I have never been much of a breakfast person...

but recently I have been craving oatmeal like crazy. We're talking breakfast...dinner. Really, just about any time. Give me the funny looking Quaker guy, some milk, a two packets of Splenda and I am a happy camper.

Today, as I was laying in bed eating a bowl of oatmeal I started thinking about a poetry reading I went to a few years ago. I was lucky enough to not only hear Galway Kinnell read his poetry, but I got to meet him after the reading. It was incredible, as he is (in the literary world) extremely distinguished and I enjoy his poetry quite a bit. After reading several well-known poems that he selected, he read one I had never heard entitled: "Oatmeal". I immediately fell in love with this selection because it made me laugh and the imagery is fantastic. I thought I would share it with you.

I eat oatmeal for breakfast.
I make it on the hot plate and put skimmed milk on it.
I eat it alone.
I am aware it is not good to eat oatmeal alone.
Its consistency is such that is better for your mental health
if somebody eats it with you.
That is why I often think up an imaginary companion to have
breakfast with.
Possibly it is even worse to eat oatmeal with an imaginary
companion. Nevertheless, yesterday morning, I ate my oatmeal porridge,
as he called it, with John Keats.
Keats said I was absolutely right to invite him:
due to its glutinous texture, gluey lumpishness, hint of slime,
and unusual willingness to disintegrate, oatmeal should
not be eaten alone.
He said that in his opinion, however, it is perfectly okay to eat
it with an imaginary companion, and that he himself had
enjoyed memorable porridges with Edmund Spenser and John
Milton.
Even if eating oatmeal with an imaginary companion is not as
wholesome as Keats claims, still, you can learn something
from it.
Yesterday morning, for instance, Keats told me about writing the
"Ode to a Nightingale."
He had a heck of a time finishing it; those were his words "Oi 'ad
a 'eck of a toime," he said, more or less, speaking through
his porridge.
He wrote it quickly, on scraps of paper, which he then stuck in his
pocket,
but when he got home he couldn't figure out the order of the stanzas,
and he and a friend spread the papers on a table, and they
made some sense of them, but he isn't sure to this day if
they got it right.
An entire stanza may have slipped into the lining of his jacket
through a hole in his pocket.
He still wonders about the occasional sense of drift between stanzas,
and the way here and there a line will go into the
configuration of a Moslem at prayer, then raise itself up
and peer about, and then lay itself down slightly off the mark,
causing the poem to move forward with a reckless, shining wobble.
He said someone told him that later in life Wordsworth heard about
the scraps of paper on the table, and tried shuffling some
stanzas of his own, but only made matters worse.
I would not have known any of this but for my reluctance to eat oatmeal
alone.
When breakfast was over, John recited "To Autumn."
He recited it slowly, with much feeling, and he articulated the words
lovingly, and his odd accent sounded sweet.
He didn't offer the story of writing "To Autumn," I doubt if there
is much of one.
But he did say the sight of a just-harvested oat field go thim started
on it, and two of the lines, "For Summer has o'er-brimmed their
clammy cells" and "Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours,"
came to him while eating oatmeal alone.
I can see him drawing a spoon through the stuff, gazing into the glimmering
furrows, muttering.
Maybe there is no sublime; only the shining of the amnion's tatters.
For supper tonight I am going to have a baked potato left over from lunch.
I am aware that a leftover baked potato is damp, slippery, and simultaneously
gummy and crumbly, and therefore I'm going to invite Patrick Kavanagh
to join me.

An Open Letter to Sylvia...

I sit here and read your words,
strewn across these crisp white pages
and I think about how you used them for kindling.

Your shy-awkward smile makes me wonder what thoughts circled
in your head as the photographer pressed, index finger down,
stealing your soul, trapping you in a moment I can buy.

The last pages filled with raw potential,
a life of boundless talent, a beautiful mind,
but sorrow that flowed through veins like Formaldehyde.

The weight it must take to force one’s heart to move,
cutting all ties, breathing in death’s fumes,
the cries of children fading away as eyelids closed.

And as I think of brilliance slighted, works of art
unfinished and burned, I suddenly catch a glimpse of you.
It was life, and the brain’s chaotic swirl. The panic, the heaviness. Life.

In conferring with a girl at work...

she asked, sarcastically, "Melia, have you always been a smart ass?"

I wasn't sure how to respond without being a smart ass, so I told her I would do some research and get back to her.

This research led me to lengthy conversations with close friends, painful and self-searching dinners with ex-boyfriends, and a few long and draining therapy sessions, but all in all...it really just comes down to this photograph.



I was five and a half in this photo, and I can only assume that the smart ass-yness began long before this was even taken. This is the same look I give to said co-worker multiple times every day.

I think it may be contagious as well, because you see the cute strawberry blonde kid in the oversized coat? That's my little brother Miles, and now he has joined the ranks. You can check out his thoughts on life at:
http://becauseimawesome.blogspot.com
And let me tell you now, he is awesome.

Nightminds...

Just lay it all down.
Put your face into my neck and let it fall out.
I know...
I know...
I know...