Perspective

10-28

It’s funny, the circles of weaving we create. The comfort in this is also a comedy; I can’t help but laugh at the feelings these circumstances dredge up inside of me. About all of this; about any of this.

The difference in age makes a difference in the level of objectivity I have with which to process this situation... and also makes what was a big deal 6 years ago into a simple laughing matter now.
I wish there was a way to communicate with younger versions of myself - I think 17-year-old Keri would appreciate the copious amounts of humor and irony in these cycles we spin through.

It’s a thing I feel fortunate to witness, though.
These ways in which our lives drift together and apart, spinning ourselves accidentally into each other.
The people that come and go, the people that stay.

Words are said and
they linger, familiar.
They’ve been said before
with cheeks upturned

There are downturns of cycle where I find myself more focused on all of the boxes left unchecked
and they stare me down with a sudden and desperate urgency.
I am the very definition of adventurous to a fault.

But. I am patient, and imaginative. Strong willed and adamant as well.

But. I am also a child that rails irrationally against authority.
A dirty hippie with desires to push boundaries of social convention.
I am an observer and a collector of genuine spirits.
I am a lover with a writer’s heart and a Bacchanalian taste for frenzy.

Duck and Dive

10-23

More intoxicated scribbling:

Waiting for a voice to call my name
Waiting for the water to kick in
Waiting for the drinks I shared with my boss
to subside

Waiting for the curtain of my hair
to reveal a familiar face
lurking beneath the fog and mist

In a strange city, In a strange bar
Waiting for a studied stranger from afar
Waiting for a stranger with no cellphone (but a car)

and jukebox lights
and potential dog fights
beautifully ballistic bar nights

The Faces: Transit

10-24

         Take two.

         As birds move from tree to tree
         I am also transitory, directed
         by the fickle whims of my own gender
         though sometimes

         sometimes a man with silver scruff
         and mossy river stones for eyes
         will casually take a seat

         And sometimes stroll down
         dark city streets sleepy and hushed
         the others fill up loud bars
         and quiet beds;

         you fill up my head.
         I crave imagined murmurs,
         guttural and gruff,
         that lips might allow to escape

         in a small hot breath

         like the fever of Bukowski’s fingers
         on typewriter keys.

19F

10-26

I went on a business trip this week and I am not all back yet.

Fuck, I don’t even have words. There’s too many places to start, too many new emotional avenues.

I could talk about how it felt to be the youngest person at a swanky business dinner by a good 20 years, and the resounding clink of my glass against my boss’ as we stood as humans listening to music in a bar together and not employer-employee. How it felt to know that my charm works as well outside of the office as it does inside, and to know that I am a welcomed presence. It kinda gives me a whole lot to think about. Is there an actual future here for me? Could I spend a few years working hard for these guys and actually get somewhere? Can my short-term goals already have changed this completely?

My goals haven’t changed. They just seem so intangible right now.

Fuck, everything seems so intangible right now.
I’m in another head-in-the-clouds phase, where my body is present but I am most definitely somewhere else.
I’ll make eye contact and hold conversation, but I’m out flying. 

Oh yeah

10-19

That moment when summer’s fever breaks
and a light breeze lifts the locks of hair that hang around your face

It’s a moment I forget about without fail, and I am ever surprised by
the gentle dark that washes over the sky
as I’m driving home from the grocery store after work

I had the comforting thought earlier that this haze of smoke
constitutes a cocoon I am swaddled in-
not a detriment but a halfway home for a metamorphosis.

I don’t know if this is just an upswing in mood
or if perhaps I am just gaining a peace, a sense of ease.

 

Chicopit Bay

10-13

My words are a little sticky this morning, syrupy with resin from Friday night’s sport.

There’s a lot built up in my fingertips, a lot of semi coherent thought and globules of miscellaneous emotion to sort through. I feel like a mermaid and a watchdog and a little girl, all at once. I feel like femininity incarnate, but also masculine and commanding.

A late summer wind is picking up, not to the level of “problem” yet but just strong enough to kick sand on my sheet, just strong enough to create a rush of miniature roar in my ears as the wind dips and glides around my earphones.

Sometimes there is simply too much to process all at once.

For instance, the water and its constant shift of color 
and the tree that grew tired and slumped over where it stands, 
leaning an arm down into the cool stream below.

The tiny soldiers in trisections of exoskeleton, 
mean-mugging me with menacing mandibles
as they brazenly march onto my blanket.

Stuck

10-9

My brain is a little stuck on this topic. I can’t seem to put it down.

If for no other reason, I think, than that I feel there is a wild and beautiful story to be told somewhere in this.
Not on a personal level, but on a literary level.

I can feel the inspiration coming over to me in waves when I am in the general vicinity
and it’s something I feel drawn to explore.

Dribble

10-8

I don’t have much to give
but all I own
is yours to take

Keep dancing with me
around the lines of
“good fun” and “mistake”

[the overwhelming command of your virility speaks directly to my simmering ferality]

Sunday Mornings

10-7

More words to come, I’m sure.
I have none right now to describe the glimmering orange and algae greens that surrounded the brown docks this morning as the sun shone through the Medusa-tressed tree above us.

None to tell you about the ceiling of graffiti and the cool stone that surrounded you and I as we sat and explored the stretches of contentment and ease that lay within our minds.

 A friendship; a shared memory.
An understanding of inner workings

Burn bright this season

 

 Our life together is poetry.

The places we explore together, drenched in sun and sound as the water laps at the shoreline - 

the things that we do together, smiling ear to ear with the wonder of all of life around us.

 

I'm looking through pictures and texts today, our pictures and texts.

Yes, I save them. The good ones, anyway. Trouble is... they're all pretty awesome.

4/2/12 - Corey to Keri
Spring silently passed by,
a wisp of some familiar scent,
tantalizing the senses causing reminiscence of fragments in time.
Missed mist, now allow the summer to shine.
Burn bright this season, our birthright is to enjoy it.
I love you in the spring,
I’ll love you in forever’s seasons.
 

4/2/12 - K to C
I hope you know that I can feel your sincerity through your fingertips when you touch my skin,
and that hummingbird heartbeat your lips leave me with.

4/2/12 - K to C
The way I love to hear your heartbeat while I am falling asleep on your chest. The ditches of your collarbones and the freckles on your shoulders.

4/3/12 - K to C
I am completely in love with your voice, it wraps around me like the thinnest warmest velour blanket and shushes my worries to sleep.

5/13/11 - C to K
Oh beauty before me, make me marvel in your grace, grant greatness in your shade, shower soulful shine in your presence, present patience and pride. Love me, because I love you. My mind knows of no other existence.

 6/28/11 - C to K
Peekaboo. I want you. My face the sun your mouth the earth, our lips eclipse and give birth, new life exploding in groping. Attracting magnetics electrics reacting...

7/1/11 - C to K
My beautiful bounty, breathe easy and rest well. No harm is allowed in such hallowed spaces as these. Speak soft and go tell... you pick the place, it doesn’t have to be a mountain.

12/2/11 - Keri to Corey
Let the record show that I, Kerianne Mezo Foster, love Corey Foster. I love him with all of my heart.

Imagine all the people

9-28

Last week I was playing hookey and writing over lunch;
this week I am playing ‘office manager’ and writing.
Over lunch.

The only constant is change but all changes have a constancy to them.
This thought occurs to me as I ponder my chosen past times and how all life weaves around me as I sit static in my scribbling solitude, listening to a new instant favorite song.

I hope to remain here forever, ravenous for all there is. All of it.
Smiles on the faces of strangers, smiles on my face as I take them in.
Smiles on my face as music enters me so deliciously,
Smiles on my face as I am consumed by thought.

I am thinking about imagination, and how I am thankful for mine.
Sure, it can be and has been a most vexing curse, but as with everything there are multiples sides and angles to explore. For instance, I feel that my life will have a more secure foundation (the parts I am allowed control over, at least) because I don’t feel the urge to break everything down that I’ve built up for the sake of finding what else there could be.

I don’t feel that urge because I know what else there is out there. I can imagine it, extrapolating an idea out of real and fictitious references, and for most intents and purposes that is perfect.

In fact, I can objectively see how my imagination has grown into as close to a tangible being as abstract thought can hope to be. How many drives have I taken in the past six months with only my stereo for company? In the past year? How many times have I had plenty of friends to go see but I didn’t feel like seeing any of them? The answer to those questions points easily to the conclusion that my imagination if a great friend of mine, a friend that keeps pace with my light speed thoughts and whims and never causes me worry - at least not of the petty variety.

Through my imagination I can be anyone at any time on my way to anywhere.
I can know anyone I want to in any and all of the ways that I want to.

Doing the Wrong Thing

9-5

 Now, with belly full and mouth warm with Indian spices, I feel in a place of writing.

I feel I need to verbally capture an experience I had this weekend, am experience of gliding watercraft powered by my own newly muscled arms. The experience of venturing into previously forbidden territory, the feeling of exploration that gave me that Conquistador’s high. The feeling of unlocking a little known secret.

Kayaking is a wholly joyous experience for me, to the extent of uncontrollable giggling in the aftermath of a capsize, my own capsize, head sticking out of the water hiding my flailing limbs that cried out in a panic that directly opposed my laughing face. Once I was out of the water again and my body’s small amount of visceral terror [alligators - spiders - snakes] had subsided, I realized that I laughed because a capsize had been my worst fear for the day.

My worst fear, realized, and it was no big deal.

I have emerged on the other side of a weekend positively filled with kayaking as my friend called me up in need of a kayak companion - and who am I to say no the whims of the universe? Such is how I found myself in a small plastic boat paddling up the river next to dolphins under the Matthews Bridge, such is how I found myself swimming with barnacles under a dock. Such is how I found myself this weekend. I found myself stiff with sore shoulders and arms, slightly burnt and more than a little bronze, feeling like a warrior goddess of the deep.

I was unprepared for the emotional response that grew strength and blew through me after such a seemingly slight event, but Tuesday night found me sobbing into my husband’s arms. It seems like with every passing week a little bit of conventional-Keri is chipped away in the process of becoming the Keri that I want to be - the Keri that wears sweat-soaked tie-dye bandanas and lives for the outdoors - and in this process a little more of my tolerance for “the system” goes with the debris of old-me. The result of this is that I feel alien around some of my friends, definitely around my family, I feel insidious hippie-thoughts creeping in during otherwise normal activities...

As somewhat of a tangent, I have felt myself incredibly drawn to the song "Doing the Wrong Thing" by Kaki King. I love instrumental songs that still carry a load of emotion, especially when given a title to guide the thought trains while listening. 

Doing the wrong thing. What can that mean for my life? Doing the wrong thing - this phrase resonates within me strongly at the moment because I am slowly understanding that my life will never be the cookie-cutter life that everyone in society wants me to have. I will never be a good girl that sits quietly and never has an opinion, I will never be the perfect mother or wife or American Citizen (TM) that says the pledge and watches football on the weekends. I hate the mall, I hate commercials, I hate plastic life.I want a yard full of chickens and cloth diapers on the line to dry, I want naked babies and wooden toys. AKA, as far as my family and culture is concerned, "the wrong thing."

All I can think of is getting outside where there aren't any corporations.
No one trying to sell me anything or make me feel inferior,
no one trying to convert me into being another plastic American.