oh my

can't stand the rain

imagining bone

straining against flesh

when i touch

my own cheek:

where

did i go?

against my surface

used to lie

the safety of

the body, marshes

of yellow fat

fed by red blood,

but even this

recedes,

and i am left with

bone--

white

that would rather

splinter

than bend.

a new skin

that feels

translucent

as glass

overlays

my face.

copper lady

press yourself

closer.

the brush of your hair

brings to the skin of my neck

a vision

of a desert

with a river

cleaving it through.

the noises

that live in these walls--

echoes of

some shattered half hour--

etch sounds

perilously close to the vein

in a color

that looks like blood.

it dries on the cuff.

to remember

the way you wiped

your mouth

on your silk shirt.

tied down and split

like a fig

every sound

reddened as skin

i shake my head

on its thick and chalk-white stem

and nothing

comes loose.

if you

love me,

if you

hate me,

guide me

to that red river

and let

me

drink.

domino, biatch!

what do you want

white rose

your petals like a white stain?

i carried you back from the

other shore

and in darkness

taut as the center

of a gamba string

you unfurled,

petals white

against sweet black leaves.

what do you do,

white rose? against

what

do you

center?

petals like

a bridal dress,

a new moon,

stained white

like bone.

if it's written to the song "theft, and wandering around lost," it's BOUND to be good

i piece various aspects of myself together within a dream

parts

that dredge themselves

up

from within

that black water.

thanks, i said

dryly,

receiving into

ridiculously pale arms

the sodden torso of my desire.

on a different current

floated by

the calves of

my helplessness.

dessicated are

the eyelids of

my dependency, churned up

from some dark recess

within the general

undertow.

parts

pile up

waist-high

on the riverbank

and i wander

in the shallows,

elbow-deep

in rank

and turgid

liquid,

grasping at

scraps of flesh,

physical detrius,

the casualties

of

fracture.

depressing as shit

i always come back to rain

1. icarus

as if all mankind

needed only one symbol:

rain, falling,

shudders

against a roof,

that shudder

located somewhere

within the stuff

of sound

and touch--

which, in their

stretched

blind twist,

work,

like

a root

v'd

into wetted earth.

thirst,

like the stroke

of a hand

down a back,

shuddering

along the root.

2. math

the sound of every raindrop

echoes the beat of some

heart,

somewhere.

statistically

this makes sense--

each heart beats

its own rhythm,

and some part

of all rhythms

can be seen as

encompassed

in rain's percussion.

this may be

an idea

of beauty

but it is lonely.

or perhaps

just shattered.

they call the fern's equation

a fractal.

3. the lady in the tower

i already have so little,

i think,

and in some small way

it's true.

clouds the color

of oxidized copper--

rain, rain,

never stop falling on me.

how much will

the breaking

of one girl

matter?

how much will

the breaking

of one girl

matter?

clouds the color

of chased silver--

rain, rain,

never stop falling on me.

i am shattered

in sadness--

it matters

so little.

clouds the color

of water

clouds the color

of water

rain, rain,

never stop falling on me.

other poem

premise

beauty being the press,
as if of two palms,
of pain onto pleasure,

the nature of the pressure
being such
that they turn into
each other

by turning in
toward themselves:
a strained
homecoming.


this is how pain
looked at herself
as if into a mirror,

seeing all she had discarded
become all she ever
would love--

she would have cracked
from side to side

if beauty,
like a bitter taste,
had not held her
bound together--
if beauty,
in a blind
home-coming,
to herself
had not bound herself
ever-closer.

early music metaphor

string player

subtle
as an instrument
with ten strings, i
move
for you,
idea of
a lover.

as the church
awaits her bridegroom
so i
await you,

like the center
of the earth,
in a state of
banked yet constant fire--

like a shape in Hell,
self-enflagrate,
even when nothing's left
to burn
but the fire itself--

formless
but for its flame,
or frozen,
repeating
like the echoing vein
of the wood,
polished
into liquidity,
that makes up
the broken back
of the low-singing gamba.

sound of science

i'm NOT depressed. i'm just using this blog as an outlet for when things get too weird.

as, for example, now--i'm wondering if every sizeable part in every opera will be as difficult to handle emotionally as cornelia's being (that totally maybe makes grammatical sense). i mean, granted, she has about thirteen arias, ALL of which deal with the subject of wanting to kill herself (a slight exaggeration). but, although i like comic characters, it's the tragic ones that kind of do it for me. and being cornelia's kind of killing me a little.

in a way it's probably just that it's too damn much to do. between the rehearsals for giulio cesare, the rehearsals for rake's progress chorus, and the rehearsals for suor angelica, even though i haven't put in ANY time on either rake's progress OR suor angelica (nothing like being a super-impressive student, here)--and class, even though i skipped class a bunch last week--and this...whatever it is, paint-by-number project of piecing myself together out of colors, voices, answered questions, and random-ass symbolism--

it's not working out. there's not enough of me to go around.

which is what everyone says. and they always survive. and i'm going to survive. but at what cost? i refuse to give on the cornelia thing. i'm going to keep trying to put more than as much of myself as is possible into her. i hope it's working; i don't actually know.

i mean, i hope that it's not just being her that's making me this...shattered; i want to be shattered, at the end of my rope, etc., because that's where she is; i just don't want to be there all the time. in a professional production, would the rehearsal time be this long? maybe, right? but i wouldn't be trying to do as much? except i might?


there's a rumor floating around within the various entities that are trying to help me piece together a self-identifiable self--you know, the ones that might mean i'm crazy? it's that pain is my gift. like buffy, with death. oh god. i mean, that the way pain is within me is a gift of mine (nice rephrase, sra. way to really explain the heck out of the concept). i don't understand what this means--i don't see what it entails, aside from the berserker streak that might just be a product of over-strong amygdalic reaction. pain is a method by which i define myself, but i use it in the old sense--the unconnected, over-intellectual, overly brutal sense of self, self in the vacuum, that i'm being reformulated from. i don't know how to break the hard plastic shell and get at the truth behind pain... it's too separate, too distinct. maybe that's the issue.

right now my shoulders hurt real bad. i'm not loving the sensation.

bitch and moan. bitch and moan.