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[24 Nov 2009|12:15pm] |
Warning by Jenny Joseph
When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I’m tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick flowers in other people’s gardens
And learn to spit.
You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.
But now we must have clothes
that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.
But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.
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[23 Nov 2009|11:01pm] |
Invisible Dreams -- Toi Derricotte
La poesie vit d’insomnie perpetuelle
—René Char
There’s a sickness in me. During
the night I wake up & it’s brought
a stain into my mouth, as if
an ocean has risen & left back
a stink on the rocks of my teeth.
I stink. My mouth is ugly, human
stink. A color like rust
is in me. I can’t get rid of it.
It rises after I
brush my teeth, a taste
like iron. In the
night, left like a dream,
a caustic light
washing over the insides of me.
*
What to do with my arms? They
coil out of my body
like snakes.
They branch & spit.
I want to shake myself
until they fall like withered
roots; until
they bend the right way—
until I fit in them,
or they in me.
I have to lay them down as
carefully as an old wedding dress,
I have to fold them
like the arms of someone dead.
The house is quiet; all
night I struggle. All
because of my arms,
which have no peace!
*
I’m a martyr, a girl who’s been dead
two thousand years. I turn
on my left side, like one comfortable
after a long, hard death.
The angels look down
tenderly. “She’s sleeping,” they say
& pass me by. But
all night, I am passing
in & out of my body
on my naked feet.
*
I’m awake when I’m sleeping & I’m
sleeping when I’m awake, & no one
knows, not even me, for my eyes
are closed to myself.
I think I am thinking I see
a man beside me, & he thinks
in his sleep that I’m awake
writing. I hear a pen scratch
a paper. There is some idea
I think is clever: I want to
capture myself in a book.
*
I have to make a
place for my body in
my body. I’m like a
dog pawing a blanket
on the floor. I have to
turn & twist myself
like a rag until I
can smell myself in myself.
I’m sweating; the water is
pouring out of me
like silver. I put my head
in the crook of my arm
like a brilliant moon.
*
The bones of my left foot
are too heavy on the bones
of my right. They
lie still for a little while,
sleeping, but soon they
bruise each other like
angry twins. Then
the bones of my right foot
command the bones of my left
to climb down.
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[16 Nov 2009|10:39am] |
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i want to meet a man worthy of fucking.
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| in celebration of sex during your moon cycle. |
[16 Nov 2009|10:39am] |
Bloodbath by Christian Drake
And it came in like the barking of dogs in your belly,
the lunatic dogs that bark every full moon on the dot.
The clock in you unwound, the little room collapsed,
and the blood trickled out in a thin red ribbon,
licking the white sheets.
They call it a period, but it’s really a run-on sentence
babbling on all week. It’s the definition of womanhood
reduced by repetition to the tedium of tampon commercials,
punchlines, and the day-long math test of cramps
shooting through you like swimmer’s stitches
while you’re in the middle of the river.
And I watch you fight to swim to the other side
of the bed, kicking, gasping hard between gulps of chamomile tea.
But when the blood is calm, it is beautiful
as a bone-handled knife. It dreams, and as it dreams
it drools like a baby. It’s the drip-drip of a faucet
as we go to sleep, it’s a bee beating itself against the glass.
It’s a presence, not like a ghost but like a memory
in your skin, changing the pitch and timbre
of your body to my ear as I pull my fingers across
your belly and you find my lips in the dark like a magnet
and I slip my fingers through your hair as gently as thoughts
and you say,
"Baby, not tonight. I’m on my period."
And I say,
Baby, I will make love to you until we look like a war zone.
Give me the sweet murder of your body
until they string up crime scene tape across the bedroom,
because period sex is awesome.
I will love you like surgery and I will transplant your heart.
I will love you like a horror movie,
’cause it’s about to be a bloodbath in here.
Because I need a hot transfusion of your love, type A-positive
because you can’t B-negative when I’m giving you my O, O, O…
I want to surf your crimson wave,
and invite your Aunt Flow for a threesome.
I want to reverse your curse, because the Red Sox are in town.
I want to make this a "special time."
I want to put my submarine in your Red Sea
and hunt for Red October, and do not hesitate
to ask me to go snorkeling down there.
Because if I’m going to order the finest steak,
I’m going to eat it rare.
Yeah, because I crave the taste of blood,
and I want your nerves raw like a bullet wound valentine.
And whether it’s hard or sweet, we’re going to leave
skid marks on the sheets
and handprints on the walls.
So throw that tampon in the air like a cotton Sputnik, just lob it,
’cause in the end, I want to be bloodier than John Wayne Bobbitt.
Your time of the month has perfect timing
because you open like the elevator doors in "The Shining."
I like some ketchup when I’m dining,
but I want to taste copper like I’m dying.
So let the woman in you make a man out of me.
Let’s get unclean. Because this lovemaking is no less perfect
than the moon rising in you, and this lovemaking is the gospel music
made by the rhythm of flesh and blood and flesh and blood,
and this blood is the closest I will ever be to making love
to your insides, sailing through your veins and arteries.
This blood on my skin is the photograph I take
when I visit your heart.
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[10 Nov 2009|09:35pm] |
today was a day of intense turmoil, thought, and choice; while none of it was desperately morose or serious, i watched the gray sky beat light yellow pieces of sun off of its transparent skin like an act of defiance, a dance that burned my gaze and caused me to blink away. i wanted to skip all of my classes and run in the woods again before demeter great grief causes flakes of snow as fat as my tongue to fall onto the ground but i was deeply aching for human contact ... the discussion of topic or a small debate. i began to ponder my immediate desire to be with nature Herself, the lone naked trees of late autumn my only company as my knees and legs wear into the ground with each mile where i force my body against the wind. and then the immediate thought : with Her am i ever truly alone? there is a clarity that the wild limbs and fingers of the forest bring (and as burroughs said : the ocean air causes your lungs to expand like nothing else on earth) that i cannot find with other people; with animals, yes. it is truly clear (with devout contemplation to the subject) as i get older that life begins with animals ... anything that is genuinely decent in me i have learned from my fine furred friends : the ability to forgive without regret or pretense, intense camaraderie, or even the simplistic beauty of napping in the sun and wrapping your body next to your own kind while you sleep. i love humanity and have a great respect and compassion for people, finding them endlessly fascinating and erotic, but enormously tedious. the energy that is required to adhere to social and cultural customs of acquaintanceship and courtship is insanely tiring and the welcome reprieve of watching cats roam in tall sharp grass or the sound of dry leaves breathing against the oak fence and through the hairless branches of the apple trees fixes the broken bones of my spirit.
sometimes i dream of a solitude with nature that would lead to an ascetic life ... a simplicity that would cause the dark and muddled fog of my mind to dissipate, where i could find what i truly am. what am i made of? generations of eastern european warriors and strong women who suffered and survived it all as their skin wrinkled and backs arched. triumph of the spirit! triumph of the sisters and brothers who move their bodies like trees through the storm, rooted and swaying their arms with the wind, never against it. i could lose myself to the mountains or the water ... and come back as what? the possibilities are endless and terrifying. what if the disconnection to my own society doesn't cease but only perpetuates until a solitary existence is the only life imaginable? what in the poet of my soul cries for the air and the rain, the western prairies where the vast landscape consumes your thoughts like a hungry and feral creature?
i don't understand the dichotomy of being without a mate ... to me it is another example of how the analytical and intuitive forces in me constantly battle. as a single woman i am given more freedom in action, appearance, and decision; i am allowed to spend my hours selfishly, and have the liberation of never having to answer to anyone. my explanations are required only to myself and (for an even more hedonistic example) i have no responsibility for anyone financially. however, alone in the hallway today, stretched out on a bench and listening to the professor in the next room speak his academic soliloquy i began to think of how you tied my wrists to your bed years ago, undoing the buttons of my shirt with your teeth. i could feel your beard rub against my nipples, your hot breath on my neck and the heels of my feet kept digging into your bed until i pushed the blanket onto the floor and revealed the dark purple sheets underneath. you pulled off my shorts (it was warm july) and kissed my right thigh while i struggled against my restraints and begged begged begged for you to untie me. you only laughed as your kisses reached closer in ... sometimes sexual acts occur only out of physical necessity, like a bland meal eaten to keep you alive. but you grabbed my thick thighs and bit and tore through every part of me ... never before had i felt so beautiful and every cell of my organism begged for you to move inside of me.
those were my thoughts this evening and i expect nothing less than that adoration from potential lovers ... a respect and heat for whatever pleasure you would receive from sharing me. while i do not attract many men (with my short hair and unshaved body, my boyish appearance) i refuse to change to comfort weak mates with weak dispositions and weak minds. you can only have me as i was undoubtedly born to be and until then my integrity will keep me company at night.
the hours of this day are ending and the morning will soon approach - the appalachian fog surrenders to the eastern sun while i cut apples in the kitchen, the reflection of this young face a familiar stranger.
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| 3:14 |
[03 Nov 2009|02:58pm] |
so these fall days are alone or with animals (who, like whitman, i would rather keep my company with) while i peruse a few pages or screens or the deep swerving areas of my mind that i attempt to drown out a night. when i am too stressed, too exhausted, i close my eyes and pull the covers over my head to hear my own heartbeat between my ears, listen to my moist warm breath and imagine standing on the edge of a bridge, looking down between my feet to the water that is black with the closing hours of the day, watching the currents wave wave wave. it's like a greeting, a cruel punishment that instead of being born furred, noiseless, with no anthropology to my consciousness i am here in this body listening to these thoughts. in terms of home these bones and flesh are a gift, but despite my rationality at the beauty of each foggy morning that i drink pumpkin coffee with vanilla cream naked on the kitchen counter, my cat rubbing her tail in the fat space between my thumb and finger, looking as the early morning sun peaks above these mountains that were once (millions of years before me, when i once was a fish or beetle) the highest in the world ... i still think of standing on the edge of a bridge, looking at the end of this life (my only life?) below me. and - as if anything else could be more vain or sickly than this imagining - i dream of someone saving me.
i fear becoming a bitter person .. i fear that any trouble that i am given will break my spirit and i will fall into myself with an implosion that will destroy anything that is kind or soft about me. years ago i helped a former lover pull himself back together and in my youthful naivety i assumed that the first love i experienced was unique, and through whatever occured the abuse was the only extraordinary happening. and i cannot explain how angry and resentful i am that there is no one here to help me now; of course eternal optimism calmy reiterates that i can take care of myself, that it is a lesson to trim ego like the branches of a tree that grow fuller every spring when the air is thick and sweet.
is there such a truth? do things happen simply because there is cause and effect and the result is just what it is or is there a larger plan, a scheme that isn't realized until the curtain hits the floor? just like a novel, how can my life be fully critiqued until i reach the end?
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| dreams. |
[25 Oct 2009|05:28pm] |
i dreamt that my sister, mother, father, and i moved into a huge old house that my father was extremely familiar with (maybe he had lived there previously?) ... there were large bedrooms with feathered beds and homemade quilts and my cats ran straight into them and fell asleep. although the house was haunted and i was terribly afraid of the ghosts i knew that if my cats felt comfortable i was completely safe. in the kitchen everything was warm and white, sheets thrown over each piece of furniture and the four of us together cleaned the deep, moth-thick dust off of the kitchen table to reveal its vast, round mahogany surface. i ran my hands along the smooth top and while my mother pointed out the flaws and cracks along the sides i kept thinking to myself, this is where i will have breakfast every morning...
when the previous dream snapped off from outside noise or slight consciousness (the intermission of my play) i came back into sleep to see myself pregnant: belly swollen, my navel distended. i kept trying to breathe deeply and stick out my ribs but it was impossible ... everything in my body flowed full and heavy. i though about the last person i had shared my bed with and i knew i didn't want to tell him about the child or even carry the child to term. while i was excited over the prospect of motherhood i was also relieved knowing i had the option to terminate and restore my menses.
next i am standing outside with a man i kept calling roman and i know that he is years older than me, while still young : black hair, a large straight nose, and gray eyes. the top of my head rests below his chin and although i am concentrating on the hot bright sun on the leaves of the maple in my backyard i can see the tattoos on his arms and neck. while i stare at the shadows that keep bouncing from different points in the garden, swaying and swerving between the thick hair of the trees that blot out the light, he pulls me to the ground and touches my feet to jaw in one soft motion. when i finally turn my head to him he kisses me and breaks away smiling, asking, "why did i never tell you that i love you before now?" i told him that i didn't know.
sometimes the rest you find beneath the dull fluorescent street lamps is more gratifying than the songs that sing you alive, the faces that greet you in the damp morning air.
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[19 Oct 2009|11:45am] |
( lazy monday. )
i'm superbly exhausted: work, class, homework, running. the weather changed abruptly, within a night's rest ... every year i determine myself to catch the change, to stop my lids from blinking and the moment my body fails or i turn my gaze to daydream the leaves change costume and drop their clothes to the floor. it's the same as when night approaches (from wherever it drags its limbs from) or the subtle lines of aging ... nature is cunning, alluring. she loves to keep her secrets behind the curtain.
tired from work and a long dinner with a coworker, i came home and fell in bed, playing future scenes in my life like clips from a movie. my life feels like one big unanswered question .. with my true passion noticeable i still cannot find exactly what i am reaching and working for. it is not romance or sex, or even money ... it's something indescribable, a recognition for my words, a position of power in my field ... respect, freedom. an anarchy of my body and of my stifled spirit that i alone hold back, the sole contributor to my unused potential. until i find an answer i am terrified i will spend my days walking around in this dreamlike state, my glazed eyes trying to focus on the people around me, their eroticism leaking through the stitches of their clothes.
i have become quite a loner ... it's not necessarily hedonism but rather a rejuvenation of a person. i guess as i get older i refuse any type frivolity and superficiality in people and relationships, which has left me quite alone. i'm trying to take these days as a thoraeu influenced meditation to focus on myself and what i want to do with the time i am given, the people i will meet. still, i am terrified as the years go by the connection will not be met and i will live in some strange solitude. in the early morning (while night was still rested on her hips, her fat black stomach hanging near the tops of the pines) the fog was thick and unwavering near the yellow streetlights, a bright reflection of horror and october macabre and for a few seconds i felt instantly happy, connected to something primal within my bones where a warm safety overwhelmed my legs until they shook from my kneecaps.
in that moment would you find the unnameable face that you have been searching for?
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