tarquin says

i'm procrastinating on a paper and found this in my notes, like a fragment in a dream, or a crumb lodged in a book binding--i guess i wrote it, and seeing as i haven't written any poetry in months, thought i'd put it up here.


Tarquin says

Those Roman eyes
Became Lucretia's eyes
And everything I had done to Rome
everything I had done to Rome

came home.

the whackness

things to think on:

1. fantasies of control: check.  because being nuttier than an outhouse rat requires certain parameters, planning, ground rules.

tying into number 1 is 2. i'm not "one of those people who [blank]."  don't fill in that blank.  types are excusable up to a certain point, but after that point, either attempt to get the real story, or get out the kitchen.  it's partially womanly orneriness, i totally admit that, but don't even try to threaten my originality.  i don't always get it right, but nine times out of 10 i have been THROUGH it with myself before it gets presented for public view, and though i may not deserve respect for that in others' eyes, in my own, that attribute is about the only thing in me that does deserve it.  i may not be pretty, polite, considerate, or receptive enough, but i am trying my ass off to be responsible for what's inside me.  call it control freakishness if you will.  i don't think that's an inaccurate diagnosis.  but i am making one hell of an effort to be what i think i ought to be--and what i think i ought to be is what i am, plus what's possible.  so there's a lot to try for.

not sure precisely what prompted this.  something like: it's totally possible that people are an equation, a la tom stoppard's arcadia sort of.  but if so, it's a divine equation.

nothing...nothing...nothing

monody

i turned your name into a bell. it was nothing more than the name of you that i hollowed, that i fashioned, and i knew it as nothing more than your name

which was why it moved with each wind.

oh my love, oh my love,
i turned your name into a bell.


meditations of the beast

once, in those hours in your arms,
once, i unseamed my eyes,
seeing the moon shrouded
in mist, or, if there was no mist,
in what i felt, and i felt,
for once, it bridged,
the gap between truth and lies,

that between what one controls
and what one knows, the moon,
floating, enhazed, is,
lustrous
constant
in the naked sky.

urgle grue pt. 2 or so

i'm realizing that this story i'm currently working on (with reluctance--it's not an easy write, i think in part because it's been so long since i've written a first draft that i can't quite stop expecting more than is happening from myself) is, like, weird to try and pull together.

the early parts of a story seem to be mostly babble, for me (again, this is the first draft experience--it's interesting as such). i mean, i have a core idea, but of course, being me, i don't know what it is. it manifests itself as a symbol, or a...what's a word i can borrow from some other discourse, for kicks? a moment--a singularity. something that stays deeply meaningless. when i've hit the right singularity, then everything in me can draw up to the thing--like the jar up to which the hill came--and bits of myself start getting thrown at it, changed in the spectrum of the light that refracts from it, but still entirely identifiable.

the fact that i actually at this point know enough to SAY this, to put a process to the action of writing a story i've never written before, maybe means that this book will be better than the last. i doubt it, though. i think i might be villette-ing myself. not that the first book was even close to being a jane eyre, and not that villette isn't a freaking FABULOUS book in its own right, but it's not the same as jane eyre. it's not. villette is a work of genius, but maybe it's not a masterpiece--or it's both a work of genius and a masterpiece, but it's just...not jane eyre.

it might be that i'm addicted to rewriting the book i know.

none of this matters, of course. i am interested in the process, though. it's almost necessary to pontificate about the process precisely because i'm so damn unsure of myself. i like things like ground rules, boundaries...there aren't any with the new book, except to get everything in there that feels like it ought to be there, which is helpful, in a way, but only in a way. i'm going to forget something, is the fear, or lie about something--put something in there that doesn't need to be there. the last book was kind of a flight of fancy; this one is sticking low to the ground, said ground as defined by what i know.

which is, i'm afraid, making it boring. but it's a first draft. it doesn't have to be interesting until the second. i'm not sure why i'm so focused on the end product. i seem to be preoccupied with what my brain wants me to be preoccupied with, however--there's something to that.

oppositions, and the way they twist. and eternal love, unfortunately. depression, and not knowing yourself, and the weird possibilities that hover between memory and imagination. an uncomfortable display of my current preoccupations, in fact. rrr. but i have to write it. it'd be stupid to reject a gift like the end of plot-block just because i'm kind of afraid--kind of really really afraid.

12

meditations of the beast

earth and sky

unbroken, tight
and unceasing as shackles--

air, light, dirt, everything,

unending, massed hostlike,

the press of hot things,

bodily and burned sacred.

break and writhe,

you, uncleanly thing,

and befoul heat itself

with your strangled release,

and you, dark receptacle

and you, dark receptacle

cleave to yourself

cleave yourself

and break yourself

and break yourself

for everything else

is too ready to spill you

if you dont spill yourself.

11

quietus (in translation)

i see your face

as if transient, in a dream,

my first and last love--

the retching

stickiness

of memory

and the wrench

of distance

a hand that wishes to

hold nothing

yet

lets nothing go

a wretched
and circular
desire.

i read your face

as if in memory

dearest

i read and rend your face

as if from memory.

a hand i once held

is over-full of memory

and my own hand

is over-full

of shadow--
substance.
i was robbed
of substance.

fullness--i was

robbed

of fullness,

and hang,

sick,

like a crescent moon,

somewhere between day

and hungering night

while night

empties her budget

into her own
hollowness.

10

milton

crush

flesh

to dark

ness.

the tower

built

of raw dark

the up-

thrusting

thing

against

its ideal

turn it

real

taste

of yellow

roses

the stalklike

mark

on creamy

forearm

i was in the darkness, though.

but it was a meat darkness.

i pushed my way out

and there was meat for days.