2010 in review January 3, 2011

Thank you to all my lovely readers!!!!!!! 🙂

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

A helper monkey made this abstract painting, inspired by your stats.

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 4,600 times in 2010. That’s about 11 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 55 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 73 posts. There were 11 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 2mb. That’s about a picture per month.

The busiest day of the year was February 18th with 102 views. The most popular post that day was The Treasure Stone.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were jingleyanqiu.wordpress.com, facebook.com, WordPress Dashboard, contentrobot.com, and thursdaypoetsrallypoetry.wordpress.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for lauren otheim poetry of the soul, lauren otheim, i dont belong here poem, lauren otheim poestry of the soul, and lauren otheim, poet.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

The Treasure Stone February 2010
14 comments

2

The dreamer August 2010
36 comments and 3 Likes on WordPress.com

3

About me… May 2009
4 comments

4

Can I help you? July 2010
24 comments

5

Once Upon A Pair Of Skinny Jeans August 2010
33 comments and 3 Likes on WordPress.com

Artic Chill December 23, 2010

Stepping into my room is like entering Antarctica
A lone island separated and cold
The temperature drops from the rest of the house
And I wonder if I wouldn’t rather have the smaller, warmer place.

After all, Hawaii attracts more people than Antarctica ever did.

But in the daytime the polar ice caps create
There are mountainous regions to explore
With frozen tundra of which I am the lone inhabitant
Surrounded by a sea-filled multitude of ideas.

I watch the blue whales frolic in the corkscrew crest of foam.

(c) Lauren Otheim – 2010

Thank you Jingle for the Perfect Poet award of week 35!

For week 36 I would like to nominate The Fool’s Back Pocket.  A wonderful poet with a fresh sense of the world, please visit!

Empty November 17, 2010

I feel empty. Shell shocked.
I am making myself move my fingers to type these words
Forcing them to go through the motions
Hoping motion will create meaning.
I thought this would be worse
The moment when I realized that I would have to let you go.
I thought I would cry large elephant tears that would slide slowly down my face until they turned into a torrent.
I thought they would fall faster and faster until everything beyond the iron wall of emotion was scarred and blurred into submission. Then I would no longer see the things around me that gave life meaning and I could weep until I felt worn out, beaten to sleep by tears.
Instead I sit here.
Staring at the wall.
I did not need to be blinded from significance.
It simply lost its meaning.
I feel as if a giant hand reached inside my body and hollowed me out and I contemplate stepping in to my stomach, right foot first, and pulling myself in inch by inch. Press me flat and roll me in to a ball so I can be stood by the door like a sleeping bag. I will collect dust there.
This emotional genocide was not an individual dying off of each part. I did not have time to say goodbye to each mechanism as it withered.
It was an atom bomb. A sudden explosion that decimated what feelings I had left and created an utter waste land. There is nothing left to see, so I no longer do.
I wonder what a breeze feels like in the barest sense of the word. I wonder in the pitted shadow of discussion. It is a question posed for the world in words only, swept away if it ever did come up.
I silently wish for the torrent that would grant rest and refresh.

(c) Lauren Otheim – 2010

Sea Song October 20, 2010

I am a ship lost its moorings
Floating: up up up up in the air
Until I find my head too heavy
And I sink bulwarks down
Eyes closed, body listing to one side
I am still for a minute, maybe two
Until it seems certain I will fall
Suddenly a breath of wind lifts my sails
And I float again: up up up
Eyes clear and then glazed with sea salt
Barnacles coat the skin of my dreams
Armor against myself and the world.

(c) Lauren Otheim – 2010

Blank Pages October 3, 2010

Marred. This page can never be the same. I have stolen its virginity. Indelible. I can not be simply wiped away. Overtime my mark will fade but it will never again be pristine. I have written its story. Words to yellow their way across the lines of page and time. Will she choose to preserve them? Such power is mine. To cover. To hold. To caress. To lift and bend her corners. Will I treat her kindly? Carry her with me to the end? A journey not yet completed will take her past my life unless she comes to some untimely end. Were it not for my hand I wonder the path she would have taken. But the life not lived looses breath. It is an abortion of the possibilities. Pre-determined. I steal her free will.

(c) Lauren Otheim – 2010

Hiatus

Hi guys! I just wanted to thank everyone who is still paying attention to my blog after such a long hiatus! I just moved back to school for the year and the last few weeks have just kind of flown by in a flurry of packing, moving, classes and papers. I promise to (attempt) to be much much better so long as my profs don’t absolutely inundate me in more papers. Thank you so much! I so much appreciate all of your comments!

Lauren Michelle

The dreamer August 26, 2010

Why must a dream deferred explode?
What is so wrong with a raisin,
sticky sweet in an oatmeal cookie?
Where, my children, are the band-aids?
I will fix your sores and kiss them better
with the syrupy sweet sugar of love I will
lift your burdens so they do not sag beneath you.
I believe in different Hughes of color as a
rainbow spreads and melts from one pigment to
another so might we dissipate from old dreams to new.

(c) Lauren Otheim – 2010

Once Upon A Pair Of Skinny Jeans August 12, 2010

She put them on, one leg at a time
Feeling the power surge through her body
Unconquerable and dressed to kill
Topped off with a pair of heels

Step through the door of the club
Click-clack Clickety-clack Click-clack
(that’s her heels in case you forgot she was wearing them)
Her head held high above the world

Sitting down at the bar she felt eyes
So many eyes looking at her
Glancing around she sees her insignificance
Uncomfortable, uneasy

She laughs with her friends
Talking about all the unimportant things
A night out for fun, to erase the memories in her head
She smiles at a stranger across the room

The questions cloud her mind
And she almost forgets to breathe
She forgets where she is clouded and claustrophobic
Refocuses on the smile from across the room

Why am I here? a wave
My life is up in smoke, a joke
I don’t know what I want, a walk
I am so confused. an introduction

I want to forget

“You know,” he says, “I think I have the same pair of skinny jeans.”

(c) Lauren Otheim – 2010

Please Read Tomorrow August 11, 2010

I procrastinate. Sigh. I am so good at procrastinating.
It is the only thing I can not do, and still be good at.
It’s a paradox. And I have always liked paradoxes. Does that make me one?
But mostly I’ve always wanted to be an enigma.
I’m not quite sure why, which is quite enigmatic in itself.
Maybe it’s because I bounce around from productivity
to complete
asdfasdfasdfasdfasdfadsfasdfasdinactivity.
Maybe.
Maybe it’s because I often find myself putting off the things I want to do.
It’s as if they scare me. But why?
If I want to do them, why?
Why? Why? Why? Why? WHY?
Oh the questions of the universe.
Writing. What sets me free from everyday boredom. What gives me wings.
I can be anything I want. It supports everything.
Including the fear of failure.

(c) Lauren Otheim – 2010

Energy Conversion July 25, 2010

Since the audio is recorded via cellphone it isn’t the greatest. Some of the “t”s and line endings are a bit lost.

I want to feel the sand between my toes
in the squishy messy kind of way and
have mud-sand squelching fights in
the blustery roaring waves

I want the wind in my hair blowing
me backwards in a sing-song lullaby
as it whips and tumbles among my bangs
turning cartwheels in split-ends

I want the mis-understood
and the not quite over-heard
and the too quiet sighs
jumbled on top of thunder thighs
that ride the fluttering gales

I want to travel so fast
that the problems of the past
are lost in the wind-blast
of forgetfulness
and tucked in the corners of
frostbit islands that ward away
with mountainous cliffs overhanging

They answer only to the wind.

(c) Lauren Otheim – 2010