Dedication to Writing 10

I have an ambitious plan. Well, shall I say I "had" an ambitious plan? The plan has already been executed, now I have to wait and see what the results will yield. I hope I can stir emotions and not just for the sake of dramatic flair. I sincerely love these kids. I want to show them how deeply they moved me so I decided to write an epic poem using fragments of all of their poetry and read it on the last night of school. The summer is such an enchanting time of year. I have been transfixed by obsessions, preoccupations, text, meter, dialogue...I love the world and I love writing...I am so deeply enjoying this feeling of melancholy as I bid my summer school class farewell. I haven't felt this way since I was 13 and it is such a relief to know I can feel again. It is such a relief to know that five years ago didn't kill every chance of ever falling in love with life again... I mean truly in love. In love where you find wonder and sincere astonishment at the beauty around you. I think the astonishment I had written about for these past 5 years was sort of a half-life. I wasn't fully feeling.It's as if I was pretending to emote, to connect, to appreciate the reality of life for the past 5 years. Three quarters of my day was spent in 2004, it's been that way for so long...then the fall-out of 2006...It's been heart-breaking, feeling only half alive. I had grown so accustomed to the heartbreak it was the only tangible thing that reality was wrapped up in. All music, movies, poems, dreams...all things were lensed through the green bottle glass of love and longing for him, for his brown eyes...How amazing to be free of that after so long. How amazing it is to laugh and lay in the sun, to get summer crushes and make new friendships. I can't express any more deeply how much this summer has changed me. It is amazing to no longer be in love with a decade gone by... to be in love with nothing more than the flaming orange of the sunset on campus, the cool of the pillowcase in the morning, lounging with bare legs...I could never begin to comprehend this moment 5 years ago... even pain has an expiration date. I never would have know this...

So all in all I hope my class enjoys the poem I wrote for them. I hope they can see that despite all of the ambiguity, I love them all...so very much...

The definition of "good"

I suppose I can be free-form with today's entry but I prefer to be crafty. I prefer to say something acute yet amusing, canny but fun... All day at work I fight the urge to be impertinent. I don't quell the urge as much as I once did. Or perhaps I am becoming bitter. This is not something I wish to succumb to. So many people in this work-a-day world give in to bitterness and dissatisfaction. Why? There are so many things to enjoy about life everyday, what is the point in spending the entire day moping about not being at home? So many people are home-bound, no job, no money, no sense of peace.

To me, life is good...

The dreams I dreamed last night were good. The hot water pounding my naked back in the shower was good as the stream arose and swirled around my skin. A scrambled egg, a small bowl of strawberries and cup of coffee nourished me. It was good. The sun and sky: warm and cheerful. Everything is well, pleasant, happy, satisfying...good. It stays this way because I stay humble. When I look at the world with eyes longing for poetry, everything I see takes on a romantic hue. The sweat from the gym at work is good, my heart pounding from cardio, my muscles burning from lifting weight, it's good, it makes me happy...

I think of the suffering of those around me and I just feel so satisfied with the blessings God has given me. I don't have to grapple with a broken heart. It is all so calming and good. I got a call from my best friend back in San Franciso last night and she is still grappling with a break-up that tore her heart to shreds. I feel such empathy for her. I am so lucky to be safe and wrapped up in the warmth of a cheerful season, a hopeful outlook. The misery of lost love can be so harrowing; to labor under the shackles of a discouraged heart.

How good life is. How good it is to be unchained and optimistic; to see the world as limitless and marvellous as a child does. It is with the eyes of a child that we can find true joy in this life...

The last week of July

Hot as blazes. Hot as Hell...Hades on the back of your neck, the sun on your bare arms, the white light in your eyes. It has always been my memory that the end of July is when we near the climax of our summer heat. I have said over and over how much I love the heat. Thus, today's heatwave is a handsel for days to come. It is a good luck token, a talisman of the coming fall...

Maybe I am getting ahead of myself but I think it is useful to keep one's mind in a forward moving motion whenever one can... although I am certain in a few words I will contradict myself...

What am I dreaming of for these last summer days? For the days to come? More balmy days...more secret scandals... more mindless infatuations...I like the wide-eyed lack of realism these 90 days sink into my soul. I love being brayed to by the beguine and shouting back in quiet moments of fantastical reverie... Outings to the museums...attacked by colors and blackness; high brow or otherwise...

This weekend the Tim Burton exhibit was so phenomenal. I cannot describe enough how immensely moved I was to read his original hand written outline for the opening scene of Edward Scissorhands. The whole exhibit was either exploding with color or mystifying in blackness. Then I went to the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary art and saw a large exhibit about the history of street art. It was steamy and crowded inside the gallery but the artwork was so arresting and I felt as though I was one of the Warriors scouring the streets of New York City. I love going to galleries...

So my mind and imagination are lured by the wondrous green trees, the extraordinary and delicate fragility of a spider's web, the sensual darkness and coolness of a movie theater...waiting in the afternoon matinee for a superhero to whisk you away to bizarre and extravagant adventures... So lured am I by the illusory qualities of summer and stars and moonlight...

Good morning Sunday

It is so late... I spent the entire day in Los Angeles in a pair of fashionable torture devices called "high heels".  Why did I wear black 4 inch heels when I was going to be walking around the Los Angeles art community today? Well, being aptly inspired by my second viewing of Captain America, I had a decidedly 1940s glamour streak and wore a curve hugging black dress and black silk stockings. I thought the heels would be perfect. They looked fantastic but hour after hour, gallery after gallery... I was beginning to swoon.

Don't get me wrong. I LOVE going to art shows in LA and I try to do it as often as I can... And I NEVER seem to wear the appropriate shoes. What can I say? I'm a tall girl and I love making myself even taller so I can tower over unsuspecting men like an amazon Barbie doll. Why would I want to be a small little girl that cowers in the shadows? Armed with my red lipstick, 4 inch heels, and black clinging dress I was ready to take on the city this afternoon.

It was a rare treat. There is a Tim Burton exhibition at LACMA this summer. It was so amazing to see Tim Burton's sketches, paintings and sculptures that display his boundless imagination. I read, under glass, a binder paper outline, in his own handwriting, for the opening scene of Edward Scissorhands and I started to cry.

So now I must rearrange my room. I must take down my UFC poster to make way for my poster for the exhibit. I love museum gift shops. I have so much more to say but it is terribly, terribly late...

A source of debate...

Artistic compromise and the way I eschew obviousness with a fierce passion has become a bone of contention in my creative writing workshop. I just don't want to change a word. Any word I change would somehow cheapen the entire thing... but the sweet boy who sits behind me with the wavy brown hair and every exacting diction said: "Don't change a word, Claudine. Your poem is perfect."
So... here it is..


"I love you". "You're sweet", "Be mine"


the end of the second week of the second month of foggy winter
still and unassuming in the wake of the new year
a day of chalky pastel candy and construction paper hearts
passed unnoticed as a little girl.
seven year old hands never gripped the chain as the sand
grew farther away
and the grey February sky
grew closer
I wanted to be launched forward,
say 'hello' to the Grand Publisher
and fall back again
to the grainy sand below.
the second week fervor of cupids and arrows
inflamed the minds of the surrounding little girls,
passed though my eyes unnoticed- never noticed the capricious ways in which little girls
were supposed to hate boys
without constancy
or integrity
seven year old hands gripped the little scissors
laying on the carpet at home
with the latest issues of Bible Literature
piled on the table
my seven year old hands so carefully edited each card
tremulously careful should the child-like blade touch the words
"I love you."
"You're sweet."
"Be mine."
one stack- a red and pink pile of cardboard with holes
one stack- a red and pink pile of cardboard bits
bearing the word "valentine"


-C. Woodard



...nope, sorry class. I'm not gonna change a word...

Food for thought and soul

I have this perverse longing to be both enigmatic and open. I want to be mysterious yet at the same time understood. I want to be obscure and yet blatant. How does a poet reconcile themselves with a plethora of contradictions? Is being understood a necessary evil? Would I rather be understood posthumously?

Posthumous artistic achievement is much like my attitude towards online blogging in general. I don't know who reads my blog. I don't know if anyone reads it. Or ever will read it... it might be that someone genuinely takes a peek into my thought life or...it could be that a computer glitch is my ex-boyfriend stalker... obsessed with my poetry and prose... could a computer fall in love with content?

In any case, no one is understanding my poetry so I might as well let my invisible machine lover feast on my thoughts and eat up my soul...

Here is a new poem:



Low battery


fingers tremble
        quivering in the flesh
fingers expectantly caress...the ghost of machinery beneath
the skin
the slick gloss of a machine caresses your skin
applying pressure
a soft click and the room illuminates
glowing electronic fruit
the manipulations of buttons, clicks, letters and numbers
the glow, the man made materials that are nothing like nature
seamless and correct
its psychic conduit, its life line ties the mind together
zeroes and ones, zeroes and ones
is my inbox empty?

-C. Woodard

Oh, fie! Fie upon thee, thou cursed working day!

Well.. it's not THAT bad... I certainly doubt any work day is so awful it merits an incantation of Elizabethan era curses and oaths. But it stands to reason, wouldn't everyone rather be at home?... sleeping away the morning moments of sunlight and pressing snooze an infinitesimal number of times... One time after another after another...in seven minute increments of bliss. Were I to have the work day off perhaps I would still like to set my alarm. Each time I rise to hit the snooze I can smile to myself that I am a time thief, stealing minutes away from the day and returning to a delicious sleep under my delicious blanket and softly inviting pillow case.

But it's summer now... I am so grateful for the balmy heat, for the warm breath of July caressing my ear and the way the warm summer air sweeps over my body as I sleep with the window open. That is my favorite part of summer; sleeping with the window open. When I lived in the big city is was the sound of cars that lulled me to sleep. I grew accustomed to an eerie orange glow filling my room from the countless streetlights in San Franciso. Now my ears are tickled by the melody of crickets. I feel a music in the air of insects and crawly things outside my window... the night birds that nest in the trees. Stars and moonlight I couldn't see before because of light and fog.

A light sweat breaks out on my neck and the backs of my knees. A strange dream possesses my half-conscious thoughts in the middle of the night. Half awake and half asleep, the ghost of a machine intoxicates the phantom softness of my skin...

Beastly Boys

Joe is outside and listening to "Sure Shot" with his buddies in what is now the wee hours of Saturday morning. I enjoy the presence of company so late at night. I think it middle on the night guests make the house feel alive. I can hear the distant whistle of the train and I am not necessarily sorry to have canceled my long trip up north. I just don't know if I can countenance the return voyage... all of those long stretches of green, wide, open California to the tune of an old lover in my ipod is enough to break my heart every holiday. Why go on vacation if you are only going to perversely glut yourself on his music on the way home? Boys can be beasts but they are beautiful beasts. They are mysterious in their simplicity, multi-layered in a two dimensional way, and it is so titillating to be in the clutches of their conundrum. There is something savory and warm in the air tonight. It is like a breath of cinnamon mystery. I hear the light jingle of the insects in the dark sky humming love songs to each other in the thick stillness. I like being up late. I like being deliciously confused and yet at peace with the long, forever stance of not knowing. We never know...we never, ever know...