PEDALLING THROUGH THE DARK CURRENTS I FIND AN ACCURATE COPY
A BLUEPRINT OF THE PLEASURE IN ME
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"...you crawled into my bed that night
like some sort of giant insect
and i found myself spellbound
at the sight of you there
beautiful and grotesque
and all the rest of that bug stuff
bluffing your way into my mouth behind my teeth
reaching for my scars
that night we got kicked out of two bars
and laughed our way home
that night you leaned over and threw up into your hair
and i held you there thinking
i would offer you my pulse
if i thought it would be useful
i would give you my breath..."
ani, "pulse"
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My three loves in life: Björk, Iceland and Ani
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These are some of my most recent poems. Feel free to e-mail me any comments...
nothing: you called me one week too late.
that shrill ringing awoke me from
an afternoon sleep, and
i wish i'd slept through your
obligatory speech.
this sadness runs deep.
deeper than you'll ever see
or know or be;
this is me.
you ask me "why?"
and i say there is no why,
there is no specificity,
only how did i get here,
and where did i stray?
there are twenty years behind me
of loss and disarray.
after seven years of pointless toil
we've accomplished nothing,
and this is all there is to it:
nothing.
lonely by nature,
i am this nothing,
this mathematical zero,
this zen, this departure.
i unfold my cupped hands for you,
my acknowledgement of loss.
i must begin letting go;
i must begin the process.
releasing these dead women
and dead men like trapped air
will help me stop seeing
in every glass, every mirror
the future as it will not be,
the phone that never rings;
these people who live beside me
in silence to my need.
your terms are no longer my terms.
your words are as hollow as the sockets
that hold your eyes
which do not see.
i will not wait in vain.
i will not expose my body
to your false and tawdry whims,
your absence of love
in this teenage fantasy you live in.
you are dense,
and sink to the bottom like a weight.
and i rise above like steam,
a cumulonimbus form,
reaching for something higher than you
and me.
i rise above the enigma
you think you are,
but are no longer to me.
Spring: For so long now I've hidden in my fairytale vision,
Existing in between reality and romance.
I've always believed somehow we'd end up together,
But now I'm treading in between leaving and indecision.
Over the next two, three years, where will you be?
Who will you love? Will you need me?
If winter never progressed into spring
Life and love would grow stagnant in waiting.
Are we too young for this? Or is it fear that grips you?
Must I sacrifice my heart simply because you don't want to?
We switch rapidly back and forth between friendship and something
That resembles love, but never quite gets there.
You jump in my mouth like you hunger for my taste
And I satiate your appetite, but I have to stop and think
Will this night turn to day? Or will I lose my love this way?
Will the leaves rot and snow drown before you turn to me and say,
My heart is devoid of spring. What this was isn't anything.
Thank you for your patience, your friendship means the world to me.
To that I say, no more.
I want no part of this love lust teasing
I've been through much disappointment, now I crave affection, stability.
I look forward to renewal, to light, to the promise of this spring.
But you are stuck in winter, and cannot promise me anything.
stand still: i change my font color like my hair,
transient like my mood;
i can't sleep, can't think,
can't eat, can't breathe,
i just can't sit still.
and we don't care anymore about school,
we dejectedly sit in our rooms
thinking about whatever else there is
to possibly think about;
there's got to be something else to do.
we're just two crazy kids in a car,
driving through the night
in this city of lights,
driving away from our fear,
driving away from ourselves because it's much too painful
to contemplate a disintegrated mind.
it's dark outside;
but dark is more comforting then the light.
at least we don't have to see our flaws,
at least we don't have to watch ourselves die.
i want to stay forever in this car,
because every time i close my eyes i don't dream,
i only fall into this sinkhole of thoughts
until i'm snuffed out,
until my mind exhausts itself from thinking.
with every hurtful thing she says
my soul cringes just a little more,
folds into itself, away from her;
recoils.
so please just let me stay in bed today,
give me some medicine to make this stop,
lull the bruising that blankets my insides,
drive me away.
drive into this night of confronting you and me,
introducing ourselves to who we are and how we hurt
and how it never stops,
how it presents itself like an unwelcome stranger
but then won't leave.
take me to the water
where we can wash ourselves clean.
drive me into the bay
so i can just swim away.
please, just don't take me home;
i never sleep anymore anyway.
solitaire: here, in ripped jeans and a dead man's shirt,
i slip into listless rumination.
i inspire stale air. i hear the sound of perpetuated hurt,
and the music of a paradise submerged in my desire.
the glare from the monitor touches my face,
but i crave the stroke of fingers and lips,
pliable, continuously transforming in space,
like this mutable soul, no longer enriched.
i want to be drunk off of a poet's words,
sedated by literature and heart so stilled,
but the dark inhibits my only comfort,
and suffocates my love, my lust, my will.
haunted by a face i never knew,
and by dying women, old and frail,
and by men who tore me into two,
i somnambulate through this waking hell.
how wonderful it would be to be content.
how simple it would be to glide through
on a raft afloat in ignorance,
to not know the difference between one and two.
these impossibilities exist in my mind.
they disfigure my face, hallucinatory
trailing like a virus, to the deepest pits
a thinking, feeling curse which renders me solitary.
my hands, myself: i have such ugly hands.
there's a purple swelling of skin
where i burned myself with my cigarette.
i bend my fingers
and my knuckles crinkle with an excess
of wrinkled folds of flesh.
my old woman digits are not long or slender.
their length stops short of gracefulness,
not stubby, but small.
a hand print like the elongated grasp
of a salamander.
my palms sweat at any slight provocation.
dirt stealthily slips underneath
the white tips of my unmanicured nails.
perfect for playing the piano,
since they crack and bend and tear off,
if they grow at all.
they are not rounded nicely,
their shape more like squares than almonds.
the cuticles run along the bottom
like fraying cloth.
there are ink splotches on my writer's calluses
where the pen slipped from the paper.
but these are my hands.
they flex and contract, fingers like
the extended claws of a kitten's paws,
that belong to my feline soul.
i sneak in and out of corners,
ducking out of view,
batting around a poet's words
like a shiny ball of foil.
these are my hands.
they write with a passion which attempts
to blot over this emptiness.
they reach out for men and women
who rid me of happiness.
they rub off tears from my face
which rests in a somber shadow.
they push the padded buttons, dialing numbers
to phones whose rings are always hollow.
these are my hands.
they seek the beauty in an ugly world.
they flounder for love from boys and girls.
but what they receive is always poisoned.
intangible like the water of finite oceans.
my rhyming misery:
melancholy is dripping from my mind.
my thoughts teeter on a thin line
volatile as the wind,
they never settle onto you.
never settle onto you.
in my heart there's a hole kicked through,
wide enough for you to fall into.
but you do not see or feel it.
it will never be completely full.
never will be all the way full.
and you don't care about me.
it was all a waking dream i drifted through.
i thought you might be god,
but the devil played me for a fool.
yes, he made me out to be the fool.
i'm weary with this growing distance,
these deceptive pretenses,
a spark that never grows into a flame;
it always dies down again.
yes, it always dies down again.
these are the nights i never sleep.
my dreams are fragmented and
interspersed with old lovers,
who will never come back to me.
they'll never come back to me.
i can count them all on my fingers,
one for each piece that they took.
they ran away to market with my love,
and left me behind to look.
all that i could do was look.
i wanted to remember it was good.
i could feel my rising need.
but there is nothing sacred left here,
in a loose noose ready to be pulled.
i'm just waiting for it to be pulled.
I listen.
I open my ears to the bravery of the people who share their stories,
Who recount their sorrow and dissatisfaction.
Just this tiny fraction
Of the population
Who fear not the eyes of onlookers,
Who fear not the judgment of God.
They stand before me with a passion that penetrates the room,
The practiced vocal inflections,
A private play put on for children in chairs, too scared to move.
The silence of the audience speaks louder than the power of the players
Sometimes
The fear is deafening,
Sometimes
The fear allows a fool to perpetuate a fool’s right
To manipulate a room full of people into believing
It’s the right thing to do
To take away a woman’s choice, leaving them with coat hangers and barbaric tools,
It’s the right thing to do
To engage in a war built on an $8 billion lie and search for weapons that were never built,
It’s the right thing to do
To penetrate the earth and drill, drill, drill, like the earth was a woman on her back without a way or will.
Well you can take your rights and shove them,
And go ahead and snap that crooked wing,
Because that bird never had a shot in hell at the mercy of weathered white men,
At the mercy of this “democracy.”
Take that bird and scrub it, pluck it, and pound the gristly meat
Rip apart the leathery skin and throw it in the oven for mommy and me.
Then burn it, burn it, burn it, watch it catch fire and go up in flames,
Throw the ashes in the pit and watch those gray dancers rise and float away.
Ninth grade, seventh period, last class of the day.
I remember sitting in the band room, too petrified to play.
My flute was a timid instrument,
I’d pick it up, place the hole at my mouth, and put the pads of my fingers on the keys,
It was scary to venture forth through the score,
To encounter the high notes, the inevitable cracking.
I’d blow.
I’d blow a barely audible whisper into that silver beauty.
I sat in last chair and listened to the first chair, second chair, third chair run along the notes like a river runs over stones.
The gentle trills,
The perfect jumps and landings from high to low, 10.0.
And I kept coming back,
Year after year I sat among blossoming musicians,
And I found my place.
I let go of the fear that held me back from playing louder, louder, louder,
From joining in,
Adding my music to the mélange of sounds,
Of sax, trumpets, flutes, clarinets, trombones, drums and baritone.
I let go.
I became a part of the group
Yet still individual,
Like in Japan, we cooperated
Yet we were still our own people.
My own unique sound and perception of the notes on the page,
I contributed to the performance, to the song;
I engaged.
It’s a metaphor, you see.
As I grew older I realized that there was no point in playing music
If I wasn’t going to play loud,
If I wasn’t going to be heard among the crowd.
Envision this:
Can you imagine what it would be like if everyone stood up and shared?
And didn’t allow our silence
To put a bigot into office?
Put into place progressive politics,
Voice your anger and your sadness,
Return to the Old Testament and burn the bush
Then take the ashes back to Texas.
Because I’m sick of the oil and the Al Quaeda and the fear that drives every decision.
If we were real patriots we wouldn’t need a Patriot Act to protect us from what we’ve done to other nations.
This is not me.
I am not represented by a flag where the white drowns out the red and blue,
I am not a woman matched by neo-conservative fools.
I will be a player
This time.
I will share my stories,
And I will cry and laugh and bleed onto the stage.
Because this is me,
And I am here and I am loud
And waving my flag upside down.
I am not afraid.
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Here are some excerpts from my Myspace profile now, so you can get to know me a little better.
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I'm a very liberal, open-minded, intelligent and funny girl. I have many interests: women's rights/issues, music, art, literature, politics, the environment, promoting social justice, etc. Talk to me if you're also interested in these things, plus whatever else you want to bring to the table. Talk to me if you have an open mind and a good heart. Don't talk to me if you're a close-minded shit head who can't handle someone slightly off balance. I enjoy good coffee, good wine, good conversation, good music and good food. I'm a writer, poet and lover of ambitious and life-changing literature. I'm also a dedicated student - I want to go to grad school at UMCP and study interior design. I'd really love to create electronic music at some point in my life too, and do all the vocals. Perhaps add some woodwind instruments. My goals in life are to learn, love, be loved and be happy. Currently, I'm a senior at UMBC. Taking the spring 05 semester off, living with my cool roomie Tara in Dundalk and working as an administrative assistant at The Healing Path in Federal Hill (www.thehealing-path.com).
My interests/hobbies include travelling (I've been to S. Africa, Spain, France, Ireland, England, Ecuador, Australia and all over the U.S., and lived in Madagascar for three years), sexual education, gay rights, progressive politics, music, creative expression, art, social justice, cultural anthropology, psychology, technology, religion, literature, human nature, grassroots movements, comedy, creating electronica music, cooking, the Green party and, most importantly, learning something new every day. I love music: singing it, playing it (flute, piano), listening to it, dancing to it. I'm very eclectic when it comes to what I listen to. My other passion is writing. I'm somewhat of a literary dork, which would explain why I love hanging out at coffee shops and book stores. Really I just love to make my friends laugh. I'm very quirky; I'll often have laughing fits and randomly burst into song and dance! Hee hee =)
My musical tastes: favorite song would have to be "The Tree Knows Everything," by Everything But The Girl. I'm an anything-electronica music elitist. Bjork, Erlend Oye, Emiliana Torrini, EBTG, Mum, Morcheeba, Esthero, Portishead, Massive Attack, Basement Jaxx, Royksopp, Venus Hum, The Blue Man Group, Matmos, BT, Moby, Frou Frou, Goldfrapp and Lemon Jelly, to name a few. I listen to everything else in the meantime. Love neo-soul, R&B and hip hop, like E. Badu, Jill Scott, Mary J. Blige, India.Arie, Janet, Michael, Les Nubians, D'angelo, Roots, Maxwell, Aaliyah, Marvin Gaye, Prince...down with lyrical rap, in love with Busta, Talib Kweli, Snoop, Missy, Outkast. Love me some folk (ANI DIFRANCO!) and the girly stuff like Tori, Sarah Mclachlan, Dar Williams, Dido, Natalie Imbruglia, Michelle Branch, Avril Lavigne, No Doubt, Annie Lennox/Eurythmics, Madonna. Big into progressive trance; crazy about ATB, Oakenfold, Max Graham and Paul Van Dyk. Love my boys from Coldplay, Simon and Garfunkel, U2, Counting Crows, Rufus Wainwright, Ben Harper, Jack Johnson, the Pet Shop Boys, Seal and George Michael. Gotta stick with my roots too and dig that latin flow, like the Gypsy Kings and Bebel Gilberto. The greatest rock band in the world: Led Zeppelin, nuf said. Pink Floyd, The Eagles, John Denver, Jethro Tull, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, Fleetwood Mac, Muddy Waters, B.B. King, Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holliday are awesome too!
My favorite movies are Being John Malkovich, Run Lola Run, Grave of the Fireflies, Requiem for a Dream, Bjork: Minuscule, Life is Beautiful, Il Postino, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Ma Vie En Rose, Boys on the Side, Bowling for Columbine, Amelie, Clockwork Orange, The Exorcist, Emperor's New Groove, Rocky Horror Picture Show, The Man Who Wasn't There, Office Space, SLC Punk, American Beauty, Finding Nemo, Waiting For Guffman, Best in Show, A Mighty Wind, Things You Can Tell Just By Looking at Her, Gandhi, Vanilla Sky, Memento, The Shining, You Don't Know What I Got, Panic, The Ring, Moulin Rouge...on and on."
Favorite TV shows: Comedy Central, Will and Grace, Sex and the City, Family Guy, Who's Line, Friends, Full House, The Nanny, Golden Girls, Law and Order: SVU, Extreme Makeover, TLC's What Not To Wear, Trading Spaces, That 70s Show, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Adult Swim, Rurouni Kenshin, Spongebob Squarepants, Looney Toons, Pimp My Ride, Wild Boyz...
Favorite authors: Edgar Allen Poe, Ray Bradbury, Ernest Hemingway, Toni Morrisson, Wally Lamb, Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf, Anais Nin, John Steinbeck...so many more that I'm probably forgetting.
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A few of my all time favorite comedic heroes/geniuses:
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Some other things I think you should do:
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Start a live journal!
If you like to blog, join the Live Journal community! My username is wetsparkle! And don't try just reading my journal either, because you can't access the juicy stuff unless you're my lj friend =)
Check out all my photo albums!
This is a great place to store all of your photos online, by the way. By signing up for a free account, you can create up to 10 photo albums!
Come to Iceland with me!
Seriously guys, I really want to go to Iceland and travel the countryside, meet the locals, and see the homes of some of my favorite musicians. Go to this website and learn more about this beautiful country!
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SWIRLING BLACK LILLIES TOTALLY RIPE
BUT THE DARKEST PIT IN ME, IT'S PAGAN POETRY
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Email: pinkaboooo@yahoo.com
