John introduced me to a friend of his from Pittsburgh not too long ago. Erin is a small, meek girl working on her MFA in creative writing. I first saw her in a coffee shop where she gave me a folio of her writing in a plain black folder.
If you're one of my friends interested in the whole English thing you probably listened to me completely gushing over how awesome it was. Her writing is a funhouse mirror for her personality; lyrical, thoughtful, gentle and enormous. It's like empathy candy.
She sent me something over e-mail she wrote tonight and I asked her if I could post it. She talked about how this past year was the longest time she spent in any given place and - this is my reading into it - this poem seems to be reflective of that. It's a contrast of what it means to be normal and rooted while celebrating it at the same time. It's not always a positive reflection, but the lyrics and rhymes seem to be forcefully pulling the theme upward, realizing that normalcy can be a jumping off point to something more until every little deviation is its own victory.
Or at least that's how I see it. Check it out. Even if this isn't your POV it's still a hell of a lot of fun to read out loud.
atypical year
by erin doran
normal doesn't belong here.
the air it breathes demands
clear
bitter inhales and sticky details
expunge this atmosphere.
here norm terminates torn and ravaged
and chokes on its monochrome song
"take me, take me
don't forget they make me
industrialized and born just the same
corporate made to please
please please
saturated with benevolence
dipped in greed on our knees
sent to feed the system and innately
follow the wisdom of our fathers.
don't bother talking what is true
we swallow only conditioned seeds.
we pray, we need, we feed
on kosher and monotony
autonomy tastes of lies and all these why's
only publicize a life of too many
tries and fails and who needs the wail
of unspoken reality?. our totality
is built to withstand the fragments
of the tangents, the tumult, the trite
existence of those insistent on being more
than just being
those atypical deviants
freeing damned ignorant spirits
and demanding
the grime of these times and designating
different as the real that we should feel
gambling with the stakes
of pain and any emotion
odious it leads them all broken.
we are the conventional
the average the habitual
crying take me take me
a life not lived can't break me."
they spit the words
"but we can't respire
our breath hitches in our collared throats
threatening to expire right here
and now this unbalanced atmosphere writhes with life
not our static air and space stagnant with stale everydays and always
accepted and perfected mask of
we are the norm
but we can't breathe here."
and when there is here
and the air – i strive survive thrive-
off this oxygen of change never the same
live day to day— it isn't thin
or smoked or alien
and my lungs aren't at all flailing
take a heaping deep one
and begin
to accept the gorgeous sin
of something different
not molded or folded to fit
but exploding within.
despite a year lost
to fear and questions of sane
remain
don't bother to explain
just breathe and know i need
nothing of daily and mundane
questions of self are ordained
and the peculiarities the norms of society
raise a brow to and muscle a frown to
serve to remind me
that this time
I can breathe no matter how thin
how thick the empty space of air lives in
and know the despair of suffocation
was just education and a few ruler slaps
scars that are art and décor
simply another door to open or shut
walk through or deny
no matter where my heart pumps the humming breath
this is where
I'm meant to be.
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