rain rain rain

pain: a list

one: to throw everything into
its transformation from
a state, a noun-dom,
into an active principle:
i pain--as a verb--
i be pain--i pained.

a lonely transformation,
that's point two.
for decades, like
a brunette princess
entangled
in a hundred years of dreams,
i waited, incarcerate,
to be saved--to be pulled
from the endless flame--
to be separated
from what is in essence
myself--
by some constant hand
not my own.

that's over now,
or i try to see it as such.
the longing floe of ice,
its attendant flame,
the wave that passed
back and forth between them,
ends like
a leonard cohen song:
too many syllables,
too acoustically demonstrative,
but powerful in its sadness
anyway.

three--
what do i do
from here? where do i go?
how to breathe,
how to draw breath even
enough to speak?

my face is drawn white against itself.
when i close my eyes,
i see skin drawn in red.
my hair unbound
black as a river,
and, to borrow a conceit,
the stars have gone out
in it.

suffering is all around, caked
thick like unsettled tectonic crust,
point four.
my own mangled whimpers
deserve no notice
amidst the general
traffic.
those who died were beautiful,
they who live in sorrow are
lovely as the asphodel,
and i am neither.

five--
a turn away from silence;
a homecoming beyond sound.

there is a tree, its branch heavy.
a rotation toward the bough--
a selection of the fruit that calls my name.

as though we'd never parted.
look at me, pain,
red in my palm.

you are the only witness
to the moment
of this my devotion
by flesh.
i eat, and
your juice
runs down
my throat.

i am honed
and ready for you
as the sheath
the dagger--
strike me
like a match
and see
the spark
that
generates.


six:
conversation in
that desert at night
that unfolds in my mind--
no, you are not pain's.
no, you are not meant
to gather only pain.
yes, stay here.
for the moment stay here.
for the moment be this.
for the moment, see nothing
beyond this.

touch me, fire,
with your sweet blue lips.
touch me and tell me
of safety in your arms:
take me, pain--
grant me the gift
of agony.

spring poem

the beast speaks

i woke to my heart in a reddened place,
the sun drying dark on the backs of my paws,
each tree woven round with crimson light--
the birdsong, the low-throated insect song
was the light's weft.

i was alone and attired all over in the kill,
so solidly alone that sound itself sank to a backdrop,
and in the breathless wilderness,
at center of that pressing molten sunset,
my mouth covered in dirt,
dirt in my nostrils, dirt

scattered like a rotting constellation across
my shoulders, i saw her, dark-eyed, the white rose
cupped
in her hands,
her mouth
curved
like a petal.

but i knew she was not there.
it was a vision,
and as such hardly bearable.

it's difficult to keep to sanity
in such a monstrous loneliness.
difficult

to wait.
difficult past
all bearing.

i cry out, sometimes,
pressed

under the red-stained sheets
of these sunsets,
and the sound of my voice
is subverted

at its tenderest point

into the body of my demons.

step aside langston hughes (this is a joke)

v

what happens to a sound deferred?
for how long can it burn
within, unheard?
for how long can it blench
taut skin to paste--
for how long can it lay
the heart waste?

how long can it hold
itself to itself,
setting fire to bone,
leaving face a blank hearth?
how long can it claim
the allegiance of silence
before silence itself
turns cold eyes
on self-violence?

in the violate quiet,
heart, mind,
rent
from meaning
the vise of all sound
nothing but brute pressing--

what happens
to a sound unsaid?
does it forget?
what happens to a sound unknown?
does it explode?

...and tired

waltz

what happens
to the contents
of the vase
when the glass
succumbs
to the press
of its flaws
and shatters?

the stamen,
the cupped petal,
drenched in their own
darkening liquid,
the stem stray,
holding nothing
together longer,
the lingering spread
of the water,

the waxy leaf
upon which drops
raise themselves
like thin welts
from out of
the wild-
spreading deluge:

water
against

the vague
and gentled
floral epidermis:
the damasked cheek
and insinuant cup
of the tulip,
the bending shifting mouth
of the rose--

all parts distinct
when the vase breaks
past itinerance, past mutiny,
past all endurance,
no longer sustained
as if solid against fluid,
but drenched,
subsumed
in the act of its scattering.

like a star
bends its light, rent
from deepest
midnight.

NINUS' tomb, man!

i've been writing lesbian poetry for about five years now. the point at which i finally felt, after years of writing crap, that i had at least some poetic thing to say and knew somewhat how to say it, was the point at which i started writing lesbian poetry. i can say with pretty much certainty that all the poetry i've written that i'd consider even somewhat good is lesbian.

and STILL this isn't a good enough clue that i might (gasp) actually be gay. nooo, i say to myself. you still have weird, tortured crushes on men you never actually want to be with. you aren't a lesbian--you're a self-loathing bisexual stereotype. and you haven't felt ashamed of yourself enough this last half hour! no more slackin'! go and think about how you're a vainglorious bastard who doesn't do anything right! do i have to cook the noodles for you to lash yourself with myself? (which considering that the "yourself" in that sentence is also "myself" makes it if possible even more confusing.)

i mean, why is it so hard to accept? it's not like i ever really thought i was straight. i still find men attractive, and i wouldn't say no to hooking up with one, but i want to have a girlfriend, not a boyfriend. if it ever gets that far, i want to have a wife, not a husband. i want girls because when it comes right down to it, my personal bio-mentality is set up so that to be with a man romantically would be an experience of safety, secrecy, and soul dulling pain, whereas to be with a woman would be an experience of intensity, passion and fright, sharing...an end to loneliness.

it's not like loneliness isn't the human condition, or that i don't acknowledge that. it's just that i've been finding recently that everything i thought was irrevocably true is less true than i'd expected. not that it's entirely untrue, just that i've been...well, rather bleak-outlooked about it. for instance, yes, everyone's alone, but no, we're not all cut off behind gigantic secretive walls through which the best we can do to contact each other is a pre-Ninny's tomb pyramus-and-thisbe act.

man i hope this sticks. i'm so tired of being dicked around by my own proclivities. people who say that everyone has bisexual tendencies are right, i think, but they aren't me, and haven't tried living in that place for 27 years. i need some part of me, some fact of myself outside the blank meat and bone of me, to be something other than everything.

yeah, try that one on for sentence structure.

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.