currently listening to:blake’s got a new face by Vampire Weekend
status:sick
No blame. Anyone who wrote Howl and Kaddish
earned the right to make any possible mistake
for the rest of his life.
I just wish I hadn’t made this mistake with him.It was during the Vietnam war
and he was giving a great protest reading
in Washington Square Park
and nobody wanted to leave.So Ginsberg got the idea, “I’m going to shout
‘the war is over’ as loud as I can, “he said
“and all of you run over the city
in different directions
yelling the war is over, shout it in offices,
shops, everywhere and when enough people
believe the war is over
why, not even the politicians
will be able to keep it going.”I thought it was a great idea at the time,
a truly poetic idea.So when Ginsberg yelled I ran down the street
and leaned in the doorway
of the sort of respectable down on its luck cafeteria
where librarians and minor clerks have lunch
and I yelled “the war is over.”And a little old lady looked up
from her cottage cheese and fruit salad.
She was so ordinary she would have been invisible
except for the terrible light
filling her face as she whispered
“My son. My son is coming home.”
I got myself out of there and was sick in some bushes.That was the first time I believed there was a war.
Ginsberg by Julia Vinograd
Every night i tell myself, Jemimah you will regret this in the morning
i tell myself, you will regret this tomorrow when you wake up
when getting out of bed is painful like fighting cancer
when you stub your toe against the bed frame because the morning light glares down your squinted eyes
when you hob to the mirror and peer in
and the eyes are tired, smudged dark from being torn off sleep,
and you want to fall into the cool deep glass exhaustion of the mirror
you have never been less radiant
yet every night i lose myself in literature
i deflect sleep with makeshift shields of paper
and Skype.
The cat must have eaten my Bachelor of Common Sense degree because i cannot tear myself away from my books and plunge into sleep, even though God knows i need it. Desperately. Which probably wouldnt have been so bad if they had been academic readings, but.. Well.
Spent the weekend being sick, balancing precariously on high ledges and smiling for the camera even though my inner ear balance was already thrown off kilter thanks to the stupid flu, convincing me i was going to fall to my death, and dragging my half dead carcass to meet the one oh one lit chicks on saturday evening.
this man eating amazonian is ditching us for the UK in slightly less than a week. with all that hugging you would expect her to catch some semblance of the killer flu bug that has plagued me and ruined my weekend but no, she was healthy enough to hold a lengthy and awkward discussion on the human uterus with me this afternoon.
x
♥jem