String Theory

A million different strings,

From a million different angles,

Hand-sewn by needlepoint, radiating from every pore of my poor body.

Each pulled taut by who- or what-so-ever;

Inmobility is an understatement.

But I’m still here,

Held together by the reverberating tugs of expectation.

Constantly in the shadow of what I could be—

The shadow of a—

World, constructed by me and those around

Me.

“Who am I?”

Is not nearly as pressing as  “What will I be?”

When I grow up, I—

No, they—no, I—no, we

Want—

What?

We want.

But when

A million different strings,

From a million different angles,

Let go, tired of waiting for a shadow to move on its own,

Then what?

A million different strings,

Tied in million different knots—

Freedom can be just as paralyzing.

That is—

Until my body feels something besides pressure,

Until my legs can carry my own weight,

Until my weight measures only me,

Until I stand, walk, run in a singular direction,

Away from the shadow I helped to shade,

Until the only shadow left is the one I leave behind

Me.

Until then.

Friday Night Poetry Club, Take 2

Honey Traps

by Francesca McMahon
Old Harlow, UK

Then our mother found herself
abandoned in the fallow years
of schools, church halls, playgrounds,
swimming pools. Her sons chased
other sons, endlessly, like mice
on a wheel. Us girls caught her heels,
bound her ankles with name tape,
hair ribbon, skipping rope. At dusk,
hands doused in dishwater, discordant
noise from miniature instruments
tortured her ears; under her breath
she counted days - years and years
of them - stolen from her own life.

More and more she saw the answer
in the future, when we would all leave
home, or run away. She planned
to celebrate: set light to the oven,
solder the iron, smash up the plates.
Saw herself swimming through a tide
of spilt milk, towards freedom.

Now the future has arrived she sits alone
in a room full of people; suffers
the steady chiming of a granddaughter
clock. At four, like a cuckoo, she opens
the door, calls our names - plain ones,
long out of fashion - into the street.
The girls whisper, afraid she is a witch;
the boys point, sometimes throw sticks.
No matter. She would call those same
names over the whole world
if she thought it would bring us back.

We hold out our hands, but she sees
through us, knowing we are not the children
she is looking for, knowing we are lost to her.

Since my readership has grown exponentially, I'm blogging. For you.
Fact: All college freshmen have at least one thing in common: alcohol.
I've decided that the easiest conversation to have with strangers my age is fratting.
Why? Clearly because I'm a fratty fratty frat star. Revel in it.
I lost my MegaBus virginity this morning. I also wasn't sober, which is probably the only acceptable way to lose my virginity(s)...I think.
It was kinda depressing how after we left Chicago it took the entire seven hours before I saw anything close to a skyscraper (mid-risers in C-bus, the cornerstone of the Midwest). I did, however, spot several cows and trailer parks which isn't something you'd think would go together but oddly does.

It feels so good to be home.

My Night Measured in Productivity.

 HI. 

1:03 am

1:03 am

1:04 am

1:06 am

1:27 am

1:29 am

1:31 am

1:31 am

1:32 am

6:13 am

6:13 am

6:14 am

8:05 am

8:07 am

BYE.

How many cups of coffee do I have to drink until I become an adult?

"Remember, you cannot be both young and wise. Young people who pretend to be wise to the ways of the world are mostly just cynics. Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it. Because cynics don’t learn anything. Because cynicism is a self-imposed blindness, a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us. Cynics always say no. But saying “yes” begins things. Saying “yes” is how things grow. Saying “yes” leads to knowledge. “Yes” is for young people. So for as long as you have the strength to, say “yes'.”

― Stephen Colbert

Daily Bread

Spread your legs like butter upon my body,

My body that is the bread.

Is that a reference to God?

Oh God, oh God,

Hallowed be Thy name.

Hallowed by Thy name.

Oh wait, it doesn't work like that.

Just because I murmur 'God',

Does not make me any closer to Him.

Just because I can feel the swirl of each letter

Upon my tongue—

The hard 'g'

The drawn out 'o'

Taking its time before it reaches a finite 'd'—

God, oh God.

"Come unto me,

All ye that labor and are heavy laden,

And I will give you rest."

Rest.

Rest.

Rest.

The rest of me is spread upon your body,

Like butter,

Upon your body that is the bread.

That is not a reference to God.

That is a metaphor

For sex.

And even though I can shout "God",

Does not make me any closer to him.

Even though I can feel the dread of every letter—

The harrowing 'g'

The punctuated 'o'

An emphasized 'd'

Followed by an even shorter,

Frustrated "Fuck."—

Fuck.

The guilt of finding God

The morning after.

To be, or not to be;

The bread is broken.

This time around my body is the bread

From which you will eat,

From which you ate,

Not for sustenance,

But to temporarily fill a void.

The bread is broken;

I am the bread.

My blood infused with my tears,

Is the wine.

The wine from which no one else will drink.

For who will drink boiled wine?

Hallowed be Thy name--

Fuck that.

Hallowed be My name.

My body will always be the bread,

Even if it is half eaten.

My blood shall be the wine,

Even if the cup is dry.

Hallowed be my name

Because you came unto me,

And I gave you rest.

Spread your legs like butter upon my body,

My body that is the bread.

That is not a reference to God,

That is a reference to Me.

I am the bread;

And the bread is broken.

Friday Night Poetry Club

If... 
by Rudyard Kipling


If you can keep your head when all about you 
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
' Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

The Implications of a Liberal Education on One's (Private) Ruminations

Although the intensity of the darkness is a rather compelling argument, wallowing in my own self pity seems too great, too daunting a task to take heed of the darkness and fall asleep. I apologize in untimely advance because I am talking in flowers and am likely to do so for the rest of this post.
I wonder why.
Who am I writing for at this time of...time--for a lack of better word seeing as how I wading in a pool of dangerously murky waters, in which night literally melts into day, and twilight into morning. Who am I writing for? In this tone of voice? It's far from objective. Objective, maybe in the sense that it lacks visible partialness for one side or another (the sides are undefined as I do not know how to define them). And yet, this post is entirely subjective since this is actually a journal entry that belongs to me. And I am choosing to employ a distinct tone of voice that may be only strictly mine. "Strictly" is such a condescending word in this sense, isn't it? Who am I to contend that everything I write here tonight is original? I am  no stranger to the fruitful practice of finding great ideas and then to take, paste, cut, copy, and delete until fringes of ideas become (the framework for?) my own, or at least what I like to think of as my own--but judging by the number of the personal pronoun "I", "my", and "me" this is a highly biased opinion that should be checked for credibility.
Regardless of the background and credibility of the author (yours truly, in case you dear reader has forgotten), this really isn't a journal entry. Not tonight. I traded my douchey hipster Moleskine for my douchey hipster blog. Does that make it different? Clearly. Infinitely. But judging by my past experience, my private journal-journal entries can be just as douchey and flowery as this blog post that's open to the public. In fact sometimes more so. Usually I don't take the time to publish this shit because, again it raises my douche level by a power of infinity. Thus it pains me to admit that even if it were that every thought I choose to publish is somehow entirely original and of my own, tonight this isn't really just for me. I'm also sharing my private thoughts with anyone who can access the internet (aka. the world excluding some of the elderly or skill-less or isolated or resourceless--a statistic without a number that was acquired from the BBC).
I don't know. It's unclear who I'm writing for. But as long as I choose to publish, it is no longer just for me. Hello there Barthes, you're successfully killing me, you dirty motherfucker.
Anyway. Tangents at 5 in the morning are no better received than tangents at any other given time (ie. 6 in the morning, or perhaps 6:30).
Journalling is something that's supposed to help me sort through my life, decompress, de-confound, de-life. Objectify (or perhaps subjectify) but either way to coalesce into physical existence of a word as compared to a thought of theory (a theory  of thought?). Visible objects that exist in the semi-real-digital world seem more digestible than the non-existent entities that are spun entirely in my mind which is guided by a network of synapses and various chemicals.
My mind. My thoughts. The mind. That is why I'm here tonight. Me--the girl who is constantly trying to psychoanalyze herself so that she can create the strongest defenses and justifications against all slander and libel and other true shortcomings. But this isn't just a defense mechanism--these three words facilitates reconstruction in its highest form, reconstruction of self. Mind over matter. Mind over matter. I've willed myself out of anorexia. Obsessive compulsive disorder. Depression. Addiction. Selfishness. Selflessness. I tell myself that I don't have problems and suddenly I don't. It's magic. Signifier and signified. What comes first? Well, in this case the signified. I wish I thought of this two weeks ago, this could've been a kick-ass paper for Media Aesthetics. Once words are written down, do they assume the position of truthfulness regardless of what they actually embody?
If you ask me about my problems in real life, I'll never admit to them. This is the reason why I journal, why I blog. It's confession. To relax all falsifications of existence. In real life, I live to pretend to be so that you, whoever you are, will never see me vulnerable. But in reality, these are the kind of thoughts that go on in my head all day (the kinds that are destined to prove futile for thinking in the first place).
The difference between pretending and being.
Slim to none if I do say so myself.
Mind over matter.
Mind over matter.
What happens when mental capabilities are reached and matter is greater than mind even if it is temporarily?
That produces an unbelievably noticeable bout of inconsistency.
Interesting how inconsistency is my greatest flaw.
Mind over matter, so long as the mind is stronger than the matter.
Currently, the matter is greater than the mind.
"What is the matter?"
"Nothing. I'm fine."
What is the matter?
To say everything is either diplomatic in the sense that it is non-discriminating or immature in the sense that it is melodramatic (the entire world is leaning towards...well you tell me, the entire world).
But to exclude anything, seems like far too dangerous a risk.
After all, if a word can have such great spin, what about an action? An action out of context must be more dangerous than a missplaced word. Maybe. Maybe not.
...
The unbearable lightness of being.
The unbearable weight of pretending.
Mind over matter.
What if there is no matter left?
What is the matter?
Nothing.
...
I'm slightly distressed.