The bottoms of shoes:
The most basic things
That no one wants to touch,
But everyone brings.
The bottoms of shoes,
And moist underclothes,
And memories of wounds,
Old afraid-to-let-go's—
That we worried weren't proper,
And imagined others seeing
With a look of quick disgust (
Every bleached-perfect being).
Brushing tension up our forehead,
Curving shoulders like a shell,
Setting us opposite of blooming,
Shaming our fragrance—“Oh! I smell.”
Yep!
Touch the bottom of your shoes.
Breathe your shirt in. Know that this
Is the earthed air every skin wears,
the perfume that “human” is.
And that time we felt a laugh break
All our tension into tears,
Until our guts all moved as one shape,
And our shamed minds disappeared?
Live toward that. I breathe from you
The earth you are, like me.
There's dirt and dew on every foot
And flowering face:
come be.
ReplyDelete“Hahahaha.” That’s what I thought when I saw the title for this one, but that has nothing to do with what I am going to write about, I just wanted to let it be known. I read “Comparatively…” from May 2022 a bit earlier and I believe both that poem and this one hold sentiments that are deeply important, and similar, of course, that’s why I bring them up together. When “Every bleached-perfect being” is mentioned I just can’t help but think about social media, I know that is not explicit or exclusive, that people hide the “bottom of their shoes”, their sides they don’t want people to see at essentially all points in life, but that line really reminds me social media and comparison as environments. These environments are apparent, should be apparent, at least, to everyone. Everyone hides some things that they probably don’t need to, they only show off their best parts, their shiniest sides, greatest accomplishments, best photos, it’s “only natural” no matter how silly that is. I think it is also true, when we think a bit further, that everyone knows that everyone is hiding something, something minor, something that we know they don’t have to hide, even if we don’t know what it is (often it is something shared, something we hide in common). So why hide the bottoms of our shoes in the first place? We recognize that it's insignificant, yet we tuck our wounds away anyway. We ought to own it, ideally. Why is it ideal to show when we can hide, though? Does it make a difference if we show it? I think it does; in particular, I think the reason for such connects to the poem “Namaste”. When we see others with their scars and their wounds and their ugly sides and bed head and dirty soles and pimples and eye bags (a lot of physical characteristics I’m bringing up, I notice, maybe I should take note of that), the things that many would love to hide and lock away forever, they only become more recognizably similar, more human. A world with less secrets is a world that is more truthful, and a truer world is a genuine one, a genuine one is a world I would love to live in. When everyone is genuine, I can be more genuine, and when I am being genuine is when I feel best. We’ve all got layers, like in the photo associated with this poem, the layers of tattoos, I would feel best if I could show them all off, every tattoo that makes me up, every dirty sole.
Since you're interested in attending to patterns in the language you use:
Delete"should be ... they probably don’t need to ... how silly that is. ... they don’t have to ... it's insignificant ... We ought to ... I should."
I really liked this poem because it focuses on something so random yet so universal and I often think about things and people in our everyday life that we discount or ignore that have so much meaning and purpose yet we fail to credit them. Contentment is derived from appreciation for the small and forgotten things, and the poem really embodies the feeling of coveting intangible things like being acceptable in society and the worry that comes with constantly trying to control emotions and appearance even though our focus should be on how our differences make us unique and the acceptance of our uniqueness will unify us. Just by looking at the poem, it is structured in a more conventional way than JK’s other poems which makes it feel more familiar, and I do wonder if the structure is intentionally more traditional to convey the commonness of this phenomena, where we discount our natural and authentic selves in favour of a more curated and intentional one. I also really liked the repeated mention of nature because our feet are the closest body part to the earth, and by that reasoning, the bottoms of our shoes have the closest connection to the earth out of our entire being. Nature is meant to be unique, and beauty comes from distinctiveness, but today, natural things such as physical beauty and the physical earth are constantly destroyed or replaced for the less genuine purposes such as money and attention and I fear we are moving closer and closer to homogeneity in the spaces we inhabit and the people we see. Lastly, happiness is often more than just an internal feeling, and I think that the poem encapsulates how happiness spreads to other feelings and senses like touch, smell, and sight. The collage is really interesting to me because the first thing I could decipher were the tattoos because tattoos, much like shoes, are indicative of identity and the permanence of experiences that remain with us. The tattoos being ever present, similar to the shoes, yet the focal point of many traditional ideas of self-expression and modesty also encourage adherence to one’s true self, which I appreciate. The blooming flower with the hand also reminds me of how intertwined we are with nature and how often we ignore it despite being made from the same exact material. In all honesty, I could not figure out what the orange picture in the middle was but it elicited a happy feeling, so hopefully that was part of the intent. - Lauren C.
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