poem: as much time as it takes

1.

you have two lines to get my attention-

   beyond, you have wasted

precious money-making minutes

       of my day.

 

you might even be un-A-May-ri-can.

 

the other morning,

   I read an article that said

we are a nation of psychopaths

       outliers even among outliers

in the kingdom

    devoid of empathy.

 

give me the Cliff's Notes version

 tell me what happens

       not how it f*****g feels

tell me what it is important that

         I know.

 

2.

I guess it all depended on

  the kind of life our grandparents desired

     for us, here

but we have left precious small room

    for magic

 

we read now to sharpen the tools

   we use against our enemies-

each other-

 

     not for the way

 the written word feels on the tongue,

    tastes on the roof of the mouth

 

 as you sound the syllables out loud

      and let the characters dance

and their truth develop

from sketches

 

    like images in silver plates

negative space, filling in the detail

   slowly developed

 

we prefer crisp and clean,

   austerity, a virtue

our literature maybe reflects

  our economic policies, our

taste in technology, a mirror

       of us

 

   we want it all digital, therefore

                perfectable.

 

3.

just tell me whodunnit, already.

but maybe that is precisely

    the point-

       that we all dunnit

and then we all forgot to pay

 our share

of the non-religious

    morality bill.

 

4.

maybe too that touches just the edge

      of what I admire in you-

you see that image

   as you reach across to grasp,

 

and then, hold on to, the way

    sand felt under your toes

       when you let a day just be drawn

    in perfect lines.

 

         there is something in you

 that a serving of hard-boiled cynicsm

      never was able

                to satisfy completely

 

5.

I remember growing up,

    the worst sin

you could commit- a public declaration

of love or hope

      or joy- about anything.

 

the boys

    tortured cats with fishing poles

 and real hooks baited

      with hot sweaty meat

and they pressed hot greedy hands

     into our spaces-

 

love was something they said

       to get a girl to lower her standards

   to deny her next morning

 

    in such small ways, every day

         we were acclimated slowly,

    especailly as young women

to being one of a series ,

                of numbers.

 

for the implication was clear

     in the way the cat struggled too:

we would be just as easy, soft things

     that we are-

          to gut like a perch.

 

6.

The truth is, maybe I delude myself

        even now, flailing to free myself of

lines, and hooks; the loneliness of

               a deeper way of feeling

in a land that does not value

       my particular contributions.

 

    I cannot spend all my time either

hoping a married man realizes

    he is in love with my flaws-

          my life itself has always been gifted

that way, with an excess of paragraphs

 

those plates were never meant to be developed

      they were perhaps better suited

           to a long messy novel where

     the heroine never found a tidy ending

with her own prince.

 

The kind we have not the patience for

    the kind that tell us

precisely what we do not want to know

     in far far too many words

 

7.

we circle further and further

    from our own centers

and we call it progress.

 

somethere,

     there HAS to be a breathing place

somewhere, a doorway

   to that myhtical dimension

where time only ever occupies

    the space it actually took

 

        where there is no opportunity cost

for the minutes required

            to watch the sun set over the Pacific.

 

and I want to be counted as more

  than a series of numbers

   and statistics and marks for a sale

 

8.

an admission, then.

  

    I may not know

   what land holds that particular

compass point but-

 

if we can find the right psychopomp

  to bring a close to psychopathy:

 

I would so love to seek and enter that space

        for breath with unknown you

and let your imperfections develop

    in an uninterrupted attention span

and even spend precious time

    examining how that tastes

on my tongue

     and how that feels

   in exactly as many seconds, hours, days;

 as many lines

         as it damn well takes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Author's Note

imperfect and messy. maybe I will come back to it. maybe not

Reviews

[Poetic Beauty]

I like this piece. The first stanza got my attention. That sounds like publishers! You have to make the first paragraph attention getting or you are tossed aside.

Readers wanting Cliff notes. Yep I know many people like that. I however love to read. I like the escape into a different world and drifting for a few moments away.

You make many valid points in this piece. This is thought provoking and makes us take a deeper look at how digital we have become and lazy too. I love to read books. Hold and feel the book in my hands. Turn the pages and feel the paper on my finger tips.

[Marie Anzalone]

Thank you very much for such a kind review, Ms. Beauty. Sometimes you read soemthing, and it tickles around in the back of your mind for a while. A few years ago, I read Roberto Bolano's mind-blowing, reality-altering novel, "2666," and have never been the same. A character in the novle, Amalfitano, is a literary professor and critic, and notes how we have veered, in literary tastes away form the large, risk-taking imperfect works (Melville was an author cited), in favor of short, tightly wrapped shorter works that are safer. I prefer the imperfect myslef, for my own life is an imperfect as one can get, and my writign reflects that. I get so frustrated sometimes with these kids on site with their short attention spans, "um no more than, like, a few lines, because, I like, get bored easily." No s**t. The time it takes is the time it takes... and I have been reading a lot of psychology about the connections between the ability to be mindful, to be absorbed- and the presence or absence of psychopathies of varying sorts. Fascinating stuff. There have also been studies scarily espousing the uS of having a general prevailing psychpopathy- marked by lack of empathy and severe polarization, as its national identity. I fled to another country and found I could breathe easier, even if it is an extremely lonely place. Boredom and loneliness i think are required to help us hone our various arts.

[Poetic Beauty]

I have to agree with you on the fact that we need silence in order to perfect our art or hone it. We need time to think and let go. I am not much a tv person and many times I have music playing with the tv off when I write. I still write most of my poems old school first then type them up. I don't have a smart phone. Sometimes I just need quiet and calm. I am a reader and writer. Don't get me wrong I have a few shows I enjoy watching like Game of Thrones, Arrow, Vampire Diaries, and Revolution. I am more a movie goer but still would rather read one of my many books laying around the house. The US is too busy. We run around like chickens with our heads cut off going in a million directions at once and we wonder why there is so much anxiety and panic disorders here.

I agree kids have a short attention span for reading these days. I don't like to read long stories but that is because the white back ground with black letter messes with my eyes after awhile and gives me a headache. If I could change the color it helps but I am also old school on books as well. i want to hold and read. Turn pages as I said before.

[MoriartyMesa]

F*****g awesome, loved this.

[Marie Anzalone]

I don't know that anyone has ever described my work using the F-bomb as an adverb before (me yes; my work, no). And certainly never in a flattering way. I have to say... it f*****g feels great! Thank you. :-)

[Girl Friday (Sarah W.)]

Well done, I quite liked this one. I love your style, very conversational and easy to get into the flow. There are so many little points to this piece that I scarcely know where to start in terms of what hit me the hardest, but I truly loved the first and last sections, they both rang like deep bells for me. Your points are provoking and intense, but written in an accesible fashion.

[Marie Anzalone]

Thank you, Gril Friday, for stopping by here tonight, and for taking the time to read and review. I often get people saying that my work is too confusing to follow, so it is refreshing to hear someone new say it is accessible :-) I am glad it spoke to you. I try to put soemthing worthwhile into most of my pieces; otherwise, I feel I would be wasting the reader's time. I appreciate your time tonight. This was a pretty terrible day all around; so nice for a few positive lines and thoughts. It is late, and bed calls (18 hour days get to me sometimes), but will be back to check out some of your writing soon.

[Girl Friday (Sarah W.)]

I really liked it. It reminds me a little of my own style, perhaps that is why I was drawn to it.

[Marie Anzalone]

I saw that :-)

[Tree]

The first thing that came to my mind after reading this was: I must go back to collect those bits of truth and wisdom, strewn across your poem like a handful of clear colored marbles, dropped by a child.

An amalgamation of the speaker's journeys though, not always pretty, but honest and forthright, even harsh. The speaker, giving us the cold dark truth. One particular portion of your piece reached out and slapped this reader, hard.

''The truth is, maybe I delude myself /even now, flailing to free myself of/ lines, and hooks; the loneliness of/ a deeper way of feeling/ in a land that does not value/my particular contributions.''

I think a lot of creative people might relate to this. There are not a lot of places in this country that values the creative free spirit anymore, few places nurture this.

Caught between two worlds is an overarching theme here. On one hand we yearn for the simplicity and the natural truth but on the other we are disgusted with the perfection and perceived ''sanitation'' of the other ... but strangely we allow ourselves to be seduced by her. And we hate ourselves for it.

This piece is messy and imperfect because the world is; We are. I say let it be. Don't change a thing.

Nice work,

Raquelita

[Marie Anzalone]

Thank you, Diego, for your review. I wonder as much about the places where we do encourage creativity- individual fields of work, indiviudal towns and cities- as much as where we often do not. There are no quick or easy answers. People often are surprised to find that, as a creative/ natural person, among other things I have never tried marijuana. I had an ex who was not only a user, but a promoter, working on changing the laws. He had 100 reasons why it should be legalized. He was also exceptionally abrasive and so emotionally disconnected he was essentially paranoid while he poured his passion and creativity into essentially selfish pursuits- violent video games, pot, and electronics consumption. He admired my art until In turned its eye towards him- introsepction had not been his strong suit. It has been 4 years now that I am gone, and his dismissiveness and attacks still haunt me.

But that to me sums up the whole question of pot in America, and can be a metaphor for so many other things. Yes, marijuana has legimate medicinal properties, used correctly, under a doctor's guidance. Yes, used correctly, in small doses, it also CAN be a powerful transformational tool, spiritually. Here's the thing- it is estimated that only 2% of Americans ever get to the level of spiritual and mental maturity thta their use of pot would be anywhere near to its correct intended spiritual purpose. Spiritual growth and enlightnment is hard work, and people want the shortcut. They want the song electronically enhanced to cover flaws in the voice, they want the Cliff's notes so they can say they read the book without investing the time in reading the poetry of its words, they want the artifical existential enlightenment that comes from getting high, not the real spiritual growth that comes from connection with another human being. We want video games that further enhance the pot-induced emotional distance from other living beings.

My narrator in this, above all, is uneasy about the type of world left behind when this becomes the norm. When the impatient, instant gratification crowd becomes the norm- when there is no room left for growth, introspection, or the type of human relationship that encourages depth and understanding.

She wonders, like me, if whe will always be left searching for that elusive connection in a place where the appreciation of slow organic processes has been, as you say, sanitized. She wonders if anyone will ever join her in a life path that seeks to look for that kind of depth.