jedmund.

Yes, I’m done posting poetry here. I will leave you on a wonderful note: I got in to Mars Hill...

Sat, 29 Nov 2008 01:50:09 -0500

Yes, I’m done posting poetry here. I will leave you on a wonderful note:

I got in to Mars Hill Graduate School!!!! WOO HOO!!!

end?

Thu, 27 Nov 2008 00:32:13 -0500

I may be done posting poetry here.

Life is good.

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 20:02:18 -0500

Life is good.

who you are is who you are is not what you do

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 13:23:54 -0400

“I’m nothing.
I’ll always be nothing.
I can’t want to be something.
But I have in me all the dreams of the world.”
-Fernando Pessoa, The Tobacco Shop

then then then
you are all the dreams of the world
if you have nothing inside you
then well then
you are nothing
and i
know no one with nothing inside

i know those with blood though
a bloody mess shrapnel inside though
are they the blood of the world
or perhaps

perhaps i know a rose
that is all the dreams of the world
that is a white linen with which to mop blood
that fits warm inside you and
then, then, then,
you are what you are
you and that rose are you

(also in response to Goddog by Jenifer Hartsfield)

"Some mistakes, given time, don’t seem mistakes— I’m counting on that; others, though..."

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 17:01:49 -0400

““Some mistakes, given time, don’t seem mistakes—
I’m counting on that; others, though perhaps
a little bit still worth being sorry for,
lose force,
we forget them mostly, or we say we have and,
almost, we surprise
ourselves, even—we mean
what we say: “it’s cold here. It’s dark. Follow me.””

- Riding West, by Carl Phillips.

This is kind of the theme of my senior thesis, and of the book I’m reading by Dan Allender, Leading With A Limp

Life with a dog is easier to do

Sun, 26 Oct 2008 20:50:40 -0400

Sorry I haven’t updated in a while. Stressful life. But I’m coping by listening to Christmas music and cuddling with my new dog. Speaking of which, I got a new dog. His name is Orion and he is officially one of my heroes.

part v. of forgiveness

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 00:56:54 -0400

v.
patty griffin descended
on a cloud of her own
brown curly hair
singing promises of florida
that the old people would
still be there when i got back
so i wrote a memoir for her
about the women raped
and bled all over the
slave castle in elmina

patty offered me forgiveness at a time when i wouldn’t take
it from god so i didn’t capitalize his name
and she lay me down in a bed of brown curly hair,
told me it’s hard to get, hard to give,
she stuck her fingers up my nasal cavity
passed the burning undying sensation
plucked my tonsils and vocal cords
from the brain where they’d fallen
relocated them, blessed the air,
and told me
i had nothing
to confess

The odd couple, or Shrek & Donkey.

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 00:54:11 -0400

The odd couple, or Shrek & Donkey.

"The only travelled sea that I still dream of Is the cold black pond where once, On a fragrant..."

Sun, 14 Sep 2008 20:53:20 -0400

“The only travelled sea that I still dream of
Is the cold black pond where once,
On a fragrant evening, fraught with sadness,
I launched a boat frail as a butterfly.”

- Ted Berrigan, The Drunken Boat, A Homage to Arthur Rimbaud

My graphic design class this semester is going to be fun.

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 17:02:15 -0400

My graphic design class this semester is going to be fun.

I Am A...Swimmer?

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 22:34:00 -0400

Today the pool was crowded when I went to swim, so I only managed 20 minutes before getting annoyed at constantly bumping into the sweet elderly lady next to me. Regardless, as I got out the guy next to me asked if I swim for the UM Swim team.

I don’t, but that was nice of him.

Update.

It turns out UM doesn’t even have a male swim team. So either that guy was as unaware as I was about UM’s sports teams, or he was confused on a grandiose level about my gender — a pretty astounding feat considering me standing there with my chest hair and adam’s apple and all. But hey, weirder things have happened.

A tad embarassing.

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 22:32:00 -0400

A tad embarassing.

can't stop listening to this song

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 01:51:16 -0400

can't stop listening to this song

poetry from africa

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 01:50:50 -0400

fayola’s post about water in africa inspired me to look over some of the writing i did in kenya/ghana. i was overwhelmed by broken glass, as you’ll see. they’ve yet to be edited.

cracked

i stepped over a bottle of broken glass
the pieces all soft wax fusing
to the ground to the soft
earth melting like no glass
should, should i

pick up the glass a
woman picked up the glass
and came to me,
came scrabbling jibberish
begging for me to buy buy her
broken glass
broken wax

her cheek had three curley hairs
several growths found themselves
beneath her lip, her eye,
her bloodshot eye
and she carried rotten eggs in a bag
or in her armpits

so i say,
woman you are too much for me
woman i am overcome by your
overcoming taste

she screamed quietly and placed
a piece of the soft molten glass wax
in my mouth and i bit hard
bloody hard

a response to “bottle” by rainer maria

She looked through me and said,
Baby there’s the moon
Then she offered to sing to it
Sing it down for me
But only if I asked her.

I asked her and asked her
She’d forgotten her promise
I screamed at her,
Time to make the stars lonely girl
Her tongue tasted sand
Her lips melted together
I pointed.
Baby
The moon.

Her eyes dripped a few pieces of glass
Baby, where’s the moon
She looked through me
And said nothing.

location: fiji, m/v pacific link. en route to the island of...

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 21:04:53 -0400

location: fiji, m/v pacific link. en route to the island of totoya

“so lift up your heart now, to this unfolding all that has...

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 20:59:00 -0400

“so lift up your heart now, to this unfolding
all that has been broken will be restored
here runs deep waters for all who are thirsty
for love has come, love has come for you”
-caedmon’s call, ten thousand angels

location: ghana, wli falls

with apologies to the sea

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 23:53:28 -0400

see the scent of her hair cascade
as she tumbles her way home at midnight
his breath stenches, rotten
fish, and he tells the ocean of his fears

she tumbles her way home at midnight
earth moistens toes born of phosphorus and gold-
fish, he tells the oceans of his fears
though the ruby-tasting stars won’t hear it

earth moistens toes born of phosphorus and gold
alive now, and with dew on their fingertips
though the ruby-tasting stars won’t hear it
she clutches fierceness and honey to her breast

alive now, and with dew on their fingertips
they dance rotten tumbling into cascades
she clutches fierceness and honey to her breast
he whispers apologies to the sea and the stars

they dance rotten tumbling into cascades
his breath stenches rotten.
he whispers apologies to the sea, and the stars
see the scent of her hair cascade

-a collaboration with hannah (who doesn’t have a blog. yet.)

Old Writing

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 03:24:00 -0400

I wish I’d kept my journals from high school. I was embarassed by my “crappy” poetry and threw it all out, when I really could have re-read a lot of it to inspire myself for future writing. Pretty lame. Here’s something I found…my friend hannah and I both wrote these prose poems that ended up being the last page of our school’s literary magazine our junior year (we were both editors so it was pretty easy to get our own work in…haha). Her’s was a response to mine, though I’m not going to post her’s since it belongs to her and not me.

Disclaimer: It’s not very good. I was 16. wait, 17. 4 years ago. Whatever.

I just want to grab people by the hands and scream, look. LOOK AT life! look at every gesture and every touch and every meaning that grasps us each so delicately! Every feeling, TAKE A MINUTE AND LOOK! Touch, touch, touch, and then rush. But life, look at what is, this is, is is is is! A whisper of fingers on your neck and then, nothing? Never! Can you reach out and touch every emotion and thought? No? Have you tried. Touch touch, feel, refeel, God there is meaning in meaning in meaning and life to be thought and rethought. See. Lying here and there, lying and talking, there underlying and metaphysical and pseudo and all that MEANING TO JUST GRAB….and let go and grab again! Can a ray of sun enter your soul and turn your mind to a light refraction of beauty and angelic presence? What kind of question is that? It’s a question. and it’s a thought. Isn’t your shadow right there, with you? And isn’t that a perfect reflection of you, horizontally? And aren’t you a vertical reflection of your horizontal reflection with life bouncing in between the two of you and it won’t really stop forever bouncing bouncing there’s life pulsing through every image you cast until the sun goes down and; there’s life bouncing through someone on the other side of the world! And thought, thought, think, look, just look. And after I grab and scream life in every inch second drop scent taste rhythm movement year love eye wind mark, every scribble of a pencil, to fall to the ground in tears of realization and self absorption that can’t be given, transferred, but love..love for it anyway.

"What is prayer if not a marriage of passion and the opposing need for quiet loneliness? What is a..."

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 17:27:39 -0400

““What is prayer
if not a marriage
of passion and the opposing need
for quiet loneliness? What is
a poem, if not the death cry
of each moment’s hard won
and abandoned self? What is
the self?””

- Margaret Gibson, Poetry is the Spirit of the Dead, Watching

the response from the tree, or not about failure, or grace gone wild

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 13:56:53 -0400

this poem is like 2 1/2 pages long. this is the first stanza. i may be submitting this for publishing so i’m not gonna share the whole thing.

if my fingers are inside out
writing this
will blood splatter over
the keyboard on the screen
if i commit the act of a failure
will my blood pour out
from the tips of my fingers