Holly Blue's Open Salon Blog

Black Swan (for w.r.)

Tue, 18 Jan 2011 17:01:06 -0500

Black Swan (for w.r.)

by Holly Blue

There is a stage

In your heart where

Dead writers go to play,

You watch their words laugh and sigh

Like they once did

When they were alive,

Untouched by the

Death and rose oil

Of time's shame;

You know how they feel,

Not dead but still

Woken up by nightmares

Of missteps and follies,

Of your youth

Passing by and forgetting

Your name;

There is a stage

In your life that

You keep in your heart,

A time when you were the only

One noticed in a room;

Whenever you laughed or sighed

It made headlines and

Your beauty untouched,

Eyes legendary

Giving a million reasons

To believe you'd never fade away

Or go out of your head with a pure craze;

You didn't know that it wouldn't last,

That you would end up in your

Black gown, a black swan,

Porcelain skin bracing against the wind;

The piercing diamonds in your ears

Where no match for

The downfall.

Broken down now with all

Of those sacred lines like wings

Surrounding;

Lining your insides with that last grief,

Heart still pounding.

-January 10, 2011

Chained By Satellites

Tue, 7 Dec 2010 05:12:47 -0500

Chained By Satellites

by Holly Blue

There's no luck in you,

You've gone up and dried,

I took a line from your book, made a bet against your tries

Again and again to shelter yourself from a storm

Nobody had forecast;

Now you're looking for satellites.

Time takes working at

To get it right,

I walked down to the court and

Declared I never did try

To testify to your

Sudden lack of hope

Because you were an emotional paraglide,

So here I am again,

On ground level

While you're high up in the sky;

Because you're looking for satellites.

There's a saying, it goes

"If you love someone let them go",

I never, never, never, never,

Never understood how

Something so simple

As to be embroidered on a throw

Pillow

Could slowly kill my days,

Make me seem so cold and older,

Make you seem like this

Chain around my every step,

Dragging across a life

I haven't yet lived;

As you're looking for satellites.

(So) You fill a void I failed to see

With something engineered like bliss

But not so free when you're just speaking

In tongues

Because that's the only album cover

You can read

Now that you're looking for satellites;

Now you're chained by satellites.

American Eye Pits and A Scar

Tue, 7 Dec 2010 05:12:37 -0500

American Eye Pits and a Scar

by Holly Blue

The American must destroy something,

It is almost a necessary if one is to get anywhere;

Then afterwards,

After the destruction,

The bones will turn into pearl walls,

Pearl gates and necklaces, and

Ladders to get to the

Higher ground

Where the rest of the world

Sits back sadly and smiles;

Asking

Why?

Why did you do that

At all?

We would've helped out

In any direction

Desired, wanted to go.

The American must pretend this

Didn't happen, so it can happen

Again, and again, and

Again;

So the American must destroy something,

It is a necessary part of survival

Among the wolves,

Among the world who would help even

If it was not a necessary;

The American must destroy something,

So the days go by and time interprets

The commodity of eye pits,

Of a scar;

The American must destroy something,

So often it is himself.

'Fidget' - A Poem for Kurt Cobain

Mon, 5 Apr 2010 19:04:03 -0400

"If you die, you're completely happy and your soul somewhere lives on. I'm not afraid of dying. Total peace after death, becoming someone else is the best hope I've got." ~ Kurt Cobain

Fidget (for K. Cobain)

by Holly Blue

You looked upon life as pestilent,

Yet you always had a story to

Tell.

As you lay fading,

Mind already inanimate,

This is the crucial drowning point.

The exertion is lifeless now,

With you on the outside.

Melancholy innocents stand by -

They see your

Frown now smudged on your

Face for eternity.

Holly Then and Now

Sat, 27 Mar 2010 23:03:36 -0400

"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"