Friday, April 10, 2009

When I look at the back of your neck,
the part just above the fold of collar,
I want to curl my hand against your skin
and press.

Ignore the tiny pinnacles,
the short-lived hairs and slept-in
wrinkles, and plunge straight through
the narrow warmth
that keeps you from the world.

***
Today I am a lump.
Well, aside from the dance class and the filing of taxes and the sorting of several pounds of magazines that collected on my bedroom shelf. Other than that: a lump!

Am reading Theft by Peter Carey. It's good. A fast read because I'm lapping it up, entirely enchanted, disgusted, saddened, and delighted by the voices inside.

Trying to figure out some things about dancing. I've been struggling a bit with some technical things that slipped while my attention was elsewhere. In class today, Summer talked about narrowing the margin of error so that even when you're doing badly, you're still functioning at a certain level. My margin of error right now feels so vast that veering from one end to the other is disconcerting. At the same time, I've been trying to mess up my dancing more. To wake up, be more human and textured and pungent. I feel like I've been smoothing things down, giving them polish, instead of sloughing them off, ripping them, digging inside and taking them out. I want to be messy and real; I want to be fluent and perfect. It's frustrating.

It's how I feel about everything right now, though it's more focussed when I'm dancing. Maybe it's the change in seasons. It's getting to be spring and I want to emerge.

3 comments:

Kat Howard said...

Is that poem yours? It's amazing.

And your talk of needing to be both messy and perfect, and spring and rebirth makes me think of the phoenix, who has to render itself completely into ash before it's rebirth. I read somewhere once that "resurrection is never easy." I don't think that anything that matters is.

Megan Kurashige said...

The poem is mine. I haven't written a poem in forever and ever, but my head has been worrying over this image for a while. I'm not sure if it's done yet. It might still grow.

The resurrection is definitely not easy. And not knowing what it is that you want to emerge as makes it a bit harder. But interesting, I guess.

Emily Jiang said...

Lovely poem, Megs :) Good luck with the resurrection, finding balance between passion and technique, finding flow.

Also, I am stealing a wonderful line from your blog and writing a poem for you:

Today I am a lump
left in a space so lost
dust has forgotten me.