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psalm_onethirtyoneOnce upon a time, Soujin said: Miss Kylee, I am writing you poetry. And it's bad. And it's taking me a long time to finish.
Actually, Soujin wrote two poetries. One is a song, and she really, really wishes it could be set to music. She envisions it like a Police song or a Postal Service song, and pretentiously considers it capable of being set to such music, if Soujin were capable of writing music at all.
The other one is simply a poem, and enjoying its magical realism.
Forgive me both, Miss. Someday I'll write you something better.
(We Don't) Love Ourselves
Three days ago I bought a paper parasol
Big enough to keep the sunlight off my face
And painted it with watercolours
With butterfly patterns and dragonflies I traced
We don't love ourselves
So we give beauty to girls in stories we write
Long-fingered girls whose eyes are beautiful
As long as we're invisible it's all right
But yesterday I tore my paper parasol
And thought I'd buy a hat instead
And it's got a veil and ribbons and
A paper flower that isn't quite red
We don't love ourselves
So we speak French and Latin and we laugh
We say someday we'll drown ourselves
Perhaps we mean it half
To-morrow I'll have lost my hat in the wind
I'll buy Chinese lanterns with light inside
If you come here we'll follow them and call the place we find our home
In out back forth with a string of paper balloons for a guide
We don't love ourselves
So we tell each other: "I love you
You make me glad you make me proud you make me smile
(The way I never do)"
Three days from now the lights in my lanterns will run out
I'll buy more paper that sparkles and it's coloured green
I'll write you every day until it's gone
I'll tell you page by page exactly what I mean
We don't love ourselves
So sometimes we try on different clothes and names
But I'll never fall out of this window
If you promise you will always be the same
We don't love ourselves
So we know it's all our fault and we're to blame
But if you don't ever step out into traffic
I'll promise I will always be the same
We don't love ourselves
So we dream of worlds and halls and doors
There has to be someone to love instead
If you'll be mine then I'll be always yours
If you'll be mine then I'll be always yours
~~~
Sub Marine
I'm typewriting from the ocean
Everything is new
But everything is old
Four months ago I thought that I was old
My hands are old
My face is old
Four months ago I thought my skin was old
To-day I am not old
The coral is old
The sand is old
To-day I live in a ship and it is old
I have waited all my life to be young again, you know
I should not have grown. I
should have been five years old for-ever, and then
I should have been ten, or I would have taken fourteen
When I turned thirty-one, I should have been twenty-three; and when
I let my family laugh as I was blowing out fifty-four candles
it should have been thirty
I have waited all my life to grow down, not
grow up
I have waited all my life for my time machine
I dreamed of turning things back
while I was in the factory sorting beans
Miles of beans, sorting out the mice, sorting out the bugs, sorting out the ones
that had died
(I didn't want to die, and be planted in a cemetery
that was creeping into a field of beans)
My feet hurt and I thought I was old already
because my back wouldn't go straight
To-day I am sitting very straight while I type
The water holds me up
When I die here I'll let the sand wash over me until I'm gone
inside a soft gold silt, and shells will
spell out my name if I remember it to-morrow
(I might not care)
I have waited all my life for timelines
I dreamed of playing music on a violin strung with years before I learned to spell
while I got used to offices and forms
and taking down dictation on my little typewriter with the shiny case and the letter
y that doesn't quite print right
(Do you recognise it
when I say: yes; I am happier here than I have
ever been?)
My fingers ached and I thought I was old already
because the office girls didn't want me to laugh with them about the office men
To-day I am laughing, I am laughing, I am laughing
The seasnakes are poison but they don't even
care I'm here; they go on swimming
The fish kiss my feet to tell whether I am
good to eat
If I write here I am writing for myself on my little typewriter
I am writing to you if you remember me
(It is fair if you don't because I thought I was too old for you
so we never spoke Up There)
I have waited all my life for this
I am eighty years old, but the coral is eight-hundred, the sand is
eight-thousand
I hope the ocean is eight-million, I hope the sea stars live as long as the sky stars
Who said everything is made out of the dust of the stars?
My ocean is swimming in the middle of the universe
I am typewriting in the middle of the ocean
You may tell them where I am
But tell them not to come for me
I spent all my life wishing for a miracle--I wished retirement would make me young
I wished the cruise would make me young
And when the ship went down I prayed death would make me young
Under the water I just wished--
If you wish on a sea star is there as much a chance it will come true?
I don't have anything else to write
I'll send you a postcard someday
You don't need to send an answer
To-day I am writing very well
Everything is new
But everything, everything is old
but me
Actually, Soujin wrote two poetries. One is a song, and she really, really wishes it could be set to music. She envisions it like a Police song or a Postal Service song, and pretentiously considers it capable of being set to such music, if Soujin were capable of writing music at all.
The other one is simply a poem, and enjoying its magical realism.
Forgive me both, Miss. Someday I'll write you something better.
(We Don't) Love Ourselves
Three days ago I bought a paper parasol
Big enough to keep the sunlight off my face
And painted it with watercolours
With butterfly patterns and dragonflies I traced
We don't love ourselves
So we give beauty to girls in stories we write
Long-fingered girls whose eyes are beautiful
As long as we're invisible it's all right
But yesterday I tore my paper parasol
And thought I'd buy a hat instead
And it's got a veil and ribbons and
A paper flower that isn't quite red
We don't love ourselves
So we speak French and Latin and we laugh
We say someday we'll drown ourselves
Perhaps we mean it half
To-morrow I'll have lost my hat in the wind
I'll buy Chinese lanterns with light inside
If you come here we'll follow them and call the place we find our home
In out back forth with a string of paper balloons for a guide
We don't love ourselves
So we tell each other: "I love you
You make me glad you make me proud you make me smile
(The way I never do)"
Three days from now the lights in my lanterns will run out
I'll buy more paper that sparkles and it's coloured green
I'll write you every day until it's gone
I'll tell you page by page exactly what I mean
We don't love ourselves
So sometimes we try on different clothes and names
But I'll never fall out of this window
If you promise you will always be the same
We don't love ourselves
So we know it's all our fault and we're to blame
But if you don't ever step out into traffic
I'll promise I will always be the same
We don't love ourselves
So we dream of worlds and halls and doors
There has to be someone to love instead
If you'll be mine then I'll be always yours
If you'll be mine then I'll be always yours
~~~
Sub Marine
I'm typewriting from the ocean
Everything is new
But everything is old
Four months ago I thought that I was old
My hands are old
My face is old
Four months ago I thought my skin was old
To-day I am not old
The coral is old
The sand is old
To-day I live in a ship and it is old
I have waited all my life to be young again, you know
I should not have grown. I
should have been five years old for-ever, and then
I should have been ten, or I would have taken fourteen
When I turned thirty-one, I should have been twenty-three; and when
I let my family laugh as I was blowing out fifty-four candles
it should have been thirty
I have waited all my life to grow down, not
grow up
I have waited all my life for my time machine
I dreamed of turning things back
while I was in the factory sorting beans
Miles of beans, sorting out the mice, sorting out the bugs, sorting out the ones
that had died
(I didn't want to die, and be planted in a cemetery
that was creeping into a field of beans)
My feet hurt and I thought I was old already
because my back wouldn't go straight
To-day I am sitting very straight while I type
The water holds me up
When I die here I'll let the sand wash over me until I'm gone
inside a soft gold silt, and shells will
spell out my name if I remember it to-morrow
(I might not care)
I have waited all my life for timelines
I dreamed of playing music on a violin strung with years before I learned to spell
while I got used to offices and forms
and taking down dictation on my little typewriter with the shiny case and the letter
y that doesn't quite print right
(Do you recognise it
when I say: yes; I am happier here than I have
ever been?)
My fingers ached and I thought I was old already
because the office girls didn't want me to laugh with them about the office men
To-day I am laughing, I am laughing, I am laughing
The seasnakes are poison but they don't even
care I'm here; they go on swimming
The fish kiss my feet to tell whether I am
good to eat
If I write here I am writing for myself on my little typewriter
I am writing to you if you remember me
(It is fair if you don't because I thought I was too old for you
so we never spoke Up There)
I have waited all my life for this
I am eighty years old, but the coral is eight-hundred, the sand is
eight-thousand
I hope the ocean is eight-million, I hope the sea stars live as long as the sky stars
Who said everything is made out of the dust of the stars?
My ocean is swimming in the middle of the universe
I am typewriting in the middle of the ocean
You may tell them where I am
But tell them not to come for me
I spent all my life wishing for a miracle--I wished retirement would make me young
I wished the cruise would make me young
And when the ship went down I prayed death would make me young
Under the water I just wished--
If you wish on a sea star is there as much a chance it will come true?
I don't have anything else to write
I'll send you a postcard someday
You don't need to send an answer
To-day I am writing very well
Everything is new
But everything, everything is old
but me
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-12 03:33 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-12 06:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-12 03:39 am (UTC)...Yes, I am too brainded for more feedback. Er.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-12 06:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-12 03:49 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-12 06:49 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-12 04:16 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-12 06:49 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-12 04:47 am (UTC)oh.
i -- think i understand the meaning of the phrase 'choked up' now. i'm a little --
the first one, it's intimately beautiful, it's -- wonderful whimsical lovely wonder whimsy love, it's -- a little sad, but it's all these bits of us, that have come together somehow, and you've made it poetry, and -- it's beautifully intimate, like a secret everyone should hear, our secret and i could blush -- and knowing that you wrote it, for me -- ! of all the poems that've ever been written for me, i don't know that any of them have made me choke up and smile all at once (and i can hear the music).
the second one, i can hear the clickclick of the typewriter and the sea-salt-swish of waves that roll in and out and numbers that flutter by, clickclickswish -- i like the way things repeat, like eternity has to repeat -- there's a sort of thoughtful flatness to it, but with that sense of fancy you capture so well -- it's lovely. :D you really do remind me of t.s. eliot. but cuter.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-12 06:52 pm (UTC)I hoped you wouldn't mind, because I know it's secrets, whole parts of it (all of it) is-are secrets, and I shouldn't have--so I hoped you wouldn't mind-- because it's all yours, truly it's all yours--
I felt very sorry for her -- I wanted everything to be right in the end. And the numbers, and the sand, and the fishes -- there's for-ever. Oh. Thank you so much. --I--!-- Thank you so much.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-13 01:49 am (UTC)for-ever is relative -- when you're tired and old but that the ocean's so much older. but, i ... well. *hugs*
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-13 03:32 am (UTC)Exactly, it is, and I. The ocean's always-- well. *hugsbacklikeacling*
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-12 07:00 pm (UTC)Can I put in my vote for that to go on the dust jacket of her first published volume? Because dude. ♥
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-13 01:56 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-12 11:12 pm (UTC)They're wonderful. Quite-- unbelievably so, and . . . and I am not really capable of saying much else, it seems. But "wonderful," I think, is as good a word as I will find.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-12 11:24 pm (UTC)Thank you very much. Wonderful is a perfectly wonderful word for a compliment. Thank you. ♥