29 posts tagged “poem”

We stood in line, backed up onto Fort St, like we did do
queuing for 'our table' in the Blue Fox.
Over dark, nearly bitter coffee
stirred with distraught
laced with angst
we held
up.

Remember, you called crying, "Can we have lunch, sis?" You said. I listened, pushing Eggs Benedict from one side
of the plate, to the next. "He won't clean the toilet" You said. I wanted to laugh, and later we did, but not then, when you were tired and teary, wading in shit, fed up with it, freezing to the bone, in his latest logic-free-zone.

The toilet. For Christ's sake.

Absurd.
A stupid conversation. An
unworthy fight. We decided unilaterally
ringing the death bells of your relationship, while
ordering a second cup of coffee, from a waitress, distressed
as you, who was adjacent the kitchen, crying in the back alley
over toilet fiascoes, or other mishaps. Perhaps calling a friend to the Blue Fox,

"Sis, can we have lunch?"

Akin to children, we play love
Here in our sandbox, manipulating toys
Gobbling goodies, side X side

Advancing from solitary, to lateral

… Dimensions
 
Bigger girl.
Bigger boy.
Bigger game.

You, sheltered by your reality,
Me, locked into mine,
We play. In parallel

Fantasies …

Your head, my sand shovel
CRACK!
Anything to break this spell
Or, draw first blood.

We allocate inventions, speak
An unspoken spoken
Discourse of love.
Cumming, going, just
Fucking
Around. In the spirit
Of parallel play, I ask,

Is it good for you?

It is a myth that ghosts are insensitive.

Behind every closed door
You slashed your wrists
To birth a witch.

Love is
Blood sacrifice,
A lineage of lies,
Constructions of smoke
Destruction of mirrors,
Seven times
Seven years of bad luck -
Regretted invocations
And dizzy spells
Abracadabra!
I am become,
Anathema.

Behind every closed door
I discover a shroud of shadows
Hand stitched by an absent mother.

It is a myth that ghosts have better things to do.

I visit barren rooms,
And find sewing kits
For the sewing on of shadows,
Empty bottles drained
Of forgetting, well read copies of,
The Art of War.
I feel –
I feel the bones of things
I feel –
The skeletal rattle of disapproval,
The intensity of unblinking judgment,
The sour breath of endings.

It is a myth that ghosts forgive.

The doors are tests, of loyalty
Far greater than a curious daughter
And her mouthful of keys

Are these, bones of things.

In the inevitability of doubt,
I tender this assertion;
I. Live. On.

I.
She, who
you
 
Imposed
your will, your hands, your words, your judgments, your agenda of destruction
Upon

I.
I am not, the former I.
Yet, I
 
Have not forgotten, not forgiven,
 your witch hunting tendencies
And my heart still smolders.

It is a matter of some small satisfaction
That the smoke is mistaken
For other things.

I am not, the former I.

   
To be seen
We go
Underneath, beneath,
Far below the dirt –
Where we eat
Modest deaths and great worms
And forget there was -
Choice.

We’re all insomniacs down here
Sharing the shameful bareness
Of our open heart surgeries,
Embellished by scalpel scars
(And other tools)
Of yesterday’s bruises –
Seen the way you never can
By light of day.

Cunningly defenseless
We woo it
Abuse it
Sometimes lose it
Strip like whores
Concealing nothing
Wanting something -
Naked.

Blood tells, but no.
Listen      lub  dup   lub dup    lub  dup

It is the Traitor who murmurs
about   secret chambers     holophonic
echoes    syncopated beatings    dark
repetition   and    off-by-heart arterial strolls.

Shhh     listen

Blood is silent. She will not tell
 though the Traitor drag her by her hair
from room to room and demand duet.
In    shut the door    in    shut the door    in    shut the door

Oh! Shhh

It is terrorous
to be enslaved to the whim of another’s song.

Blood bides her time. She is patient as an ocean.
She is a river! She is a stream of consciousness.
She will not tell. As a prisoner
her right is             silence, her dance       resistance.

The Traitor is a conductor. Blood is a freedom
fighter. She has a lifetime to memorize
rhythm     to practice      dissonance.    She waits      
with the fierce intentionality of a flood.

Listen        shhhhhh

She foresees escape and

Lub dup
Lub dup
Lub dup

dreams of sharp objects and bright openings

lubdup
lubdup
lubdup

Then       Blood sings!

Winter should have meaning for you.
Louise Glück, “Snowdrops”

The poem is the point at which our strength gave out.
Richard Rosen


I do not trade in
Beginnings      middles      ends
Such trinkets lurk or linger
Elsewhere. Find them for
Yourself.

~ * ~

The room at the end of it,
Is a forest, certainly. Sentinels
live there, who long for my skin
 And carve their initials upon it.
Like a miracle, I am made visible.

Afternoon light is perfect for reading
White rooms, which are dead, quiet
But whisper     like haunting     like
Memories      like time       like pages
Like you     Like I could     ever     forget.

I sleepwalk through another room.
On a starless night, the snow is
Endless, the sky unforgiving.
Desire freezes upon my cheeks
The way tears do.

This room, pulses with probabilities
Call it ours  Call it home    Call it    like it is
The radiator is on the fritz.
Like blood now and then,
We go cold.

I was the one set to naming things but he was the one who gave my names; 'bitch', 'witch', 'crazy whore' and best, 'snake in the dark and 'serpent girl'. I never took the names on. Not even when his hand, heavy on the back of my head, pushed my face to rod and staff while he panted, "suck it bitch."

A Snake knows a snake when she sees one.

Took me some time it did to unravel myself, to find the magic words, which meant my liberation. Oh my Gods! Freedom.
 
F-r-e-e-d-o-m.

I squandered freedom, they said.

I built a little casa on the shore of the sea. I painted huge canvasses of thought and I wrote volumes of feeling. The angels came, wearing pristine white suits, dangling straight jackets from pale hands telling me, 'Time to come home, Lilith'.  I smiled sincerely and I told them, "Suck my dick"  and I went back to writing.

Luci(fer) popped round the Casa for a cold drink and some hot sex and yes, yes, yes ... I fucked him (and a few other demons too). My bad.

We gossiped, lying in my bed sharing a smoke still simmering in our sex. He told me God had been meddling again, a little Metaphysic surgery. Seems He put my ex to sleep on a bed of rotting poppies and fashioned a woman from his rib. This Barbie girl, they called her, Eve.

Luci laughed and I don't blame him. It had the feel of a great joke.

Then the tug came, pulling on my dread curiosity. I had to go back to that prison of a garden. I had to peer through the hedges to see this woman, Eve. I hear tell I was jealous. HA! I felt sorry for her. l saw her lying beneath that Neanderthal Adam, fucking in the missionary position night after night after night.  Under the moon, her eyes blank, she was softly sighing, 'you're so good, you're so good'. Her voice was sweet, so sweetly ... bored. Adam never noted it. Why would he?

I bided my time, watching. Even when Luci came and said, "Babe, let's blow this place", dropping kisses along my neck, lacing his fingers tight and full of promises in mine, I couldn't be drawn away. I felt responsible for her.

They say it was Luci who tempted Eve [Stupid asses]. It was me, who slid into snakeskin, shimmering, opalescent under the sunlight (no one expects naughtiness before noon).  I sang my Siren's song, sssslowly from the branches of the No No Tree.

She came, my Barbie sister. She came.

'Eve, darling girl', I said; gentle, I didn't want to scare her. She looked up, wide blue eyes vacant, quite frankly too stupid to be afraid. "You want to lie underneath that man night on night, always and forever?" She didn't even talk, she just looked dumb.

Man! I shimmied my hips, tight in snakeskin. I shook my head back and forth. I sang, charming her, hypnotizing her and I say still, I did it for her own good! When she was mesmerized (it wasn't too hard to do) I said, 'pick an apple girl, any apple'. She reached her hand up and up she reached. She reached for a nondescript, nothing special, red apple.
"Bite it", I said. And she did.

I saw dawn rise in her eyes, dark and sensuous. I think it'd have been Art ... Then that buffoon Adam came into the grove bruising plant, obliterating peace. Eve smiled and tossed him the apple. "Bite it'! she said ....

"Noooooooooo" I cried.
 
Too late, too late. Enlightenment strikes as it will.

I was disgusted by their sudden modesty, their preoccupation with ... small concerns. I spit twice, forked tongue flickering.  I, Lilith, was gone into obscurity. 

Adam and Eve? Well, they live on.
Poor fucks.



Fiona 12.08.04