Plaiddragon's Plots
Robin's Ramblings
2002
Robin writes some poetry, but also a lot of stuff that's about halfway in-between poetry and prose. So I've titled this page "Robin's Ramblings." (Or maybe I just wanted to keep up with the alliteration started with Penny's Poems?) She won't do this herself, so I've picked some stuff of hers I like. She can also be found at theInternational House of Poets under the sn: Robin and on her livejournal. Oh, and as she puts it: "Spelling errors left in as a mark of authenticity."
Two Short Poems on the Subject of a Boy(10/18/02)
Breath (9/16/02)
Paranoia (5/15/02)
I want to stop now (4/25/02)
Songs of an April Summer Evening (4/17/02)
I am...(4/12/02)
Sunshine and salad dressing (4/11/02)
Find it (3/16/02)
I'm waiting for the rain. (3/16/02)
Wishes (3/11/02)
The Oddesy of the Night[unfinished] (3/1/02)
Let life wash over you (2/25/02)
Thoughts from the shower: the moments between (2/19/02)
Images (2/18/02)
Contrast (2/17/02)
...remembering Saturdays. (1/30/02)
Watching... (7/?/00)
Two Short Poems on the Subject of a Boy (10
18/02)
You want to make amends now?
Well I'm glad you're going to grow up and take responsibility for what you've done.
Have you lost me?
Well, to have lost me you're going to have to claim that you had me.
There's no proof of that.
The girl whose heart you had has been lost to time.
Reinvented too many times to count, changed beyond recognition.
My heart is my own now.
My feelings for you are but shadows of the love she had.
We have lost the brief chance we had.
It doesn't even matter anymore whose fault it was,
who dropped the ball.
I am leaving soon.
My future is calling.
You are my past.
I outgrew you like an old coat that slipped down between the bed and the wall and although I looked and looked I could not find you. And slowly I learned to live without you. Although I never forgot. And when I found you again, I put you on and rememberd how happy you made me. But the sleeves are too short, and the zipper is a little broken and spring has come and it's getting a little warm outside.
I should like to give you away to someone who needs a good coat, who will apreciate you and take good care of you.
Breath (9/16/02)
Breath.
The air is crisp and cool,
warm and heavy,
thick, like water.
Like breathing water.
Your breath.
My breath.
I'm breathing.
I just remembered how to breath again.
I found my lungs, I found the air.
I found that even after all that, I could still breath
Somehow, now,
now, unlike any other time I've felt like this
I can live and breath and love all at the same time.
I can be myself and be loved all at the same time.
Loved and love and breath.
I am breathing life.
Paranoia (5/15/02)
Empty.
I awake to a house without people, save for me.
The dog sleeps on the the couch, the cats lounge in the sun, the kittens are quiet.
I am surounded by space that is soaked in my own memories.
The only words are those I speak myself.
Sometimes I speak out loud to no one to be sure that I can.
That speaking is a real thing, and not somthing I dreamt.
All of this could be somthing I dreamt,
all my memories of the things and people that populate my life -could- be my own fiction.
For all I know
I could be a murderer from Wisconson on the run from the police who stumbled in
the unlocked door and collapsed on the bed from exaustion.
I could have invented all the memories I think I have of this place.
But I don't feel like I'm making this up.
I know the password to this computer, the pictures on the walls look like me, the dog answers to the name I call him and I know the number and the colors of the kittens in the box upstairs without looking.
Odd paranoia this is.
I want to stop now (4/25/02)
Mommy, I want to stop now.
No dear, you've got too much to do.
I want to go outside and play.
It's raining outside dear, stay in and work.
Turn the music up, loud enough to drown out the whining of your inner child.
Lose yourself in the music.
Turn a blind eye to the grey sky and the falling rain and your wet socks.
Drink another cup of tea and look at the clock.
The hours tick away, but you've got the time to finish this.
There's more to be done when this is.
Sugar, drugs, what's that pain in my stomach?
Better make some food.
Cardboard noodles in watery sauce, who knows how long they've been on the shelf.
March 10th actually.
Sitting in class feel like you're floating. Pull your consciousness in and in and in..
Fingers gone, arms are mere strings within the bone, if you close your eyes you can feel the blood pulse through you whole body, melt together into one form....
Songs of an April Summer Evening (4/17/02)
Hard warm pavement 'neith my feet feels safe tonight,
walking 'neith the street lamp's yellow light.
Somehow being crazy feels safer than being sane,
a reminder than life will never come again.
Mother, mother, I don't want to come home right now,
I won't submit to a lifelong solemn vow.
I'd rather dance forever in these night-light streets,
warm pavement or fresh grass support my feet.
Soft warm air floats though my hands and skirt,
my bare feet walking the soft pounded dirt.
I'd rather smell the fresh soft grass between my toes,
than the freshest of the summer's rose.
~~~~~~
I see the people
a mockery of peer review.
I wonder if they think to know
what is real or what is true
This song I guess that I will loose,
a fate that I cannot prevent.
But songs I think are thoughts of life,
set to notes that heaven sent.
I am...(4/12/02)
Low and behold, I have a role.
I have a place here, a person to be.
I am the woman, the female. I am the mother, the caretaker and the sensible one.
I am the one the boys flirt with, always.
I'm the one who gets the kisses on the cheek and tickled and the big hugs.
I am the one that could kick their asses.
I'm the one that doesn't because they're still my friends.
I'm the one who doesn't give two ounces what the world thinks of me.
I'm the one doing the crazy things because I'm bored.
I'm the one taking the out-there classes.
I am the one people are open with because I'm accepting, I'm one they tell things they don't tell other. I'm one they talk to.
I like this role better.
Better than any role I've had before.
I don't follow, I lead or I hold my own.
I'm not the quiet one, I'm not the shy one, here.
I wish I could be like this elsewhere.
Sunshine and salad dressing (4/11/02)
What? Give this up?
Sunshine and salad dressing,
mornings and markers,
clean clothes and card games,
Raindrops, pavement, old books, laughter,
being cold, compliments, icicles, nerf guns,
paintings, crying, paper cuts, lemonade, swords,
words, dust, checkers, broccoli, hand cream,
music, parking tickets, smelly markers, green grass,
chewable vitamins, warm towels, outside in bare feet
Photos, fire, smiles, cinder block, driving,
hot showers, hugs, wind, life.
These are the reasons. These and so many more.
I stay.
Find it (3/16/02)
You have to find what makes you tick.
What challenges you?
What wakes you up @ 4:30 in the morning?
What do you search for on the Internet?
What can't you sleep until you've finished?
What do you find yourself thinking about at the most unlikely of times?
What do you relate things to?
Where is your passion?
What do you keep coming back to?
What can't you get out of your head?
What do you do even when you don't have to?
What do you force yourself to excel at even if you hate your teacher?
What teacher do you love?
When do you never fall asleep?
Where is your soul stuck?
What makes you go WOW! ?
What awe's you?
What drops your jaw?
What opens your mind?
What boggles you?
What can't you bend your mind around?
Where does your head hurt?
Find it.
Whatever, wherever.
Find the thing that makes your heart pound.
Find it and do it.
I'm waiting for the rain. (3/16/02)
I'm waiting for the rain.
The weather is warm, the skies are cloudy.
I can feel the cooling breezes and I wish it would rain already.
I hate this drought.
Not it's endless blue skies or clear weather.
But how the ground is dusty and how I miss thunderstorms in my warm bed.
I want to walk in the rain.
The rain of warm spring that falls in heavy drops.
I'm a big girl and I don't mind getting wet and I miss that.
Why does this poem feel like a paper outline?
Thesis
and proof
and leading connection to the next
I like this...poem.
Wishes (3/11/02)
I wish to be unpredictable and always interesting.
I never want to be caught in my own monotony.
I wish to be free of reinterpretation.
I want to think things though every time and not make assumptions based solely on past experience.
I wish to always be interested in what's going on around me. I want to never
be bored and never ignore the circumstances.
I wish to always thirst for knowledge.
I wish to always be curious.
I wish to never be afraid of the truth.
I wish to always have enough knowledge to get myself into trouble... and out of it again.
I wish to have the drive to give every day something to remember it by.
The Odyssey of the Night[unfinished] (3/1/02)
Grey eyed goddess, stretch the night out endless.
To your chosen you gave no less.
And we have traveled, an endless measure time and space.
to find ourselves here in this place.
Shores of home, toward which we have been drawn.
but hours left only until the dawn.
Let life wash over you (2/25/02)
Let life wash over you.
Touch everything, what sticks is yours.
Try it all on, if it doesn't fit you can always put it back.
Don't limit, reach; you never know what will be.
You'll find your place. Don't look for it, let yourself fall into it. Like a baby toy you'll know when you have the right place. It'll work perfectly with no extra bits and nothing sticking out.
You space will come. You'll wear it all in, like a favorite shirt you'll be comfortable, it'll cover you but leave you plenty of room to move. Don't forget to stretch, you'll never know when you'll need to move quickly so stay limber.
Be open. Be aware, don't worry but be ready.
It'll all come together...you'll find you place in the world.
Don't be afraid to let things go if they aren't right, holding a struggling cat is harder than just putting him down. It'll hurt more too.
I miss the lives I've had but I wouldn't go back to them. They had they're time, there'll be more memories as long as I'm living in the now to have them.
I'm content, but I'm restless. I need something new. But not that'll change the balance I've found.
Thoughts from the shower: the moments between (2/19/02)
Let's take a moment and examine the between.
The moments so often overlooked because of the exhilaration of the result.
The moments that stretch from hours to instants and the space that we forget unless we are there.
Between being dry and wet... as the water splashes onto your body transforming the imperceptible crust of dead cells, old and dried sweat into supple glowing skin.
Between hearing and understanding as the vibrations of the air are transformed into words and then ideas.
Between seeing the symbols on the page and transferring knowledge marks from the paper into thoughts in your mind.
Between mixing and changing as the chemicals suspended in water dissociate from one another and the precipitate falls out of solution crystallizing suddenly into minute particles.
Between sleeping and waking as we try desperately to take this accumulated knowledge and fit it into a description of the world around us and we go from suspended beings into people.
Images. . . (2/18/02)
A young boy in uniform holds a drum in a yellowing photograph...
A woman stands by a car while a soldier in fatigues changes her tire...
A family holds a crying baby after a minor car accident...
A tree house decorated with religious mottos...
A man dressed shabbily sits by the side of the road...
A girl turns as she hears a friend call her name...
A child watches the clock in class...
A dog chases a rabbit though the yard...
The sunlight passes though the trees...
Bread dough rises...
The air stirs the bare branches of a tree in winter..
Contrast (2/17/02)
See the two people
One is the optimist, sees the best in people,
One is not, sees wrong all around.
Can't fathom some people's actions,
Thinks they understand all to well.
Doesn't understand why people hurt others,
Says hurt is the only thing people give one another.
Tries so see their motivations,
Believes motivations are clear.
Never sees the injustice until presented with it,
Sees a world full of injustice.
Sees a world of misunderstandings,
Sees a world of alternate motives.
Which one is closer to the truth?
Which one is happier about it?
...remembering Saturdays. (1/30/02)
Sunny ones in the car on the way to air shows or the park.
Rainy ones cleaning my room so I can go ice skating, listening to music Dad is playing in the basement below me.
Snowy, icy ones curled up in front of the fire drinking hot chocolate and eating bagels toasted over the propane stove waiting for the power to come back on.
Ones spent entirely in the car driving though New York in the back of Mom's old station wagon.
One spent cutting and gluing on a project with my father.
I don't remember when that childhood ended.
The problem with growing up is that some changes happen so slowly that you don't remember them happening.
Watching... (7/?/00)
I would watch you until the world ended.
I don't know why.
I can't find the reasons my eye gravitate towards you.
I look for you. No reasons.
I'm trying to be discrete, lest you notice that I'm searching for you every time I'm looking up.
Don't look back.
Don't see I'm watching you.
Don't watch me writing this near you, trying to glue my eyes to the paper.
Don't see I'm singling you out among the crowd.
Dividing my attention between writing about you and watching you.
When you leave, I'll breathe easier knowing that you can't, you won't see this.
I think I'm blushing, writing about you with you so close, danger.
The way you move.
It captures my attention. I'm not staring at you, really.
Now I wish you'd notice.
Grab the paper away from me and read it and ask "Who?"
And what will I do then?
Say "No one." Lie outright?
You'd know.
I hope you'd know.
Without me saying the words.
What words would I say if I had the chance?
Focus.
How do you explain that?
Not a crush, not attraction, deeper, different.
Not like a little girl.
This paper turns every which way as I'm trying to fit all of this emotion on this tiny piece of paper.
Okay, I lied when I started writing this.
To you, to myself.
I know why.
I know exactly why.
I know every reason except why I can't stop watching you even while I'm pouring my heart and soul out in little lines of in of a bit of wood pulp as if that will solve all the turmoil.
All mixed up.
Like the worlds ending. . .
. . .and I'm still watching you out of the corner of my eye.
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