"Apprehensive, unable to work, Joshua began to sift through cardboard boxes that had not been unpacked since they left London, sorting out old papers. The days are long, Seymour's grandmother had said, but the years fly past." - Mordecai Richler, 'Joshua Then and Now'

 

While looking through some old notebooks the other day I found a few of my poems, a few of my first poems, written when I was sixteen years old. A very difficult time in my life, sure, but I came to the realization that I could not have created them - or anything else that I have written and/or created since then - without having gone through what I did. Is this progress? Dare I say this recent jaunt into my past and the small insights gleaned from what I discovered there could be called Healthy Insight?

Am I finally, at almost Twenty-Two, comfortable - ah, screw it let's just call the emotion what it is, Happy - am I finally Happy?

I think I am. I think I may have come into my own, and I will say that in the last six years, and I say this also with the fear of sounding cocky but oh well, I am certain that my writing has.

Here is one of the poems I found, titled 'Matrimony'.

 

Matrimony

by Holly Blue

(date unknown, early 2004)

 

My eyes are deep

With deceit.

 

My hair is a coarse 

Black.

 

I slumber fitfully,

Unable to make a 

Connection.

 

I cannot dream anymore.

I've lost that, too.

 

Writing words escapes me.

I am quiet in my corner so as not to be a bother to you.

 

I don't speak anymore,

I do not think.

I just do; 

 

You say I'm fine with what I have

Only because what I have is 

Only you.

----

 

Reading this now the first thought that comes into my mind is "How odd! A sixteen year old choosing to write about, of all things, the complexity of a marriage!" What the hell was I thinking? Why didn't I write about my boyfriend at the time, my "first love"? Why didn't I write angst-y, vitriolic, nobody-likes-me-everybody-hates-me-no-one-understands-me teenage verse while I was listening to Hole's 'Live Through This' on my walkman? Which I did almost every day in high school, well, on the days when I actually decided to turn up. It was either Hole, Patti Smith, or the Best of The Velvet Underground, a white cd which I remember loaning to a couple of people only after just meeting them, saying "Hey, I think you'll like this, give it a listen and tell me what you think?" It was a practice that I'd taken up at the end of ninth grade since I was perpetually shy, so I think it was my way of judging if they were cool or not without actually having to speak too much, and so we'd have some common ground the next time we saw each other. Also, I am a little weird and have the fervor for good music usually only found in guys. One of the guys fell in love with them and we became fast friends and stayed that way until I "respectfully declined to attend" high school anymore. Anyway, enough of that. Back to what I was writing about. Why I chose to write a poem at sixteen about the complexity of a marriage (a sad marriage to boot, what with all those looming undertones of abuse) instead of, say, teenage love. Or, well ha ha, love at all.

The short, simple answer is: I didn't care to.  

 

But that's not true, not really. I did write about love then, I wrote about love in a twisted, caustic way. After all, that marriage in 'Matrimony' had to have started in love but something along the way went just a little wrong and that was what I was drawn to, and still am drawn to.   

Dark Streets and Pastel Houses.                                                                                   

One of my more recent poems, written on March 24/25th, 2010, deals again with the more, I guess you could say desperate (though I know that's not the word I'm looking for) aspects of humanity that I find intriguing - mainly a middle-aged man in love, and the longing and loneliness that comes with that.

 

Holiday At The Beauty Bar

by Holly Blue

 

 

You are convinced we are two satellites,

Orbiting around each other, so

I went to Austin looking for you;

You had written at 2:46 am, saying you loved me, begging me to come and find you.

Was I so much your salvation?

You said you had spilled beer on your best green suit and

No one was drinking your Guinness milk shakes.

You said

You thought I would be there, you said

You missed me.

You called me your Tattooed Lady.

 

I recently read that as the male brain ages it becomes more

In touch with loneliness;

 

You are convinced you are still that young punk in his twenties

So you, in your forty seventh year,

Still can't fathom why you felt the way you did outside of the

Alamo Drafthouse theatre

Drunk and writing to me on your cell phone.

 

You said you had just flipped off the entire theatre and

Left the stage; under stress

The angry young man rears his head in you.

Even after all these years you find comfort in rolling the dice

Just to see what turns up, always

Hoping for Snake Eyes.

 

Now you are outside, alone,

Wondering why

I am 137 miles away,

Wondering if Love will tear us apart,

Wondering about your life and how it's

Played out on the stage from which you just walked away.

 

----

 

 My childhood was spent watching Tim Burton's view of normalcy, the dark in the light, the underlying weirdness and humor of just about everything, of course I am drawn to that.

So I think knowing that has helped me, in a weird way, to be happy.  

It's just who I am.  

 

"I am Doll parts/

Bad skin/

Doll heart.

It stands

For a knife/

For the rest

Of my life."

 ~ Hole, "Doll Parts"