The invention of poetry

I never liked poetry.

Frustrated
by rules
and precision.
Tired of sitting
and thinking
what rhymes with my last line...
am I coupletting correctly?

Who made these rules?

Not poets.

We, The Normal People,
so in awe of your word magic.
We dissect.
We count syllabus.
Trying to find the science behind the trick,
the slight in the hand.

I never liked poetry.

Until I read some
and wrote some
and realized:
I am not a scientist.
I am not the normal people.
I do not dissect.

I make the rules.

So go ahead
Count my syllables.
Measure my voice.
Analyze my worth.
Someday, you will imitate my structure.
I invented poetry.

Saint Edna spoke to me,
carved her words into my skin,
Like lined paper,
always where they were meant to be.

She sang about the wide open spaces.
About the girl who sang colored pebbles.
About fog so thick, it swirls as you move through it.
About loving someone so much it breaks your heart to look at them,
and about the loneliness that comes from walls like ours.

I read books about childhood and adventure,
books that had plot and point,
and then I read about a little girl
who lived in a house,
on a street named after fruit,
about how aweful it is to be young.
How beautiful and horrid life is.
And she was like me, a red balloon.
She sang in my key.

Sarah writes about food and love.
About messes and remembering.
about sisters and forgetting.

These are my saints.

Edna sang about sadness.
Sandra sang about sadness.
Sarah sang about food and sadness.
And I harmonized,
with my snap crackle voice.
It's broken notes and misplaced vibratos
Sobbing songs that we feel in the hollows of our chest,
like chocolate bunny hearts, that shatter when you press your thumbs in.
That same hollow breaking
mutilates the form and figure
and anyone lucky enough to not know
will look at it and ask,
what is this supposed to be?

Getting Very Philosophical about Fruit.

Honestly, I've always thought apples and oranges were pretty similar. Highly comparable in many ways. Both fruits, which we eat, they can be delicious or disappointing, sweet, under ripe or rotten. Most people have one they typically prefer, (I personally, am an Orange person), but as two of the most typical fruits, either will do for almost any situation. Both make a nice juice, both are handy and nutritious at any meal, and slip into a snack lunch pretty casually. Perhaps an apple will never be a good orange, but sometimes an orange isn't a good orange either, and when I want fruit, either will do.

People say "Apples and Oranges!" to claim that two things are being compared that are incomparable.
I think this kind of logic is essentially flawed. Of course everything in the world is different, which is why you cannot eat only apples your whole life, but claim you know what oranges are. You can't eat one orange and decide they're all bad. You can't read about oranges online and decide they're all bad.

And yes, there are basic differences between apples and oranges:
Apples range in color from yellow to green to red, often a combination of the colors. The fruit is mealy and pith-like in a gross apple, and crispy and sweet in a good apple. Oranges are orange when ripe, the fruit is juicier, and divided into sections by a thin annoying skin. They are easier to peel, but it's also more necessary, and the effort of having to peel them makes them more work to eat.

Of course, there are countless differences and variations among the fruits themselves. Every apple seed inside an apple will grow a new kind of tree, the only way to propagate one type of apple (say, gala) is by grafting. Every single gala apple you've ever eaten, eventually came from the same tree. When I was growing up we had an apple tree in our front yard that grew apples that were green and starchy and very sweet. We would eat them when we were bored. We would eat them till our stomachs hurt. You had to eat around the little worm holes and hope for the best. That house is no-mans-land now, the tree is dead and I will never taste those apples again.

Oranges are a winter fruit. They are a citrusy explosion of flavor, or a bland, tasteless skin sack that you spent five minutes peeling, and your hands are all sticky now. Tiny oranges are the same, but less work. Clementines remind me of christmas. I love buying bags of oranges and eating them all day, my trash bins and pockets filling with bright peels.

Peaches are good too. I love the way pineapples look, but they make my tongue itchy. As I'm writing this I'm eating a pomegranate, and my fingers are sticking to the the keys a little bit. And the name pomegranate means, in latin, "Seeded apple". Because honestly, let's all stop being snobs and admit, in the grand scheme of things, all fruit is basically the same. And for whatever reason, we think everything should be apples...

Anyway, in case you can't tell, this is supposed to be some sort of metaphorical. Except when it got a little bit side tracked and it was actually about fruit, because, that happened too. Also, When I say I'm an orange person, thats not a metaphor, I prefer oranges, the literal fruit, to apples, the literal fruit. I am a little bit orange though, now that you mention it, up on top... Actually now that I'm reading it this is almost all about fruit. Well. I tried. Have a good week everyone, in light of recent events, remember not to oversimplify to a matter of race, ethnicity or religion, there are crazy evil screwballs in every sector of the world. You know, Bad Apples. (*snicker*) (don't laugh, I'm trying to make a point) (yeah, but see how I brought that full circle? pretty clever.)  (shhhh)

Blue Ukelele

If you are going to be this
radiantly--
gloriously
beautiful
could you please do it somewhere else?

I have spent years cultivating this brain,
with books, education and careful synaptic pruning,
then you walk in
with that smile,
and it is all reduced
to a twitching,
soupy,
electric
puddle.

The thrill of just a few moments
-not even with-
simply near
you

and I am undone.
A school girls blush
is so unbecoming
on a full grown woman.

And
there is the slow decent,
in your absence,
back to sanity,
rationality.

But still,
there is a constant craving.
You are a vixen,
and it is cruel of you to exist
if your simply going to leave.