re: childhood.

in reference to the content of my earlier post, i’m replying to the person i was at age three and tagging memories together that remind me of each poem.

once i got in truble:
i was something small, with a bubble in my hand. the soap smelled like paint or acid that rolled in circles on my back, making my head drop sideways onto the shoulder strap of a infant, plastered easter dress. i dropped the wand to my side and reached up into the dogwood sky, spotted with bright plastic canisters and zip ties from bread bags, my arm too wet, too sloppy, to shake hands with the twig that cut and broke my skin. the leaves like lassos, i pressed my lips against the rubber edge and drank soap until every word i spoke before i went to war was clean again.

school:
the dome was the staple gun that shot my legs backwards and clipped me to a sheet of sand. i chewed dirt and tasted plastic lunchbox latches. i was a science project, running from variables A through Z until the desk was my base
and i tagged it,
with capital god, some forty-six year old woman who went to college, telling me i’m lowercase and late and chokes me with the alphabet and asks me to throw it up in cursive.

fall is here:
the chains dropped from painted poles that hooked onto a seat we shared. swing like lightning. summer weddings taste so dry. the atmosphere swells with fever chills but the clouds and stars will never die.  the leaves, this air, the speed of life the smoke that whistled and decked the bride. interior decorator, some god, damn these designs, these sober sticks, these legs of mine. long like the time i waste sleeping in pine straw and chasing crickets down the aisle. i take a seat on the school bus while my mother and my maggie on a leash take a sink into the pavement of the street. i smile. fall is here, fall is here, fall is here.

lost:
an artificial shopping cart that made me feel like a consumer. i could feel my own expiration date as a shifted like salt water across my bedroom ceiling. dancing in the lap of being grounded. it hosted my dreams of god and old-people cars. dreams that threw dice over breakfast before it could pray. dreams that bowed their heads with little left to bless or save. i’m a sick dog and i’m looking for my future to treat me, that veterinarian on the timeline. i toss clothes and bears and blankets into the gate of the cart and tie sidewalk chalk to my ankles, like post-wedding cans, so somebody knows where i’m going. i pause beside the skirt of my bed and kick every box of board games until i lift this lid, this tea set, that cut time zones in the chest of my small hands when i squeezed the sugar spoon so hard that it melted into the same dust that i served to the world with coffee.
i made a map to the water and pushed my shopping cart out toward the sugar cane circle to drown. i placed my life in the child seat, fake like the plastic in its gross domestic product and statistics that make socialites and country clubs colorful and kind. dinner dates and the wine glasses they imported from the moon. mom and dad were sitting on the front porch, smoking a cigarette in the name of the economy, and asked me what i was doing.

the witch with the itch:
the witch is a fragment of a pirate ship. the spur that cut into the horses ankles and had him dropping dead to the ground. she picked up the saddle, easy like the gadget pasted to the bottom of the cereal box that three kids would sugar and milk and take turns for collections and fighting for elections. the war became an allergy that broke the necks of trees and weeds and dirt we used to brush our teeth, we starve backstage to eat front seats.
an audience of mazes. a coliseum filled with cages. the witch undressed her saddle and threw it on the stove. sure that every souvenir in life is waiting to explode.

not done yet. more coming.

rewind remix.

i know that when i blog i usually write more, creatively. so i’m blogging. so i can write more creatively. but not exclusively for that reason. i like to talk shit. i like to talk politics. i like to talk. or write. whatever.

a few days ago, i was searching through all these boxes of papers and notes and bills and trees that i brought to wilmington because i save everything. i was looking for my birth certificate, which i think i lost in my high school locker senior year. i have to have it to apply for a passport, which i think is stupid. all of the information that matters can be found on my driver’s license or whatever can be pulled up from my social security number, and i have the card. why does it have to be certified that i was born and why am i responsible to saving that document?

i don’t like my identity being marginalized into documents and social security numbers.
or loosing half of it and being quarantined from access to yet another qualifying document:
passport.

not the point. i never found the damn thing but did instead spend an entire day reading through scraps of writing and poetry and stories and movie scripts and plays from about age three onward. i have always been writing. i owe something to that, mainly, not stopping now because beer and school and life distract me.

i wanted to post these.

the preschool archives:

once i got in truble:

once i got in truble, becase i blew a buble big. i beged and beged and beged my mother if i could pop it with a twig. my mother said i could and i relly relly sould, i trided and trided and trided and then. . .POP! it would!

school:
school is boring school is great! the teacher gets mad when you are late! take out your lunch box take out your stuff. you lurn to be smart, you lurn to be tough.

fall is here:
leaves are turning in the morning. fall is here. fall is here. fall is here. leaves are turning, it gets more cillyer, fall is here fall is here fall is here. fall is here!

lost:
there was a dog and he got lost. and fell in a river and his stuf got tosed. the dog got mad. and then his dad chad came to pick him up!

the witch with the itch:
there was a witch who fell in a ditch sense then she had a very bad itch. she scached and scached but it made it even wores she even trided rideing a houres.

faces:
most people make sad faces. some people make mad faces. but do you know what? i like makeing glad faces!

my name is taylor herbert:
my name is taylor herbert i live in a boul of shubert. i like my last name herbert. thank you very much! i hope we get in touch one day!

camping:
camping is fun, i love to jump and run, out in the sun today. most people get sick. and they allso get pricked. and camping is fun by the way.

if i had a lot of money:
if i had a lot of money, i would buy myself a bunny, and this bunny would be funny by the way.

once we had a fire:
once we had a fire. and we relly had to addmire. that fire was bad. and it made us relly mad. don’t worry because we ran out in a hurry. and my dogs are relly furry by the way!

bed:
i do not like to go to bed. all my pincells are out of led. i do not like to go to bed!

the sea:
the sea is fun. people reast out in the sun. i like callacting seashells. i also like hereing seatales. lisen to the waves, they allways get jumpy, the sand is relly bumpy. i love the sea!

the turtle named murtle:
there was a tutle, his name was murtle, because he was from murtle beach. he went to school and his teacher was not there to teach. so he went home to celibrate his brother’s birthday in may. then he went to the beach to stay!

there was a yong witch:
there was a young witch on halloween night. she fell in a ditch with alot of fright. she called to her bat and best fat cat. she called to her mother and her two year old brother. she called to her broom, locked in her room. she started to pout and ate her a trout. and then she got out!
(note: my first taste of publication, this poem. the fayetteville observer, baby).

now, homework for myself. come back to the entry and write a poetic response to each of these. maybe even question my early fascination for the scenery of ditches. the end.