So I'm Liz, a poet and fiber artist living in the Hudson Valley Region of the US. My poems are informed by my paganism, bisexuality, response to world events, and (of course) grief. I'm getting back into the routine of readings, mostly on zoom, but I'm open to local events as well. You will not find me putting any of this on Instagram or Facebook, because I'm one of the cool kids right here on neocities! You're just going to have to bookmark me and periodically say hi to me on Bluesky.
''...But a few carols I leave vibrating through the air I leave
For comrades and lovers...''
Walt Whitman, ''No Labor-Saving Machine''
Everything is bleak and tired and I think we let you down.
There are no comrades and lovers,
Your America is different, bowed at the base, sinking in the heel.
Shrill and suspicious, we waste the best everywhere.
A guilty flag glints on every lapel - a pig's dead eye.
Love and mercy have retreated, everything is small and mean.
I'm so sorry, Walt, but there is no revolution.
We all let you down.
The pagan rush you wanted burnt out.
What you wrote is extinct - no one cares anymore.
The rain on the tiles, the grass, the tall ships,
Railroad tracks, lamplight on salted thighs,
The open secret, the marsh, the beacon, the lover's call.
The carol stopped. The echo died.
The songs have rotted. No one took up the verse.
There is no young man romping through the foam,
There is no salt-sea woman, vast and holy as the dawn.
Nothing is going as we planned,
The world has turned so cold, so rude.
The gyre yawns and sighs and
Belches out another stooge.
Nothing is going as we planned,
The falcon's mangy and he's losing altitude.
Any minute now this could all be fucked,
But yet I fell in love with you.
I went to the diner at half past noon
''Refill on your coffee?'' (Please)
You were thin, unsure, pretty shy
But when you smiled your dark eyes crinkled
''Oh, shit,'' I thought, and swooned.
All things considered, this sure is strange,
But, ''as romance is a breakfast food'',
You ordered eggs and taylor ham
Dolce ragazzo, what could I do?
Nothing is going as we planned,
Everyone is so cold, so petty, so crude.
Pundits lie, politicians bark,
Idiots continue to disrupt -
The whole fucking world seems to have given up,
But I have not
Because I live for love and I love you.
Our mothers rolled and rolled the stone
They carved the same wheel until the day they died.
We sainted them,
We trapped them,
Pre-ordained, selected.
The corruption (the true verse) was excised.
Edits became a holy operation and
Our minds were made safe.
They were made entries in a thick anthology,
Their songs representative samples.
Each life, a slide, a drop on a lens,
An approved collection
Fit for comfortable eyes.
You can't remember a woman that way.
Still, our mothers stirred and stirred the sea.
With thick hands and strong arms they turned the mill.
They started the flame - they wrote
In a land where there was nothing before.
They wrote so their daughters - we - could have our bread.
If it wasn't for their might, if it wasn't for their pens,
Their gleaming machines, their voices,
We would have no language for ourselves.
If it wasn't for every whispered word,
Every spell, every psalm, every lullaby,
Every gasp and moan, every grunt -
If it wasn't for every poem written to pull back the veil
And break the pedestal -
If it wasn't for every poem written
When they were told they should not -
If it wasn't for every poem written
As if on the edge of disaster,
As if on the lips of death herself
As if in the bluest part of the flame,
As if in the grip of the iron queen -
We daughters would have starved.
We would never have known beauty,
We would have been without place.
Silent and still, we would have been only images.
Dead as canvas in a private room.
*From Elizabeth Bishop's "One Art"
This poem begins with him because that's how the world hinges.
We extend, we bend, we reach, but everything returns to him.
His. This is where the poem continues, in the possessive case.
His. They are all him, and all things are his, these men that teach.
Every man who acts in false heroic solitude,
Who considers himself my father and god.
Every man that saw me as a prop, my body as a prize,
My youth as food for their starving souls.
If I was a witch, I would curse them with famine:
Everyone they attempt to take, everything they try to own,
All they seize would bring them less than nothing.
They wanted to teach me.
They all wanted to teach me.
Some thought they were protecting me.
Some thought they were warning me about the things men would do,
If I gave them half a chance.
But I gave them nothing. I just was.
They wanted to teach me, out of nowhere. Self-appointed.
Catcalls. Stares. Busy, grabbing hands.
''Men are pigs'', they'd say as they sniffed at me.
''Men are animals'', they said as they stared at my tits.
''Men will hurt you'', they said as they discussed my cunt, how tight it must be.
Oh, but what I do not understand is that everything is a struggle for them!
They are awash in a strange world!
Women are not what they used to be!
They are lost in tales of old warriors and kings!
They didn't know whether or not to hold a door, or call me pretty!
But they knew how to call me a whore.
They knew how to watch every move I made.
They knew how to make me cast my eyes down.
They knew how to unnerve me.
They knew how to make me view everything through fear.
They knew how to watch me on dark nights.
They knew how to talk about training me.
They knew how to move closer and closer, their breath hot on me.
They did not know how to ask me the time of day, but each one thought
He could teach me.
You took the path of cruelty and waste.
And now you want children to cleave to your side.
Now you want women to serve you,
You want every inconvenient person to disappear
You want every problem solved by waving your tiny
Pen. You want all of us to be grateful to you.
You want all of us to pay you, you want more extracted,
More mined, more taxed, more fined
You want more and more and more and more;
Now you want wreaths and tears and applause
For your very existence.
But we see you failed.
You had your chance, and you wasted your life.
You made a choice, your choice is wrong.
You were happy for the patriarch's mantle,
But you never kept the promise made
In the dusty past; the rest of us toiled and died,
A penny dangled over our heads with a dollar in your craw.
You never kept the promise made
After the world burned twice,
You saw these sins yourself: Some of you wore a helmet,
Some of you lied. Now you deign to tell us anything.
You made a choice and your choice is wrong.
You put bullets in the guns and poison in the ground
And tell us how great thou art. You invoke your god with one hand
And stroke your stack of cash with another.
Don't dare blame it on age. Some of you are young.
You grew from men who saw nightmares.
You were supposed to learn from their mistakes.
You had every chance to make it better.
You had your chance, you made your choice, and
As always you chose wrong.
You knew what went on. You tasted ash and saw bleached bodies
And rushed to buy more guns. You saw the terror of swords
So you stole the plows and made more.
You saw the ravaged earth and decided to rape her again anyway.
Your performance was grand, your speech was long.
But, as always, you made a choice, and you chose wrong.
You never kept the promise made
To heal the suppurating wounds of the past:
The still-bleeding welt of the whipped
The still-echoing cries of the sold and dispossessed
The still-torn body of the raped
The still-frozen skin of a child dead from cold
The still-weeping bullet hole
The still-smoking crater of a bomb -
You know what's going on- it's always been this way.
You know good and damn well what’s going on.
Your will isn't weak, your will is strong.
You keep making your choice and your choice is wrong.
With your hand on your own pocket,
Your eyes lift and they see the dawn.
Your eyes look to the left and see crying children.
Your eyes look to the right and see starving mothers.
Your eyes look behind you and see blood and glass.
Your eyes look ahead of you and see poisoned rivers.
Your eyes go down to the balance in your account,
Your ears hear, your nose smells, you know everything
That goes on. But you come first.
You keep making your choice. Your choice is wrong.
Was it worth it daddy?
Did you get the blood you wanted?
Did the control make you feel like a man again?
Did you like screaming at a cowering child?
Did you like maceing an old man with a sign?
Did you like punching her lights out?
Was it really worth it daddy?
Did they make you one of theirs?
Did they put you in their club?
Did they love you after you beat those cops?
Did they make you safe with their big tough arms?
Was it worth it daddy?
Was it worth ratting our your neighbors and cleaning the streets?
Was it worth raining hell on a hospital half a world away?
Was it worth it?
Did it make you feel like a man again when they said they'd put us under your thumb?
Did your heart leap when they said you could be just like your grandpappy down the mines?
Did your cock twitch when the movie star said to take the belt off?
Was it worth it daddy?
Did enough of us die for you this time?
Was it worth it daddy?
Are you one of the boys now?
Was it worth it daddy?
Did you get the blood you wanted?
Was it worth it to be able to say that hard r again?
Was it worth it to bash some queers again?
Was it worth it to draw the red line again?
Was it worth it to round them up again?
You feel like a big man with a rope in your hand daddy?
You feel like a big man with a gun in your hand daddy?
You get the blood you wanted daddy?
Did you make it great again daddy?
Susanna, years ago you said they kill the poets first.
If that's the case then I expect we'll go together.
Sebastian was a fighting man
He met his end one day
He met his end at an old oak tree
When the generals said "fire away".
I don't know what song was on his lips
When the Roman arrows hit home.
I don't know what he saw before him
As his eyes let go of this world.
It's been a while since I bent my knee,
It's been a long time since,
It's been a long long time since I believed.
And now I tell you this:
Sebastian if you can still hear me,
Brother, if you still care,
Give us a hand in the here and now,
For the sake of the love we shared.
I don't care too much how you call it,
I don't care too much about your rites,
I don't care much about the one and holy,
I just want us to make it through the night.
Get us off the cross, we need the wood,
Despair is too fine a shroud,
We don't need to be in this stinking tomb,
Just bless us for whatever good it does us now.
I don't care too much how you call it,
I don't care too much about your rites,
I don't care much about the one and holy,
I just want us to make it through the night,
You have your grandmother's almond eyes.
You have your mother's hands.
You have the last thirteen years with me.
And you will have the rest.
(Like Leonard, a baffled poet tries to keep the meter,
Composing as she goes)
You took two baskets of magenta and purple
Orange flames showing through,
You hung them on the iron crook
I wasn't strong enough to plant.
The afternoon was warm, the sun bit my tender skin.
I cried because I never thought I'd be here,
Thirteen little years in.
A dragonfly visited our garden, a tiny teal caterpillar
Tickled my arm as you found a native bee.
And let this be a blessing.
(Incense smells like lilies to me,
Oh, this sounds like praise to me).
We have planted, we have lifted, we have disturbed the land
But I think it accepts us.
Let this be a blessing.
Back to our garden, back to your dirty hands,
Back to our round and full and bright and summer,
Back to our rosemary, mint, our foxglove, our butterfly bushes,
Back to our floribunda, our world.
You were panting, hauling mulch,
Then tenderly tucking honey suckle, pumpkins, berries.
''Did you ever think we'd be married,
Working on our garden?''
I choked up, unable to give a pat reply.
I heard echoes of her hospital room,
I was thrown back twenty years to an old grief
Smeared with pollen and late sun.
The last whiff of her perfume
Still flickered in my brain.
The dead are with me even here.
The past is with me, even in life.
The past is with me, even in happiness, even here.
And that is a blessing.
I've crawled on my fat belly
And I've smelled the black dirt.
I've rolled like a snake in the Orange County mud.
I've rolled like a snake in the 5 quilts on my bed,
Dry eyes peeled at the stream and the feed, despairing.
Lately, people have gone to great lengths to dissuade
The human hand and the human mind
Empathy is a sin now, unimpeded cancerous growth is a good.
How in the hell do you write a poem in a time like this?
I've licked that black dirt from my lips and
I've peered between the roots, reading the augurs.
And let me tell you,
This will all decay one day,
I will be a carcass and so will you.
But as long as we have rot and ret,
As long as babies swim into their mothers' arms,
As long as a beast lays its body to yours,
As long as we place a stone on a grave,
As long as we close our eyes to music,
As long as your hand falls over my hip,
I'll have a job to do.
The glass-eyed thief prowls the second floor stacks.
Sequestered with the little tombs, the racks of forgotten names,
And the tart appraisals, or dusty wreaths of praise
That crown the remains of human labor,
Safe from the gentle jealousy of Friday afternoon's late light,
And the relentless, seductive signal of the street below,
She is free to ignore the light and noise,
Bowing and arching, tapping on her brain.
She is free to disregard the moist and silky reminders
Of spring trying to sneak in by the dull casements (cracked against rot),
Grimed with decades, hung with abandoned webs, nests, and wings.
She is free to feed on memories, to rest from the pressure of action.
A lungful of old ink and must, she drinks a greedy breath,
Capturing the scent of this place,
Wanting something strange to take back to her rude and shouting shore.
She carefully folds her prize away as
The floor settles, with a arch remark, with a dry protest,
Under her thick black boots
And the warmth of her fallible skin.
The glass-eyed, loving thief finds a path
Through these genteel graves.
She pats the titles, mouths the words
On the carefully interred ribs.
Every few steps, she pulls one from its shelf,
Strokes the flaking skin, sniffs the trace of escaping chemicals,
Half-expecting it to scream like a mandrake
As she silently addresses its withered face.
She fills her living, twitching lungs with time’s passage.
The glass-eyed lover, as carefully as she can,
Quietly as she dares,
Courts the past contained.
She hopes to coax a token, tiny word, some small sympathy,
From the quiet printed dead.
The darkness relents and comes to morning.
My raging memory dies to salt, and I retreat
From the sea that had possessed me.
I return, shaken, holding my head,
Still feeling hunted, still afraid.
(try to be still try to be still)
I try to pull a breath up through
the lingering panic.
I have to leave our bed,
I know it was a dream, a midnight worry,
But I am half convinced that
Devils dance on my pillow.
Hoofbeats still pounding in my veins,
I make a padding circuit of the house,
Checking locks and switches.
Eventually, my mind relents,
And through the shadowed glass of recollection,
I reach for you.
You roll and sigh as I return,
Waxing and waning, climbing back to you.
The hours grow smoother, and I grow calmer.
Rain laces the window and I watch the sky become lighter.
The last memory of fear dissolves
With the release of a contented heart.
Through the thickness of hours spent in fearful watch,
I drift closer to our shores,
I drift closer to you, trusting all is well.
You reach for me, slightly out of sleep,
Mostly out of habit.
Somehow you know how I felt,
Like I still did not belong,
A gentle exile from time.
You reach for me over the rippling lines of linen,
You bring me back, rising against my tormenting will,
Innocent now of my worry.
You bring me back. In your wisdom, you bring me back,
your love's hands on my storming head,
Your lips pressed to mine.
I strain against her silence
A string taut-strung.
I long for her signal, her resonance,
In my cage of oiled wood.
She will pull me, pluck me, hair and lip,
I will sing into the cleft between word and deed,
I will sing the sun warmed hide, the things I forgot.
For her, for her I will.
I will swim this sea, this nascent ecstasy,
Serpentine, ready, ready for the shouting break,
For her willing wet thighs.
For her I will tangle vein and flank,
Hands full of flesh released to rhyme
From the milk of thought.
For her I will.
Riot and groan in the heat,
Love, love the brassy impulse
To break the motherskin,
To stretch wet in the humid dark,
Allowing the warp and weft of recollection
To part, and to let your body speak again.
There is nothing without this.
Take what you will, but there is nothing without
This scraping reach, this godless ecstasy.
Rise and fall, feast and fast,
Swallow the cool and calling waters
If that is what you want.
If that is what you want,
Part your tender lips on the sea,
Make romance of sacrifice,
And praise the empty gestures
Of blueboned deprivation.
Starve if you want to, but do not forget
There is nothing
Without your wild flame,
Crowding out from its calyx
To burn a passing prayer
On the walls of eternity.
Part the warp and weft of recollection,
Of fear and artifice,
And let your body bloom again.
There are things you'll never remember.
But with my tired eyes, dry hands, and satyr's words
I'm telling you things to never forget:
You owe ''the one-eyeed sonofabitch''* nothing.
You will never remember balances, figures, compliance.
You will never remember the nice man in the suit - you don't need his praise.
You will never remember the nice man in the robes - you don't need his forgiveness.
You will never remember the nice man on the hill - he is immaterial.
You will remember joy, you will remember rain,
Openness, silk on her skin, perfume on yours.
You will remember the feeling of sleep and the thrill of sunlit straining.
You will remember how the saltwater drops sparkled on his skin.
I hope you listen to me, I hope you mind my open eyes,
My open hands, my witch words,
Because something in you rings true
And I can't ignore it.
So hear me now, my love. Hear me a hundred years later,
Hear me when I've become nothing but moss and dust:
Owe only to your lover - let your allegiance be to spring.
Walk the world, be a fool - it's the only worthy thing.
*from E. E. Cummings' ''Voices to voices, lip to lip''
We've done this before.
I've met you before.
I've called you beast, I've called you sacred wanderer.
I've scented you, I've taken you inside me, I've tracked you in the summer sky
When our hands and words were so young, when the forest echoed with our youth.
They still sing you. I still love you.
We've done this before.
I've met you before.
I've called you Lady, I've called you Thea, I've lit your lamp.
I've knelt before you, my veil trailing, I've burnt the best for you, I've run along the strings
When our songs coalesce. Lady, they still sing you. I still love you.
We've done this before.
I've met you before.
Mother, I've called you, fountain and valley, provider, fearsome and loved.
I've worked the beads, crowned your head, lifted my voice in the smoke-sweet house of your son,
Ever dying, ever living. Mother, they still sing you. I still love you.
We've done this before.
I've met you before.
What comes next?
What wild shore will you dance on?
What unimaginable crescent will mark your rites?
What tongues will move to speak to you?
What sounds will make your music?
You will always be sung. I will always love you.
It doesn't matter where your shrine is, your shrine is in my heart, A thousand hearts, a million hearts,
Your shrine is where we go, your shrine is between breath, rhyme, and syllable.
Your shrine is where we all go together, offering prayers for the new season.
A greedy little creature!
I'm basking in your luxury of blue,
Then in the dark down on your belly,
In the squared off width of your hands and your hips.
A greedy little creature!
I mount a soft siege: I twist and burrow,
My face in your warm secret juncture,
Solid and living as the crease of trunk and bough.
A greedy little creature!
I smile as I slide farther, ever deeper
Into the wiry corners of your body
Pawing at what I find, lapping at what I want,
Pulling pleasure by the stalk.
This is a sign I know, this suffusion
Rising from the skin, carried in the blood,
This soft command, the smell of men.
There are the other symbols I speak,
There are the other things I crave,
The fanning dark hair, squared hands,
Bent knees, arcing ribs - gems -
Surrendered in praise of my lust.
But I rise and I run for this.
For this I am a swelling river, a vein,
Full in my fascinations; I run sap-heavy
At the smell of men.
I can taste the musky, rising heat,
The deeply quivering insistence,
And I'm something poured from a jar.
I trap and bite, and dive on the sugar stamen,
Sepal by sepal, seeking the willing tongue,
the wave of sense, the thing I most need.
I become a bird of paradise,
Living on the smell of men.
Months ago, we stayed up late,
Too tired to sleep, too tired
For the warmth of your bed.
It was too warm for late winter.
You opened the window onto Mine street.
The city pressed against the glass,
A soft companion to the apartment’s light
Falling over your bare back.
You moved and love's constellations,
The sweetest wounds,
Moved with you.
I paused, I paused in love for you,
Drinking you like David,
Memorizing every span and arch.
The glass rose and sirens and taxis
And laughter poured in through the screen.
You stopped to watch, holding the frame.
Your hands, so loved, could have just as well
Been marble as flesh.
You moved as you watched, contrapposto
From an old master.
You moved as you scented the night,
Hinting at spring. I watched as the fire came
To my head, the little light of poetry,
The little light of love.
I fed the flame to make sure I'd always remember this,
You, half-naked and beautiful,
You were saying something but I confess I didn't hear,
Burning as I was.
The city poured in, from dark to light, a gentle mess.
I paused, in love, to hold you
To write you,
To wrap you in the tendrils of a never-ending spring.
An emerging slice of sun
(that you said I brought with me)
Has gilded this corner of the park.
The detritus of late spring
Would make any Old Master's table look winter-lean:
Overturned cups, abandoned sandals,
Soccer balls, scraps of paper, rumpled blankets.
The fountain shines, the running children,
The traffic pulsing along Columbus circle
Become a tapestry behind us.
This afternoon is a fortune too great.
Everything is rendered as if from a lowland brush.
Crumbs on the basket, trailed sentences,
The glint of gold by your throat,
The stitches on my skirt - these small details we pore over,
Each unwilling to leave the other unwarmed by hands and breath
(Lovers leave nothing unturned, unread, untasted.
I spill my coke and as it sizzles into the ground,
We laugh and you collapse the space left between us.
You gather me up again.
Covered in sugar, sweat and earth,
Honey flows from me.
I crest and flow,
I send my ship, myself
Riding currents carved in stone.
I crest and flow, searching in every direction
For the scent of sandalwood,
For the glow of sea glass in her eyes.
I search with every inch of skin
For the landlocked woman
Who gives me thoughts of the ocean -
For the city girl that turns me again to the sea.
(Search my beating heart,
Search it now,
Or a hundred days later -
You won't find what they say you should.
You will find no guilt,
No pose of reticence.
Search me and all you will find is the wild,
The wind and the sea.)
When I find myself there,
On the impossible island once again,
In that borrowed bed,
I reach out beyond the borders,
And by instinct I feel the endless battle of waves,
Far beyond the frame of marble and glass where she lives.
In me, in my body, the Atlantic's wild heart pounds.
Its gray-green thunder pours through the arms
That surround this island,
And the staggering joy, the simplicity of desire
Pours through her arms around me.
I set a lovely table, I offered you my finest wine,
But now you have another lover,
So you let the cup run dry.
You could have stayed with me, my dear,
And I could have called you mine.
But you chose to chase another,
So you let the cup run dry.
I was art, you said - you wanted me -
I wanted to call you mine.
But you chose another lover,
And so you've let the cup run dry.
You said you wanted to swim forever
In my warm and languid seas.
You could have washed ashore and lingered
And tangled yourself in me.
You could have held my books and learned my rites
But now I set you free-
You said you were my lover,
But now you walk away from me.
When you were new there was a different tune,
But now the note has lost its grace.
I was cypress and I was acacia,
I was a sacred, thrilling place;
Every poet's mad and secret dream,
I was every lover's face.
I was the moon wheeling in her majesty
Above the sun's wasted, empty rind.
There was incense on my name,
Figs and honey in my thighs,
But now you want a lesser lover,
So you let the cup run dry.
He's gone, he's gone.
The imago of my desire is gone.
I am left reeling, bleeding,
I taste only the stinging slap of the void.
He has left me, he has left me.
I have only a pile of bones,
I have only the faintest memories to pluck,
The rest to bleach in the merciless gaze.
I have no love story, no familiar skin.
I have nothing to satisfy the innocent and kind.
His wings spread wide, he has left me.
I run plain and dry, empty as the flame.
I am a ruined place; I am only dust,
Nothing even left to swell and rot in the sun.
I tell myself, by way of cheap consolation,
Cheap and tattered comforts,
That it is better to be empty than haunted;
Better to burn coldly than rage at the faint taste of bliss.
Do I now live by my lie?
There is nothing lovely here.
I have no enchanting memory
To satisfy the innocent and kind.
He has gone, he has gone. I am a lonely servant.
Where do I turn now? There will be no relief,
There is no honey in this stone.
I will bear only the strange symptom of my need.
I have nothing to tell you, no wisdom to impart
From a heart sadder, but sweeter. Mine only howls.
I have nothing for you, the innocent and kind.
Come and see my empty vigil, see the keystone of a hungry arch.
Pay good money and gorge your veined eyes on me,
I give nothing; sucking on my own heart,
Singing in my own space.
No honey in this stone, nothing for me. I am a shadow now.
I will spare no foolish sentiment,
I will not satisfy the innocent and kind.
Do not offer me your mercies, your prayers.
Do not waste your tenderness on me.
I am traveling far and farther into exile,
I am beyond hope, beyond flesh, beyond sense.
I will stay out here, far from the innocent and kind.
There will be no honey from this stone,
Only my wasted life.
But it is mine to lose.
It is done:
I will burn on this pillar for him.
I will strike into my own heart, let it shrivel,
Let it dry to stone.
Forget the innocent, let them learn.
Lash me to this pillar,
I will burn until my savage saint comes home.
Bleeding and exhausted, I wandered further than I should.
I came here alone and I'm dying
And I disturbed her peace. I paint the marble with my blood
My finite life is a crude joke in the face of centuries.
My suffering is nothing in this splendor, this searing cold.
Shards of late orange light fall around me
The approaching twilight howls, the early stars glide over the horizon.
Patterns unknown to me appear, bones of thought, forgotten stories wheel over my head.
They watch me crawl - they know how it will end.
I continue to fight, just long enough to give her my last offering.
She gets up - in her own time - to receive.
Queen of the piercing night,
She caresses and folds, tooth over bone,
Every word pierces through the skeletal grin.
Finally I am no more, I give everything to her majesty,
Her skin the ice of eons,
Her crown the lipless wind.
I am too young to live without desire,
Too young art thou to waste this summer night
Asking those idle questions which of old
Man sought of seer and oracle, and no reply was told
Oscar Wilde, '''Panthea'''
The old masters
Would layer their painted tables
With plates and goblets,
With succulent things-
Fruits bursting with nectar,
Jewels burning still after the breath of centuries.
Useless, beautiful things from exotic shores.
They would not hesitate to interrupt the riot
Of rendered linen, of silver's gleam, of ripe peaches,
With the brute grace of a skull.
Look into the quiet of those empty sockets and find the will
To press that grape to your palate -
Will that muscat go sour on your tongue?
''All this will end,'' they said, ''All is vanity,''
As if to convince our living eyes,
As if to deter our flesh from being in love with flesh.
As if pleasure should ever kneel to piety.
''This is vanity,'' some still say.
As if to chase me away from my lover.
I have heard this from every old master,
Every one - I now ignore.
Why waste pleasure?
This is all we'll ever have.
Why attempt to please something that's not there?
Why send your love into emptiness?
Why pray to unending silence?
Why try to love a man that doesn't see you?
Why waste your life on the specter of a marble god
And try to please his dead, dead eye?
The old masters groaned heavily onto the joy of so many,
But they never counted on a woman like me.
''Mother, why do you not stay still when I would embrace you?
If we could throw our arms around one another we might find sad comfort
in the sharing of our sorrows...''
(The Odyssey, book 11, trans. Samuel Butler)
We can only meet now in stories, living and dead.
We cannot speak, we cannot touch, but we are still bound.
We trade image and memory, shuffling the deck,
Pulling cards to tell our fates.
I miss her but I cannot touch her, I cannot speak to her.
She is as close to me as my skin, but she is not with me.
I miss her, but the land of death is broad and cold
And I cannot make that journey yet.
We meet now in stories, in recollections, in small abstractions.
Words and images are all; things borrowed from centuries-worth of other ghosts.
Poetry and memory seal us and cross our lives.
We are bound, living and dead.
I cannot move my tongue to speak, or my hand to touch her,
So I move my pen. If I cannot hold her in my arms once more,
I will weave a temporary cage of syllable and line
To hold her shade in the space of a breath.
I can trace a spell to keep her with me for a merciful moment only.
She is bound to me in life, in death. She is my spirit, my cross.
For only a breath can I look through the dissolving gate of incantation
And see her living self once more. I cannot touch my love again,
Nor do I have a tongue to speak to her. But I can move her mind
And gently haunt her, giving her memories and dreams.
Dead and living, we are bound, crossed, and sealed in these silent words;
We meet in the abstractions that only the dead can truly speak -
Only the dead and their loves. We trade in ancient symbols,
Sentiments stolen from the centuries I now face.
I miss her, but the land of life is sharp and hot
And I cannot make that journey again.
I cannot touch her. I cannot even speak to her,
Close as I am, closer than the memory of skin.
We pull cards to tell our fates, having shuffled the deck before.
We trade in memory and precious image, bound we remain.
We cannot touch, we cannot speak. Dead and living,
We can only meet in stories.
If I ever lose the silver thread
If my brain ever fractures,
And I bleed memories from my mouth
And my hands grow crabbed
And I can't hold anything in this world -
I will have gone, my love.
I will have gone.
Who you knew will have already have fallen
Down time's well.
And who you love
Will already be a memory.
Don't follow me. Please don't follow me
If my mind betrays me,
And I fall away into the arms of the earth,
Don't follow me.
Don't forget my body - it loved you.
And it was warmed by your kisses,
Thrilled by your bites, your thrusts,
And it was comforted by the swell of your body each night.
Don't leave as ash my words, my letters, my jewels-
Anything I ever made when my mind was mine.
Let the world have as much as you can.
Give these to our children, and their children.
Tell them my story when I can't.
Take them to the places we loved,
Take them to the house we lived,
Take them to the river and if they must cry,
Let them cry on the currents that flow to the sea;
Take them to the forest
And let them be cradled in the roots
When my arms can no longer hold them.
If you must mourn me,
Give something to the world if you can.
But don't follow me.
Teach our children to trace the stars,
Teach them to comb the sand,
To sing in the sunlight,
To weave words with the moon.
Tell them we loved and tell them we created
And tell them we laughed with the wind.
Make friends, take lovers, marry -
Live with love, for that love will be me.
Think of me often, cry if you must,
But live full in love - don't follow me.
The city that claims me
Is a system born to play across the face
Like flame; an impulse or a trembling memory in the hands,
On the lips, or in the much wiser gut.
How do I make my meaning
When I am unmoored?
How do I progress when I lose my thread
In the dance of loop and spire?
The city that claims me
Is a puzzle made to catch the willing and the wise alike.
It is meant to seduce the pure and the tired.
My eyes strain for pattern, my body for the fulfillment of this task.
How can I continue my winding way
When there is no one to lead me?
How am I supposed to walk when there is no echo of her,
Except for some deep chemical, some dream?
The city that claims me
Is sung to infect awareness and memory.
It is not there to guide me, it is not there to shelter me.
I may haunt it for as long as I like, but it is cold at its core.
There is no answer here in these alleys, only need.
There is no completion to be divined from the lace
Of cracked plaster on these walls. What was once clarity
Cannot sustain, and now spreads like blood on white linen.
I wander on, looking for the faded outline of what we once were.
We live in imperfect sympathy,
Two women, feeding on regret. We travel suspended
In intimated secrets, motes, and half-uttered, abortive breaths.
We live in a nefarious intimacy.
We are quick to hold, quick to scream, and quick to blame.
Too scared to measure the growing structure between us,
We grind our teeth in regret, and tap our fingers on the walls.
Where are the borders? Where are the doors?
Is this a church, a tomb, a bed?
Where are the borders between us?
I cannot understand this geography,
I always miss a new avenue of regret,
Or a new span of her need.
I have to cut off my journey, worn with my efforts.
I am hungry for a resolution,
But there's no end to my wandering in this place.
We walk on opposing streets,
Me with my shoulder to the brick,
Her, hesitating, her map starting to fray in her hands
and her image of the city starting to dim.
I can see her sometimes,
And my love strains at the bounds of flesh and circumstance.
I buck up against the wise council
Of time, of age.
We can't help but lose each other,
In this growing city in our little house.
Locked in the track of habit, and of fear.
This woman and I, in our troubled sympathies.
The unmoored heart
May now discharge itself.
Everything it once held,
Every phantom that once swam
Through its soft walls
May now leave.
With palms spread plain and flat,
I measure the weight of love miscarried.
Angels better than I could ever want
Shake their way up, crawling,
Humping up the ladder,
Legs and arms around each waist,
Splinter, cracked toe, push.
The tongues of regret fall,
Lopsided and stinking,
From their heads,
And yet they rise.
They mourn,
Gloriously, and they rise.
They creep on from their ruin,
An arm of sullen sun
Stretched to aching.
My mother died without me,
She died for ten weeks straight.
Count them off:
The fingers, the hairs, the tea-stain bones.
Dig them out and put them around my neck,
Because her too wild smile has gone.
Because her smell, her musk, the sugar on her hands,
These are no longer mine to adore.
Dig this grief out of the desert and
Tie it to my neck.
Because her brain wilted on its stalk,
Because her Judas' heart heaved,
Dangling, useless in its cave,
Because the wet lace of nerves burned out
When I wasn't there
To throw my body on its fire,
When I wasn't there
To stop the skull-knell
Because I wasn't-
All of her became a flash of synapse,
She is now n invention of my memory,
And a ghost of my own design.
I believe in hushed rooms and long distance calls.
Electronic moans.
Ache.
(No one ever told me about this)
Don't tell me if she rolls her dead eye
Don't tell me
If she speaks to you from the stench,
From beneath a crusted bandage.
Don't tell me to wait for her to rise.
I drape the surplice,
The standard-issue precautionary robe
over the back of my chair.
I slick the gloves off my hands, tasting the rubber smell.
No more.
She is a puppet collection,
Pus and phlegm,
Bloodied skin and haunted twitches, jerking muscled
Dry yellow a swollen mass
Chained with the best of intentions,
Holy water,
Antiseptic,
Shit,
Lullaby,
Desperate stench of platitude.
She is a dead queen ruling from her wasted body,
A proud child of science, of industry.
No machine so like a mother's love.
''Do not resuscitate?'' Yes.
''Sign here, miss?'' I will.
Draw the curtain.
Daughter.
I set you in that white bed,
I kissed your cold cold skin.
I tried to mourn,
I tried to properly feel
For that thick wood trunk, flush with chemicals.
I tried to feel
For the dour set of your painted lips.
I tried.
I should've slammed the lid and
Given you back your face.
Please tell me there's something left,
That love is no rude trick.
Tell me I did the best I could,
That she's a gem in my vein, a tattoo.
I carry her now,
Like she did me, full in our bodies
Full in the gentle joke youth tells to bone.
I feel her again in the waters that rush to the belly,
In the supple glands,
In the breath of understanding.
What was, and what might have been,
Are now consigned to dust,
Condensed to clay.
The regret I wear is a crown star,
And like a woman wiser, like a woman wiser,
I collect the shards and feathers.
Excelsis. Adoramus te.
Scarlet on the sky.
I call you,
Firebird, Spirit, Mater,
Beautiful Force,
Woman Victorious.
Adoramus te,
I call you as I set these stones,
As I sift through my blue veins,
Sounding the depths of love.
Even now, I pass through uncertain spaces.
But like a woman victorious, I wear our glory,
These shards and feathers.