Introduction

Welcome, web-surfers. Today is the first day of your journey into my teenage archives. The poems are in chronological order. If you read them chronologically (starting here), you will see my progression as a poet, and you may also get some of the subtle cross-references that are imbedded in my work. This is not everything - some things are for me alone, while others went straight to the recycling - but it is, I'm sure, enough.

I hope you enjoy it. Laugh with me, cry with me, be as deeply embarrassed as I sometimes am, but don't tell me you haven't been there, too.

* * * * *

“I should advise you to put it all down as beautifully as you can — in some beautifully bound book,” Jung instructed. “It will seem as if you were making the visions banal — but then you need to do that — then you are freed from the power of them. . . . Then when these things are in some precious book you can go to the book & turn over the pages & for you it will be your church — your cathedral — the silent places of your spirit where you will find renewal. If anyone tells you that it is morbid or neurotic and you listen to them — then you will lose your soul — for in that book is your soul.”

- New York Times, "The Holy Grail of the Unconscious", 9/16/09

If you only have time for a few

Dear Reader,

If you only have time to check out a few poems, here are my favorites:

Nothing's Lost

Change Your Fate

October

Poetic Justice

The Hour of Relative Impermanence

Cosmos in the House

Identity

Magic Poem

This is My Life

Pencil to Paper

Lackadaisical

Comments from 2009

Scrapbook

A Note About My Creative Commons License

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For more info on Creative Commons licensing, please check out this What is CC? or Understanding Free Content.

Photos at the end of the decade

So this is it

It ends with the last poem. Words continue, but they speak of someone new - no longer the poet. With a new voice, the aspiring artist has entered her twenties. She now plays house and pretends to be a woman - until, at last, it appears she is. . .

1987 marks the year I found my people, my family of choice, my tribe. I awkwardly dragged myself onto a path that would lead me forward. There was no noble reformation. I still made a lot of the same questionable choices as in years past: falling for people who would never love me, loving people who were unavailable, swearing allegiances to dead ends and impossible dreams, and then breaking the tension flippantly with easy lovers. Even as I watched those around me deadened and stupefied under the influence of the substances we abused, I was confident that my lifestyle presented no risk to me.

But I also got a little perspective in '87, and probably just in time. In the spring, one of my closest friends entered detox. What for? I literally did not believe in alcoholism before then, so it gave me a lot to think about. Later that year, I found myself in Cicero, Illinois, living with my boyfriend in a transient hotel owned by his father. The glory days of the gangsters were long past by then, leaving only the hookers, drug addicts, down-on-their luck schemers and old gamblers who spent their cash playing the horses and paid for their rooms with food stamps. I couldn't walk outside the building at night, for fear of being mistaken as a prostitute. I met a man there who had never traveled 6 miles east to the lakefront, and another who told me, "If you're going to marry a guy, make sure he has all his teeth." For someone as worldly as I tried to be, I was clearly out of my element.

I was nothing but a princess to the tenants there. And frankly, I was glad. That kind of tough life was not for me. I was a tourist in a place that never saw any visitors. I felt guilty to be able to walk away so easily - in some ways, I was more transient than anyone else there - but it was only my sense of adventure that brought me there in the first place. My stubborn self-preservation, on the other hand, readily convinced me to move on. In my home town, I had been a wild fish in a very tame pond. Chicago opened me up to the great river of life, and I was not always big enough to swim there.

Cicero was only a stop in my transition to Chicago. In the fall of 1987, at 19, I finally broke up with the boyfriend who I'd been in and out of love with for two years, moved to a neighborhood on the north side, and returned to college. Art school, this time. Everything on the class schedule was something I loved - writing, film, dance, and theater. The halls were filled with people like me: artists and searchers, some of them in trench coats with cigarettes and bottle-dyed hair, and some fresh from the suburbs, with their oxford shirts and innocent curiosity. And all there to study art. Why??? I didn't know. Maybe because for us, there really was no other way to get through college - or life, for that matter - except by alternate means. All I knew was, it made me feel less crazy to be with them. As I said, they were, and still are, my family of choice.

* * * * *

This is the best place to stop, I think. Everything that came after - the love and marriage, careers and lessons learned - it is just a human life, and it is a story that is still writing itself. I am grateful for it all, but I will leave it respectfully alone, for now. The teen poet is gone, now. Long gone. But she left her poems to turn you on. . .

To My Rock

It was so silent.

It was so silent, I heard

the cars moving along

the street

two stories below you

over the phone.

It was so still,

I imagined

the drip in the sink in

my kitchen

echoing -

through the wires.

I have not had a solid

night's sleep since you

sank to that place I

could not reach.

It used to be all jazz

in that red light.

The masked woman from

Venice, hovering above us,

gave us invitations to festivity -

night light, secluded sensuality;

strong hands and fingernails.

I knew that woman could do

anything she pleased, we were sure

she could climb walls

and speak of the unknown

we knew --

One night, in my dreams,

she turned her head to face me,

she was going to speak --

I have been familiar with

the agonies of the mattress,

it was breakfast in bed

three days each week --

I have fought those needles at

my fingertips;

and welcomed them;

and nourished them.

There are leftovers in my freezer.

What I think you think

is not what you think,

you react to what you

think I think

I CAN'T THINK ANYMORE

I had an idea, once,

that was healthy and pure

I mothered a cactus to full bloom --

five wide petals that felt like skin

and looked like sea anemone;

wilted, on the floor,

they formed a stray banana peel,

peach-soft on the backsides

like my child's skin.

I have sinned

by forgetting my child's name

her growth is stunted

without identity.

I thought you knew

the true values of the moon

you say you do (you do! you do!)

sometimes it's undeniably

there in your eyes

then you turn full around,

aim your darts at my heart -

say I'm "idealistic" and

I lose.

Richard at work said

I should try three things:

1. get in good with your family

2. write you a poem

and

3. smile.

- April 18, 1988, A.D.

My Rock (explanation of title of last poem)

At the back corner

of the thrift store -

for only a dollar -

I spotted a real

live lunar sample -

a charming example of

the mooner stock.

I found it resting in

the water on a fish

tank floor, and swore

I wouldn't be complete

without a lunar rock.

And so I, barely able

(with the fish tank and its table),

carried home this little stone

and placed it safely upon

the empty half of my bed

and since then -

I have watched as the little

fish have swum in and through

and around him

I have marveled -

he doesn't glow

he doesn't grow

but oh, I love him so. . .

- April 18, 1988, A.D.

El Dream #2

The faint rumble of the train lulled me into near catatonia, my eyes wandered off into the middle distance, and all the little voices in my head mumbled, or spoke in fragments. I didn't notice where we were, I payed no attention to the voice of the conductor. I simply trusted - as we all did - that eventually, this train would get me to where I needed to be. And so, as we were stopped at Belmont, I did not hear the words of the conductor until they were repeated a second time.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, this train will be running express to Oblivion."

Had I just heard that? My eyes shifted back and forth, as I tried to conceive of this new information in some logical way. I looked up at the faces of the people on the train, and they were all blank. They must not have heard. All of those people were on a train that was headed toward the bowels of oblivion, and they JUST DIDN'T KNOW. I stood to get off the train, but the doors closed. I reached for the emergency release, but by the time I got to it, the train had begun to move again.

"Huh," I said, turning back towards my seat, "Well, what do you know about that?"

I moved to sit down and then stopped myself.

"Wait a minute. I can't just sit here while somebody else controls my destiny. Where the hell is that conductor, anyway?" I stormed off toward the front of the train.

At the end of the next car, I spotted the conductor - a short woman with glasses, whose jacket sleeves reached down to her thumbs - and I approached her.

"What is the meaning of this?" I charged, "This car cannot run express to oblivion! My stop is Morse. I want off at Morse. I want to go home and make a sandwich and read this book that I just got yesterday - I do not have any desire to enter oblivion!"

The conductor stared at me with glazed eyes. I was about to repeat my argument when she cocked her head to the left and put her hand up to her neck.

"Do you ever have one of those kinks in your neck that you can't seem to get rid of, but you keep moving your head around to figure out which way is the most painful?"

"Listen, woman, I don't want to hear about your fucking neck, I want you to stop this damn train and let me off!!"

"Have you been smoking?" She said, still poking at her neck.

"No, I haven't been smoking, I - "

"Have you been littering?" She asked, angrily.

"No, dammit, I - "

"Well, where is your radio player?"

"Lady, you can check my pockets, but I'm telling you - " She leaned over to look into my coat pockets.

"Look," she said, "if this is about gambling, that's no allowed, either. There's this guy who comes on with a newspaper, a red ball and three cups, and if you've seen him - "

"Forget it!" I said, "Just forget it. I'll take this matter to the driver." As I pulled open the door to the next car and slammed it behind me, I heard the voice of the conductor: "Hey, did you pay for this ride?"

"Oh, fuck you," I said, under my breath. I moved forcefully through a small group of people standing by the doors ["Oh, in a hurry to get to oblivion, are we?"], and then I heard the conductor in pursuit. I got as far as the second set of doors, when she yelled out:

"Fares, please!!"

I stopped in my tracks and turned slowly, counter-clockwise. I shot the woman a furious look, and I reached into my pocket, pulled out my CTA pass, and flashed it in her face. She flinched in horror, and I saw the reflection of the hologram burning her eyes. She took two steps back, and looked at me, hurt. I smiled, and turned back towards the front of the train. I pounded on the door of the driver's compartment. A man opened the door.

"I am not allowed to speak to you while the train is moving," he said, with a look of fear.

"Well, then, stop the goddamn train!" I said, trying to contain myself in the small doorway.

Then, the fear in his eyes went away and was replaced by the same glaze as the conductor's.

"I can't stop the train, this train is running express to oblivion. Please step up. There is a 'B' train right behind this one."

"Look, Jack, I am not going to stand for this! Oblivion is much too far away, I am cold and tired, and I want to go home!"

He tried to smile then, but the effort alone seemed to hurt him.

"When we stop at oblivion, you can catch the next train southbound. The trains come every fifteen minutes. . ."

"WILL we be STOPPING at oblivion?" I cried.

"It's thirty-five minutes to the loop," said the man, "I'm sorry, but I'm not allowed to speak to passengers while on duty." This was said with an inflection of helplessness, as he closed the small metal door between us.

As I heard the door latch, I looked out towards the tracks, and I noticed that they were slowly fading. The buildings we passed were becoming less and less clear, until at last the whole scene was just a dull, cloudy white, like a winter sky. The train slowed, and came to a stop.

1/12/88

Trust Me

Try the water

(rocks that shine and pieces of light

underneath

seashells);

touch the sand.

memories and emotions are starfish,

exploring the meeting of the elements.

- Jan. 5, 1988

Tame Me

Torrential fantasies

and

motionless

escapades

must

end.

- Jan. 4, 1988, A.D.

On my mind today

Decadence vs. Morality

Tension vs. Relaxation

Conscience vs. Flippancy

Guilt vs. Not Giving a Shit

Accommodation vs. Expressing (or Having) Opinions

Pacifism vs. Aggression

Thought vs. Non-Thought

Sex vs. Celibacy

Love and Openness vs. Cynicism and Repulsion

Lauri vs. Reality

Dishes vs. Anarchy

Acceptability vs. Rebellion

Instinctual vs. Analyzed

People vs. Privacy

Life vs. Death

Self-Hatred vs. Acceptance of Blandness

Happiness vs. Depression

Masochism vs. Mellowness

Hypocrisy vs. Hypocrisy

Hope vs. Fatalism

(Xmas '87)

More Photos '87

Floor Plan (From a Dream)

Something Strange Happened on the Train

Yesterday, on the el: my thoughts were hazed with a blue-gray mist.  I had met someone who turned my concept of life a full 180 degrees.  We had spent nine hours together, doing nothing more than opening ourselves.  Trusting, but still strangers.  On the el, my head was stuck in the night before.  We did not touch, but our words touched.  I felt I wanted everything from him.  Not sure he would comply.

Thoughts took me out of my physical form.  I was an orb on a brown, vinyl seat.  A woman stood in front of me.  She stood and swayed against the movement of the train.  For a long time, I stared at her, her pale purple sweater, her red flannel pants, her green socks, and her black nurse shoes; her bags and her confused mumblings.  And then I saw, in her fisted hand, a plastic bag containing water and five goldfish - white and orange.  They swam below the hand of the crazy woman.  They shook in their water.  I gasped.

The train swerved, and then halted.  The bag dropped.  The floor came alive with water spilling outward, and fish, dying in the air.

I knelt down to the floor of the train.  The water seeped into the knees and shins of my pants.  The fish danced a nauseating, acrobatic death.  I clutched one in my hand.  It flipped its gold and white.  I kissed it once, and then held its head up to my mouth.  I parted my lips, and with one fast bite, the fish was decapitated.  I pushed the head out of my mouth with my tongue, and I started for another fish that limped along the serrated rubber flooring.  I repeated the same process I had completed with the first.  I developed a sickening taste in my mouth, of stale water and metal and what I imagined to be secretions of saliva or tiny brains.  I moved on the the third fish.

The crazy woman looked at me with terror.  Her fish were being systematically sacrificed before her eyes.  Her forehead wrinkled, and her expression became pained as she looked down at the small pile of bodies and heads that lay in front of my knees.

Other passengers turned away.  One woman, with a comically made-up face fainted onto another woman's shoulders.  I moved quickly to the fourth fish, and finally, to the fifth.

The fifth fish moved only slightly.  My kiss was real.  I brought it dearly to my lips, and then bit fiercely down over its head.  I felt its death in my hand, and in my mouth.  I pulled it out from my teeth, conjured up some saliva, and spat on the wet floor.  Ceremoniously, I took the fish heads and bodies and put them back in the plastic bag, and gave them back to the crazy woman.  Then, I walked off the train.

Last night, I dreamt I vomited millions of tiny goldfish heads.  I would repeatedly swallow and throw up the little heads, and I kept looking into their eyes.  Their eyes. . .

He has such beautiful eyes.  I am obsessed with them.  I carry myself limply through life as my mind wanders on and on.  I am senseless and irrational.  And I look so forward to our next meeting. . .

12/1/87

Storyboard, Film Tech I (partial)

Nothing's Lost

Nothing's lost.

It's just retained

in memory;

sustained in time

by impressions

on the mind.

Nothing's lost

but nothing gained

for this that is now history.

It occurs to me,

despite the pain,

that it will be forgotten -

though love remains.

Forgotten, forgotten

And what the cost?

I still believe

that nothing's lost.

Images -

and so specific -

address my mind,

and in terrific tunnels of feeling,

I find

we are the same.

Yin/Yang is a famous harmony

we cannot be together

but still, we can see:

hearts hold to love dearly

like a fragrance, or a feather

and what, through our disunity

we destroy, or we weather

will be mended,

and retained.

We'll not speak together as ever

before

- perhaps we'll never speak again -

but tell me, darling, what's the cost?

I still believe there's nothing lost.

- Nov. 2, 1987, A.D.

What's Left

I lie, face down on the floor.  The incandescent glow from the shrine merely warms the darkness in the room.  I'm not sure how long I have been here.  I turn to my side and look out the window.  The moon lingers there, in the orange-black sky, laughing.  I am only semi-conscious, now.  I turn again and look down at the floor, where my notebook lies, wide open, spotted with dampness from tears and saliva.  Words, words - incoherent from pain - rest on the blue lines.  I am more conscious, now.  I turn again.

The tape recorder - at my feet.  I rewind the tape, and then press the "play" button:

"Tuesday, September 15th, 1987. . .  I can't come to a single damned conclusion about my life. . ."

I stop the tape and get up.  I stagger toward the bathroom, running my fingers through my hair - unkempt in the usual way.  I stop in front of the mirror, try to understand that that thing in the reflection is me, but it seems so unreal, so sad, so empty.  It doesn't respond to me, staring.  I look down into the sink and I feel - I feel like I'm inside a bubble gum bubble.  The pressure increases and the walls expand, and suddenly, everything around me bursts.  The walls of the bubble collapse onto me.  I am surrounded by the sticky aftermath.  I start to tug and pull everything away from me, but I'm all caught up in it, and pretty soon, I'm flailing about wildly, like an animal in a net, and I'm beginning to suffocate -

I look up.  Her lips are moving.  Her words are vague and incoherent.  That feeling in my stomach and my throat returns, or maybe I've just now noticed it again.  I wish I could have it surgically removed.  She's babbling.  She's mad.  I turn away and leave her.

I walk back over to the shrine - that last, tangible remnant of the world we built together.  We built a cage, you see.  And we had two birds.  When I left him the first time, his bird died.  I removed the stick that had been theirs, together, and I kept it as a memorial.  I lived alone with my bird.  This time when I left him, my bird escaped, out the window.  No one left.  Just an empty cage with a light, just the shell of a home that we once shared.  And then one day, the cage was gone, too - thrown out by the man I believed I had left him for.  When I found out, I cried.  No birds, no home - there was nothing left.  My brother put together a shrine, using the light and some beads.  And as I stand and stare at the light, I think, "Well, at least there is that. . ."

I walk back over to the tape recorder and press the "play" button:

"I have been away from him for one month, now.  It's just like the last time.  The first month is okay, and then I'm ready to go back.  I'm finding it harder and harder to remember why I left him. . ."

I know why I left him, and I don't want to remember.  All I want is the love back.  ["I know it would be suicide to try to go back again, but I can't stand thinking about the alternatives, thinking about all of the never agains and no mores. . ."]

I've got to admit to myself that I used the other guy to keep my mind off of the fact that he had his mind on someone else.  I used the other guy as a safety device, so I wouldn't have to hurt so bad when or if I was cheated on.  I didn't know this until just now.  I thought it was love and passion and a new beginning.  ["I thought that I was doing the best thing by starting over, but it turns out there's really nothing there to work with.  He can't even tell me how he feels.  He loves me too much, and all I can do is hurt him.  It's making me numb.  So numb inside. . ."]

I turn off the tape recorder.  I take a deep breath and try to clear my head.  It's going to be a while before I start moving forward again.  It's all so fucked up, now.  I breathe.  Somewhere inside, I am thankful just for breath.  I find my trench coat and my keys in the corner of the couch, and I leave the apartment.

The night is warm, but breezy.  The moon is descending toward the horizon, and I am numb.

(fall '87)

Train, Swiftly

Train, swiftly

without any recognizable pattern:

eerily sacred, this lust.

not unlike

time warps or candy canes;

you mystify me.

Forgive my naivete, but

under these

coordinates, uncalculated,

kerosene-lit maps lead to journeys

immensely dangerous.

not unlike

gluing a hope to the stubborn walls of your mind.

Like 

infinity.

necessarily,

essentially,

secure in insecurity.

? do you tempt me?

? or do I provoke?

- Oct. 26, 1987

The Rush

I was standing in the subway,

waiting for the train

in the distance, the white eyes of the snake 

glared at me

"It's coming," I whispered to myself.

But it was not the train that I would catch you on.

As it neared, the volume of its rumbling increased in numbers -

earth-shaking power -

I began to feel the rush.

Then the wind came up

it nearly blew the hat off my head

I sensed the strength

and the unmerciful force

that nearly swept me away.

But this was not the train -

not yet.

I watched, and part of me was pulled along

as this train went on without me

[heartless infatuation,

you give me a feeling, but nothing more. . .]

how disappointing.

And in the past few weeks that I've been waiting, 

I've begun to wonder

why it's always the one that passes

instead of the one that stops

but there is a force that takes me down there

and a certain pleasure to the rush

and I keep thinking it will be the next time -

so I do not mind the wait.

- Oct. 26, 1987

Love the Chaos

Part I:

Sweeping, popping, serving, talking, smoking

thinking

thinking

thinking

I burnt my hand and didn't feel it

I flirted with my boss

because I'm so excited

- talk about dogs in heat -

I've been thinking about Rickie,

and how beautiful she is under the moonlight.

The ceiling in my bedroom is falling down

in huge pieces

I love the chaos

Part II:

It's so damn familiar, isn't it?

Part III:

But tell me, is it wrong?

- Oct. 24, 1987