poems.
my first portfolio is due tomorrow for women & writing, so i've been editing poems since about 10:30 a.m.
here are two more if you've got a minute.
[this first one is about body hair and shaving more or less]
the barren
in a vacant winter
bare branches
scarcely interrupt the moon
while leaves lay dying
underneath
in their own rotting heat
melting the snow
the symbolism of this season
where beauty sleeps
in hibernation
between dark mornings
and the scrapings
the fall of foliage
the cutting of ice
until all that’s left
are the infertile limbs of trees
harsh to the belly of your fingertips
all that’s left is the desolate
the barren
and as children we play as flowers
with our feet in mud
and our face towards the sky
whispering to outer space
"help us rise,
all we've known are fingertips and eyes
and we long to make love in black and white."
but women
what trees are we
what willing extremities we dance with
to the whirlwind symphonies of snow
charmed with warmth from the soil we stand on
dance and dance
and do not shake the leaves from your boughs
or you both become detached
swing them through the wind of movement
a wake of flames shadowing the blues
and coo-calling to the sun
that it will know
they dance such beauty fully clothed
i’ll give them spring
so spring may grow
everything stunning
build me up with ideas of love
baptize the pores of my forehead
in romantic water and everything stunning
in a pact with the abstract
we weave webs
to tie existence to reality
and language to knowledge
but instead we fill our heads
with textual evidence
of our stereotypical tendencies
and descriptions that we fit
categorizing
looks and habits
in books that map it out
characterizing
our smoke and mirror alter-egos
i am tearing out the ideas of love
clogging the pores of my forehead
in stagnant water and everything stunning
in the midst of this existential ambition
i am carving away the clay of my layers
cutting their weight from the top of my shoulders
while the jealousy of atlas
makes the world seem colder
i will strike with the weight of my knife
to cut off limbs of trivial life
i am not this and this and this
but’s only me that does exist
i strip down to the science of my bones
self-aware in marrow
while destroying the vessel
i rebuild on enlightened ground
where a word like gender
is inconsequential
and i am parading forward into the ideas of love
drenched to the bones
in romantic water and everything stunning
i am so fascinated by my (and so many people's) ability to step in and embrace the powerful idea of womanhood, and to step back out and feel just as at home in a kind of abstract gender of humanity. there is more to say about it, always, but i have to keep doing homework until i go to work.
but if you want to talk to me about it sometime, please.
[thanks jenny]
here are two more if you've got a minute.
[this first one is about body hair and shaving more or less]
the barren
in a vacant winter
bare branches
scarcely interrupt the moon
while leaves lay dying
underneath
in their own rotting heat
melting the snow
the symbolism of this season
where beauty sleeps
in hibernation
between dark mornings
and the scrapings
the fall of foliage
the cutting of ice
until all that’s left
are the infertile limbs of trees
harsh to the belly of your fingertips
all that’s left is the desolate
the barren
and as children we play as flowers
with our feet in mud
and our face towards the sky
whispering to outer space
"help us rise,
all we've known are fingertips and eyes
and we long to make love in black and white."
but women
what trees are we
what willing extremities we dance with
to the whirlwind symphonies of snow
charmed with warmth from the soil we stand on
dance and dance
and do not shake the leaves from your boughs
or you both become detached
swing them through the wind of movement
a wake of flames shadowing the blues
and coo-calling to the sun
that it will know
they dance such beauty fully clothed
i’ll give them spring
so spring may grow
everything stunning
build me up with ideas of love
baptize the pores of my forehead
in romantic water and everything stunning
in a pact with the abstract
we weave webs
to tie existence to reality
and language to knowledge
but instead we fill our heads
with textual evidence
of our stereotypical tendencies
and descriptions that we fit
categorizing
looks and habits
in books that map it out
characterizing
our smoke and mirror alter-egos
i am tearing out the ideas of love
clogging the pores of my forehead
in stagnant water and everything stunning
in the midst of this existential ambition
i am carving away the clay of my layers
cutting their weight from the top of my shoulders
while the jealousy of atlas
makes the world seem colder
i will strike with the weight of my knife
to cut off limbs of trivial life
i am not this and this and this
but’s only me that does exist
i strip down to the science of my bones
self-aware in marrow
while destroying the vessel
i rebuild on enlightened ground
where a word like gender
is inconsequential
and i am parading forward into the ideas of love
drenched to the bones
in romantic water and everything stunning
i am so fascinated by my (and so many people's) ability to step in and embrace the powerful idea of womanhood, and to step back out and feel just as at home in a kind of abstract gender of humanity. there is more to say about it, always, but i have to keep doing homework until i go to work.
but if you want to talk to me about it sometime, please.
[thanks jenny]