An Observational Statement About the Tedious Circumstance of Being Alive from the Viewpoint of a Household Cat - A Poem

Sometimes I write things with unnecessarily long titles, and sometimes I write things with necessarily long titles.  This is an example of the latter.
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An Observational Statement About the Tedious Circumstance of Being Alive from the Viewpoint of a Household Cat

i am

a cat

i am not

a human

i do not have

carefully laid plans

nor

a voice in

the world

and that should

bother me

perhaps make me

upset

but aside from

the institutionalized ennui

of my

current existence

i find

i am

content

with taking

your chair

and getting fur

on your best suit

five minutes before

you leave

for an important meeting

*FERVENTLY TAPS THE MICROPHONE*

HELLO YES

LOOK WHAT JUST ARRIVED

MY ENTIRE LIFE HAS BEEN LEADING UP TO THIS MOMENT

Look at how goddamn gorgeous this cover is.

Neil Gaiman signed this book.  Neil Gaiman.  Signed.  This.  Book.

Neil Gaiman

signed

this

book.

Someday I'll write a thing about what Neil Gaiman means to me/why he and his books mean so much to me.*  But for today I'm just going to say please please please read his books.  Read this one.  Read any of them.  Just...read them.  They are so so beautiful.

*To give perspective, Derek Landy has caused many good things in my life and means a lot to me, but Neil Gaiman means about 60x that or more.

*taps microphone*

Um hello yes

The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman comes out tomorrow (June 18, which at time of posting, is in 55 minutes for me)

and

I have been wailing this song at the top of my lungs all day

Thank you for your time goodbye

What Art Has Taught Me - A Poem

Copy change of What My Mother Taught Me by Melody Lacina.

It's late and I wrote this in approximately ten minutes and it's bad and I'm too tired to be thinking in flowy language.  At least it's honest I guess.

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What Art Has Taught Me

On sheafs of snowy college rule paper,

the little red line shows where notes end

and doodles begin.

Take pictures when you see

or think

of something beautiful.

Don’t be afraid to feel things sometimes.

It’s okay if your tears blur the pen ink

and it’s better to tear up paper than to tear up yourself.

Be aware of the world around you and pay attention to little things,

like orange rivers spilling out into a cat’s yellow irises,

or the way the light is hitting the elderly couple in the café corner.

Care too much about everything.

It hurts your heart a lot

but at least you can say you tried.

Carry some sort of notebook everywhere.

Immortalize the world around you in quick sketches

and half smeared pencil lines.

C'est la vie, c'est la mort.

This I Believe - A Poem

Boop.
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This I Believe

I believe in logic and reason and fairytales.

I believe that princesses are capable of rescuing themselves,

thank you very much,

and the best princes are the ones who look

like they were raised in a library, not a castle.

I believe that knowledge is the air I breathe but that I would still

be a Gryffindor if my Hogwarts letter ever arrives.

I believe that Thomas Edison was an idiot and a conman, and that

the utter lack of Nikola Tesla in the books we use

to teach our kids about the past is obscene.

I believe in strength comes in different flavors -

Queen Elizabeth I of England was just as fantastic

and daring dangerous as Ching Shih.

Julie d’Aubigny would have been one of Shakespeare’s muses.

I believe in taking lessons from the past but not pretending

that the past is over,

because I believe the past has already happened,

is still happening,

and will happen all our lives -

that time is happening all at once and if we just had a force strong enough,

we could break through and see what really happened

and what’s in store.

But mostly, I believe that history is an unforgiving mistress.

I believe that the quantum theory is correct

and nothing tangible exists until it is observed,

and so the same must be true of the intangible -

of love and trust and human resilience.

I believe that music is the one language that everyone speaks

and that it will never die out.

I believe in a god who doesn’t exist anymore

and a god who only exists when I want her to

and that there will be no pearly gates at the end.

The afterlife is what we decide it to be

and some people don’t want to live again -

they just want to go to sleep

for a long, long time.

I believe that H.P. Lovecraft told it like it is,

that W.B. Yeats was a master wordsmith,

that J.K. Rowling is the cornerstone of my childhood,

and so it must be true that people who go by two initials

have a better sense of the world than most everyone else.

And of course, J.R.R. Tolkien had the good sense to go by three

instead of two, and that’s why he spent time talking to the trees -

because he knew they knew what we did not.

And I believe that this world is a senseless and random

repeating pattern of elaborate nonsense that only makes sense

when looks at in pieces and not as a whole.

And those pieces will never fit together.

I believe in rainy days and rubber boots

and lazy summer afternoons spent sleeping under the bookshelf.

I believe in folk songs mixed with alternative rock, punctuated

every now and again by Bach or jazz or the Beatles,

in ancient mythologies moving alongside detective thrillers.

I believe that if I don’t drink coffee I’ll never grow up,

and in drinking hot tea all year long.

I believe in the possible and impossible,

the probable and the improbable.

I never believed in Santa but always in Peter Pan.

I believe in good TV and bad TV and that

Steven Moffat really needs to leave Doctor Who already.

I believe that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

would hate every single one of us and I hope whoever built his coffin

had enough sense to add in space for the all turning

he’d be doing.

I believe the sunsets really were brighter and the trees taller when I was little.

I believe the sunsets are fiercer and the trees wiser now that I’ve grown some.

I believe that the only thing that smells better than old books

is the interior of a car that’s been sitting out in the sun for hours.

At the end, though, I believe I only believe a lot of things when I have to think about it

and that in general

I just believe in semicolons

and ampersands.

My Starry Nights - A Poem

Um. Written for class based on the prompt, "You don't know it yet, _______, but..."

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My Starry Nights

You don’t know it yet, Vincent van Gogh,

but I will not be you.

The girl from a year ago could be seen

as the female shadow cast by the ghost

of a young you - overly emotional and insecure

about literally everything - but I

am no longer that girl.

A year is a year is a lifetime is an infinity,

and infinity has a way about it that changes

those who it touches.

I am still a suffering artist - and how strange!

How strange it is indeed

for one so young to label herself as such, but alas,

Vincent,

that is a link between us

I am willing to admit survives.

For while I am mad, I will not go mad, per se,

in the manner in which you

so fantastically did.  I’m mad

at the world, Vincent, and did you know?

I’m mad at how beautiful it is -

so fully, infallibly beautiful -

because tell me,

my dear,

what should be allowed

to shine so brightly despite all

those trying to dirty it with lies

and crimes and murder?

And it is that anger, that unjust

and righteous anger,

that fuels my fervent and fanatical love

of art and all that it encompasses.

I wonder -

did you not once feel the same?

I made art my religion, Vincent,

a long, long time ago.

I will not succumb to the world and allow it

to swallow my passion as you did.

I knew when I first heard of you that

in you, I could see myself, and

that would be alright, but I also

saw myself as you, in the end,

alone with your sunflowers.

The girl from a year ago could still see that,

see herself alone in a cornfield,

letting the winds of time weather

her to nothing, “for the good of all.”

But as I told you, Vincent,

she is no longer the one calling the shots.

I will not be you, not wholly.

I carry a part of you but not enough

for me to choose to walk to you in the end.

I will not be a post-impressionist, for I

will leave an impression, and leave it loudly

and boldly for everyone to know.

I will make art, Vincent van Gogh, and I’ll be dead

before anyone tells me my art wasn’t alive.

I will be your antithesis, your counterbalance,

or, at least, I will do my best to be.

And someday I hope to stroll past

the Café Terrace at Night and see

the beauty that you once saw.

And it’s the years that separate us that

have given me a truly unfair advantage

in my quest not to be you, for

I am able to look farther into the sky

than you were ever allowed.

I can see with my own eyes

the sprawling expanses of billions of years

of untold history captured in the swirls

and intricate wrinkles of the starry nights

that you were only able to imagine with paint.

And let me tell you -

it is beautiful.