poetic curse

faces stare back at me through history: i read the poets of the past and i hear their voices speak to me through the marvels of modern inventions and i sit and think.

sit, think, sit, think--stuck in the washing machine cycle of perpetual thought.

am i too to be pigeon-holed as just another woman author, another woman poet of all things? i don't want my work to be interrupted as being feminine. to me it transcends gender. where do we draw the line between men and women, and more importantly where does this line cease to exist? there is no face to the narrator speaking those words. i am in the background: an unimportant player in the flow and dynamics of my words. i do not want to be the next 'feminist' writer; i just want to say what i have to say and that is that. i sit and think some more.

alone, alone, alone, alone in a quest to find the meaning to it all.

where is my place in this universe? i've been writing since somebody first put a pencil in my hand, but where is it all going? sometimes my path is blurry and mingled with the scents of others i do not wish to smell but inevitably always seem to be lurking somewhere by my side. i am cursed to ponder the state of things. i need to write it all down but i lack the focus to do so. i must find a way. i sit and think.

this is routine for me now. thinking is more than an action; it is a way of life.

i wish i could find other poets to figure out if i'm alone in my madness. the words never stop. i try to stare vacantly and peacefully at the clouds, but the clouds form into words and ideas. the blue sky contorts into women in dresses twirling and writhing in the pleasures of the wind and clouds gently brushing over their flesh. they moan and sigh from above and that wetness you feel falling on your head is not rain or dew.

today i was staring at the windows of a skyscraper shining in the flood-lights of the bus station and their reflection of the cityscape. i was entranced by the beautiful angle it made against the sky; a juxtaposition of nature and society: who is the rightful owner of this planet? we take her beautiful face and mar it with our presence. someday we will all be exfoliated off her face like the spiteful acne we've become.

i dreamt of dressing a cat in its own fur; it had a zipper to aid the process. i look at my cat and see no such props to aid his transcendence from furry creature to furless one. i wish i could zip off my skin and figure out what makes me work. what are my processes? why do i write like there's nothing better to do? poetry is a disease, and as i count its ravages on my soul, i slip off into fits of imagination that draw me farther and farther away from reality; i fall into nonsense that seems to sprout out of nowhere: is this the way my imagination is doomed to manifest itself? perhaps i should wait another ten years before trying to come to any conclusions about myself. after all, i'm only twenty-six. sometimes i feel like i must be at least a hundred...

i picture myself growing into an old lady with crow's feet around my eyes, still staring off at clouds and measuring verse on the backs of strangers. counting each and every track that the train bounces over in an orgy of electricity and steel, i will watch for eternity, just waiting until all the answers are revealed.

-ade.