Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Complementarity Pt. 6

In the morning I begin an education
When at length I am awoken
After basking unfettered

I, Homo Naturalis
Against the stark moon
Am all alone
Companion of the stars
Likewise oscillating, differing slightly in luminance
Greatly in ancientness

And the wood whispers a vague rumor
 about the city
and the city creates a susurrus about the wood
and I alone under the night sky hear them all
and see the stars with ancient, wizened faces
as they chuckle softly at the ignorance of such temporary things

Sunday, August 1, 2010

Complementarity Pt. 5

The following is the fifth part of Complementarity. Enjoy and comment:


Is my poem too long?
Then my poem is too long
The journey from me to you
Is immense and filled with freshly shifted eyes

Have you left your body behind yet?
Have you outgrown its conceits and melancholia yet?
Have you dug into my poems to dig me out into your mind’s eye?
I am imponderable there, loose in the rapidly bloviating forest
 

Monday, July 26, 2010

Complementarity Pt. 4

The following is the fourth part of my long poem, "Complementarity" :

The light begins to dance its way through the dying rain
It begins to settle itself upon the morning
I sleep but dream the dreams of those
who busily begin about me

The jogger on his way around the green lake
  the mother packing extra pudding for her child
    the business minded gentility on their way to an early meeting
     the baker beginning his bread, the night watchmen closing his orbit
all with a similar dream which I dream
I don’t need to describe it to you
you dream it too every sleep
And are likewise disturbed when awoken by the real sun
Which is unlike the rosy dreamscape
in which the mothers, bakers, guards, and businessmen, and you
and I are more free, more electric, and of newer stuff
Happy as in the old ages of a fairy tale

Or do your nightmares wait within your heavy eyelids?
Where only the closeness makes them more real?
What more than a veil is your eyelid? See through mine instead
and I will reveal to you what only you have truly seen
that only I have understood

Saturday, July 24, 2010

And now, for something entirely different

Well, not entirely different, but I figured I'd take a break from what is shaping up to be a post-heavy month, to mention a few basic things about myself and why I started blogging in the first place.
  • My name is Leonnie Dickens, which you already know, I feel no need to hide my identity as this isn't a terribly personal blog anyway.
  • I don't think I'm a very interesting person most of the time. Now, don't misunderstand that; I'm a very confident person, and I think of myself as being very smart and very funny, I just know that I tend to be very excited by things which most people don't comprehend/ care about.
  • I am preparing to attend UC Berkeley in the Spring to obtain a B.A. in English (w/ a minor in linguistics). Before people ask, yes I plan to teach. Hopefully, I can pursue my Master's at Berkeley too.
  • I wouldn't be pursuing this degree if I felt that being a writer was a viable career decision, but clearly it takes a lot of luck to get Dan Brown rich.
  • I obviously like to write, mostly poetry because it has always come easier to me, but occasionally fiction, which may pop up here if I ever finish one of the 20 stories I've started in the last 6 months(sadly, that's not hyperbole, I have at least 20 stories at various stages of incompletion on my computer right now)
  • I like getting critical feedback on my work, and I haven't found too many places for that to happen out there on the interwebs, so I decided to start a blog where I could post most of my pieces without dealing with the hit or miss internet poetry scene
  • I seriously dislike what I have witnessed in the past year while looking for people to share my poetry with. I appear to be much less thin-skinned about my writing than other people, although I just think that criticism is necessary sometimes if you want to improve.
So that's a bit about me and mine, and I'm sure that I'll elaborate on many of these points as time goes on, but for now, I think that those will suffice to explain my motivations, as well as to give an idea of the writer behind the writing. Oh and because I know how tedious all this text looks...
Work by BanksyImage via Wikipedia
Banksy, I am such a fan
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Friday, July 23, 2010

Complementarity Pt. 3

Part 3 of Complementarity, or A Song of Us

After work it begins to pour
The rain rings heavily on the rooftops
In echo of my sweat falling
In echo of my toil’s engendered fluid
The sky is sweating deeply in the night
I smell the perspiration and am invigorated
Each drop of mine a fractal brother of this
Each drop a bulbous fractal of a liquid fig
Returning the cycle as quickly as I began it

It began me long ago
It was begun long before that
All have begun again a million times
All have a million more beginnings
The rain proves this

The water which comprises it is not new to the universe
The water is comprised of antique hydrogens
Primeval oxygen
There is only so much stuff to be had
Yet there shall continually be new waters
New oceans, new seas, new tides
New men and women with original energy
And new poetry, the rain is a new poem every time
Giving the earth a new sensation every time
Breeding new tubers and roots and imaginative flowers
Feeding bees, feeding birds, feeding life
With new waters until it is time to return them
The sky is filled with new waters
Heaven’s face staring down at its produce
It is new like my face is new every morning
When I am shaved
And when my beard is full at night and dark as the blackened sky
My skin covered in rain proving
New universes from old waters every hour
The apocalyptic dance of a trillion veils of the universe