee, my brother, Into my garden come

I guess you can blame my Catholic education, but I am something of a Nazi about justice. Hmm…I should probably rephrase that sentence.

As Martin Luther King Jr. said, injustice anywhere is a something something to justice everywhere. Hmm…I should probably google the precise wording of that quote.

(Raise your hand if you can tell that I totally forgot about Poetry Wednesday and I am very tired because I was tossing and turning all night because my braids are too tight? Put your hands down, jerkwads.)

*clears throat*

So, justice and me are, and always have been superfriends. And not just the whole eye for an eye thing, though I do stand by that, but a deeply ingrained sense of if someone is kind to you, you should be kind back. If someone needs help and you can help, you should. If you see something, say something. Someone is picking on your little cousin, they might have to meet with an unfortunate accident in the stairwell. I didn’t know about the concept of karma, then, but if I did, I would have probably gotten a tattoo which said “I am the karma I want to see in the world.”

Again, if I knew about karma. Oh, and if my mom wouldn’t have kicked my ass for getting a tattoo.

But the one aspect of living this karmic life that I always struggled with was gratitude. I could try to “pay my debts,” such as they were – but there are times when others just do things for you and you just aren’t in a position to “repay them,” so you’re just supposed to be grateful. Tell them you appreciate it. Man, I hated that! It feels so weak and humbling…but maybe, there’s some unsung strength in that…being able to accept help, being grateful at how someone improves your life. Or not.

But this poem made me think about that. And I figured I’d share. You’re welcome.

Those Winter Sundays

by Robert Hayden

Sundays too my father got up early
And put his clothes on in the blueback cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?

Oh, this might also be a fine time to thank all my poetry Wednesday guest bloggers, Petitedov, Pearatty, Angela, Tae, Alceste, Mary, Vinnay, Fisch, Astin, Tito, Kaz, I truly sincerely thank you all for volunteering, all free-willed like, and sharing your favorite poems.

And Pearatty, I hope you have gotten closure.

Vinnay has volunteered to do another one next week, and I extend that invitation to any of you to repeat guest blog. And anyone who hasn’t done one yet, but would like to, just leave me a comment and I will assign you a Tuesday!

F-train made fun of me the other day when I sent him this lengthy text about how I was soooo hot. He mocked me because I then went on to explain that by “soooo hot,” I meant that I had turned the AC off before I left for work and, with all the windows being closed, my apartment was a sauna. I concluded with “so I mean temperature wise, I didn’t want you to think I was conceited. Not that I’m not conceited, but just in this instance, I meant temperature wise.”

He responded “so what I’ve learned about you, is that you’d rather be thought long-winded and boring than conceited. Mission accomplished.”

Assface. I cannot wait until my friendship with him ends in 2012.

But, yes, I confess, I want to be understood. I will use as many words, clauses, parenthetical statements, texts, tweets, blogs or facebook statuses as it takes so that my position is perfectly clear. I don’t think of myself as particularly complicated or mysterious. I do what I say I will, I am predictable almost to the letter and I cling to routine like a toddler to its favorite stuffed toy. And yet…

I haven’t given this post very much thought. I was supposed to have a guest poetry blogger today, but *ahem* I don’t, so I’m stepping up in a pinch. I say that because I’m sure there might be unpleasant fallout from this post. That often comes when I write these kind of pieces without exactly naming names, but certain parties make certain assumptions… and heck, those assumptions are usually right. And everytime I get that fallout, I scowl and decide, “fine, I’m not writing anything like that again,” but then something new happens and, well…out it all tumbles.

But usually, I try to wrestle with my language for a few days before I hit publish, with this, I have maybe an hour before Poetry Wednesday is properly Thursday. Ish.

So, here goes, advance apologies to anyone hurt or further angered, with the understanding I can’t control anyone else’s reaction to what I write. I can only be as fair as I can to my own sense of truthiness.

But F-train is an assface. I stand by that.

My friend Pi sent me this poem, with the subject line “This made me think of you”

A Poison Tree
by William Blake

I was angry with my friend;
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I waterd it in fears,
Night and morning with my tears:
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright.
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine.

And into my garden stole.
When the night had veiled the pole;
In the morning glad I see,
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.

I jokingly wrote her back “Why would this remind you of me? Stupidface. Have an apple.”

But in reality, dude, this poem should be called an Ode to Dawn Summers. In the last ten years or so that I’ve had friendships that needed active participation to maintain cause I wasn’t just hanging out with the people I see in class or at camp everyday, I’ve learned certain things about myself.

I loathe confrontation. Yet, my capacity to harbor resentment knows no bounds. Delightful. I know.

However, with my friends, I’ve discovered handy ways to express my disappointment/disapproval/anger/hurt/annoyance that both avoids proper confrontation “screaming or tantrum throwing and like” but clears the air and allows me to let go of the unpleasantness. So, I’ll make jokes about how awesome it was not to be invited to their wedding or leave clever lines in posts about how I don’t care that you said you’d write the Poetry Wednesday guest post and then flaked without a word.

My friends are smart and decent, they take the hints. They apologize in fun ways and make it up to me with lots of comments and retweetage, and we move on.

But sometimes there comes a point where I’m making these jokes too often and far too many posts are loosely based on the fucked up things a certain person or persons have done. I start to delete them. My kidding around is replaced by silence. The resentment grows. Plans for revenge crystallize. I actively start to wish them ill. I feel bad, overcompensate with some nice deed, but then that niceness is taken for granted or not appreciated enough and we’re back to resentment.

This eventually goes one of two ways, they end up doing something marginally bad, but I explode in unmitigated rage as if they had smeared feces on my walls! They apologize; but it won’t matter, that’s not really what I was mad about in the first place and I don’t care enough to talk it through anymore. From their standpoint, I’m being unreasonable. They apologized, after all, why couldn’t I just accept it. Woe be to them if they express this to me verbally. How dare they tell me how to react to their apology for the bad thing they did?! HOW DARE THEY!

The other route? Cutting of all communication.

But, in the end, I think that’s the point of the poem. You either speak your mind, tell your wrath or know that you are well on the way to growing an enemy. For me, I also take this to mean that if friends have suddenly become silent with me, overreacting, in my mind, to small offenses, something else is wrong.

I grow weary.

Then wary.

I avoid their apple trees.

Well, who am I kidding, I avoid all apple trees, you know what I mean…I’d avoid their cupcakes. Unless they were vanilla/vanilla and delicious.

Damn you sweet tooth! Daammnnn yoouu!