she said it to no one

i'm not wild about the following's style of poetry, but i'm interested in the idea of telling the truth...what do i do with pain? what do i write? what sound do i inscribe against pain? it's an interesting question, even. i have an opportunity, here.

the fall

is there a point

to regret?

that which

i have been

too damaged

to try, too

piecemeal

to

accept--

i write

words

that run

down the face

of the truth.

they have

little to do

with their own

beauty.

is there

anything

to regret--

anything,

truly,

to mourn?

the velvet husk

splits, torn;

the blossom

presses through;

i feed

its root

this mangled

tongue

and words

rain down,

split,

thrust through,

pulsing with longing.

is there anything

to regret?

is anything

so totally

lost?

no sunrise;

no sunset;

no wind, no

swift-fallen drop

of rain--

thank you, darkness--

thank you, hell god--

you prepare me

as a banquet--

you lay me out,

you turn me out

into a feast--

for within this

sucking

darkness

there is

a great

tenderness

that batters me

as a heart.

my love

unfolds.

my love

trains

my tears

to be

its own.

my love

meets

my mouth--

my love

sanctions

my end--

my love

invites

my fall.

in which i shouldn't end a sentence with a preposition at.

heh. the wages of vanity: nothing particularly horrifying, but nothing one hopes for either.

in times of stress i skip class...in the last few years, fruits basket has also become one of the things i can do. i wish i could write japanese so i could tell natsuki takaya how much her series means to me. i mean, one can never know anything until after it's happened, but fruits basket helps me--actually helps me, to know what i can try to feel when i feel like such a piece of crap, to know what in myself i can try to see.

and i do have to try to be strong, however bad i am at it. it's just so weird, this whole thing is weird. today i threw away a paper towel three times--because i didn't throw it away the right way the first two times? i don't know! it was the multi-stall bathroom at school, too. i mean, nobody else was in there, but someone could have come in and seen--or heard--me walking from garbage to garbage in my abrasively percussive high heels.

mais je n'ai pas peur. i have a best of leonard cohen cd--i like only three songs on it. "famous blue raincoat," "the partisan," and "who by fire." however, i really really like both "who by fire" and "famous blue raincoat," so i can't say i dislike leonard cohen.

i realize i can't convince myself of what i have to do. this whole thing is not just an inconvenience to me--it makes things difficult for other people too, and that bothers me more than i can say. but i think i have to stop fighting--i can't dictate the pace. i want to face it, but i can't, because some part of me that either hates or more simply fears for me isn't convinced that i can't continue to survive without knowing whatever is hovering on the edge, whatever's causing me to sit at the bottom of some dark lake looking up through a whirlpool. it's not giving up, precisely, what i'm talking about--it's more just the cessation of hostilities. i can't control this. when it gets bad, i'm terrified of the dark. when it gets bad, i can't touch door handles. i smoke. i don't trust people. and sometimes when it hits hard i can't really see and can't really hear. i only cut myself because i'm angry, and because i like the look of my own blood, though i can't stand to see others'. this isn't complaining. it's a catalog of facts. i like both the ideal and the actuality of pain, though i have only self-inflicted experience with it--but pain isn't the end; beyond all this, and beyond pleasure, is an unfolding, like the wing of a large bird preparing to take flight.

i'm not brave. but i won't back down. i'm weak, weak beyond comprehension. i'm torn easier than a petal, torn easier than a word printed on a cheap page. but it doesn't matter. anything but surrender, even in surrender. i surrender; i have no pride. but i don't give up, because i am myself, a thing i'll willingly apologize for a thousand times a minute, but a thing i also refuse to be anything other than. is it a case of semantics at this point? the substitution of one term for another?

my own personal opinion is that it only matters to a certain extent. the point is that because both the statement "i surrender" and the statement "i don't surrender" at this juncture of self-scraped-ness are true, i'm at the point of paradox, and thus i have to make a sound. that's why i write in this blog--and it's why, if i can harness this point, i'll be able to sing to the full extent of my abilities. of this i'm not afraid. i'm not afraid of standing in the mouth of this thing and becoming its sound.

though technically, at the moment, i don't have the energy to be afraid of anything. throwing away that paper towel really took it out of me.

jibber jabber

i'm trying to be better--i am trying. trying, for example, to tell people things instead of letting them just compress like sediment and eventually turn into rock. but it feels so...self-indulgent, unnecessary...i can handle myself, sort of--i don't want to worry anyone, i don't want anyone to feel like they're not doing enough for me. and i'm terrified. i don't know why. that is, half the time i'm happier than i've ever been--the new depth to things hasn't gone away, and everything has much more muchness (oh dear, did i really just go there?) than it ever has before, plus i don't feel pushed so far to the tip of the isthmus of my isolation. but the other half of the time, things are very very dark.

and it's hard to acknowledge, you know? i guess it's like, what i know how to do is deny myself. that's what i'm good at. i'm okay with being uncomfortable--okay with using any spare ounce of comfort to push myself into discomfort again. if it can be denied, it should be, has always been my philosophy. if i have to suffer, i should suffer in silence, but most of my suffering is window-dressing, a dream, an excuse to feel something, to make my life more interesting. it's wrong to suffer because suffering is never real for me--it's real for other people but never for me.

or that was the accepted wisdom in my head. now that whole thought process looks a lot like a protective mechanism, something i got hold of because i couldn't handle what it meant to feel the way i did, the way i still do. little religious nugget of thought: maybe that's part of what peter was up to in denying jesus--to save his literal body from being hurt by the authorities, but also to save his soul from the knowledge of what was going to happen to his friend and god. i'm not christian, exactly, but i feel like the passion is a really good story.

i'm damaged. and instead of healing, the damage has been putrefying inside me for a long time. i'm grateful as hell for this whole process. i mean, it sucks, but whenever something basically vomits itself up from out of that void--whenever i have to break and cry and crap--i feel better after it's there, after i can face it. i have responsibilities that keep me from being inside myself all the time, but, hell yes, bring it, putrefied void. "use me as your spaniel--spurn me, scorn me, strike me dead."

it's odd to realize that the process is basically analogous to throwing up mental food poisoning over a protracted period of time. i'm still shy of the repressed memory concept. i just don't know--it's the only thing that makes sense, but i don't know. cuz i can't remember. WEIRD.

tango 2

dance with no meaning

turn, words, turn, turn; bend

my hand on my cheek into her hand; un-rend

my woken world from her smooth dream realm;

unfurl in me that calling satin thing

that, like the inside of a shell, beaten, spent

into silk by waves and the crawling life it held,

best cradles the best thing it held.

limping like the relief map of a river's bend,

my words but half-recall the life that rent

itself from mine, standing counterdistinct, realmed

itself within itself, a stone thing

against which the water turns, spent

like words. therefore softness housed a never-spent

memory, softness turned her cheek to mine and held

my hand to it--softness blends

her flesh into mine--softness rends

a sigh from the body's wet dark realm--

softness a pulsing sweet blanketing thing.

words, turn, turn me into her thing,

turn this shell to a spent

casing, turn the memory that held

to her to flesh, to her flesh, bend

me to her, rend

the stone from my side. The realm

of this wish repeats, becomes the realm

of the figures of the dance, the soft intertwining

of my cheek with hers a motion already spent

over and over, the turn of my hand to hers held

already to a cheek my words have bent

to create, un-rent,

myself in her--let her never rend

herself from the realm

of me. let the thing

remain we, we, resplendent,

sans split, the rock that once held

itself so to itself now awash in the un-riven riverbed...

a bent wish,

a command rent

from itself--in what realm

could the thing

of me spend

itself in her?

i warp, held

against her. like fresh wood, i bend--

like words, like words, i bend.

tango 1

dance of a few words

the heart, in beating, shows itself blue and red

against the parchment skin, a parchment torn or sound.

the heart's beat flowers at the wrists,

barely clothed, hardly protected from day's white

machinate light. vessels fine as hair

spread under a skin not a centimeter deep.

blood's beat is as a dance, enacted deep

down, in some center hot as earth's iron-red

core. blood's dance is as the sheaf of your hair

rolled in wind; blood's dance is the sound

of the wind that has touched you, the punishing white

light that glances off your naked wrists--

i see the sinuous shield of your crossing wrists,

and this ever-lengthening hunger spears me deep;

blood seems to drip away; i shrivel to silence, to white,

as the heart performs its dance of red,

a red to feast on, a red as impossible to sound

as is the blackness of your dark-shining hair--

like parchment, a surface, your hair

off of which the light rivers--like parchment your wrists,

which display the writing of your blood--the sound

of your heart like parchment, on which, inside, deep

down, is written that which can't be read

by one who writes only this, standing outside the white

enclosure of your body, the glancing light, white,

dancing like blood, light in your hair,

light dyeing red

the curve of your ear--dying red the curving wrists

with which you wrote such deep

messages, messages i could not sound.

the sun was setting like blood, the whisper of sound

was the word carved on your heart. my white

lips pressed themselves whiter, deeper, deep

to the point of red; the writing light red on your hair,

red on your hair, your wrists

lit red--your wrists laced with what i had not read--

the red blood word,

that wild sound

that beat in your wrists,

that turned light from red to white--

it was not my name that lit your hair,

not my name that thrust in deep.

how many poems am i going to have to name this name?

veronica III (or more)

believe me, you are held--

a heart alone has no more to do

than hold a shadow,

cling

to an emotion

it once knew.

veronica,

i attempt

to break through--

to no longer sit

and suck the cloth

your face once fit.

veronica,

i don't find you

though i sort through

piled linen and lace

for that one dirty scrap--

leave me not

with nothing,

lady,

to wrap around

my hands

in this

pursuit

of a grotesque

self-

plundering.

great and entirely non-litigious

usually the urge to describe myself in the manner of the author i'm reading comes over me when i'm engaged in agatha christie novels. i always feel like agatha christie would have something pretty incisive to say about me, and it wouldn't be anything i'd like--she'd put me into words in about a sentence (i'd show up as some sort of friend of the dead person), and i have the feeling that the word "bovine" would be used. i think ngaio marsh might be even harsher. in fact, the only mystery writer i like that i think would be at all kind to me is raymond chandler, and that's only because he doesn't seem to have any types of broad between the good and the bad.

inspired by reading the first version of the american, i think henry james would describe me something like this: "what intellect she possessed was separate from the affect that she had, which was that of a timid but beautifully kept domestic animal."

transmogrification

life is full of simple if entirely bizarre solutions. my brain knows more than i do, and has decided that, for the moment, i've done enough with the memory stuff. i have had an incredibly dark two weeks, and, working together, my brain and i have gone to the limit of what i'm prepared to deal with--we now back off, and i do some odd visualizing about the shoot working itself out to the capacity of the new-laid roots.

it's easy to confuse the ends and the means, because they're really the same thing. but for my own reference, the end, for now, and maybe for always, is singing better, and the means are these growth processes. which involve everything but the kitchen sink, apparently. proust attempted to attain a simple end, that of explaining the meaning of an incident, and ended up with recherche (which i haven't finished)--he pulled the entire world into his pursuit of the end he was after. i would say the same for shakespeare, possibly. i'm no proust and i'm certainly no shakespeare, but i see how these things happen: you want something, you are willing to do just about anything in order to attain that thing, and, boom, there are voices and images and tongues of fire, apocrypha, impossible visualizations, symbols that come out of nowhere...understanding of all the things you thought you understood but were too afraid to believe you understood...

and there are answers. i don't know. and they're simple. they're just weird. like, in order to move on, for the moment, i have to acknowledge that that other me, the one who repressed the thing in order to go on surviving, is dead. it's terrible, but it's true. she would have made a better me than i do, i'm pretty sure, but it doesn't matter--the thing's impossible. what happened to her killed her, and i turned up in her place.

i wish that either, a., i were overstating the case, or, b., the case wasn't quite so cliched. but i'm speaking more literally even than one would about something fairly literal, like a mountain of homework. a mountain of homework is a lot of homework; the idea that an earlier version of me died when she was repressed from necessity is slightly more of a fact than a crapload of homework that gets turned into a mountain. it's embarrassing in its literalness, in fact, because, if i could, i would go with some other metaphor. how many times do we read about someone rising from the ashes of a former life, or, more specifically, some lady character in a graphic novel who deals with her own violation by cutting off her hair, dressing as a man, and gaining magic and/or kicking-ass powers? i mean, it's a whole genre i'm channeling, not just an isolated rhetorical conceit. but it's the case. i died, and was reborn or something, and now here i am.

why is this helpful? distance, first of all. not that i want to embrace distance from anything, really, but, yeah, i'm far away from the person that it happened to. the things that kept her safe won't keep me safe; the things that healed her won't heal me. but i cling to them, secondly, because it's what i know. if she's dead, i can talk about her ghost, and her ghost has been possessing me for something like twenty two years. another cliche--another unfortunately apt cliche. i keep acting like she would have acted, seeing things as she would have seen them...she doesn't exist anymore, though. acting like her doesn't bring her back. acting like her doesn't give her back her life; it just takes mine away. i am safe in a way that she wasn't--i'm safe from the thing that killed her.

maybe. this is an interesting point. i'm not sure what i'm safe from. i just know i'm safe from something--i'm safe. not from...death or pain or attack--i'm just safe, safe within myself. i'm okay. it's not easy to explain that, but it is a pretty interesting thing to feel, for the first time in, well, forever. there is ground in which to plant myself. i can't be ripped up at the roots ever again. i don't know why--i just know it's true.

i mean, thank god, right?

the pain file

in the absence of meaning
i created for myself method,
but some things simply cannot
be whole
without their requisite
addenda.

one gigantic filing exercise,
then, has been
sorted
to its finish, and i move
from drawer to shelf
admiring a self
replete with its
several
completed
aspects.

in short, i learn,
among many things,
a method by which
to shed tears
not into a well,
the depth of which
i cannot plumb,
but as sacrifice,
as offering--
a new way
in which
i turn salt water
to inviolate
phoenix
feathers
and thereby
scald
myself
clean.

grape

what happens to a life deferred?

i'm not even angry. not yet. i'm not even that hurt. or not precisely. i mean, i would have been a different person if it weren't for the repressed memory crap, and even now that i kind of have someone to blame for all the pain, the waste of shame and choking self-loathing, the isolation and mistrust and self-abuse...i don't know. i feel worse for that dude. at least i didn't do anything--at least i'm innocent.

and i am innocent. i might have been weak or...attractive or something, but i didn't do anything to deserve what happened. if i was weak, i was born weak. if i was attractive, i was born attractive. i didn't do anything.

i feel worse for him, because at least i can take this out on myself. the fact that he couldn't, that he had to involve me in his issues, makes me pity him. it's hard to explain, but a thing i understand--and one i don't really live up to--is that it's the greatest of privileges to take care of other people. i'm not good at it, which is why i can understand it, thereby turning myself into a shining example of the maxim that those who can't, teach. but he couldn't take care of me. he had to hurt me to satisfy himself--and in the end that kind of satisfaction did him way more harm than it did me, whether he saw it that way or not.

of course it might all be lies. i might not be remembering anything. my psyche might just be desperate to close around some sort of solidity--push really any story into the void. but i think it's true. the attendant details might be false, but i think the memory is true. but of course i would think that, now wouldn't i?

whatever. the point is that i've been robbed of truth, faith, love, and my own body, but it doesn't matter that much. whatever brought me to this point has to be dealt with--and i'm grateful for the point i'm at. i wouldn't want to be anywhere else. whatever brought me here has to be a blessing--possibly in one major-ass disguise, but still a blessing.

although, yes, if you see a tall girl crying on bart, it's probably me. and it's not over yet.

wrung

soundless.

i'm so tired. i guess it's better to be asked to give something than not to be asked for anything, right? but i do wish there were some sort of medium. i need a break--and i'm greedy, so i don't give myself one. i'm willing to do everything possible because i'm greedy for experience, for opportunity. i'm trying to learn, but i don't yet know how to care for myself. and other people can't care for me--i know this. even if they want to, they don't know how, because they don't know the exact nature of my needs, because language is never that specific.