in the library

I wish I smoked sometimes, I feel that would impregnate my silences with some sort of meaning like I was brooding intentionally, not the reality which is I can’t remember or I don’t know.  Lovely.

You’re not from around here are you?  Automatically you think that.  It’s easy for me to go with.  That.  Why not?  No, I’m not from around here, but yes I am.  I grew up right around the corner, I went to school up the street, I wore a mu’umu’u in a parade and sang Hawaiian songs in a choir.  For the first time, I don’t feel blasé about someone not knowing that I’m from here.  For the first time I feel a little strange. 

I held a copy of the application for the Vermont studio of arts fellowship, a print out that I needed.  Due in a week.  A dream, come to term, or not, but will be forced out of me because some sort of omnipotent force has deemed it ready.  And in my other hand a book of poems by Ginsberg.  She knew him or knew of his work I should say, and so she felt it only necessary to inform me that she was a poet as well.  Lay her beside Ginsberg and she would say he’s taking her limelight.  One of those.  A confident artist.  They always seem suspect to me. 

Then we started talking poetry as I absent mindedly folded the application into the pages of Ginsberg.  Perhaps I was hoping he’d rub off on me.  We talked about poetry and about poets and about slams.  There was a degree of arrogance and yet I continued to swim in her pool sullied by self righteousness because it was pool with a poet nonetheless and they seem to be in short supply round me lately. 

I dreamt of connections, human connections, emotional connections.  I dreamt of you and you.  But not you.  I stroke my neck softly in the hopes that my hand will transform into someone elses, yours or yours.  Meet a real writer.  I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean.  Someone who has been through it, someone who knows.  Knows?  The pain, the despair, the desire.  I know these things.  There is a projection I put out that I’m not happy with.  Are you from here?  Aren’t you young?  I’m feeling underestimated and misunderstood in my time.  signs that I will be a great artist someday.  Surely.  To look at the milk as less sour and to suck on the chunky bits because.  I waited for the writers and they were nowhere to be found.