Slam Poetry

Margaret Ruth Olson will woe words where thoughts refuse to go. Play pieces where people left long ago. Your misery falls like hot rain, and yet i watch it freeze like snow. Freeze me. Fight me. Play me. Write me. Poetry. Tonight. 7:00pm. 501 studios.

For

I am flighting
But you're flighty
Forever flittering at my fingers
Forcing forever back to for-never
For failure
For futures free of fun proof living
For flapping
Until i forget how to
Fly
You say I want to hold your breath
Breathe your steps
Soak up your sand
Count your grains of nonsense
You are full of it
Full of forgetting
Full of how to
Full of fights lost
For flights cost
More than I was ever willing to pay
Break me
Cash me in
Tell me my worth
I am worthless
I am worth this
Thought of thinking
This thought of throwing
Thimbles of protection
Thanks of never-lasting
Towards your thought bubble
I am bursting
I am cursing
I am wishing
For failure
For futures free of fun proof living
For flapping
For forever flittering at my fingers
Forcing forever back to my for-never
Until i forget how to
Fly

Not Cool.

So incase you didn't know, my name is Margaret Olson, and i write the stuff on this website. I know cool concept. So here's the deal. Don't jack it. Don't claim it as your own. Don't pretend like you wrote it. It's called poetry, it's really easy to do. I can teach you. Just leave my stuff alone.

Feel Me

I see him standing there and my fingers shake to reach out and brush his soft skin. I feel the goose bumps chill up his arms and i wonder if i did this.
i can feel her looking at me by a sense not easily defined. static between us chooses me as the victim when it's broken by a touch that hits more than just skin
he's breathing as if i pegged not only his heart but his lungs too with one sharp jab. "Can you hear me?" Speaking to myself, convinced the halo of the situation surrounds only me. He answers.
“Yes,” and as a glass sheet has been put on my mouth, i try to scream out for a savior. in vain. my mind inhibits me. her feelings aren't just hers when she asks to talk
I lean in. Hoping a simplistic kiss would close an awkward situation but he wont allow it. He's forcing me to respond. To feed the desire that i cannot even touch, nonetheless eat with the devouring bites he's used so many other times. i will not fall into this trap, “Please."
I look in his eyes.
No, knowing these simple pair of lips would do little more than nothing, i deny the attempt to pull my wicker-weaved fabric of being from my mouth. how can something so grand be derived from nothing? it defies nature, it defines my entirety.
He doesn't even know what the simple out reach meant to me, as he denies me even the smallest favor. "If you can't, then who else will be willing?"
with just two simple flicks of my eyelids i retort, "and that, you must learn on your own, for who else possesses your heart?"

You Propel Me

Sweetheart
Can we sit down for a moment
Forget the pettish colors of our socks
The flow of our blood
And just be real
For one moment.
You ask me
“Gather my words
Make my meaning
Mean something to someone more than me.”
I respond.
“I wish I could write your tale
Finish the story book you haven’t even cracked open,
But I can’t.
I can’t wish for you to find the wisps of light that will propel you
Construct the wings of a kite so fragile
You only want to fly.
I wish I could whisper the secret.
But I can’t.”
Your disappoint fills me.
“But I can hand you my pencil.
Guide your weary fingers,
Where words will not wobble.
Watch my mind leak to ink.
I am yours to play with.”

What's to come!

Remember forever go when i asked you guys to answer some questions? I actually got some great responses (feel free to send more!) and so I constructed a pretty cool piece, if i do say so myself. However, it's still in the edit, reword, think through process, and hopefully it will be up soon!
Also! I would love to add some more artwork to the blog. If you have any cool pictures you'd like me to post (especially with a fun story to go along) just send them this way!

Just Dance

The strength I needed to lift my whole body off of the ground again felt unreachable, but I was doing it for her. Hair hung past her angel-wing shoulder blades, her eyes were so propelling I saw answers to their questions. I couldn’t believe she was my friend. She was beautiful. And she was killing herself. The simple lines she drew down her wrists with a razor refused to do the job, so the end of her life scooted closer with the drugs she consumed and the tally of calories she etched on her hands. Anorexic. Bulimic. Addicted. I was going to save her life the only way I knew how. We would chase my passion in search of hers. We would dance.
It wasn’t difficult convincing her to pull out her slippers and become the ballerina she’d dreamed of as a child. I simply told her I wanted company in the gym for rehearsal, and she never knew that as I pushed her body to form my similar diamond of plié, I pushed a search for a passion into her mind. I made the girl who hated Twinkies, twinkle with the thought of a new day. Dancing meant something new for her to do.
We started simple. I taught her to point her toes through the pain she was convinced her boyfriend was putting her through. We stepped up to a passé, which not only found the center of her body, but also centered the irregularity that her past eating patterns had instilled on her cycle. We walked on the balls of out feet and learned the beauty of grace. We forced the heals of our tap shoes into the ground and reveled in the release of controlled aggression. And when her suicidal thoughts slowly eased out and thoughts of doing something productive with her life slid in, I was excited to help her focus on a new goal. She wanted to be on the dance team. We would do it, one muscle at a time.
Simple times in the gym turned into intense workout sessions, searching to solve her internal dilemma. We worked her axels, Russians, calypsos, leaps. What she wanted, I also had to push for, racking my mind for moves time had lost. The girl who didn’t even want life before now wanted a leap that was higher and straighter then even my legs knew. I now had to find my own time to perfect the moves she craved.
Leap after leap, the strength I needed to get my whole body off the ground again felt unreachable, but I was doing it for her. My legs straightened, and in the frozen instant I defied gravity, I realized how much the dance sessions had defied for her. She no longer strained to be a pound lighter, but an inch closer to the ground in her splits. She no longer wanted to get high in her backyard, but wanted to get high enough to soar across the dance floor. She had not only gotten her life but had discovered a new way to live it.
The day of auditions her hands shook like before, but for once I knew they weren’t itching to mutilate. They were itching to gyrate. She entered the room and that was the last I saw of the girl I knew. When she walked out her external beauty was finally met with the internal beauty of confidence.

Congratulations!
We are proud to announce that you have been accepted as a new member to our team.

She was no longer struggling with herself, because she had been given what she needed. She was given a chance. I was lucky all she needed was someone who knew how to dance.

Stealing The Shoes of Spontaneity

I am not sure if it was the miles of biking I had done all day or the fact that I finally got up and got my blood moving that made me pick up the phone on Tuesday and call my sister. I asked her if she want to go downtown and bowl like old times, when she still lived at home and we weren’t so busy. She was shocked that her newly dubbed lazy sister wanted to do something and she agreed right away. I called an old friend and asked if she wanted to tag along.
It was eight when we crawled in the Lexus and drove downtown. We stopped at Starbucks for a jolt of caffeine and way too much sugar, and by the time we hit the Union we were already too crazy for our own good.
I must admit, I was the best bowler. I could, and hold me to this, bowl 8 gutter balls in a row, while trying. I mean I would line the ball up with the little arrows and somehow, about halfway down the lane, my ball would get scared, slow and curve away from the lane, hop into the gutter, hitting not one pin. I had a crazy speed of 5.6 miles per hour with my orange ball, a close third to my sister’s 19.22 and friend’s 17.6 bmph. A night, obviously dull, picked up fast with the help of 3 nerd ropes and enough sour patch kids to send me spinning. Slippery shoes hit the lanes, and I was moon walking over the do not cross line. Three games, three girls, three pairs of shoes, walked up to pay. We set the shoes on the counter, got back our ids, paid the bill, and the lady turned away. The shoes were just sitting there, asking to slip into my friends over sized bag. We all locked eyes. We wanted those shoes, neon, tacky glory and all. Guilty conscience took over as we walked out, regret filling our soles, (of our shoes of course), and at that moment we needed enough spontaneity to make up for it. We ran down the long, dark sidewalks of campus, screaming songs too loud, swirling around lamp poles, attempting to moon strangers, sneak into the boys dorms, and steal bikes. We crawled into the car, cranked up the tunes, and drove, belting “All My Single Ladies” way too loud. Each stop light meant a crazy Chinese fire drill. Throwing our shoes off and running as many times around the car as possible, screaming and laughing until we hurt, we would throw ourselves back in the car and keep driving. As we twisted up the long hill of 2222, I told my sister to pull over, and swerve into a parking space at mount benelle. The curfew said 10, but at 11:30, we were prepared to face darkness. We crawled the hundreds of steps, in pitch black, past couples wrapped in blankets, who were silently macking, and stood at the top of Austin. It was gorgeous, lights acting as the towns little stars, and above us, a sky so clear, held the big dipper and a half moon. After several pictures, we ran back down the stairs, tripping and laughing each time we missed a step. High on spontaneous, we made the music louder as we made our way up to the condos at Jester. We swerved around poles and snuck in to the apartments.
The night was everything we would never do. Loud songs, roof down, cold wind in our face. We laughed and sang and gyrated to the music and had the time of our lives. When I finally got home, I realized how long it had been since I just had fun and didn’t care. How long it had been since I didn’t worry about homework or money or what I looked like and threw my shoes off and ran through the streets, laughing until I coughed myself into the grass and rolled down hills. It had been a long time. I missed the feeling of just being stupid crazy fun. I didn’t want that. Having to slow my life to make fun fit in. I wanted to live a life that was fun and never held me back.
I didn’t steal those bowling shoes, and I am glad I didn’t, because I wouldn’t’ve searched for the spontaneity somewhere else. But that high from fun, that, I always know I can get. One night can change your life, and I plan on letting it do just that. I will have more fun and be more fun, because you only live once, and because I can’t promise I wont steal the shoes the next time I go bowling.

Elisa and Margaret Have Fun

Albert- A loveable creation from the next Martha Stewarts' kitchen, and the hands of Martha herself and her little helper. Albert is a apple struesel muffin/cupcake... thing.