Final Piece

HOLLY CUELLO
Word Count: 5,061

Prologue:
What is a prologue?
An introduction or preface, especially a poem recited to introduce a play.
An introduction or introductory chapter, as to a novel.
An introductory act, event, or period
Prologue this.
I guess this is my introduction to my poetry/estranged writings. I had no outside forces to help stimulate my mind, such as drugs (legal or otherwise) or alcohol. I did sometimes struggle to find the words to put my thoughts on paper (computer, rather). All these thoughts were produced in this magical organ we call my brain. The only information that was duplicated from other writers was the Dickinson and Niedecker poems, although I used my own creativity to make those my own, in a way. I rely on myself to produce these thoughts so that I can transfer them onto computer screen for all to see. I am opening up myself and my creativity for all to see, and that is new for me. I do not normally share the things I write about. Although I do not often write. But I suppose a little requirement and deadline applied call for some interesting thoughts.
These thoughts are mine and are not organized in any particular manner what so ever, of course with the exception of the centos as already discussed. My stream of thoughts, as I look back, I have decided is very strange and has no order to it. Nor does it have a filter. Filter is a weird word. When I see the word filter, I can envision a filter of some sort in my mind. But without the vision, the word is obsolete and seems to have no meaning.
The idea of coming up with 600 more words feels preposterous to me. And this is what I went through every time I sat down to write the following pieces. Enjoy.

What is poetry?
Poetry is blue, poetry is the trees swaying in the wind of the great outdoors.
Poetry is a cat licking its fur.
Poetry is the lonely man on the corner watching a family from afar.
Poetry is a bright green balloon floating into the atmosphere that was once loved by a 5 year old boy only moments ago.
Poetry is anything you feel, whenever you feel it, however you feel it.
Poetry is the feelings we feel that we once thought could not be verbalized.
Poetry is fluff.
What isn't poetry?
Poetry isn't evil or morose or shameful.
Poetry isn't afraid. Poetry isn't a tool used to hurt.

Are you afraid? You may not be poetry matieral, if so.
You may wonder what a feeling even is.
Poetry is feeling.
"A Poet's brain is the ultimate brain"
"A poet shall not spend his time in unneeded work"
"Obedience does not master him, he masters it"
(Whitman)
Whitman is crazy.
I feel lost in this giant giant world full of humans and animals and buildings and dirt. I feel lost because in comparison I am merely a molecule in this giant element.
I get tossed around like a floating bubble with no destination, nowhere to go, nothing to hold onto (or else I'll pop).
I feel like boredom is a lot like writing essays. Filler, fluff, filler, fluff. And repeat.
Boredom plagues us like a disease. Boredom has no clue, simply cover-up tactics. We are never not bored. Even when we're amused, deep down we're still bored. And we know it. When we are having the time of our lives, we are bored. Bored bored bored. Filler filler filler. Fluff fluff fluff.
Ideally the world would be at peace and every body would have a smile on their face and there would never be a reason for hurt. Ideal is out of reach. Ideal is no such thing.
Ideal is not real. Real is not ideal.

Today reminds me of a turtle trekking along through the thickest quicksand comprised of peanut butter. Nothing has gone slower.
Red is for sirens. Flashing, distracting, bright. Red.
Orange is for construction. Alert, warning, watch out. Orange.
Yellow is for yielding. Yield to walkers in the cross-walk. Yellow.
Green is for leaves. In nature, indoors, everywhere. Green.
Brown is for chocolate. Sweet, tasty, refreshing. Brown.
Purple is for lightning. Striking, startling, dangerous. Purple.
Blue is for skies. Open, fresh, never-ending. Blue.
Black is for hope. Always hoping to find a color in that black mass. Black.
There is a post card with a banana hanging on my wall. It made me laugh the day I got it in the mail. It was from my sister. She always has the best sense of humor. She always makes me laugh. Now that she sent me this banana post card, a part of me laughs every day. Thanks, sister.
Motorcycles driving by. Not even driving, but zooming. I really hate motorcycles. Drivers make me nervous because they wear the bare minimum required gear. I think all motorcycle drivers need to wear layers upon layers of leather. I don't care how hot it is, keep hydrated. You need a lot of leather to survive. Ironic, rely on a dead cow to save your life. But I'm a carnivore so it doesn't bother me personally.
They need to slow down. Everybody needs to slow down. We're all in such a hurry, it hurts. Hurry hurts. Zoom, zoom zoom. Everybody's flying by. But we can't even fly!
Traffic signs amuse me. Especially in Australia, where there are "kangaroo crossing" signs. I want to drive down Main street here and see a kangaroo hop across the street in front of me. I would surely yield, you can bet on that. I could never hurt a kangaroo. Or anything really. But a kangaroo is so much more interesting to watch cross the road than a damily of ducks. Although they are cute. Deer are the least fun animal when they are crossing the street. Usually they just hit your car and cost you thousands of dollars in damages and a life time of trauma. Mental trauma. Some people never get over things like that. You're driving along minding your own business and a deer suddenly comes out of nowhere and rams your car? The last thing you care about is the deer's well-being. Who cares about that living being when your precious Benz is dented to a crisp. Maybe it's not even the damage it cost you: maybe it's the damage it cost itself by ramming into your innocently driving car. You never meant harm to this deer. It did it to itself. Or maybe you feel guilty for not having left your house 5 minutes earlier because you couldn't find your favorite socks and yelled at your boyfriend for losing them.
Poetry is fate. Poetry is drama. Poetry is real.
Poetry isn't a joke. Poetry isn't fantasy.

Poetry is vitamins and minerals.

Some people need poetry to survive.
I don't know anybody like this. But I sure would like to meet them.
Poetry is books. But some books are useless. So poetry is not books.
I am still struggling to define poetry. Maybe it has no definition.


Wake up. Eat. Work. Sleep. Repeat.
Wake up. Eat. Work. Sleep. Repeat.
Wake up. Eat. Work. Sleep. Repeat.
Wake up. Eat. Work. Fall in love. Sleep. Repeat.
Wake up. Eat. Work. Break someone's heart. Sleep. Repeat.
Repeat repeat repeat.
As humans our lives are so mundane. But surely there's much more to living life than the repeat repeat repeat.
What else is out there? I am not smart enough to travel to space. I am not smart enough to invent a new, useful product. I hate math. I hate history. I don't understand economics. I am useless to this world.
How could humans have evolved to become so boring?
I bet that cave men had more fun than we do and they lived the simplest lives out of any type of "human-like" life there ever was. They invented the wheel and it ruined them. They tried to complicate things. They tried to be smart. They tried to evolve. Well they evolved and now they're gone. One day we will be too.

Poetry is cavemen.

Poetry is art. Art on the walls of an expensive museum. Art on the walls of an elementary school. Art on the walls of a brick building in form of graffiti.
Driving down the most boring country road,
I wonder to myself
"Why is this road so boring?"
The wheat sways in motion with the wind,
the gravel hot from rays of the sun.
These things should make an old boring country road interesting.
Up ahead on the left are some cows.
In 12 seconds you will smell them, in 30 seconds you will see them.

The word “gravel” is just “grave” with an “l” added to the end of it.
I wonder if they’re related. Related like beetles and ladybugs.
A grave is sad, a time to move on, somewhere to put a decaying body.
Gravel could cover this body, fill the empty hole that we put that body in.
Gravel fills the grave.

A human body is complex. A human body is made from one head, two eyes, one nose, one mouth, one chin, one neck, two shoulders, two arms, one chest, one waist, two hips, two legs and two feet. Why are there only one of some things and two of others? How are we “symmetrical” if we have one of some things and two of others? We are not truly symmetrical if things are uneven.
The inside of the body is much more complex than the limbs. Two thousand veins, thirty-ish organs, too many bones to count, hundreds of nerves and tendons, hundreds of muscles, and all of these things allow our human bodies to operate without us even having to do any work. Miraculous.
If you fill the graves with gravel, there will be less change of a zombie outbreak. Soil is soft and smooth and weak to a zombie’s touch. Gravel is hard and rigid and impossible to break through. Maybe we should start filling graves with gravel, just in case. Because you never know.
But I do not believe in zombies. The idea of “the living dead” is so dumb to me, there is just no way that something dead can be alive. If it’s living, it’s living. If it’s dead, it’s dead. You can’t be both, you can’t have everything!


There is something fascinating about the weather and how we can not control it, kind of like how we cannot control life or the clouds or the wind. But I guess that's all weather, except for life. The clouds literally have a mind of their own, floating about, merging with each other, taking different shapes. Sometimes I like to sit and watch the clouds.

One day I was walking around in a wooded forest, frollicing with the gnomes and fairies, minding my own business. It was a warm day, with something a little strange in the air. The gnomes suddenly began to squeal and run around with their arms waving. They knew something was coming. Suddenly a light shines over all of us. It is so bright that I can see through my clothing, yet somehow I wasn't really embarrassed. Because aliens aren't attracted to humans. Anyway, through this light appears a square-shaped space ship, not like one of those flying saucer kind everybody like to envision. It was square and had many colors on the outside of it. Anyway, it lands and parks in a clearing. One of the gnomes indicated that this had happened before, and it did not end well. You see, aliens are bald and ugly and want to look more like humans, so they steal humans, and take their hair. They go for the humans with the best looking hair, so if you decided that day to spike yours up into a mohawk, you are in luck. They do not want you. Yet.
Anyway so the space ship lands and an ugly bald alien comes out of it. This alien actually looks a lot like a human actually, just more wrinkly and kind of has a yellowish hue to his skin. he points to me and says that I have been chosen, they want my hair. I realize that I have absolutely no choice in the matter, because nobody knows what these ugly bald wrinkly aliens are capable of! So he took my hair, and I just felt happy to still have my life and all of my gnome friends.
Turns out this was all a dream and I woke up the next morning to find that I had been in a coma for 13 months and was bald because I had been undergoing chemotherapy treatment. Apparently I had a heart attack the day I found out I had cancer and fell into a coma. The cancer and chemo took my hair,not an alien from a box-shaped space ship. And the gnomes were my little brothers and sisters. And the fairies I still can not explain. But I suppose you're still somewhat conscious when you are in a coma, except nothing is exactly what it is supposed to be.

One day at a friend's house, my boyfriend could not find his keys. As we searched for them, I finally decided that he maybe dropped them on his way into the house. Sure enough, he did not drop them outside. The keys were still in the ignition, in his car, and his car was running for the two whole hours he was inside. While this was hilarious, I had to wonder what the car did while we were inside for those two hours...
The way I see it, this car went on its own little joyride adventure without us even knowing. Although clearly I am suspicious...
Anyway, what I think happened is the car realized it was still running so it turned the corner, and stopped at the liquor store. It was refused service because after all, you can not drink and drive. So it decided to move on down the street to a drive-thru. After ordering successfully, the car realizes it has no money. This is when the car realizes that it should not be gone for very long, because the owner may realize his keys were missing. At this point the car was in a hurry back to my friends house. This is when the car gets pulled over for speeding. Because nobody was in the front seat when the officer appeared, he assumed that the driver had fled the scene. This caused the car to be shut off while police officers patrolled the area for the runaway driver.
While the police were distracted, a homeless man climbed into the car with the keys in the ignition and started the car. A cop spotted him, so he got out of the car and ran for his life. Assuming this was the runaway driver, the cops followed the homeless man who had nothing to do with the car speeding in the first place. Now that the car was started again and the cops were nowhere near, it headed back to my friend's house. Seconds later, my boyfriend and I came outside and discovered that the car had been running for about two hours while we were inside. He brushed it off and did not think twice about whether or not the car had had its own little adventure, but I sure know better. I am on to you, car.
r-e-s.
impress. Undress. Caress.
Arrest. Interest. Suppress.


Static electricity pulling my hair against gravity. My hair sticks straight up.
I kind of look insane, in fact. But I am not insane, I have just come in contact with static electricity.
Static electricity: –noun Electricity.
a stationary electric charge built up on an insulating material.
My hair is an insulating material, especially in the winter time. Hats are great, but you get hat hair. And really, your hair is the natural insulator, so don’t insult it.

I tend to see the brighter side of things:
Inside of an orange is never as bright as the outside, but the inside of a lime is brighter than the outside. Weird how that works. They are both citrus fruit. I see the brighter side of things.
I see the brighter side of things when the whole world is collapsing around you. Except, not in a literal sense. Because the world probably can’t collapse. I would probably have to look it up, but I am almost certain that it can not.

If only teleporting were possible. You could think about a place and magically be there. Except it wouldn’t even be “magic”, because teleportation would be a legitimate form of transportation. My car once broke down on I-55 in the middle of winter, and this is when I really wished for teleportation to be a reasonable way to get around. Seriously, think about it. I am in a boring city. All I have to do is think about a beautiful place, and there I am. I guess this couldn’t work for everybody, because prisoners need to stay in prison and not teleport elsewhere…
But ideally, we should be able to teleport. It would cut gas costs, we wouldn’t have the economic issues we have now. We would never have to worry about plane crashes. We would never have to worry about sea sickness. We would never have to worry about the elevator breaking in the middle of your ride up or down a large tower. You could be anywhere you want, when you want, however you want. And come back as you please.
Maybe regulating something like that would just be too hard.
That’s what she said.

I wonder how the fibers of paper stay together. This is an odd thought. Hold up a dollar bill, of any value. How does it stay together? Paper turns to liquid at some point when it is being processed, but when you really think about it, you can tear a dollar bill in half. But you can’t fuse it back together. It’s irreversible. You cant fix something like that. You can’t put paper together but you can take it apart… You can put dough back together into a ball after separating it if you wanted. But you can never reverse the tearing of paper. Paper is torn and it can never be repaired until it is recycled. How sad.
I guess paper makes me sad. You write on it and scribble on it when you’re bored in class and don’t want to learn how to do today’s math problems. It eventually gets thrown away and is rarely placed in a recycling bin so that it may be among other wasted paper. It is all so useless when we think about it. I am technically typing into what looks like a sheet of paper, yet it is electronic. This is the right idea. I am not much of an activist, but this could really save a lot of forests. And you don’t need to recycle. You just open up a new screen and nothing is sacrificed. Trees are sacrificed for our use. Trees are like Jesus.

These are the days when skies resume (130)
How many cups the Bee partakes (128)
What all the world suspect? (129)

Endow the living- with the Tears (521)
Riding to meet the Earl (665)
It multiplied indifference (519)

No notice gave she, but a change (804)
Maimed—Was I – Yet not by Venture (925)
How the waters closed above Him (923)

Pain has but one Acquaintance (1049)
Entitled “Memory” (1273)
I take thee by the hand (1275)

The Spider holds a Silver Ball (605)
It was a gentle price (602)
I’m hardly justified (403)

I held a jewel in my fingers (245)
Blood of His Blood (246)
Yet eloquent declare (97)

Such trust had one among us (43)
When I con the people (40)
Reminded me of mine (510)

The Brain – is wider than the sky (632)
Bereaved of all, I went abroad (784)
To fill the awful vacuum (786)

A Man may make a Remark (952)
That Nought be lost (954)
Perish with him – that Keyless Rhyme! (503)


Say, Jesus Christ of Nazareth (502)
Was God so economical? (690)
Would you like summer? Taste of ours. (691)

The Dusk kept dropping – dropping – still (692)
And the Sun – go on (714)
More distant in an instant (981)

This season of the year (980)
It is to be the saved (1347)
As Summer into Autumn slips (1346)


Life it – with the Feathers (1348)
I groped him before I knew (1555)
Knew where they went (1551)

I’ll begin to sew (617)
As if my Soul were deaf and dumb (577)
But dropped like Adamant (519)

I’ll tell you how the Sun rose (318)
Hid golden, for the whole of Days (321)
Some, too fragile for winter winds (141)

The wolf came peering curious (9)
Upon the hill – that lies (11)
Where every bird is bold to go (1758)

I married
A still state hard
Fog-thick morning
(they keep their trees away from us)
Moon on rippled.

Heart, be still.
The frost
Close to the heart
On the minnow bucket
With me.

Nothing worth noting
We can’t afford it. Selfish of her
Eager to remain
In this Eternal Category’s
Pride.

Now hide
To ache
As my absent father’s distrait wife
Hotly cared
In heaven’s name what other.


They’ve lose their leaves
Since she was young
In the leaves and on water
Land of rigmarole
Breaks my hand



He drinks, you know. The day we moved
She had tumult of the brain
But I drink Maderia
No marriage
Between us.

She eloped with Shelley
Who died
Thi not like him
In north woods
Before the fruit flies.

Tell me a story about the war
Head blown off
The obliteration
He wonders now
Without any opening
When the market raced down to a dime a pound
He’d say: all my life I saved
Then left everything
For a three half-penny fare
Till he lost his spring and fall

But eat your beef-ounce from a doll’s platter
Gave to the poor tho he himself
And as I left a sucker jumped me
No modesty anymore
To probe the river

You spoke your poem
With another slave
I sit in my own house
I fear this war
No matter where you are

Sure they drink
To sense
And hum
Or care a kite
On one leg in the weeds.

She carried books
With brilliance
Before dropping off
Then thousand women
Across the sky

You ought to put forth
All body
Downstream
Tonight I beseech
Let’s take it in

Lisp and wisp
In my favor
Bends to inspect
In this dark
A man.

In sphagnum moss
And tooth enamel
You bowed
As tho to fly
Ahead – home town.


I wake, I think, and my eyes struggle to open.
Feels like you’re in a dream, the outside of your vision is fuzzy and blurry…
Except this is no dream, I really am trying to open my eyes.
I eventually pry them open with my fingers.
Waking up should never be this difficult, ever.
No matter how tired I am, my eyes should always open with ease.
Maybe there’s something the world does not want me to see.
My vision is still not clear, and I know it’s not from the absence of my contact lenses.
I want to see, I always took it for granted: my vision.
My eyes are finally open, but I do not see.
The daylight seeping through the windows peeks at me.
My eyes’ instinct is to quickly shut.
The forceful light of the morning is too much for my tired eyes.
I try again to open my eyes, this time more blurry than before.
I can feel a sensation of stinging inside and out of my eyeballs.
I drag my lifeless, partially blind self out of bed and to the mirror.
I can’t see clearly but I can see one thing for sure:
Conjunctivitis.

Recipe for Disaster:
- 1 Handful of matches
- 1 can of kerosene
- 1 ant hill
- 1 clumsy idiot
Start by pouring the entire can of kerosene all over the ant hill. In order to get the desired effect, be sure that you do not leave any dry spots. Next, grab your handful of matches and light all of them. Then, carefully throw the lit matches onto the kerosene-covered ant hill. If performed properly and in correct order, your ant hill should explode in flames and your ant problem will be solved. However if you chose to include the last ingredient, your hands and arms will be covered in kerosene as well, and when you lit your matches, your arm would catch fire. This would cause a chain reaction of you tossing the lit matches into the air, your hair catching fire, your dog catching fire, and then an army of angry ants attacking your entire body.
I guess next time you should just pick up a can of ant spray and maybe some OFF while you’re at it..

Got that iPhone wart problem?
Let me explain. Say somebody has a wart on their cheek, or on the side of their face. A device like the iPhone operates on a touch screen, including the controls to receive and end a phone call. Well if you have a wart in just the right (well, right?) spot, it has potential to press up against the “end call” button. Your phone call will end, and you will find yourself yelling to the person who was once on the phone, accusing them of not paying enough attention. You’ll probably check your phone to see if you’re even still connected, and you will come to realize that your wart ended the call for you. The wart decided that your phone call was over, not you.

Fires are interesting. You have your wildfires, fires blazing endlessly, so it seems. These fires have outstayed their welcome, like your friendly uncle who means well but ends up embarrassing you in front of the rest of your family. That uncle. Wildfires are like that uncle. Some are started on purpose to burn leaves and brush. But sometimes they get out of control and don’t do what you want: which is burn down communities. I think people should be flame-retardant. Our skin shouldn’t be flammable or burnable. Why are these monster fires so impossible to put out? But a small candle flame is so easy? I thought size doesn’t matter? So you can’t tell me that a candle is easily put out because it’s small.



Today I feather more fluff on this fucking thing. How does my mind go blank so often? Is it even possible for a mind to be blank? I think not. Too many thoughts racing through the mind at once, it is impossible for it to ever be blank.
But somehow, my mind is.
Blank.
Blank.
BLANK.
KNALB.
I like “blank” backwards more than I like the original word itself. Knalb. It sounds like a last name, or a title of some sort. The Mighty Knalb!
My mind, clearly, is not blank. Or knalb.
I was supposed to mail out a letter 2 days ago. I am just lazy. Sorry, old roommate, I probably will not mail this out until at least Friday. And that’s if you’re lucky. And from what I learned by living with you, you do NOT get lucky. I think you tried once but it never happened. Why would it? You’re so awkward and dopey. Who would want to get lucky with you? I probably couldn’t pay anybody to get lucky with you, or make you lucky, or however that’s supposed to go.
You remind me of a cow. Like when people go cow-tipping. And the cow is so utterly unsuspecting, and then they lay on the ground with nothing to do for 7 more hours until the farmer wakes and picks you back up again because you’re too stupid and idiotic to handle doing so yourself. You must have been tipped when you were a baby. That would explain it. And then your parents didn’t care to help you back up because they thought you were too stupid to be deserving of standing upright. You are a stupid, tipped over cow flailing your stupid arms and legs and not able to get back up. You are probably too stupid and slow to get it up anyway, if you were going to get lucky. But you’re not. And I’m not sending out this important information until Saturday, I’ve decided. That is, if I find the time. Your mind is probably blank, or knalb, or something just as bad as either of the two. You once asked me how to use the toaster. THE TOASTER. A common kitchen appliance and I don’t care if you’re Polish, YOU HAVE USED A TOASTER BEFORE. But no, you are simply so stupid that you had to ask me how to use it. You are a stupid cow that got tipped when you were younger and your parents realized you were a lost cause and that one day when you were 21 years old, you would have to ask your roommate how to use a fucking toaster. Your parents must be real proud of you. You are a cow who is trying to get into Med School. With your ability to use a toaster alone, I think you could be a rocket scientist. Maybe you should stick to something easy, or something that doesn’t require you to be in charge of innocent, unsuspecting lives. What if it is my duty to warn the world? What if he does somehow become a doctor, the same idiot who can’t use a toaster, and ruins lives because of it? Maybe I won’t go out of my way to warn the world, but I certainly will interview and testify to your stupidness on CNN when they ask me if there were any early signs of his failure. I will say, yes, he was tipped over as a young cow and never got back up. It did a lot of brain damage. His brain is blank. And Knalb.