Poetry and Music (I'm Still Here!)

So many things are happening all at once! More trips and excitement, but sadly fewer good photos to share (that's what I get for letting other people take pictures on their -admittedly far superior- cameras); I'll try to get more pictures soon, I promise.

So much uni work (brain overload), so many activities I want to cram into my last few months (trips, events, and fun, oh my!), and so many things to think about and ponder and reflect on as my time in Oz begins to draw to a close (I'll have to save those meandering thoughts until I have time and mental space to write it all out).

Thus, in the meantime so you beloved readers don't think I've forgotten about you, I'll put up a few poems and songs that have been floating around at the back of my head throughout this crazy time.

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Now I Become Myself

Now I become myself. It's taken
Time, many years and places;
I have been dissolved and shaken,
Worn other people's faces,
Run madly, as if Time were there,
Terribly old, crying a warning,
"Hurry, you will be dead before--"
(What? Before you reach the morning?
Or the end of the poem is clear?
Or love safe in the walled city?)
Now to stand still, to be here,
Feel my own weight and density!
The black shadow on the paper
Is my hand; the shadow of a word
As thought shapes the shaper
Falls heavy on the page, is heard.
All fuses now, falls into place
From wish to action, word to silence,
My work, my love, my time, my face
Gathered into one intense
Gesture of growing like a plant.
As slowly as the ripening fruit
Fertile, detached, and always spent,
Falls but does not exhaust the root,
So all the poem is, can give,
Grows in me to become the song,
Made so and rooted by love.
Now there is time and Time is young.
O, in this single hour I live
All of myself and do not move.
I, the pursued, who madly ran,
Stand still, stand still, and stop the sun!


by May Sarton
{I don't believe I've become myself -but I think I'm a lot closer than I was before}
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I am madlymadlymadly in love with this song and music video. XD I tend to find really upbeat dance songs when I have to chain myself to a computer for days on end for uni projects, and this is a particularly excellent one.

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Okay, so I know I'm clearly biased because Joe is my bro, but SERIOUSLY GUYS, he is an incredible musician. (Joe, quit making me cry with your damn beautiful sad music! Jerk!)

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Human Atlas

Because the body really
is Mars, is Earth or Venus or the saddest downsized
Pluto, can be booked, bound, mapped then.
Or rendered like something off the bone, fat just under
the animal skin, to lard,
cheaper, quicker than butter, like stillness
belies restlessness, like every yes
was or will be not, never, no,
                                                  none of that.
A full section in such a book
keeps the skeleton quiet. (So untroubled to be specific, to say
femur, rib, half-minute of splendor,
to stare like that
stops time...) Or slick pages and pages given over
to slow the blood, remake muscle, to un-secret
that most mysterious lymph, its arsenal
of glands under the arm, at groin, at neck, awful
ghost lightning in it. Inscrutable.
                                                            Complete: because
the whole body ends, remember?
But each ending
goes on and on. Complete: because some
minor genius with a pencil, with ink, with drastic color
makes that arm you've known for years
raw, inside out, near wanton run of red vessel and nerve,
once a sin to look, weirdly now,
what should be hidden. Oh, it's garish
                                                               equals austere.
Compute. Does not compute. Tell me.
Then tell me who that
me is, or the
you understood, the any of us, our precious
everything we ever, layer upon
bright layer.



by Marianne Boruch
{I've been thinking a lot about home and homes and of course people}
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