i still have a blog.

Does anyone even read this blog anymore? I often wonder it, question it, and then decide it doesn't really matter. But also, to be fair, I haven’t written anything on here in like, I dunno forever. Anyway, though, I have a question for you, if you write stuff like I do: Do you ever write something and whoever the subject was, it seems like then those words belong to that person? I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. And it’s certainly how I felt about lots of the past posts on here. Somehow, I felt old posts were written with the intent of impressing someone who I didn’t need to impress.

I’ve lately discovered that I don’t have to do that all the time. Sometimes, that’s pretty consuming. We spend a lot of time searching for people to appreciate who we are. There’s nothing wrong with that, either. It’s kind of nice, I suppose.

But sometimes people come along who just like each other, just as they are. No matter what, that’s one of the nicest things around.

On that topic, I wrote a few things that have been replaying in my head for awhile now, from some recent stuff that I’ll spare you the details of. And, I felt almost funny putting them on here, because these belong to a different person than before. Up until now, I still felt like the poems I shared with you before made my blog belong to someone else. And somehow, that’s true of me, too. These certainly belong to me just as much as the person I write them for, and I’m different, too.

I just read that back and it made like, four percent sense. So, sorry for that.

But anyway.

It’s nice to write things again.

::

Lately, certain colors have filled me up.
Flashing orange of talk
Blinking green of talk
Flashing blue of talk

All things decided upon by inventors of things we use to communicate.

I wonder if they ever thought about that? I guess they did. I wonder if they thought about people connecting through the colors they picked.

Do you think they did?
I kind of don’t.

::
Infatuation
Infactuation
Infalluation

Call it anything
Call it yours
Call it mine
Call it ours.

::

Sometimes the world hates closing its eyes
Sometimes it fears what it’ll see when it does that.

It’s scared of its saltoceans coming up and drowning the knots of the wood on a dock
It’s scared of its land having too many feet walking on new concrete and nowhere for the trees
It’s scared of its sun blistering the squishy skinned shoulder-freckles of a little red-haired girl
It’s scared of its moon.
Sometimes the world’s people hate closing their eyes
Sometimes they fear what they’ll see when they do that.

They’re scared of their children growing up and they forget that doesn’t mean they won’t still be around
They’re scared of their parents not trusting them to take and beautifully use what they’ve taught them
They’re scared of the present and what future could come from it and how it will change everything
They’re scared of the past.

Sometimes you hate closing your eyes
Sometimes you fear what you’ll see when you do that.

You’re scared of keeping your love around
You’re scared of letting your love go
You’re scared of your brain telling you the logic of keeping away from her
You’re scared of your heart.
Sometimes I hate closing my eyes
Sometimes I fear what I’ll see when I do that.

I’m scared of my mind flashing through the snapshots I took, a silhouette of him in a rainy doorway
I’m scared of my ears listening to the notes and melodies that were given to me
I’m scared of losing you
I’m scared of a lot.

But did you know that Time isn’t scared of anything?
It might sound silly, but Time has no rush
It has nowhere else to be, but where it’s at.
Time isn’t scared of everyone trusting it.

Time isn’t scared of anything.

::

I think it might be nice to have a little candle around to burn ---

One that smells like tea-d spearmint and peppery tobacco
One that smells like kneading cardamom into playdoh
One that smells like cabins and chocolate
One that smells like tiny wooden ABC tiles
One that smells like ochre blankets
One that smells like barely rain dusted grass
One that smells like little yellow daisies
One that smells like pretending acrylic paint is oil paint
One that smells like lemony icy stuff
One that smells like watching an old movie in a hotel room
One that smells like old books resting in leather chairs
One that smells like the thick tube wall of a lighthouse
One that smells like being happy.

::

I like the electrical sounds you make
With the scratching of things that go round and round
And the beats of drums peppering underneath.
Then I like to think about you making them and picking each one out with a left and right ear and then a thumb keeping rhythm on a steering wheel.

I like the way the sounds opposite who you are
Their mechanical taps like aluminum foil around the last piece of a warm spice cake.
And if they are the foil and you are the cake,
Then I’m the one wrapping it up.

Putting it away for later, but slowly closing and slowly opening the fridge over and over to see whether or not the light stays on.

I like the font Perpetua
If you add an L to it, do you know what it means?
It means continuing or lasting forever.

::

That’s all for now. Thanks for reading.

One more thought: bad things happen to good people, but they don’t forever. I’m sure of it.

Yours again,
katie beth

from probe to purpose.

Good friends of the blog: how’s it going? I’m not going to act like we haven’t spoken in months. I’m not going to catch you up on stuff. Instead, I am going to post something I meant to post a little while back. I rediscovered it the other day, swapped around a few words, remembered some stuff I wanted to forget, changed a few endings, got a little nostalgic, got a little mad, got a little sad and posted it.

I hope all has been going well for you and I hope you know that I have missed you and your awesome way of reading the blog.

I hope you like reading it, I mean, I know the other stuff that I write is probably more fun, but I don’t want you thinking that I’ve only got one dimension. So, I keep-on keeping-on. Here’s some more seemingly futile writings from me, katie beth byerley. Now read on and get pleasantly enlightened, confused, whatever. And know that I’ve missed you.

Anyhow, here goes:

::

probe.

Oh, verses with iambic pentameter…
Oh, poems with images of things…

But the things are images.
And, if that’s the case, the images are things.

And what if that one really did mean “wheelbarrow?”

Really, I think we’re just beating-a-dead-horse.
Those people might have, in fact, said what they meant and meant what they said.

To the similes,
To the metaphors,
To the imagery:

I bid you a line of brightly-colored ink & little plastic tabs stuck-all-at-the-edges-of-my-pages…

And I offer up the 3-D boxes I draw over-and-over-and-over, just to get away for a second…

And I’ll hand you my sanity in replace of your veracity.

[maybe they didn’t want us to know what they really meant]

Well, I no longer want to bear your delegation.
I’ll just pass it, and the ink, and the tabs, and the boxes, and the sanity onto the next, the next, the next, and the next.

And I’ll tell them, “good luck,” but I won’t mean it.

::

S&H well-wishers:

I hold onto certain friendships and I hold on tight,

But it’s not because I like you, because I don’t,
And it’s not because we have anything in common, we never really did,
And it’s not because we’ll ever see each other again, because we won’t,
And it’s not because I think you’re funny, cause you’re not,
And it’s not because you think I’m funny, you probably find me to be completely different from anything you like and know --

[in which case, I thank you]

And it’s not because we haven’t ever fought, although, we never did,
And it’s not because I really miss you, because I don’t,
And it’s not because I wonder how you’re doing, because I really don’t care,
And it’s not because I’m proud of you for joining some False-Greek-Sisterhood, because you have to feel included, and you have to feel accepted with happy smiles and plastic cups as your little veil,
And it’s not because we’re waiting to follow-through with all those plans we made:

No, I certainly don’t hold on for any of those reasons.
I’m holding on for the nostalgia,

Because we used to be friends.
We used to be and I don’t want to get mixed up in your ridiculousness because I’m afraid,
But I’m not afraid of your lifestyle and I sure as hell don’t envy you with your silly-parties-stupid-ideas-false-believings-head-in-your-ass-ways-of-thinking,

No, I just hold on because I don’t want to taint my memories of who I used to be,
Because I was always some version of who I am now, only getting better.
I guess I thought by now, you would have caught up, and I guess I thought you’d be a lot smarter. But, turns out, you’re still an idiot.

But I’m not going to let go. Because I need my memories, and I’m afraid that if I saw you tomorrow, we’d mess-them-all-up, and we’d go through the motions of a conversation and all-the-while, we’d be saying nothing. And that’s all we’d be able to remember.
I guess it’s pretty selfish of me.

::

I am, in every respect, loyally dedicated to the pursuit of a pragmatically pensive euphoria.

…maybe it was just a nice thought?
But I really thought it.

I mean, I really did.

But I don’t feel silly,
Or ridiculous,
Or like I was living-a-falsity.

No, I just wish it was more than just a nice thought,
More than just some idea.

I guess I’ll see you around. Never mind about what I just said.

::

to the histories of the arts and the arts of the histories:

How we try-and-try-and-try to understand what you meant.
And how we analyze, oh, how we analyze:
your gods, your loves, your lives, your needs, your wants, your jobs, your homes, your children, your truths, your colors, your dress, your minds, your thoughts, your passions, your ardors, your desires…

But we can’t know. At least, not really.

And I wonder what you would think of us, Arts and Artists of the Past.
I wonder what you would think if the time was reversed
And my present was your past, and you were living now and unearthing all that my world had done:

I wonder what you’d say if you unearthed our “Art.”
And you saw our Madame Tussaud’s bizarre and eerie completions of waxed-out-washed-up celebrities, and you pulled them up out of the ground, and their glittery eyes were dulled and their fingers were broken, and their wax had somehow made it through the years and didn’t melt, although, I wish it would have.

And you tried to figure out why we had done it. And you scratched your heads.
Maybe you’d think we worshipped them as our gods and goddesses.
Perhaps some of us did, but just know that most of us didn’t.

Most of us were just as confused as you all were.
And maybe, as your hands sculpted the marble dips and curves into your gods and goddesses,
You felt like a jerk for questioning it all.

But you kept-on. I think that’s what I admire most about you, Arts and Artists of the Past.

::

You will, most likely, spend another second, minute, hour, day, week, month, year…

Doing nothing. Nothing but worrying about yourself,
And your purple glitter for your eyelids,
And your hot pink polish for your hands,

And you’ll worry about where to go drink-and-dance,
And you’ll complain that your boy has broken-your-heart,

But there wasn’t one to break.
Well, there is one, but it already belongs to you and you alone.

It’s not that everyone loves you, it’s just that you only love yourself.
And I’m tired of having to hear about it.

I don’t care.

::

I sat outside a dollar-budget store
in the parking lot.
And the car parked beside me had a woman, her children, and her cigarette
in the parking lot.

And she sucked on the smoke, and she drew it out and blew it back up into the universe.
And her son sat beside her in the front, fumbling with his seat-belt, trying to keep safe.
And her teen-angst daughter sat in the back, sinking her teeth into a candy bar.

The mother had on so much make-up, and her lavender-dewed eyelids looked bright and washed out against the fake orange of her skin.
Like the dressing on a corpse, she was trying to look alive.

And as she pulled out of the parking lot and splashed through the rainbow puddle of an oil spill, she looked right at me and I can’t understand why she hesitated.

I guess it was because I was looking at her, and her children, and her cigarette.
And I saw right through it all. I saw her
in some parking lot.

::

Do you have anything else that you’d like to say?
I wondered it to myself as the girl beside me kept her notebook closed and her pen down.
She was not taking notes and she was doing it as a tiny-baby protest against the teacher in front of us:

The girl sat there, arms folded, breath huffing every-so-often-to-get-her-point-across,
And I knew it was because that Philosophy teacher told us she was nonreligious, ironically enough.
And the girl wasn’t.
And she argued,
And she argued loud,
Over-and-over-and-over,

Of course, she was trying to convince herself and no one else in that room.

And I felt sorry for her.
Because she was missing the point:

If you wear gloves for-forever, you start to forget what your hands looked like.

::

It was pretty magical-enchanted-just-in-time,
The way I met the metaphysical realm of it all

The wonderful-beautiful-possible-here-for-you
World of the Hyperlinks

Leads me to discover things who are still waiting to be discovered.

::

Truth, you sit there in the traveling cart of the Circus,
And we can pay-our-tokens-eat-our-peanuts
And watch…

But we aren’t to touch,
The bars keep you inside,
But we can see just-enough.

Just-enough to keep us coming back-and-back-and-back
And paying-more-tokens, for we can’t think of anything better for which to spend them,
And we do it all
Just to watch some show.

::

Did you both forget?
Did you forget that it was me who brought you together?

You must have.
Surely, that’s the reason,

Because I have forgotten the both of you,
At least for the moment.

And I’ll enjoy every second of that moment,
Because I hate to taint my brains with your memories of Skies Calling and Quitting in the Hills’ Laughing.

::

I hate learning new things about you,
Because I keep waiting to learn something that will make me stop wanting to learn,
But it hasn’t happened.

And it scares me because I know I’d go-back-on-the-things-I-believe,
If it meant I could keep on learning about you and who you were, are, and will be.

I hate reading what you have to say.
Because I keep waiting to read something that will make me hate you,
And what a joke that is.
Nothing could make that happen.

And I hate hearing what comes out of your mouth.
It rattles me, but in the best-sort-of-way.

I know I don’t know you, but I feel like I do.
I feel like it’s the shadows,
The forms,
The things I’ve seen in a past life,
And I just keep on getting reminded.

When I said I hated learning,
I lied.
When I said I hated reading,
I lied again.
And when I said I hated hearing what comes out of your mouth,
I guess I lied a third time.

And I hate lying.
So I’m going to keep-on learning and I’m going to keep-on reading and I’m going to keep-on hearing, at least I hope,
Because the forms won’t fail me,

But then they did.

I hope you like her very much and I hope I never have to hear about any of it.

::

I hope you know that you are things:

You are not defined by-that-one-time
You are not defined by-that-school-you’re-at
You are not defined by-that-shirt-on-your-back
You are not defined by-that-one-story
You are not defined by-that-job-you-have
And you are certainly not defined by-that-job-you-had.

No, no.
You are defined by the seeking of the definition.

And you might get it tomorrow, but you might never get it at all, but
Just know that it’s within. You just have to go seeking it.

Cause that’s really all we do,
We search for something to awake our souls,

But we forget that it starts within ourselves;
And not books.

We are given these bodies,
And this is where we will live
And this is where we will die.

It’s comforting, really. At least we know we have that one constant.

Death is not what we fear,
We fear Death without a purpose.

See to it that you have Purpose,
And I’ll be right there with you,
Searching and seeking for the same.

::

I know you’re busy.
But I don’t know if you’re too busy.
I mean, you make time for things you really want to do,
And it’s okay that my mail isn’t on that list.

It doesn’t hurt my feelings.
Well, maybe a little,
But it really hurts my feelings to know that
You’re too busy doing things,
Trying to make it look like you’re doing something important.
We both know you’re not.

I had hoped for more out of you.

You look real dumb in that one picture.

::

Well, I think that was worth coming back for. I mean, these have been saved on my laptop for a little while, and I thought that I wasn’t going to post them, but then I thought, “yes I am.” And so, I did, after a few swipes and swaps. I hope it wasn’t time wasted.

That was kind of a long little post. Ah, who cares. I didn’t tell you that you had to read it, anyhow.

Did you like it? You know I hope you did, cause I really care about your feelings. Really. They’re super-important to me and all that I am.

Welcome back to the blog.
I missed you like the deserts miss the rains. Yes. I just said that.

Yours with one of those knowing nods-and-a-smirk to a person that you haven’t seen in a while,
katie beth