kaarina started us out on the theme of dreams. i’ve lived several imaginary lives in moments here and there… and haven’t thought of them as being a part of me before, however fleeting those dreams may be. but it’s true that they are. albeit in my head, they stay with me as solid as my bones.
now that i hear them gathering around me i’ll spit this out like a list or a free verse poem:
i moved to washington
with my truck and my dog
buzzed my hair
and lived like a dandelion gone to seed with my guitar
and my voice in the wind
then
once with little left to lose
i grew my hair long and tangled
bought a motorcyle
and crossed the country a thousand times
alone
younger
i moved into an oval silver trailer
at the mouth of sandy red foothills
stayed warm in wool socks and sweaters
bundled with my best friend
and our books
younger still
my love galloped down my suburban street
i ran to meet him in bare feet
scooped into the saddle and his arms
we rode away
through the colored sky all the way to oregon
and i named him joseph
they’re fading away and now my inner history feels more real. my bones have a voice.
mmmmm…….
i love this.
i love “inner history” & “my bones have a voice.”
bones are hidden away from us, like dreams, but there, real, concrete, holding us together. what an incredible metaphor.
there’s an indigo girls’ song, here’s the lyrics from memory, “…the dreams crowd in like needy children begging at my feet, i said i have no way of feeding you, so leave…”
we do that, don’t we? silence them & send them away to slowly starve.
i don’t think they go, though, & i don’t think they ever die.
Lovely poem, dear. I’m really glad you two thought of this blog. I am really excited to see what creativity it sparks in you. Yesterday I was reading some Borges, and I came across a passage that I think describes your poetic sensitivity:
“The fate of the writer is strange. [She] begins [her] career by being a baroque writer, pompously baroque, and after many years [she] might attain if the stars are favorable, not simplicity, which is nothing, but rather a modest and secret complexity” (Jorge Luis Borges _Selected Poems_, 149).
You have that “modest and secret complexity.”
Oh, and I didn’t mean in any way that you were ever “pompously baroque.” π
that IS a great poem, aimee. you just “spit that out”? wow. π it’s funny, for the longest time i wanted to live in a van, or my car, or in the woods. never did it. i tried dreadlocks once, too, for a few days, but then my head got too itchy. i was also thinking today about how i regret never having gotten my degree in fashion design, or gotten more training in computer graphics, etc. i’m looking for a job these days and don’t feel i have enough “credentials” to get a creative jpb, am afraid of having to work some boring job, and not having enough time for creativity…
p.s. hi james! you’re aimee’s husband, i’m assuming…:)
wow aimee! you’re amazing, and I’m glad that I’ll be seeing more of you on here! Its much more fun than merely doing alterations together π