The slippers I bought at the store -
they were soft
and had wings on the heels
They made the way softer;
it seemed they made it look…
like it wasn’t so heavy a door
The man on the mountainside might
not really be holding a knife
he doesn’t care
and it doesn’t matter
…he is really a most worthy guide!
so take the leap before you look
take every page out of the book
take each droplet out of the soup
To sleep soundly, enter the loop
there was a day
something was said
that was sticky,
it was claimed..
I was pink,
on display -
spices and icing in
sweet disarray
Of course I have philosophies
..I do not believe
in the sugary ways
of the cannibal parade
I explained that my skeleton would ache…
my jaws would snap around
each fractured protest of smiling
if the honey were siphoned away
and sold to the slaves
for money that I could not pay
to wash all the raindrops
away
this morning I woke up afraid
like I have every morning.
I wondered if I was old
and reached up to feel my face
as i had for every day since the day
you’d touched it in the circular
fingertip sweep that convinced me
i might still have decades to go.
but this morning I hit a resistance..
a refusal to rhyme, a need to hit
pavement – a yearning to
define out-of-times
(a need to go back to My bass lines …)
the low beats that once made me
slip and to sway …
like to wait without breathing fresh
with my skin, or wrapped with a ribbon
beside of a lake;
stretched out of a porch swing,
or alone like a dagger inside of a letter
-they have once more intoned me!
the tips of my fingers hit smile
and today stop resenting invasions
of lace
(sad patters one misses
at distance but craters
one never mistakes upon closer
inspection)
…the evidence left in your trace.
It is way too easy
to be carefree
if you are a being
with uncluttered mind
whose way is spent free;
whose path can have
choicesness and wine-
and fine things besides.
“Must be nice..”
well it’s easy to say,
it seems…
So many don’t know
the darkness of roads,
the toil and the dirt
under toenails and clothes;
the spit and the blood
and the lies and the other
things coming
along..that the songs
speak barely of..
I used to feel love,
the love which is there still;
love which does not
come in
to get me
when I have
retreated in deeply
to die.
and yet death never
seems to
want to come cheaply
(even on sale for
a buck-ninety-nine!)
I’d leave if I could but find
an alternative
life!
-an oasis,
a safe place,
a garden,
(a spaceship…)
-but all of my love offerings..
my sweet copings,
are interpreted wasted excuses;
and so I will harden to crystallized
money
in place of my once deliciously
stickysweet honey
It’s useless to die,
out of fashion and silly.
No one cares to observe
the meme of your goodbye
The act is old hat -
so if it’s going to be done at all
do it postmodernly, silently
beyond the wall…
This poem is very dramatic. It’s like a cross between the violence you feel at rejection, high school like hormones (or hell, just being a woman), being moody, CSI or Mulder and Scully, and Mistakes Were Made….
The Authorities Assess the Terrible Outcome
“There’s a floppy ‘v’ on the floor, next to a smashed
- and reshaped – ‘e’,”
the detective said. His partner quietly looked up at him
almost accusingly.
“I notice,” she said slowly
that the ‘you’ has lain as if to be unnoticed
- just there -
underneath the bed
on an edge of nightshirt sticking out
quite sadly
for awhile.
He looked a little frightened then,
her partner; as though she was accusing him
of some false crime. He studied her in the bedroom door
watched her mouth form the perfect “o”
matching the sick red symbol at the bedhead
and they wrote in notebooks
of the “L” shaped slash of blood upon the floor
He touched her shoulder then
and the she stepped away like it had burned
he barely heard her whisper
“I wonder, which one did it?
I wonder which one just couldn’t say it anymore..”
I went to dance
in the crowded bar
resplendent in my nudity
I covered up my sweaty
jiggling realities
… akin to everyone’s;
with disapproving, leaking fingers
… but really, everybody had these.
Something inside of me,
but floating in periphery
was the first to point –
and laugh
And the robe of my religion
could not shield me
from rejection
I had no frame of reference –
for automatic writing
of a truth
became a painful
Obligation
But what truth?
the one that’s told to me
by modern seers with clout the size of
common comic books …
I crack around
the edges of the painting
for an answer …
Seek admission to the temple –
and, denied,
drive all the faster
Now I force (a little)
-a kind of quiet integration
to enlarge the “living room”
that I feel a lonely truth in.
I have speaking with a new friend online about religion.
I am feeling rather tired and overcome, so it is calming to me. To a point. It’s helping me sort out some things, sometimes, when we speak. I don’t know. Perhaps it is some form of abuse. Toward him. I don’t know if I should feel that way.
When I used to feel conviction so very strongly – and sometimes this is still true – I would make sure of its consistency from every angle. I believed in a concept of absolute truth.
I used to be a different person. Completely. Not different in principle, but in practice. I believe this is because I know that humans are weak, and fragile, and that they cannot help but to bring in their own needs and desires.
I believe that it is a RARE thing indeed to have a religious discussion where one party does not eventually run into a wall of fear and turn to anger against the other person. That anger can take many forms. Denouncement, threats, emotional blackmail, intimidation … sure I’m referring to specific situations – not just my own.
Sometimes, there are two people that can sit in difference and be fully convinced of the truth of their belief and not be threatened at all by someone with an opposing viewpoint – even if it invalidates completely their own. This may be a hard thing though, because of sitting with a person who completely invalidates a God that you love; or whose God feels that your unbelief or behavior makes you worthless, or that something about you makes you less than another person that deity may favor more.
I won’t get into my personal story. It’s long. But I did write a poem about my conviction at a particular time. I had doubts and needs and I wanted to discuss them with people who were supposed to share beliefs with me. Instead, we argued, in fear over trivialities.
Then doesn’t just apply to religion – When we argue, in fear, over trivialities, the inanities surrounding us in this silly, silly modern life win. There really is nothing new under the sun or moon. We are all still singing for our supper in front of Simon Cowell types and the masses are watching us do it. Very few people I know are on the social media things trying not to desperately get love and self-worth. Those that aren’t I very much admire … they are getting their power from in themselves. On a good day, I can do that. Usually – it involves time at a piano.
In closing, I will leave my friend a poem here, that I wrote a few years ago;in the way of explanation:
UNTITLED
If I believe in A or B
and you believe in C *AND* D
then we can’t all be right, you see…
But sagely tells the body – three
(a number which ironically,
encapsulates for you and me
opinions of those Branches Three
- and of the Fourth especially)
: conviction is both Quaint and Dumb
Out of Vogue is Reality…
But what if someone could be right
and Truthful, gifted with some sight,
discerning between wrong and right?
(a concept which prevails at night
when conscience seeks to win the fight
‘tween “Freedom” and a “Vise so tight.”)
I know that we feel obligated
to view the things amalgamated -
shun absolutes as “way outdated”
and moral codes which leave us jaded.
I also know we wish to stay
the progress of American Way -
to recognize Awareness sent
to War against Entitlement.
Then again, we never will
descend from on our Holy Hill
we fancy that we’re thinkers still
(as we swim within the swill
of our enslaving immovable will
letting stimulation kill
the values which were once instilled).
But no! Enlightened commoners mill
at the buffet of our creeds and pills.
No, we will be pulled from it!
The throne from which we’ll cease to sit…
While we are still considering it -
The hungry souls with drive and grit
will make our brittle doctrines split.
We will be left without a whit
buried in that Entitlement
‘neath eighty tons of TV glitz
while THEY decide our holy writ.
I talked with a few people about this poem. And I wasn’t going to post it. I became unsure.
This is a poem I’ve been working on for a while. I’m not going to explain it overly much.
The thing about my work, my poetry, my songs even, is that I am a puzzle.. a little bit puzzling. One of my girlfriends thought that it was about another experience that I had gone through that *she* knew about with me, long ago. I looked at it and laughed.. Because it really could have been. This made me happy, because I supposed this meant that the poem could be universal.
So I don’t feel that I rail at anything, I don’t feel bitchy, I don’t feel bad. I feel like a woman trying to claim her space when my space is not often honored. When she is not often sure of her support systems or alliances. And when she must ultimately own and rely on her decisions and herself.
This is yes, about issues of mine, and also yes, about general things too. It’s just like my songs. I’m fine with this.
****************
SHE FINDS A WAY
It seems I’ve made
A dastardly mistake
The colors swirl around me
In this supple fourth estate
You would think
that I would see them
But I isolate
I freeze into
A smear of ink, a spot of pink
a woman
with no place to think
I had a place
For a short while
a secret span of smiles
My brethren never understood
my metaphorical miles
You would think
that they would see them
for they stained the tiles
of kitchen floors, of chairs
of stairs, and I find
…I just don’t care no more
Hear that- I do not care!
I need…
My bones are hungry
mouths to feed
Go ahead!
Interpret me
Ask why you are
surprised at what you find
beneath my sheets..
And go ahead
If it occurs
to spring at once to anger
Grasp quickly at your pointed staff of hasty little apostrophes
I should think
you would know better
than to fling these afterthoughts at me
I have been no-one for so long,
you see
I have let you fly high above
peaceful, unconcernedly
uncareful haughty turns
Of phrase incur a burn in me
but small words have their power
-None
My power lies in things I’ve done
In places ive made space
in flowers that have opened
In love that finds a way
I don’t know if I’ve published this in the blog yet. But with all this twitter-talk of theory, and with the lack of control I’ve had over my writing, and reading, and playing, and thinking lately – it’s worth another go.
Obsession
has turned the subtle
into gauzy transparency
Ideally,
understanding my perception
would bring nothing
but release
But fear of the
strange convention
time and tradition
will make dreams I have
of taking a taste
(of a something
that maybe should not
go to waste)
-it will twist fading mysteries
and warm sharp intensities
into tawdry insanities
held by the unchaste
So I will be vague
-as vague as a chord
that changes its third at its whim.
It’s not meant to do this!
It should follow the rules!
But obsession itself is my lover..
and I remain one of its fools.
-Feb. 2010
I’m in the middle of a long, tiring posting. I thought I’d post a poem I may have posted before. This is because friend and fellow Austinite Brett Randell posted a nice poem that was wistful and image filled and sad. It reminded me of moving and leaving things behind and almost-cryings.
But this is the poem I feel like today. Because I am angry and pissy and creeped out and viscious. Perhaps it is because I am moving and there is still so much to pack. I don’t know. Maybe I still have a lot of practicing to do. I have a LOT to do. But maybe it is because I see so much STUFF that just …
… bothers me and I just don’t… SAY … anything.
Who knows these things.
Poem->
So you are sarcastic -
clever…
I applaud, for never since
the dawn of time
has anyone accomplished this;
this subtlety!
Perhaps one day you will be asked to host your
own sardonic version of what
nights like this should be!
Your tone suggests a firm hand,
it suggests that
we would not go gently
(and my friends
just occasionally
wonder why
I hold my mystic cards of rhyme
So close beside
My own Vest.)
Incidentally with some restraint
I write of this …
and other small
artistic humiliations
but I hesitate to share them…
I cringe! I have already penned
your scathing crisp lampoon of me!
It is a pretest I have taken..
failed abyssmally.
This exam of twists,
of course it leaves me shaken
I’m an offering of unwanted mincemeat now
at the great bright vegetarian buffet
you have created
