...Miss Kitty "Utterances Incapable"...

"It is this wild longing - it is this eager vehemence of desire for life - but for life - that I have no power to portray - no utterance capable of expressing." - Poe, Ligeia


It was for Miss Kitty that I took the leap into poetry.  And not only a brusque interpretation of the theme, but I took upon the cap and feathered pen and fully understood poetry in one early winter's night.  Only because I could not find expression, as limited as my education was to that point, did I find the flowered words published in my otherwise ignored An Introduction to English a dawning of sorts.  Here I could pound words from the clay of my heart's unmitigated tempest (or as I first wrote, 'shit') and at least have a point.  It has been a curse and power ever since:

"A thread of gold leads to your heart

and I could not (by my soul) win its prize

among the ruins of my trials

meaningless supplications to impart"

The yellow pads were stared at long enough to give a reddish hue to the world around me once I emerged from the trance.  I was, in effect, attempting to define what I saw in her, the first transcending woman in my memory. To hide her well, the moniker Miss Kitty came as a bit of subterfuge.  The appellation was a homage to her taunt musculature - the curve and shape of her hips as they led past the roll of her supple estremita to the curve of her back - reminded me of a feline stretching.

"Would they weigh much to one like you?

As I'll never fit those expectant sighs

that comprised your loving light's rise

though same in effect, fail to be construed."

I left a note, of many.  There were larger envelopes and a stationary that was unique to Hallmark at the time, when letter writing was at least an option.  I would leave my imprimatur on the face of it.  So, by the second one, she must have known.  How foolish I once was - I laugh at the pitiable, purposeless waste I was back then with a lip curled in derision.  Especially, when chancing her finding one of these notes in her locker, she immediately...[x].

"The golden thread was but lost art

and as I enjoyed the sport just the same

lingered much to late on the game

walked from the whole, but cannot of its parts."

I wish I could say that high school had its moments, but, aside from the darkness that intrudes upon the children of this age, I have no good memories.  MK was the culmination of those moments, where my heart was ground to dust.  I may not been able to verbalize at the onset of what I affectionately call the prison, I was able to give utterance to my sentence.