Poetry Post #3 and Keele Rituals

Levity

Any showering now
of rain or sunlight
feels like the birth
and fall of stars -
catching in my hair;
debris I wear proud
like a crown, for years to come.

Sediment

it’s raining properly: great silly drops making fools of themselves
rushing the ground over and over like it will give immediately.
relentlessness painting my shoes with clay mud,
smothering the fireworks that spring violently
every time i open my mouth-
so i’m a hushed little lamb with damp ears
and today you can have what you want

——————————————————————————————————–

I would call nothing here routine. Every day is some kind of new adventure. However, we have some rituals. One of them is playing cards. Almost everywhere we go, someone brings along a deck of cards. I’ve learned a large handful of card games here, from three or four different people. Another ritual is of course, the snakebite. A snakebite is a local invention, I believe…. a drink you wont find in the states for sure. Cider, beer and blackcurrant juice combine to make a slightly foamy purple sweetness that coats your throat and lips and gets you terribly drunk. It’s cheap, it’s easy, it’s a snakebite!

My favorite ritual thus far has become dinnertime. I never got into making meals back home. I’m happy to eat bowls of cereal, crap or nothing at all. Here, however – a couple of my friends are good cooks. We make dinner together a couple nights a week. It almost always includes pasta and vegetables, but I think I’ve got some cuisine creativity tucked into me somewhere.

Laina eats pasta, mozzerella, tomatoes and basil. Mmm!

Another ritual my friends and I seem to be developing is attending the open mic nights around campus. Every Thursday, Keele Folk Club hosts an open mic at the Postgraduate Association. It’s a really cool little club house on one of the far sides of campus. Undergrads aren’t meant to hang out a lot, as they don’t want the motley crew from the Union coming in and making spectacles of themselves. It’s low key and has a great community vibe. The musicians are amazing, too. Classical guitarists, bass guitarists, violins (fancy a jig?) and acapella vocalists. It’s a great way to just relax.

My friend Ryan did a couple songs again at open mic. She’s quite brave. We were meant to do a song together, but I had a little panic and decided against it. I’m a good singer, folks – but I did not leave my stage fright back in the United States.

Ryan plays "Chocolate" by Snow Patrol

One American ritual my friend Kelly is trying to bring to Planet Keele is beer pong. We had a party in her dorm this past Friday, with the hopes of teaching the Brits how to play. They quite enjoyed the game, but need some help with their throwing. They tend to shoot the ping pong ball like its a baseball. And if you know beer pong at all, you know that is not the way to go about it.

I felt momentarily like I was back home, though I’ve never played beer pong at the University of Southern Maine. It’s  just a quintessential American college kid pastime. I hope it becomes a ritual here. After a few rounds we moved on to a massive house party. Kelly came up with the best comparison for the party: “Have you ever seen the movie Can’t Hardly Wait…?”  Too true, Kelly. Too true.

British, French and Australian beer pong players.

Canadian and American girls play beer pong too.

My Latest Musical Companion

It was time to flush everything stale from my musical system. Enter Andrew Bird, the dreamy musical/ lyrical genius.  He guides my strides across the red clay and green grass on campus. His violin bow is the gentle wind that repeatedly strikes my nose with the familiarity of a lover, reprimanding me for not accepting compliments. His words come like the thickest dark of our nights and the only way to find yourself through is to dance with each piercing intonation.

This is how I feel about Andrew Bird. Enjoy!

Lovely, lovely musician...

Some Kind of Beautiful In-Between…

A typical Wednesday night...

I feel very fortunate to have made the friends I have at Keele. It’s some kind of small miracle that I was bound to these lovely, mustached girls only a week and a half into my life here. There’s a network of support that I know will dissolve once we return to our regularly scheduled lives. It doesn’t bother me to know it, only helps me to appreciate and cherish the insulated community we live in.

Keele is an extended vacation of sorts…. It allows us to live without abandon, to press on through anything bad, to break free of what hang ups we have in our “real world” lives. I’ve learned a tremendous amount about my own limits and boundaries. I’m pleasantly surprised to report that I am, in fact limitless. Anything here is possible.

The beauties above, from left to right: Laura (South Africa), Magdalaina (Canada), Ryan (Canada/U.S) and myself.

This is not at all to discredit my impossibly wonderful friends in the real world. They undoubtedly helped to prepare me for this leg of my journey. I think of them often. I’m surprised to find that more than anything, I miss Maine. I feel a sense of belonging and home when I think about the people there. Portland is still a shining beacon in my heart. There’s a very full feeling I get thinking about it.

In less emotional and heady news… We went to see Watchmen last night and…. It was perfect. If you’re a graphic novel geek,  I suspect you wont be disappointed. They got every detail but one right… and I believe that detail was sacrificed for the betterment of the movie. Mmmm hmmm.

"A miracle, by its very definition does not exist...."

Perfectly Rainy

Here’s what a perfect day at Keele University looks like…

this is what converse shoes were made for...

The pace of life here, though far slower than the hustle of the United States, is swift enough to keep me busy every day of the week. Class hours are minimal, so you jam your social life with trips to the Student Union, nights playing cards at the numerous resident hall bars, watching movies, going into town, dancing and general revelry.

It’s fantastic!

The Student Union (SU) held an open mic on Monday in one of their bars, where my brave friend Ryan sang a song and I read a poem. I’ve not written a lot of proper poems since being here, but there are so many snippets of people and places and things floating around my head that when I go to write, word collages come out. They won’t make sense to anyone else at this point, so I will refrain and spare the mental energy of the reader. It’s polite.

Today, Keele is perfectly rainy. I took an leisurely hike through a set of paths I found, sitting behind the campus. Here are some words I might use in a poem, without making it a poem… but maybe it is a poem, or maybe you could make your own poem out of it all: clay, thick, moss, fracture, root, fluttering, spindle, spines, horses, craft, expanse, atmosphere, perspire, melody, syrup, clattering, fingernail, bells, slight, flight.

I have to stop now, or I will really turn it into a poem.
But for fun, here is a video for Remember the Mountain Bed, which describes very much how today feels.