EXTRICATION, EXIT AWAY
by Jessica DePue

We moved around, a family ungrounded, finely grated
By haste's insurgent plight, the frenzied whim
Spells love like a scribble dribbling downward from
The spell-bound heart, finally starts to connect with
A hole full of whole pulsing pleasure nerves unholy
Unnerved other times only empty space to restore
Or merely store the bent boredom of lament, discontent

We strew about like a slew of flies
These were not the stuff of keepsakes, seeped youth aside
No family flairs to St. Lucia, or Oprah's Top 5
Places to visit before you die and revisit
Fortunate selves long buried in goldmine flurries
Of the Egyptian's pyramid tribes angled perfectly
Impossibly peaked towards no man's mysterious land

Misery land is harmoniously bland in her mind's rewind
Undriven drive ploughs wheels through mosh pitts of mud
She always writes about God and his love for me
How his one wayward son bled like she bleeds
Eternally ruptured by my withdrawn affections

Seems sweet things dwell in swelled hives
Coating stung stings with thier thickly drip drip
Sickend as a heart throb, an ache overjoyed
Just to get by to get paid and breakout, to get laid
Out of line and succeed from under it

July 29, 2005 finished 12:25pm

DEAR LACUNA, DEAR LARD by Paisley Rekdal
I found this awesome poem in Poetry (Novemebr 2004)
It immediatley became a favorite.

This poem is nothing if not genius, brilliant.
DEAR LACUNA, DEAR LARD:
by Paisley Rekdal

I'm here, one fat cherry
blossom blooming like a clod,

one sad groat glazing, a needle puling thread,
so what, so sue me. These days what else to do but leer

at any boy with just the right hairline. Hey! I say.
That's one tasty piece of nature. Tart Darkling,

if I could I'd gin, I'd bargain, I'd take a little troll
this moonlit night, let you raddish me awhile,

let you gag and counfound me. How much I've struggled
with despicing you, always; your false poppets, relentless

distances. Yet plea-bargaining and lack of conversation
continue to make me

your faithful indefile. I'm lonely. I've turned
all rage to rag, all pratfalls fast to fatfalls for you,

Mr. Farmer in the Dwell. So struggle, strife,
so strew me, to bell with these clucking mediocrities,

these anxieties over such beings thirty, still smitten
with this heaven never meant for, never heard from.

You've said we're each pockmarcked like a golf course
with what can't be said of us, bred in us,

isn't our tasty piece of nature. But I tell you
I've stars, I've true blue depths, I've learned to use

the loo, the crew, the whole slough of pill-popping
devices without your intelligent and pitiless gaze.

Everyone knows love is just a euphemism
for you've failed me anyway. So screw me.

Bartering Yam, regardless of want I'm nothing
without scope, hope, nothing

without your possibility. So let's laugh
like the thieves we are together; the sieves:

you, my janus gate, my Sigmund Fraud,
my crawling, crack-crazed street sprawled out,

revisible, spell-bound.
Hello, joy. I'm thirsty. I'm Pasty Rectum.

In your absence I've learned to fill myself
with starts. Here's my paters. Here's my blue.

I just wanted to write again and say
how much I've failed you.

THE CITY IN WHICH I LOVE YOU BY LI-YOUNG LEE
A COMMENTARY by Jessica DePue
The poetry of Li- Young Lee has inspired me to abandon my inhibitions in writing and pursue a full fledged love affair with poetry. His words take the plight of compelling emotions and ground them in rich personal ancestry and past. The City In Which I Love You (1990, Lamont Poetry Selection of the Academy of American Poets for 1990) shares its title with the touching poem-saga which bookmarks the collection. In this poem Li-Young Lee tours us through a rugged journey of the heart. It is also a right of passage from the corners of memory that shadow his contentment with the stark mist of a world wrought with turmoil. His words reveal a desperate city in a fragile state of decline. The reader can relate to the poverty and violence that insistently gut our best efforts at love- to know love and share it. The City In Which I Loved You crosses lonely and sorrowful terrain to find what perhaps may never be found. The poet endures through his immaculate spell of language. One gets the sense that his language is his sole mode of survival; that without this gift he would perish leaving not a trace of the passions which exist to devour him. "A sky cross-hatched by wires...". "A pie plate spins past". "A nest of raw mouths...". Nothing is over looked or taken for granted as he scours the streets for a love he knows may be impossible to find. The reader wonders whether he is driven by delusion or optimism? Is he writing of the search we all set upon yet by some personal twist of fate find ourselves eluded? The poet is equally plagued by the desire to qualify his childhood self with his present adulthood. The City In Which I Loved You weaves us through perfectly exacted imagery of personal and social tumult. His beautiful words simultaneously lift you whilst pulling at the elemental roots of self. The poem ends with the resolute assertion "I never believed that the multitude of dreams and words were vain". When one labors towards what one loves and aspires against desolate odds to attain something lost, then there is nothing sacrificed that is not in turn gained.

WONDER TWIN POWERS ACTIVATE
What Happens When Childhood Best Friends Meet Up
After Six Years of Seperated Soul Searching

I went to meet my best friend since 1st grade. We had not seen eachother in six years. Repeat: Two girls who spent every day creating juvenile variations of mahem and mischief went six years without seeing one another! Was there hell to raise? You betcha! But not before we talked ourselves into a passive stupor and napped for several hours like a couple of lame old fogies. Thus was the unpredictable kick off of our reunion.

THE MORE THINGS CHANGE THE MORE THEY STAY THE SAME
Its funny, how much things change and yet certain things never do. Andrea and I are both twenty seven to the twenty one age we last famialiarized each other with. We are both working to establish an acceptable foundation upon which to plot our still very young albeit not- as- young lives. We are taking ourselves seriously whilst simultaneously pointing at and chiding ourselves all the way through. A little time and frivolous experience has only served to teach us what we already knew. At the end of each day we are the butts of our own jokes- be them intentionally or haphazardously cast. The inner narcisist is contently humored to find ourselves through the ins and outs of our charades. Daily stressors become inanely important in passing perspective. We are thinking about our youth gone by, those days of yore that can never again be yet remain as constant in memory as the present. Andrea has beautiful blue eyes, long light brown hair, pale skin, and a whip smart wit that compliments her playful, girlish giggle of a laugh. These things have not changed. And the affirmative reassurance of that fimiliar kindred spirit was enough to send my already excited state into a fluent spin of nostalgic joy. Its pretty gay sounding but its true. Andrea is my home girl. She knows me like no other because we have seen eachother through an extravagant array of years. Ours span the innocent ages of six or seven through the more definitive pulls of adolescence. Somewhere along the way a semblance of adulthood rears its head in disbelief.

MEMORIES THAT LAST A LIFETIME
Some of our earliest memories are of trapping wild kittens. We were always on the prowl for those poor stray beasts. At twelve years of age we got our hands on some PETA propaganda and promptly became vegetarians. We were the only non-meat eaters in a small Texas microcosm of sticks and grass roots where farming cattle is the pride of the land. People began to think us weird. We were. From summer camps to high school graduation one can imagine the infinitum of ground breaking in- betweens that bonded our friendship into a sisterhood. The alliance was sealed by first periods, first dates, first kisses, endless crushes, and tons of practical joking at the expense of our peers. This was naturally accompanied by all of the awesome music we could possibly cram into late school nights and weekends that never lasted long enough. Um, did I say AWESOME music? Socially lame was more like it. We were dancing to 80's in the early 90's. To anyone who does not recall, the 80's were stashed away as tragic memorabilia until atleast twenty years passed and it was safe for the rest of America to open the forbidden neon box and laugh at their embarassing obsessions with hairspray and cocaine. Our insistence on the coolness of the 80's made us first order dorks to our peers who were hammering away to MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice. We were rebels if only in our own minds. Sweet, teenage rebels who grooved atleast one beat beyond our boring local.


CH-CH-CHANGES
Andrea finished college at Texas A&M. Her present job brought her from her new home base of Austin, TX (a city I once was emmersed in and continue to ardently revere) to San Diego for a week. This is where I came to visit from my recent perching in Los Angeles. We both have been through several moves. Andrea's initial job post was in Raleigh, North Carolina. My initiation into California was from Austin to Los Angeles. I have since moved to San Francisco and back to L.A. I have been divorced from a naievely premature marriage. I have lost two dear stongholds on my turbulent family web: my ethereally angelic Great Grandmother and wonderfully humorous Father. He was my Father by legal custody but still ther only father I knew and love him as if he were mine by birth right. Andrea has lost her beloved Grandpa. Nature takes its course and endows us with a newfound perspective of our place in the chain of imminent exemption. Along with a handful of nieces and nephews, Andrea's down syndrom cousin Molly is growing up. She is far from that tiny, wonderous bundle we held when we were only eight. Many book worthy tales of side splitting humor have ensued from Molly's blessed existence in our lives. Significantly, I have begun a fuzzy and somewhat unsettling relationship with my estranged Mother. Also, I recently met my real Father for the 1st time in oh, say twenty years. We met at the Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco and boy has it ever illuminated my dark and furious corners of self!
Andrea and I had alot to catch up on.

CURVE BALLS
Andrea and I share the the graphite strand that smears depression all over one's sensitive, young slate. We discussed how remarkably difficult our early twenties were to our fledgling spirits. It was a time when we were mature enough to go it alone yet too immature to relax and roll with life's inevitably merciless punches. The young mind adapts a dualistic perspective and reasons every let down in a fatalistic sense- as if nothing worse could happen. Our impressionable youth was ill equipped for the bite of reality. Most of what we thought was right became blurred or wrong. When one strikes out on the field, the standard rules do not always apply and it can seem as if one is dodging bullets. Ironically, "not knowing any better" provides one with the dexterity and resilience to plod along. This transitional time of turbulent ups and downs eventually passes. I had moments when I felt that this life bit was an out and out sham. I would have gladily thrown in my towel had the situation been ripe to my stupidly impulsive tendencies. Andrea as well has had her share of the evil blues. We arrived at the conclusion that the twenties are simply dramatic and emotional years for the whole lot of us. A perceptive and sensitive disposition combined with a perfectionistic personality can make for one heavy brew when stirred with the gritty stuff of life.
Thankfully we have outlasted our more impressionable days and the torturous spells of our wounded egos and hearts. The six years we were apart were years of dramatic experiences and perceptions. They were the years of primordial self assessment.

TAKEN CARE OF
We managed to reunite upon a respectably stable current. We are both in comfortably amiable positions with our jobs and personal lives. Andrea has a hot latin lover named Jackson who she met on the salsa dance floor. I had to laugh at this predictable liklihood- Andrea has always been attracted to latin men. I am in love with a kind, talented, and devilish soul named Bramley. I was pleased after our comical introductory lunch when Andrea said to Bram "Thanks for taking care of her". Bram was about to leave the two of us to the glory of our rebel reunion. What pleased me about the statement was its complete accuracy. Bram and I have fallen in love and hastily moved in together. What this boils down to is being there. We take care of eachother. We endured the initial phases of establishing our personal territories and private boundaries. Only two Scorpios would be so determined in their labor to control these sanctions. Through the ups of sweeping passions and downs of daily monotony we establish our personal lives in L.A.- a city hell bent on terrorizing the dreams of hopeful, aspiring talents. I have been compared more than once to Lucille Ball's character on I Love Lucy. The crazy shananigans that have ridiculously defined the larger half of my twenties continue (inspite of my redeeming moments) to runneth over. I'm not sure if it is in spite of this or because of it that Bram "takes care" of me. As I inturn do the same for him. Ours is a strange if not unique arrangement of gives and takes. Somehow this alligns in an enviable balance between two shared souls. Andrea called it with her simple statement upon his departure.

FORM OF TWO ARTISTIC NUANCES
Left alone with six years of catching up to do, Andrea and I could have steered ourselves in so many directions from the starting point. The road was open and untread. Between the two of us we have logged many newly discovered paths to selves unknown by each other. We are both severely artistic souls. Andrea brings an intelligent effervescence to anything she touches. Be it the tedious task of flood planning which she does for a living or the recreational hours spent crafting complex sketching and origami. Andrea's attention to detail produces nothing less than stunning results that serve to her credit as an indisputably creative talent. Her bold and unique art is the bristling undercurrent of an unassuming and polite mannerism. As far as kindred spririts go I am the written verse to Andrea's finely attuned, precise visions. I write and write and some more, write. Mine is a conflicted existence: I am a highly acclaimed and talented poet caught in the body and secular plane of an aspiring and significantly unglorified poet. In some parallel exisitence the two meet regularly and wax poetic over drinks.

THE POLITICS OF DANCING
Andrea and I shared the years that facilitated and paved the wet cement of our artistic grounding. Perhaps this is why we did not discuss our creative vices in extent as we might aptly muse to do. I did not even mention a poem throughout the duration of our visit. We also share in commom an astute sense of obligation towards our respective humane and moral causes yet we did not discuss any of our efforts or concerns at length. One might imagine us to have much discussion surrounding the wonderous avenues of science and philosophy introduced to us through our liberal educations. Still, we barely touched on any politically compelling topics. Little was mentioned of our post 911 world or my disgust with good ol' Dub-Ya. I am frankly surprised that I scarcely peeped about my obsession with existentialism and the personal truths I've excavated from Russian literature. Andrea and I found little importance in redefining ourselves before eachother. The rest just fell into place as if not a week had passed since we last gabbed over drinks. Whatever our respective politics- personal, environmental, and sociological Andrea and I meet at the ever pressing forefront of the politix of dancing. And we campaigned like hell all over the dance floor on Saturday night.

Then on Sunday I boarded the Northbound Amtrac back to L.A. and the love of my life... the life I have begun so far ahead of our homes on that little street called Bordon in that little town of Lorena in that big Lone Star state. Our reunion lasted little more than twenty-four hours. I can not differentiate missing Andrea before from missing her after. Nor can I reconcile the feeling with anything less than the necessity of seeing her again. Soon before the next six years fly us by.