On a Lighter Note

Baby

Blair Marshall — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 04:41:39 +0000

And you know what, baby?

I love your curls

And I’m taking away your staightener

Because sometimes we all have to be a little bedhead big

Touching the clouds with a giant cow lick

And, baby, don’t you tell me that you shouldn’t eat this

Because I baked it and I will hold you down

And give you enough cupcakes that those love handles you bitch about actually start to exist

Now have another

And don’t you tell me, baby

That you don’t usually act like this

No, wait

Actually do

Tell me

And then tell everyone

So the people you were hiding yourself from are dripping wet from the splash you made

And can’t do nothing but sputter

And, baby, teach me something

Because there’s a reason I got out of bed this morning

And left my hair alone

And for all you know, that reason is you

That reason is to keep you from growing out of your big eyes

Or to help you grow into that voice

That I only hear because I’m listening

And I’m here to tell you that guess what nobody cares

So you can do whatever the hell you want, baby

So go get ‘em

And maybe I’m just here to see gravity’s attraction bring enough together

That I can witness a star being born

And baby, the only thing that gets me to sleep at night

Is the hope of dreaming about how great you’ll be

When you grow up.

Be Beautiful

Blair Marshall — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 07:01:17 +0000

Maybe one day I’ll wake up fluent

I whisper

More to myself than the genie in my ear saying

No….

You want to be beautiful

And I just ask if he’s listening

I never wanted to fly or metamorphize I wanted to laugh

I wanted to lean over all late night barstool buddies to the lady on the train

And say something

In a language only her and I speak

And only her and I share in sticky summer nights

Brown Line barstool buddies

I wanted to bite my tongue at a joke I wasn’t supposed to be aware of

Behind them in a boundless, boring line

But I did because I’m fluent

No….

He whispers again, bugging me

You’ll hear what you wish you hadn’t

And you could be beautiful

And I was all like

That’s the point

Since when are genies in bottles like early Christina Aguilera videos?

All belly button baubles over Brown line barstool buddies who laugh

Because no one else understands why they’re laughing

And I snap at my genie

Of course I want to be beautiful

But clasp his hands in mine like a half blind great-grandmother recognizing your nose from your mother’s

And it’s my turn to ask the questions

Buck-o

My beauty isn’t binary

Or bigoted

You don’t know what my beauty is

And in fact

Neither do I

Because I need Bulgarian and Bengali

To bring beauty to light

And I brought my great-grandmother hand though the misty mouth of my brainless genie

Before he could barge in and break my train of thought

Because beauty isn’t binary or bigoted

Beauty is Bosnian with a British accent banter

With Brown line barstool buddies

And everyone else who doesn’t know why we’re laughing?

Barge in on them next, genie

And make them beautiful

Adaptability

Blair Marshall — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 07:36:36 +0000

Nothing annoys me more than things I cannot change. I hate it when the photocopier had a hair on it, and now it’s on my worksheet, impossible to brush off. I hate it worse when I yawn without covering my mouth or zone out in a class I know I need to pay attention in or lie about something that doesn’t matter and I don’t know why I made anything up. These little habits are what makes me wish I could change, and knowing I can makes me, more often than not, firmly happy about that girl in the mirror. I recently heard about the concept of a habit bracelet or a 21 day bracelet (how long it’s supposed to take to form a new habit). You’re supposed to wear a bracelet on one wrist for 21 days while keeping a goal or a habit in mind. Every time you stray from the habit you’re trying to form (like saying ‘I’m sorry’ without need) you’re meant to switch which wrist the bracelet was on and your counter goes back to zero. By the time you’ve taken it off, a new and better habit has been formed. This adaptability is easily one of my favorite human traits. I’ve been meaning to make a bracelet with the letters ATHII on them, but I only really get around to that sort of project at camp. Camp is also where I learned the significance behind most (if not all) of these words. By going through the two years of training before becoming a counselor, I learned a thousand and one ways to become the person I truly want to be. I know I can change whatever I have to if I try hard enough, switch a bracelet enough times, or really see why it needs to be changed. The best part about the pillar of adaptability in my life is that it will never stop and it will always fit perfectly, like shoes worn out in certain places. I’ve heard it said that once you stop learning, you’re dead, but I can’t remember who that quote is from. I guess I should go find out.

Busy

Blair Marshall — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 05:05:44 +0000

Revisiting you

I find that I

busy busy busy

have neglected you.

You who sit in the corner and watch from high up as I

busy busy busy

leave your pages too closed to collect dust.

It’s been months

and seasons

and there you sit

lazy lazy lazy. But maybe not.

What happens to you when I am

busy busy busy?

Do you sit, selflessly watching me?

Or inside is there a game going on?

Are C’s switching places with K’s?

Kausing Khaos

Are the Y’s off mingling with the vowels?

When they’re only welcome sometimes?

Busy busy buy

All my letters and spaces scurrying around

To form new stories

and poems

and rants

Rehearsing

for when I’m not so

Busy busy busy

Commute Encounter

Blair Marshall — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 07:45:52 +0000

She was lonely. The train was crowded and ‘maybe,’ she thought, ‘maybe a little human contact is all I need.’ So she slid her hand down the subway train’s pole to rest on that of a stranger’s. He was dark, a cap pulled over most of his hair, and she had already been eying him. She wanted to be held in tight from the world, the warmth of someone’s arms surrounding her, but for now, this would do. The train screeched and halted, her suddenly leaning into him. And it was warm. The train car gained passengers and the two were pressed together. Every other person commuting would have thought they were a loving couple as she lifted her head and their lips met for a moment. Just a soft, gentle kiss, she had never seen him before in her life, nor would she ever see him again. The train car drained, but still they stood pressed together, like penguins, tightly packed against a cold world. Her stop came and she removed herself from him, avoiding eye contact as he did too, and left the train car. Still, she took one last glance back. His eyes were closed, and he leaned against the pole, looking completely content.

Wandering Around

Blair Marshall — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 07:19:49 +0000

My knuckles and cheeks go pink and it hurts, writing this, but I must keep walking. It’s not a time crunch or destination that drives me, but the lack thereof. I am Holden Caulfield, like I will cease to exist unless I leave a tangled train of footprints behind me in the dirty city snow. But this is just because. Something fell through and I have time to wander around on the Gold Coast. Might as well go into a record store, build a repport with the workers of my favorite neighborhood diner (so I can later get free food, like my brother has managed). I’m wearing his giant, plaid, flannel jacket signed by the members of Eagles of Death Metal, so I’m feeling cool, hip, and indie. Texting, mouthing along to Coconut Records on my purple baby, ‘iPod’ tattooed on her back. Oh, yeah, it’s a good day. My hot chocolate is finished and this page is filled, so I must grab my custom-painted backpack and continue wandering around.

Muses

Blair Marshall — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 07:46:49 +0000

Chuck Palahniuk, author of Fight Club and many other novels, once said how he liked the idea of muses. He liked how the ancient Greeks acredited their ideas, genius, beautiful, intricate ideas, to their muses. It was not what their genius, intricate, beautiful minds regurgitated, but only what the muses chose to give them. Like a little creative being, curled up in that part of your chest that caves. Warm like a tiny fetus, shifting positions slightly, tumbling over and stretching up to whisper. Whisper something genius, intricate, and beautiful into your ear. Palahniuk, forever at war with those unbecoming traits every human is inescapably adorned with, would have loved something being thanked. I guess you’d have to reason the presence of muses if there were bards around reciting the Odyssey. Still, I can’t help but wonder how eloquent these thank you’s were.

Home

Blair Marshall — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 06:16:35 +0000

The idea of ‘home’ is ironically fleeting. From my nomadic ancestors, I’ve stolen ruthless adaptively, like setting your computer to empty your trash at the end of each week. Four years ago, I moved from a place that hosted a unique regional accent and somewhat off-kilter slang. Within a year of moving, that was gone. Some will always remain, like shoes, still wet after being kicked aside form last week’s rainstorm. Never will I be able to say ‘water’ like a newscaster. But in the times I return to what will always be my hometown, I feel awkward, I stranger in a small town inn. My old bed, in which I shed tears about moving to the Midwest, felt stubbornly cold and smelled like cutting wind after rain. Not like the last friend to sleep over or the shampoo that promised to not make me cry. Not even like it had been lovingly packed away in our linen closet, the closet I would hide in during hind and seek. It just smelled like the same wind that sweeps over land and seas. Wind, pushing folks home, away from home, or towards a new home. My words sound different. Inflection ignored over my time away from the coast. Flat ground, rather than the hilly areas in which I learned to walk, is assumed under my feet; I am hyper-aware of any slope in the land. So soon after I left my hometown, characters reshuffled, like figures in a haunted wax museum. I visit school, see my old friends, reconnect and rebuild friendships on top of a hill. When I spend a long enough time out east, the accent again starts to color my speech. It colors the answer I give when people ask we when I’ll be going home.

Future Streets

Blair Marshall — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 06:30:56 +0000

I can’t ever imagine an address past four thousand. Where I live and I stay, all the numbers start with one. Years, all of them, but so far back no one remembers what happened then. But I do. I remember what happened in 1555 and 1511. Especially in 728. But that was before we moved to the city, where addresses meant four numbers, not three. Three was enough in a place where you can ride your bike to anything if anything was there to go to. I’ve never ventured far enough from where I reside to see the future streets. 2063. 4006. Where the places are called something without the N period that I’ve become so used to. Or maybe no period, I never knew. Here is so orderly: the grid system makes Madison my equator and Sate my prime meridian. Makes it so weird when my brother and I would drive out far on sticky summer nights. Numbers keep growing then drop off. Forever smelled like rain without raining. But no blue Febreeze can rain, city rain. Smelled like car horns. We’d drive out far, my brother and I. Far: Evanston. Where there are three Sheridans. Which sounds like a family name. Three Sheridans, all close. And they never want to move away from their little three-digit world. Or into the future streets. Especially not two thousand years into the future streets. I can’t even imagine an address that high, or what I would remember from the year 4707.

Fireflies

Blair Marshall — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 03:45:45 +0000

We always caught them fireflies, all of us. If we had fancy names like in Peter Pan I’d rattle them off, but it was just the names our mamas gave us. I think people assume we all grew close, growing up in the tiny neighborhood, but we mostly kept to our own families and our own back yards. Except for those summer nights we caught fireflies. All the neighborhood kids flocked to the biggest back yard around — the Perkins’s. Now, Mr. Perkins had died a few years back and their children were long grown, but still, the house always belonged to a plural. There were always enough jars to go around. If Mrs. Perkins hadn’t been so sweet, all cheek pinches and gingerbread, some kid would have sworn she was a witch and pickled eyeballs in those jars. More likely she made jelly. But there were always plenty of jars for us. People always seem to think we were all so close, us neighborhood kids, but we spent the most time together catching fireflies. And on those nights we had no faces. Dark and always summery — dandelion before it went to seed, I can feel those nights on my skin, even now. It wasn’t ever humid, not too much anyway, but it never felt dry. The spring gurgling a few yards over. It was always the biggest kids who could catch the most — they were the biggest and had been doing this the longest. And they would stay the best until they got too big, called us kids, and went home to do something else that made them feel more mature, like reading Peter Pan. You catch a firefly by finding one. You hold your hand in its path and it lands on you. The trick it using the same hand for multiple fireflies to land on, and covering that hand with the other before any flew off. The bigger kids always did this best. We’d all put our winnings in a jar, slapping our palms over the top. There was always one that got smooshed on the lip, and it just got poked in to lie, broken, at the bottom. With fork-poked holes in the lid, we compared our jars like July trick-or-treating and brought them home. We always expected the fireflies to float around in there all night like little natural nightlights, but they never did. And the next morning they were always dead. Still we shook out that killing jar and went back to catch more the next night with the kids without faces in the Perkins’s back yard. We weren’t ever close over nothing but fireflies, and even then, some of us called them lightning bugs.