broken-shells along finger-spines for word-stems like the tongue-dry feel of your ever-mouth. how much longer the sun-black? twist-corn inversion of marrow-splint, a something-more lost, a some-less-more forgotten-kind, a sad-sad-fire-anger, like the weeping of a widow-house. and i-there, and i-stare, and i-crackling, kindle-ash scattered ever-nowhere.
Monthly Archives: January 2008
as her mother leaves
as her mother leaves she has to wonder what monsters lurk for her in the dark, in the light of day, in her home, in the eyes of her husband who has betrayed her. she wonders what lies ahead for the rest of her life now, watching him place the suitcases into the back of the car, her daughter rambling about around them, feeling a slight sense of nausea go through her. here she is, alone, and there he is, nothing he ever was, only an ever was. he turns to her, sees her watching him and he would smile for her if he didn’t already know all the damage he had done.
when cornered
you know nothing of me you will never know me look all you want search all you want you will never know you do not want to ever know the rage i hide behind this thick skin the instinct to protect what’s mine after all that has been taken from me i will protect this i will mutilate myself i will scar myself until the outside matches the inside to keep them safe from the devil within me from the infection i was and am and always will be from the sickness that cracks the world in me into rust and bleeding and puss and garden shears struck through pried palms and tongues frozen on barbed wire fences and tires burning thick black plumes into nostrils cleaved open you do not know the lengths i have gone through over nothing what i’ve done to anyone when nothing even mattered but here and now with all that i have left i will gouge you all i will render you all i will bare my teeth and i will howl and i will show you the sort of animal i truly am when cornered and nothing that ever threatened my own in this world will be safe from harm
doing saying
doing and saying are different but words should move they should move you out of a room where bodies hang on meat hooks over your bed and the entrails brush the pillows and the stain of everything you’ve done becomes a whisper taught to children with mangled limbs and cleft faces
brick silent
and the silence is like a brick in his mouth that he can barely chew and she says I’m sick and he tries to ask how long has she been this way but his tongue is stuck on the mortar and she says again I’m sick of this and he tries to fit his fingers between the brick and his lips and she throws off the sheets and looks for her clothes and he imagines she will never find them because he cannot tell her where they are
project snowflake: notes: amanda, ian, breakfast in bed
and she has breakfast in bed with ian the way normal people do with a cinnamon raisin bagel for herself and a wheat one for him. he globs on the cream cheese in a way that makes her laugh and she doesn’t think about the others, she doesn’t think about harry or tom. instead she bites into it, telling ian about her next project, telling ian about the dream she had. he listens and nods and chews, a dab of cream cheese caught in the corner of his lips. suddenly she kisses him there and he kisses her back and the bagels fall onto the bedsheets then fall onto the floor as they tumble over each other.
cut and paste
there’s a man with a pair of scissors and a pile of magazines. he cuts. he cuts out her face and puts it here. cuts off her hands and puts them there. he smokes viciously. he flips through each magazine, frustrated hands. he cuts and pastes on whiteboard an obscene shrine. the eyes most important, seductive and sleek, predator eyes, eyes focusing on prey, eyes without remorse. her body means nothing, interchangeable, always. and beside her, him in a tux, him in speedos, him with a fine hair cut, him cut up and in pieces. him torn from glossy pages, him never as he was. perfect and whole.
sight unseen
my daughter drags me into the living room to show me patterns of shoes she’s made on the coffee table, toe to heel, heel to toe. my son smiles and coos and razzes at me as i walk towards him and he excitedly swats his arms left and right in his bouncy.
does he see me, does she see me, does anybody really see me at all?
what do we really see?
the world in my mind, my mind in the world – Igor Aleksander
we see something, it shows up somewhere, back there, literally in the back of the skull and then filtered through, filtered outward throughout the whole and it registers as something else. we see and do not see. we feel what we see, we think of what we are seeing and it happens so quickly, apparently so effortlessly, it’s transparent. we make meaning all day long. color is a meaning, shape means something, it takes hold: clenched jaws shaking us about.
there is no reality without meaning. constant and pervasive, we are shackled, i am shackled into making meaning out of everything. there is no sitting still.
all that it threatened
i dreamt of an ocean that did not know the trespass of any land, no jetties broke its surface, no island climbed out of its depths, and the sky was a dark and thunderous violet just before nightfall or dawn, and in the distance there was a rumble that growled across the horizon and streaks of lightening shocked everything into a pale white, and i did not know where i was but i looked for signs of my body, some stray limb, some motion, some sense of nausea and i found only a perfect stillness with all that it threatened.
you do not belong in the roar
he says to me, you do not belong here
you do not belong in the roar, where it all began
and where it will all end, your feet should not be buried
in this dirt, cracked fingers not dug into this rock
you should be walking across the lapping of a shore
a crystal blue coolness should be licking your heels
the sun should be tanning your skin with the sea
salt brushing your hair, you should be dreaming
of a better place than this without torture
without this song