literature

Leaves of Grass

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How We Love

1

We secretly fall all over each other.
We’re yearning to fall all over each other.
Even when we’re big and brave with machine-screen words of pride and personality and wit
we fall flat in real life; we are still humans, humans.

What does it mean to be human?

It means that sometimes we think of each other as so beautiful that we have no words to tell them, to say that we love how the colors of their clothes make them look so alive,
That we watch for their eyes just to see how they change,
That our hearts jump when they show up walking somewhere,
That men and women both feel a shyness that is human, I believe it.

We all have skin and we all want to be touched by each other, just once.

2

A man eyes a woman somewhere on public transportation.
As the vehicle shifts them both in their seats he admires the way the sun casts a shadow down her neck, it’s outlined perfectly by her smooth jaw.
He sees her legs, he sees the earbuds snake down her ears
and he sees her eyes gazing out the window, and just by her body language he figures he
could know her whole life story, could know she is calm, dominant, sure of her life and unsure, and needing someone, probably.
She is white, and her brown bangs sit perfectly on her head.
No, she is black, and her hair is black, and her legs are perfectly crossed.
No, she has two different colored eyes, and she is some ethnicity, and he can’t tell where she is from.
Only that she has dressed herself beautifully today.

The man is white too, and in a business suit.
No, he is asian, and feeling out of place here.
Actually, he was looking at another man, with muscles and a shy smile, who glanced  back at him too, and although it probably didn’t mean anything, he liked to think that it had.

They were all sitting there, every variation of them, on public transport riding home
to America.

America

1

On the mornings of many workdays’ beginnings,
Some walk into the sunlight, some lose themselves on the subway, some fly to other cities, some wake their children for school.
On these mornings I sleep, preserving my soul and letting it imagine what it wants to imagine.
Letting it swirl and slide in the darkness of my body.
Scattered upon this land this morning are coffee cups, opening establishments, taxis, stray cats, projects, suburbs, bicycles, bakers, Open Signs and opening doors.

Throughout the hours this technicolor world of ours comes alive.
In my mind’s eye I see a sped-up vision of us as worker ants--old, young, women, men,
night-shifters coming home, morning-shifters going to work, the crazy and the sane,
children walking to school, multitudes of people bumping into or passing each other
in concrete mazes, suburb sidewalks or on small-town streets.
We make the world turn.
Sometimes we know exactly what we contribute, sometimes we think we know, and
sometimes our souls give others light long after we’ve passed.

The myth of America is that we push it forward corporately.
The truth is that we work with our souls.
The give-and-take that lasts longer than currency is the laughter we share,
the fragments of a knowing glance, the subtle affirmations like touching one’s arm
and the wide-open love of an embrace.

And, too, we walk past the suicides on the bridge,
the ghosts of that monstrous, black hole that some of us hide in our sleeves.
America is also the nation of those who gather the exhausting strength to smile, at everyone, every day.
It’s the nation of those who don’t like to admit they see therapists, who feel like dicks for even talking about it.

We should know that the solution is love, either way.        

2

I know that we are scared.
When our rulers fight invisible enemies,
When we are fragile before the growing madness of nature,
Even when we act as if we can’t stand the sight of each other
we stand as one and look to the skies and wonder what’s next.

When you realize that we are not trying to save the planet but are trying to save ourselves, you begin to realize that nothing can protect you, especially not America.
The best thing you can do is live.

A young girl with cancer lived long enough to attend her prom. She said that there was no use in staying alive to be miserable. Her words appeared under a picture of her smiling, bald-headed and beautiful, in a long, flowing dress.
A young girl in Nigeria escaped the Boko Haram kidnappings. She told others to jump from the moving truck, and jumped.
Others said “they will shoot us.” She said “I prefer to die.”

Life is a tangible thing. You are made of it, the grass at your feet is made of it, the sky is made of it, the lilacs on the breeze are made of it.
I stretch my arms wide in the wind and thank the world for life.
I thank this country for the freedom to live it.
America may not always give us those freedoms, and it may not always stay America,
but wherever you are there is life. Even in the weeds between sidewalks there is life.

What Life Is

1

I have been learning from life every time I step out the door.
I used to hold my soul in a room and let it wither.
I didn’t know how to step outside, how to unchain myself from duties, obligations, academic perfection.

The weary-eyed who scramble from place to place in their slack-jawed, exhausted bodies should know that this isn’t really living.
They should know that every time they step out the door, they’re met with the sweet and sickening multitudes of the world, the thrilling potential for every high and low, in every person they meet.
They should know that there are birds and sunsets even in cities, and that as long as they live and forever after they can find something to smile about, if they want to.
I know this because I’ve sunk to the lowest lows of my life, and haven’t forgotten how to smile.

2

So what is living? Living’s what I’m grateful for.
Living is knowing what songs you love, and playing them whenever you want.
Living is singing, reading, and writing poetry: diving into the lake of your soul, and coming up wet.
Living is taking your time with things. We can linger a little longer at our favorite cafe, look up from our phones to watch the sunset, look a good man or woman in the eyes when we talk,
yes we can.
Sing in the car, if you really want to.

Living is surrounding yourself with good people but always knowing your own self best.
I keep the smiles, laughs, little touches meant for me in my back pocket, while I walk down my road in solitude.
My heart has its own constellations of those closest to me, shining.
Their light never fades.
They each reside in their own section of my heart, and there is always space for more.

3

I often think that my iPod and notebook and pen would be enough to live on.

Death

1

There’s a reason a mother lets her son wait in line again for the theme park water slide.
A reason to sit and linger a little while on a Sunday morning.
A reason summer exists.

We have big and small, beautiful and sad ways to charge ourselves with life
before we step through the other side of that door.
Death is inside the telephone, waiting to tell us. Death is at the next intersection, and in the hands of the lost and lonely.
Still, what death does for life is more beautiful than sad.

I got the news of one death one day, the next death the other. I walked around campus with no one to talk to.
Still, it filled me with a slow static electricity, something rising from the depths of an unaccountable place.
I stared back at the mountains. At once, I saw clearly what was in front of me and inside of me.

I believe death makes us dig up an “I love you” from the earth of our hearts, and makes us mean it when we say it.
Death could be an ominous spectre haunting the news, or a ripped-out part of our hearts when it opens its dark door for someone we love.
Wherever it comes from, it makes us see that it’s each other that stands in front of us.

2

The creamy white walls of the church, its classic shining furniture and blooming trees lining its streets collided into an achingly beautiful setting for my grandmother’s funeral.
Stories sprung like gleaming fish at every turn: figuring, through the Minister’s words and body language, that he knew Marge all this time; realizing, in the well-furnished family waiting room in which we sat, that my aunt had waited there years ago as a
young bride for her wedding.
In this church, we stood up to sing “Morning Has Broken.”
My father and I had already heard the Cat Stevens version on the car radio the way over.

It was here that I connected the dots for the first time in nineteen years.
Standing before the pews with my mic in hand, I wove together the puzzle pieces of my maternal line,using the clues of what I knew about my grandmother.
She was there in my mother’s hands weaving through my hair,
there in the way I learned to speak up, there in the words I loved,
there in the tea I drank, there when I became a feminist.
She was there when I fell in love with a poor man hiding fire in his soul,
there in my own hands when I write letters, when I write this.
There in my mother’s letters too.

3

The summer night was warm as we walked through the front door and gathered in my dad’s study.
This was the summer of my first love, and my first death. Sleepless nights.
My first love had heard plenty about my first death. Bill, my dad’s friend, would never get to know about my first love.

We gathered in the dark room, with the monitor giving off the only light.
We played one of the songs that Bill had written when he was still able to cling to reasons for living.
His wavering voice sang time is an ocean that gathers in waves, and beats at the shores of our lives.
We huddled around the light, watching the iTunes tracker slide across the track.

When it was over, my brother wiped tears from his eyes.
We walked to the kitchen couch, where we talked to each other for the first time in our lives.

New Journeys

1

There are plane rides, new paths, places and innumerable experiences coming my way.
I can feel the restless potential energy bouncing around inside of me, hungry and wonderous for all of it.

‘Comfort zone’ is a stupid term, but a real phenomenon. I’ve been learning that getting shoved out of it and spending more energy than I have on new experiences is part of growing up. Growing up a little faster than I’d like is part of growing up.
This is the part of life adults never talk about, that no one ever talks about, because we cross that threshold on our own. We have only ourselves to truly witness it.

I can picture myself walking down Vermont paths, stopping on English sidewalks, bracing for takeoff, finding some earthly comfort in a new place. I know what I’ll actually experience will never be how I imagine it, it never is.

2

I think if you’re looking forward to being alive, then you’re living life right.

Here I’m alive, everything all the time…-Idioteque, Radiohead
This was the final for my Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman class: I had to write 7 pages of my own "Leaves of Grass" set for modern times. I thought good and hard about what Leaves of Grass was about and what Walt Whitman was doing, and tried to really follow him but also stay true to my own voice as well. Here's my preamble below, if anyone cares:

When I think about Leaves of Grass, what awes me the most is how all-encompassing and equalizing it is. In writing it, Whitman wanted to leave nothing out. Everything he experienced and everyone he ever met or imagined seemed to be in it, and everyone was equally worthy in his eyes.

He also went about writing everything in different ways, describing the big and zooming in to the small. He would list the details of the world for us or bring our attention to a single animal that humbled him, or to the characteristics of a single person he would hold in the light for a few stanzas. He commends the good of the world and exposes the bad. I suppose these are some of the ways to get at timeless, universal truths. In fact, this plays into a balance he seems to keep quite well: the balance of documenting the world as it was by describing the people and the practices in it, but also of speaking to those of the future who he knew would read his book.

Perhaps it is this balance that really makes Whitman’s Leaves of Grass a Bible for his time. The Old and New Testament that we all know certainly maintained its balance between being steeped in its own culture, voice and history and laying down its rules and virtues for the future. And although it may not be as accessible to us as Whitman’s writings are, both texts are open to everyone who wishes to read them.

Maintaining this kind of balance and accessibility while attempting to encompass the truths of my time period (as well as universal truths) in many of the ways Whitman does is what I will be striving for in my own writing. The time and place will be different, but the themes will be the same: I can capture events of our time the way Whitman documents war, slavery, and sinking ships; I can write about what love, sexuality and being (or feeling) young is like now; I can capture the essence of a single person or many people who might represent something about our world now or I can list a multitude of details that all paint a picture of life today. The aim will be to build on Whitman’s structure and voice to create something that may stand true for today and also stand the test of time.

When I chose this option for my final assignment, I was apprehensive at first about not being up to the task. Besides, what would a young college student who has hardly traveled ever know about America, or the world? Would my perspective be limited by my view of the world through the social and news media? Would my age be an asset in a world that’s often clearly viewed by the youth who have mastered the technology of our times? When I was thinking this issue over, I remembered that Walt Whitman was writing this book as an older, gay man, and even if he did not want his sexuality to show in his writing, it unmistakably did. Therefore, as much as we would all like for our personal perspectives and biases to be made completely nonexistent when writing something as all-encompassing and inclusive as Leaves of Grass, perhaps it’s something that is unavoidable. Perhaps an author’s inevitably unique perspective is actually an advantage. Hopefully, in my own version of Leaves of Grass, I may have something unique to offer.
© 2014 - 2024 forgetyoself
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8bitisawesome's avatar
This is beautifully done. You discussed so many different aspects to life from different angles.

Perfectionism is one of the reasons probably why I procrastinate so much. Academic or otherwise.

Also the life and death, beginnings and endings, was brought wonderfully to life when you mentioned sitting in the same room after the funeral as your aunt did when she was to be married.