Death Becomes You
*
You’ve built a curious reputation
As a researcher of death – here’s a picture of you,
Black and white – it’s in the Times.
*
You are never taken by surprise.
*
Your eyes are inscrutable; your mouth is a school
Your finger rests upon the pulse of endings,
Anti-beats, slow retreats.
*
You refuse to look into mirrors
Searching for unavoidable mysteries,
The ones that find us all -
*
Inexplicable multiplying of cells,
Drowning lungs, silent hearts,
Broken parts – oh, and accidents.
*
No, yours the preoccupation with
Shut doors, house calls, terrorous choices -
Pills, razors, nooses, guns and gas.
*
Rummaging in this dark closet, you found -
*
Your own brand of canned courage
And you became Cohen or maybe Cave; singers
Of cautionary songs, deeds gone wrong
*
Most significantly, your fixation
Legitimised your love affair
With a dead girl and her colossal poems.
***
My Feet Have Further Goals
I find my feet have further goals.
Emily Dickinson
My Feet Have Further Goals
In the land of Pop Psychology
and Pseudo Spirituality –
I am told that I must learn to find my role
In this or that problem.
And Know – there is no problem,
That my thinking has not made it so.
I must consider the ‘Other’ –
Their views, needs, wants desires.
I am admonished, before feeling for myself,
I ought first to feel for them.
I must brush up on my sharing skills.
I must learn to … compromise.
If there is a problem, I invited it, invented it.
Indeed, I signed on for it,
Contracted to it – to you – before my birth.
We agree.
I will drown in my responsibility
To save you from your own.
I will apologize for your mistakes
I will embrace them as mine.
You will sleep comfortably.
I will weep.
We agree.
I must love my anger, gentle it, tame it
Talk it down.
I must teach it a lesson -
‘Little Anger, there is no home for you here. Be happy”.
I learn being a Realist, is not acceptable.
The way to lovable is to be agreeable.
Optimism must be cultivated.
Silence will serve almost as well.
My thoughts create my reality – and should you hurt me,
It is simply a reflection of my deeply recessed desire to sport my bruises.
I survive – as though survival is of itself, commendable
- As if it excuses hell.
I have very bad karma, you say.
You say a lot of things, behind my back, to my face
- It makes no difference.
You must think me incredibly deaf.
I regret to inform, ”I find my feet have further goals”.
I, Blind
“The wildish woman can pretend to live ‘an ordinary life” while gritting her teeth, but there is always a price to pay.”
~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run With The Wolves
There is no ambivalence
I wrap the blindfold round -
swathe the cage
so the birds cease singing.
This… shrouding
is necessary.
It is imperative.
Mine are eyes who chatter
too much. Too much!
I must sleep,
I am very tired -
even my bones yawn.
Tongue Tied
Let’s talk about a woman who is not we,
(and most certainly not me).
She who says, “I do not generally
allow others to treat me badly”.
We notice the word generally
even if she does not.
She must use this qualifier.
If she forgets, her words will be a lie;
a noose that will snap her neck
and make her feet dance a jig.
Generally is a sturdy bridge
but it leads nowhere.
We question
her lapses of judgment.
From where we sit,
the rope around her ankle is obvious.
We wince when she runs, reaches the limit
and is snapped, face down in the dust;
a dog
at the end of her tether.
When she does it again,
We laugh and say, not unkindly,
’stupid bitch’.
The poverty of choice is endless.
So,
this is not a story of liberation.
This is not a story, even we
can see
it is more complex than that.
The doors are not locked but
she does not try the knobs.
Tongue tied,
she is preoccupied with air,
the way it fills her lungs,
expands her chest
and animates.
Stripped
Photographs that transcend but do not deny their literal situation appeal to me.
~ Sam Abell, Stay This Moment; The photographs of Sam Abell
~*~
The picture does not consider
the white stains on the sheets
your side
of our bed.
I am not alarmed, or disgusted
by the obvious sign
of your need,
bled upon
our bed.
But.
The picture does not consider
I lie next to you
with my heart open
dissected for your pleasure
upon our bed.
So.
I make offerings of your lust
to the washing machine
drying, dying
spinning inside.
Our bed is bare,
barren,
stripped.
The picture does not consider
this.
Sleeping Pills
“You shouldn’t be told you are completely irresponsible and then be left alone with too much medication. It’s too easy to forget.”
~ Judy Garland
There are strange occurrences in the hall.
Why, the walls are saturated with
Secrets. The mirrors went silent
Over a week
Ago. Unseeing has not stopped erosion
Nor stifled interior
Slippage. After all, the cacophony is no less
When a heart is
Spent.
Predator
“Hunting is not a sport. In a sport, both sides should know they’re in the game.”
~ Paul Rodriguez
Here I come…
He’s not angry,
…. she runs
it’s about prowess and control.
…. she hides
It’s a game,
…. she resists
sport of a sort that only
…. she cries
Bleeding hearts protest
… she bleeds
is not ‘sporting’.
… she prays
A man needs to eat
…. “oh Father, forgive my trespass
Doesn’t he?
….. for I am meat.”
Winter Mother
(1)
I’m imagined to be a goddess; blond as a wheat field
Ripe as a summer peach, quintessentially fertile.
The willful blind own history.
I’m just an impertinent, raven tongued slut
Who played the profane side of the pantheon
And got caught -
Kissing jesters, poets, gods.
Swaying hips, parting lips, opening trap doors to
Mires, moist and perilous.
(2)
She.
A foreign delivery, an Act of God, a painful stranger
Fragile as hope, sweet as spring, hungry as fire.
Mine.
I am born again.
I didn’t know I was meant to love.
I didn’t know love. No one showed me.
A Winter mother.
(3)
Scutwork. Tired as time. Eyes wide open in the back
Of my head. Demands dragged at my skirts,
Turned tits to husks and hung dreams to dry.
Weight piled upon my bones until they moaned
Convulsing flesh into new, angry mountains.
I wept for grace.
(4)
I didn’t notice her absence. I did not hear her cry.
I had no time for shadow watching.
What kind of mother …
Judgments flew, hungry hornets,
Catching in my hair, stinging my eyes.
What kind of mother…
Opinions salted the earth, parching lips,
Until the thirst was unbearable.
What kind of mother …
(4)
I searched. I stormed. I bargained. I cried.
Empty handed, I sunk beneath skies
Turned the color of water.
Then snow. Then silence.
The surcease of
Mother guilt.
If the emptiness was
Sufficient grace -
I no longer recall.
Flinch
The Buddha said, Everything dear to us causes pain.Those of us who have chosen relational life have made the choice that the pain is worth it.
-Sylvia Boorstein, Its Easier Than You Think
Noble is the truth,
All things loved will cause pain.
Primal, potent, and inexplicably salient -
There are no exceptions.
Perhaps you have not lived long enough
Or hard enough, to perceive such patterns.
Perhaps you think you are above them…
You are not.
There is no cure. A known thing
Cannot be unknown – even if
Your head should
Fall
Off.
It cannot be taken back.
~*~
Now, if your heart grows cumbrous
It is merely the weight of knowing.
Unknowing has no substance.
Knowing is exceptionally heavy.
There is no escape. You are free
To make and remake love
Over and again.
Do not flinch.
To tell the truth,
The pain is
Noble.
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