This was once exactly what I wanted to do. Now it's the opposite of what I want to do. So even though I haven't been doing it, I've continued to think I wanted to do it. Now I know I don't want to do it anymore. So I won't. For now.
Love,
Melanie
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Bus
Every shining creek & pond in Jersey; the grass & trees of northeast somewhere; and seeing once a pickup truck in a field off the highway.
Want is to be moving on highway dreaming of summertime, remembering to be alive, remembering that shining creek was everything I needed and now it's gone.
I could go on like this forever.
I'm getting good at delighting myself.
I want to be penetrable darkness. I want to be an underwater where you can't see or breathe. A death facing the light tenderly joining & touching. A light looking on a dark death. A thick sweet and wet earth, where we could feel silent black force of bloom -- struggle & yielding of roots in dirt.
Want is to be moving on highway dreaming of summertime, remembering to be alive, remembering that shining creek was everything I needed and now it's gone.
I could go on like this forever.
I'm getting good at delighting myself.
I want to be penetrable darkness. I want to be an underwater where you can't see or breathe. A death facing the light tenderly joining & touching. A light looking on a dark death. A thick sweet and wet earth, where we could feel silent black force of bloom -- struggle & yielding of roots in dirt.
Easter Weekend Poisoning
Aspiring to a yeast infection, I eat five oranges a day. In addition, I am full of tap water & have been sitting in front of microwaves.
The Easter miracle this year was discovering my favorite type of frozen waffle in Grandma's freezer.
When I joyfully poisoned myself in Queens, it was on substances appearing as food, tasting like food--
cheesed spinach,
sugared squash,
whipped potatoes,
oiled vegetables.
Because there was no way to know what was in them, I didn't ask.
With eyes wide open, I took bite. Then took nother bite.
I happily poisoned myself, but was surprised when I went back for seconds.
Easter cake, I said, was the end of Easter Weekend Disgusting.
And so far it's true, except for the grapes, which I will never count.
The Easter miracle this year was discovering my favorite type of frozen waffle in Grandma's freezer.
When I joyfully poisoned myself in Queens, it was on substances appearing as food, tasting like food--
cheesed spinach,
sugared squash,
whipped potatoes,
oiled vegetables.
Because there was no way to know what was in them, I didn't ask.
With eyes wide open, I took bite. Then took nother bite.
I happily poisoned myself, but was surprised when I went back for seconds.
Easter cake, I said, was the end of Easter Weekend Disgusting.
And so far it's true, except for the grapes, which I will never count.
April 9, 2009
New York doesn't need me to pay attention to it.
New York doesn't need me to write any kind of poem about it.
New York doesn't need me to write any kind of poem about it.
Last Week
There is some necessity in sweetening. And is it only because of Cancer in the second house? Or Venus in the second house? Or even Jupiter in the second house?
It doesn't matter. Because in this earthly sphere/abundant world, there are myriad ways to sweeten. All (not all) thick, lovely bestowing upon the tooth, the tongue, the belly, the base of the brain a pervading experience of perfection. Perfection feels like peace.
Perfection, then, is maple syrup.
Tree milk.
Perfection, then, is honey.
Bee milk.
Perfection, then, is molasses.
Cane milk.
Do you remember how sweet was your mother's breast? Unlikely, because there was no bitter world to compare it to.
Perfection, then, is milk.
Human milk.
Breast milk.
It would dribble down your chin as eyes rolled into back of head. Milk drunk.
Your mother would easily forget important details, names and dates, how to spell. She was drunk too. You were here lover and beloved.
That breast was the whole sweet world and you drank & drank.
O maple syrup! Manifest original sweet world.
O honey! Manifest sweet world!
O sugar! Rot me from the inside for a moment of sweet loving to fill me up. I will give you myself completely.
O cow milk, who we steal out of baby beasts' mouths to stuff into our own in attempt to drink ourselves back to Eden! O cow milk! for the sake of the calves we cuckold, fill our mouths, our spines, our brains with some original lovely sweetness, so that baby cow bellies and their experience of sweet whole world not go empty in vain.
O mama mama mama, your milk so long ago dried up, don't forget to hold me hold me that I might never leave that perfect world in orbit round your breasts.
It doesn't matter. Because in this earthly sphere/abundant world, there are myriad ways to sweeten. All (not all) thick, lovely bestowing upon the tooth, the tongue, the belly, the base of the brain a pervading experience of perfection. Perfection feels like peace.
Perfection, then, is maple syrup.
Tree milk.
Perfection, then, is honey.
Bee milk.
Perfection, then, is molasses.
Cane milk.
Do you remember how sweet was your mother's breast? Unlikely, because there was no bitter world to compare it to.
Perfection, then, is milk.
Human milk.
Breast milk.
It would dribble down your chin as eyes rolled into back of head. Milk drunk.
Your mother would easily forget important details, names and dates, how to spell. She was drunk too. You were here lover and beloved.
That breast was the whole sweet world and you drank & drank.
O maple syrup! Manifest original sweet world.
O honey! Manifest sweet world!
O sugar! Rot me from the inside for a moment of sweet loving to fill me up. I will give you myself completely.
O cow milk, who we steal out of baby beasts' mouths to stuff into our own in attempt to drink ourselves back to Eden! O cow milk! for the sake of the calves we cuckold, fill our mouths, our spines, our brains with some original lovely sweetness, so that baby cow bellies and their experience of sweet whole world not go empty in vain.
O mama mama mama, your milk so long ago dried up, don't forget to hold me hold me that I might never leave that perfect world in orbit round your breasts.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
April 2, 2009
Even though I sometimes think I should, I have never minded folding up the stroller and bringing it inside after taking the baby for a walk. And Eventhough I think I shouldn't, I always mind when the baby doesn't go to sleep for as long as I want him to.
These words are filthy liars, because every word is a promise and no promise can be kept. It is disgusting. All these filthy words and these disgusting promises. Sometimes I want to throw up.
These words are filthy liars, because every word is a promise and no promise can be kept. It is disgusting. All these filthy words and these disgusting promises. Sometimes I want to throw up.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Yesterday
Lost in thought
I walk
into the middle of the street
and almost get hit by a car.
Lost in thought
I walk
in the presence of the ten thousand things
and see none of them.
I walk
into the middle of the street
and almost get hit by a car.
Lost in thought
I walk
in the presence of the ten thousand things
and see none of them.
Be Wrong All The Time
The nature of the human being is imperfection. Human alone among all the creatures is imperfect. It is the highest expression of human life to be irrefutably, irascibly, inconsequentially and undeniably imperfect. The quest for perfection, a perfection which belongs only to the dogs, the dolphins, etc, leads any human who pursues it into the depths of living hell, where they spread filthy suffering to their children, to their spouses , to the sky and to the dissimulations of birds. Renounce unearthly perfection! Embrace your Human birth right to be wrong all the time! It is an inevitability anyway, and to resist will only bring perfect clouds to your imperfect horizon! You are spotted expression of divine confusion! You are first attempt! You alone are imperfect! Renounce attempted righteousness! Denounce the stress of attempted perfection! Stress makes you stupid and depressed! You alone have the power to be wrong all the time!
You cannot be right, no matter how hard you try!
Approach the ultimate embodiment of your humanity and be wrong all the time!
TESTIMONIAL
"I used to try to be right all the time. It was so stressful. Every decision was anguish. My quality of life was diminished. My inner light was nearly extinguished, or at least so obscured that no one could see it.
Now by being wrong all the time I am learning the meaning of freedom.
I have urges still to be right, but I view them now as ultimately wrong, and so therefore completely acceptable."
Melanie H., Baltimore MD
You cannot be right, no matter how hard you try!
Approach the ultimate embodiment of your humanity and be wrong all the time!
TESTIMONIAL
"I used to try to be right all the time. It was so stressful. Every decision was anguish. My quality of life was diminished. My inner light was nearly extinguished, or at least so obscured that no one could see it.
Now by being wrong all the time I am learning the meaning of freedom.
I have urges still to be right, but I view them now as ultimately wrong, and so therefore completely acceptable."
Melanie H., Baltimore MD
How to Trade Something For Nothing
1. Convince yourself that something is nothing.
2. Convince yourself that nothing is something.
3. Destroy your original something. By any means necessary.
4. Embraced the disguised nothing, and nothing will be what you're left with.
2. Convince yourself that nothing is something.
3. Destroy your original something. By any means necessary.
4. Embraced the disguised nothing, and nothing will be what you're left with.
Monday
The saddest thing is that once I had
a perfect shirt
and it got sucked out the window of a tour van
as we left Cleveland Ohio.
But the baby will wake up soon, and that feels sad too.
And so does Jeff Mangum's perfect face & voice.
Even his perfect hair.
I tried to conjure feelings about memories by trying to remember how I felt
and then I looked at pictures of the past to reread them with new information;
to prove to myself that either, these feelings weren't true then,
or they were.
It didn't work.
Because they can remind me of nothing but that perfect shirt
and the hair I hated but now think is pretty.
They give me no new information except
that there is no new information to get.
There are so many nice things to say,
but it's not even worth saying them because
now I don't have a future.
I never thought it would come to this ever.
My eyes look puffy from crying and little sleep and I think
"I will be unattractive very soon."
It instills a sense of panic and an urgency
to bind someone to me;
someone who doesn't look too close at my face.
a perfect shirt
and it got sucked out the window of a tour van
as we left Cleveland Ohio.
But the baby will wake up soon, and that feels sad too.
And so does Jeff Mangum's perfect face & voice.
Even his perfect hair.
I tried to conjure feelings about memories by trying to remember how I felt
and then I looked at pictures of the past to reread them with new information;
to prove to myself that either, these feelings weren't true then,
or they were.
It didn't work.
Because they can remind me of nothing but that perfect shirt
and the hair I hated but now think is pretty.
They give me no new information except
that there is no new information to get.
There are so many nice things to say,
but it's not even worth saying them because
now I don't have a future.
I never thought it would come to this ever.
My eyes look puffy from crying and little sleep and I think
"I will be unattractive very soon."
It instills a sense of panic and an urgency
to bind someone to me;
someone who doesn't look too close at my face.
Monday
It's come to this.
Lacking ANY of the wisdom of our forebears
we must invent our own augury.
Fine.
I can tell you first it is good luck when any bird shits in front of you
instead of on you.
And that a dissimulation of birds, any birds,
but especially dark ones,
(so especially crows)
flying in a sky that is any shade of blue
means everything is going to be OK.
First bird that you see is a whisper from God.
Second bird is just herself, so you can remember who you are.
All subsequent birds
are irrefutable proof
that everything is fine.
Lacking ANY of the wisdom of our forebears
we must invent our own augury.
Fine.
I can tell you first it is good luck when any bird shits in front of you
instead of on you.
And that a dissimulation of birds, any birds,
but especially dark ones,
(so especially crows)
flying in a sky that is any shade of blue
means everything is going to be OK.
First bird that you see is a whisper from God.
Second bird is just herself, so you can remember who you are.
All subsequent birds
are irrefutable proof
that everything is fine.
Sunday
It was reading Joy Harjo's Indian poems that was to be my homeopathic cure for too much poetry -- more poetry. And it was reading them that was my allopathic cure -- not enough poetry? Read more poetry.
But it was while reading Joy Harjo's Indian poems that I felt that poetry didn't exist.
And the well of truth & sadness was so deep & dark that I couldn't even cry about it.
"I am tired of you existing and then not existing," I'd say only to myself.
"I'm tired of your face rearranging and your voice disappearing. Why won't you just sit here and let me look at you until the memory of your face is all I need to see you for real?"
But it was while reading Joy Harjo's Indian poems that I felt that poetry didn't exist.
And the well of truth & sadness was so deep & dark that I couldn't even cry about it.
"I am tired of you existing and then not existing," I'd say only to myself.
"I'm tired of your face rearranging and your voice disappearing. Why won't you just sit here and let me look at you until the memory of your face is all I need to see you for real?"
Saturday, March 21, 2009
March 19, 2009
The lovely precarious tower that I've been standing at the top of is about to crumble and what I see is that, instead of falling off of it, I am jumping just in time because I've overstayed my welcome.
The cooling rosy tea on the warmer will activate the lunar properties of my string of pearls to align my chakras and ensure an auspicious bleeding.
I know it will hurt this month.
I know because it already does.
And I'm OK with that. Because before when it didn't, I was all alone and knew it.
Now I'm alone but I keep thinking I'm not.
The memory is of walking down Shattuck at night after buying my own groceries, feeling my uterus floating in its spot and now the memory is of having little angels inside of me, the colors of sophisticated little girls. As if there was starry sky, but the sky was white and the stars were pink.
As if my blood just happened to be pouring out of me and not really red but something else. Though I guess it's only red when I see it and not when I feel it.
I am not scared of scabies anymore because the fever is breaking.
Now there is nothing to be afraid of because I remembered myself.
Like when a baby is scared because she doesn't see her mother, who is her only sense of self, and then when her mother is there, she feels safe again.
When I began smiling at the pictures of my awkward years, I felt like the mother to who I was then, even though it's the other way around.
Every morning waking up & forgetting my troubles has finally got to me and now it's hard to remember them even when I'm already awake.
It won't last long, but I love the promise I make to myself when I feel good about everything, which is that I look forward to watching it all fall apart again.
Though I'm pretty sure that all this started when I took the Turkish protection against the Evil Eye off my wall & packed it away. But I'm also pretty sure that the scabies is a manifestation of both my spiritual discomfort in my body & my unconscious/conscious desire never to touch anyone. I always get what I want, so I'm happy to have gotten all that and now want something else.
And when I try to see a seagull or a cockroach as anything other than a seagull or a cockroach, I am hating what is in so far as I think it should be different & we should not be who we are.
Because when I sing be my baby all alone to myself, I am the same Melanie Hayes who sang it on schoolbuses with other little girls. It's always been just liking the sound of my own voice.
I love to remember that there's nothing magical and this is perfect, because it's only ever true when it's true, and so never a memory.
The cooling rosy tea on the warmer will activate the lunar properties of my string of pearls to align my chakras and ensure an auspicious bleeding.
I know it will hurt this month.
I know because it already does.
And I'm OK with that. Because before when it didn't, I was all alone and knew it.
Now I'm alone but I keep thinking I'm not.
The memory is of walking down Shattuck at night after buying my own groceries, feeling my uterus floating in its spot and now the memory is of having little angels inside of me, the colors of sophisticated little girls. As if there was starry sky, but the sky was white and the stars were pink.
As if my blood just happened to be pouring out of me and not really red but something else. Though I guess it's only red when I see it and not when I feel it.
I am not scared of scabies anymore because the fever is breaking.
Now there is nothing to be afraid of because I remembered myself.
Like when a baby is scared because she doesn't see her mother, who is her only sense of self, and then when her mother is there, she feels safe again.
When I began smiling at the pictures of my awkward years, I felt like the mother to who I was then, even though it's the other way around.
Every morning waking up & forgetting my troubles has finally got to me and now it's hard to remember them even when I'm already awake.
It won't last long, but I love the promise I make to myself when I feel good about everything, which is that I look forward to watching it all fall apart again.
Though I'm pretty sure that all this started when I took the Turkish protection against the Evil Eye off my wall & packed it away. But I'm also pretty sure that the scabies is a manifestation of both my spiritual discomfort in my body & my unconscious/conscious desire never to touch anyone. I always get what I want, so I'm happy to have gotten all that and now want something else.
And when I try to see a seagull or a cockroach as anything other than a seagull or a cockroach, I am hating what is in so far as I think it should be different & we should not be who we are.
Because when I sing be my baby all alone to myself, I am the same Melanie Hayes who sang it on schoolbuses with other little girls. It's always been just liking the sound of my own voice.
I love to remember that there's nothing magical and this is perfect, because it's only ever true when it's true, and so never a memory.
March 19, 2009
A poem about the dogwoods outside the government building would be impossible to write
because,
like the magnolias whom I dream about when not in their presence,
once I see them, I can have no fantasies.
When I stand & look at flowering magnolia & those two sprays of new dogwood,
I am the fantasy
in the presence of their perfect reality.
because,
like the magnolias whom I dream about when not in their presence,
once I see them, I can have no fantasies.
When I stand & look at flowering magnolia & those two sprays of new dogwood,
I am the fantasy
in the presence of their perfect reality.
List of Experiences
Storm cellar protected by propped up plywood.
A red bowtie on an old man.
Baltimore skyline seen from the middle of a small sloping hill,
at which time I thought about the concept of the song "Streets of Baltimore", though not the actual song because I don't remember it.
I wondered how long it would be before these felt to me like streets of Baltimore and how long it took for me to be in Oakland.
A vacant lot seen from higher ground.
A computer chip of sorts in the weeds on the outside of the fence.
A child under an umbrella too big for him, then dancing into his father's arms who sat in the driver's seat of a car.
My jacket all wet, but there's not that much rain.
Two youngly flowering dogwoods in front of a government building, with flowers mostly on top, like the Baby's Breath in a stick bouquet.
Two Asian people directly in front of me -- man and woman; cosmic androgyne.
You as come, me as menstrual fluid.
Cheese soft & wet from no refrigeration partly crunchy from exposure to air, too salty & soft on my fingers & mouth, too small on my jacket, a hole in the cheese bag, the cheese crumbled & I slightly panic.
Writing a poem about the dogwoods that I consider only an attempt at a poem.
Gracie tells her mother she loves me, or so her mother tells me. Now I can live up to expectations of being loved.
Jay's Italian Gourmet.
Mount Royal & Saint Paul.
Bottom teeth against back of front teeth. Back teeth together then apart.
Memories of Charles Street in the Summer.
Domed curvy Victorian vestibule feels like my Root Chakra. No. Sacral. No. Both.
Uncommon crow call.
The dream of buying a lapis lazuli to wear to the observatory.
Men digging up holes next to the sidewalk. Thick & thin yellow mud all over. Piles of mud next to men in construction suits in deep holes, three in a row. Mud on the street needing to be swept & being swept.
Wild medicinal herbs smiling at me from among the garbage.
A red bowtie on an old man.
Baltimore skyline seen from the middle of a small sloping hill,
at which time I thought about the concept of the song "Streets of Baltimore", though not the actual song because I don't remember it.
I wondered how long it would be before these felt to me like streets of Baltimore and how long it took for me to be in Oakland.
A vacant lot seen from higher ground.
A computer chip of sorts in the weeds on the outside of the fence.
A child under an umbrella too big for him, then dancing into his father's arms who sat in the driver's seat of a car.
My jacket all wet, but there's not that much rain.
Two youngly flowering dogwoods in front of a government building, with flowers mostly on top, like the Baby's Breath in a stick bouquet.
Two Asian people directly in front of me -- man and woman; cosmic androgyne.
You as come, me as menstrual fluid.
Cheese soft & wet from no refrigeration partly crunchy from exposure to air, too salty & soft on my fingers & mouth, too small on my jacket, a hole in the cheese bag, the cheese crumbled & I slightly panic.
Writing a poem about the dogwoods that I consider only an attempt at a poem.
Gracie tells her mother she loves me, or so her mother tells me. Now I can live up to expectations of being loved.
Jay's Italian Gourmet.
Mount Royal & Saint Paul.
Bottom teeth against back of front teeth. Back teeth together then apart.
Memories of Charles Street in the Summer.
Domed curvy Victorian vestibule feels like my Root Chakra. No. Sacral. No. Both.
Uncommon crow call.
The dream of buying a lapis lazuli to wear to the observatory.
Men digging up holes next to the sidewalk. Thick & thin yellow mud all over. Piles of mud next to men in construction suits in deep holes, three in a row. Mud on the street needing to be swept & being swept.
Wild medicinal herbs smiling at me from among the garbage.
March 18, 2009
I was dreaming about possible children & their possible fathers. When I see a pretty little well-dressed child in a playground, I imagine she is my child and I take strange pleasure in it. Because I am imagining she is an extension of myself. And her father will be very handsome no matter who he is. And she will have a handsome well-dressed brother. And they will be smart & funny.
These little lives I dream about can only be my little life, right?
My little life is red-faced & greasy right now. Bored with herself and thigh-chafed from walking. Tomorrow I will write about something else besides myself.
The forsythia bloomed first. That is to say, the first forsythia bloomed. And while now I am in a place with forsythia, it still doesn't feel familiar. Must be that grandma uprooted the two bushes in the driveway years ago, and I don't think there's any more in the backyard.
Though, when I dreamed of a joyful Aunt Betty-Ann, she was wearing all yellow in the garden. The first flower to bloom. The first flower to die.
I can't help forgetting her when I look out the window to see Baltimore backyards made of stone and slate and such things.
It is only Wednesday.
I remember the blacktop backyard & the ancient wild strawberries we'd put in little green baskets and hang on the clothes lines.
The rope swing, then the hammock, then the tree stump and the perimeter fence.
I went out into the backyard last summer and read three lines from a book. I sat under a tree and marveled at the grass & the house. This was the grandma's house of my own legendary memories. I can't believe I was really sitting right there, where my famous childhood self once played games with my famous childhood brother.
Grandpa once told me what the hole in the basement wall was. He said it was a coal shoot, and I still think it's vaguely obscene.
And even though he said it was for coal, to make heat, in my mind I can't help conflating it with the idea of the ice man & the ice box, though obviously no blocks of ice would fit through that tiny hole. And when I see it, I see a shovel and think of horse shit.
When I smell hay I think nice things about you.
When I walk in the sunshine my face always feels hot in the shade.
And my grandfather's father built that house a hundred years ago, and it's the only place grandpa's ever lived.
That's not precisely true, because he was born without medication in an apartment in Manhattan, which is, incidentally also the city Grandpa Kephart lived in and also where Michael was born, though none of them at the same time.
These little lives I dream about can only be my little life, right?
My little life is red-faced & greasy right now. Bored with herself and thigh-chafed from walking. Tomorrow I will write about something else besides myself.
The forsythia bloomed first. That is to say, the first forsythia bloomed. And while now I am in a place with forsythia, it still doesn't feel familiar. Must be that grandma uprooted the two bushes in the driveway years ago, and I don't think there's any more in the backyard.
Though, when I dreamed of a joyful Aunt Betty-Ann, she was wearing all yellow in the garden. The first flower to bloom. The first flower to die.
I can't help forgetting her when I look out the window to see Baltimore backyards made of stone and slate and such things.
It is only Wednesday.
I remember the blacktop backyard & the ancient wild strawberries we'd put in little green baskets and hang on the clothes lines.
The rope swing, then the hammock, then the tree stump and the perimeter fence.
I went out into the backyard last summer and read three lines from a book. I sat under a tree and marveled at the grass & the house. This was the grandma's house of my own legendary memories. I can't believe I was really sitting right there, where my famous childhood self once played games with my famous childhood brother.
Grandpa once told me what the hole in the basement wall was. He said it was a coal shoot, and I still think it's vaguely obscene.
And even though he said it was for coal, to make heat, in my mind I can't help conflating it with the idea of the ice man & the ice box, though obviously no blocks of ice would fit through that tiny hole. And when I see it, I see a shovel and think of horse shit.
When I smell hay I think nice things about you.
When I walk in the sunshine my face always feels hot in the shade.
And my grandfather's father built that house a hundred years ago, and it's the only place grandpa's ever lived.
That's not precisely true, because he was born without medication in an apartment in Manhattan, which is, incidentally also the city Grandpa Kephart lived in and also where Michael was born, though none of them at the same time.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
March 17, 2009
Droopy lids are a lie because my eyes are wide open. The fire has cooled to sparkling embers and it feels goooood.
I wonder what tonight will look like --
will it look like fear of my bedroom (which is more vague unease than fear)? Or will it look like staying up late? Will I laugh tonight? Will I get my period tomorrow?
Turmeric stains my shirts and underpants.
This cool flame is nice, but also scary. But it's time to do everything wrong. It's time to ruin my life.
And it's also St. Patrick's Day. A fool of a holiday. Egregious cultural & historical errors. Egregious Catholic imperialism.
Someone has gotten on this bus with McDonald's french fries. I want to eat them and remember how soft & wet with oil they used to be. It all tasted good, McDonald's. How was I supposed to know it was bad for me?
My hunger is devouring me! It has nothing else to munch on.
Walking past Johns Hopkins everyday awakens long latent & unknown (unconscious) cultural conditionings -- marry a doctor. I thought it was just a particular class of people, a particular segment of Staten Island population who would teach/genetically implant in their daughters that desire. Now I know it was something in the water.
But you know as well as I do, it's not just Staten Island where doctors are coveted. It's also in movies and TV shows.
I only see weird nothing out these windows, and two people on the bus are speaking unamericanly. My stomach speaks to me like an American stomach, and sometimes I Americanly listen.
St. Patrick's Day means nothing to me today, but last year Mexicans in Fruitvale drank Pacificas and set off fireworks to celebrate the ancestral saint.
But what they were really celebrating was themselves. Their particular bodies and the particular ways those specific bodies would feel after being sufficiently drunk. They were celebrating their own love of being alive; their own drive to merge consciously with the rest of the universe. They're doing better than I am.
I celebrate nothing. I sing no songs and celebrate nothing. I live to love the song you sing me, but not even that, really. I celebrate nothing & sing no songs. There is nothing to laud because I am terrified of you and terrified of me. There is nothing to lose and there is nothing to celebrate.
I wish my vagina could open up wide enough to take in all of this whole world, and all of the ways you are beautiful. But I don't have enough blood in my body to open up at all, let alone a world's worth. The vagina, after all, is not the portal. It is the womb-space, after all, that first births the baby out of nothing.
An unborn baby is still a baby, and it is everyone's human right to kill when necessary. And anyway, everyone needs to die, one way or another. So God Bless those lucky children who only ever know the pure joy and comfort of their mothers' insides and who are then granted a perfect experience of death.
I wonder what tonight will look like --
will it look like fear of my bedroom (which is more vague unease than fear)? Or will it look like staying up late? Will I laugh tonight? Will I get my period tomorrow?
Turmeric stains my shirts and underpants.
This cool flame is nice, but also scary. But it's time to do everything wrong. It's time to ruin my life.
And it's also St. Patrick's Day. A fool of a holiday. Egregious cultural & historical errors. Egregious Catholic imperialism.
Someone has gotten on this bus with McDonald's french fries. I want to eat them and remember how soft & wet with oil they used to be. It all tasted good, McDonald's. How was I supposed to know it was bad for me?
My hunger is devouring me! It has nothing else to munch on.
Walking past Johns Hopkins everyday awakens long latent & unknown (unconscious) cultural conditionings -- marry a doctor. I thought it was just a particular class of people, a particular segment of Staten Island population who would teach/genetically implant in their daughters that desire. Now I know it was something in the water.
But you know as well as I do, it's not just Staten Island where doctors are coveted. It's also in movies and TV shows.
I only see weird nothing out these windows, and two people on the bus are speaking unamericanly. My stomach speaks to me like an American stomach, and sometimes I Americanly listen.
St. Patrick's Day means nothing to me today, but last year Mexicans in Fruitvale drank Pacificas and set off fireworks to celebrate the ancestral saint.
But what they were really celebrating was themselves. Their particular bodies and the particular ways those specific bodies would feel after being sufficiently drunk. They were celebrating their own love of being alive; their own drive to merge consciously with the rest of the universe. They're doing better than I am.
I celebrate nothing. I sing no songs and celebrate nothing. I live to love the song you sing me, but not even that, really. I celebrate nothing & sing no songs. There is nothing to laud because I am terrified of you and terrified of me. There is nothing to lose and there is nothing to celebrate.
I wish my vagina could open up wide enough to take in all of this whole world, and all of the ways you are beautiful. But I don't have enough blood in my body to open up at all, let alone a world's worth. The vagina, after all, is not the portal. It is the womb-space, after all, that first births the baby out of nothing.
An unborn baby is still a baby, and it is everyone's human right to kill when necessary. And anyway, everyone needs to die, one way or another. So God Bless those lucky children who only ever know the pure joy and comfort of their mothers' insides and who are then granted a perfect experience of death.
March 17, 2009
Me and Cleo and Breathing Baby are sitting together. Cleo is a little being behind whose eyes I catch glimpses of something I think I should be seeing. It's so frustrating, trying to be right and always failing. Why not give it up? And try to be wrong? (don't need to try, it seems).
Why not just be wrong all the time?
Why not just be wrong all the time?
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
March 16, 2009
Taking over 4,000 felt foot steps as fast as my Kneeshaw legs can carry me. Swinging my hips like a Kneeshaw man above womanly spider veins behind knee caps. There is a dearth of words on this page because these feelings have been extracted from a panoply; a cacophony.
I anticipate becoming nauseous asap.
Dear Bob,
The magnolias will bloom any day now.
Love,
Melanie
My sweat is only unappealing to me because I imagine it is unappealing to everyone else. I wish I could forget the things that you said, because then maybe I'd forget my responses.
Baltimore, a city of spires and smiles.
I found my smile again (it found me) and dreamed of Staten Island magnolia,
honeysuckle in June, and January California wood sorrel.
I have forgotten my vulva and remembered.
I have forgotten I have work tomorrow and remembered.
I can never remember exactly the sound of your voice precisely,
and I'm loving these arbitrary lines and curves, arbitrary sounds,
the memory of two bodies in a corner meaning nothing but what we meant to each other.
Think me not too forward or too impractical.
Please don't think anything about me, because I will disappoint you for sure.
I thought before that right now, because before I was walking fast & breathing fast & now I'm writing fast, I thought before that right now I feel joyful in my misery. And now I can't find the misery. And now I've found it and I tell myself it's not so scary after all.
I imagined that I would need to enjoy my misery now if I had any hope of enjoying it later. I thought that since my left arm is sore from holding baby, I better write more with my right hand.
I better write more so my right arm is sore too.
I better never stop writing.
I better look out the window.
Breathing fast during aerobic activity such as the one recently undertaken and aforementioned reminds me of the idea that I am replacing all my old and tired oxygen with fresh stuff, creating more blood even. I am generally unaware of my blood being created, but I think I need to make some more of it. Feels like I'm missing a couple pints.
No redwoods are waiting for me at home and none will be tomorrow or ever again.
At home I am awaited by lack of mattress, lack of bookshelf, jupiter retrograde of hugs and kisses.
At home emptyish refrigerator waits to be opened by me, waits to be looked into and sighed at. I wouldn't feed myself even if It was full.
I'm missing a very important picture and a very important poem.
And you better be making that corned beef because it is the last hope I have of any of my dreams coming true.
I'm sorry I don't believe anything you say after you say it. It is my way of trying to kill any goodness or love or any connection between us. How disconnected do you feel? Because I tend to feel pretty disconnected, but maybe I expect connection to feel different and it doesn't.
Can anyone be happy in Baltimore? I don't really believe that they can, except possibly by sheer force of mighty will.
I don't know why I feel like I could never love this place. It can't be essentially unloveable. We just haven't really gotten to know each other yet.
This will be a slow to start, slow to burn, not very bright or warm but certainly existing flame. I hope.
This will be a Baltimore Orioles colored flame in a Baltimore Ravens colored darkness.
This will be the Spring of my new skin.
Thank you scabies for digesting my old one.
I anticipate becoming nauseous asap.
Dear Bob,
The magnolias will bloom any day now.
Love,
Melanie
My sweat is only unappealing to me because I imagine it is unappealing to everyone else. I wish I could forget the things that you said, because then maybe I'd forget my responses.
Baltimore, a city of spires and smiles.
I found my smile again (it found me) and dreamed of Staten Island magnolia,
honeysuckle in June, and January California wood sorrel.
I have forgotten my vulva and remembered.
I have forgotten I have work tomorrow and remembered.
I can never remember exactly the sound of your voice precisely,
and I'm loving these arbitrary lines and curves, arbitrary sounds,
the memory of two bodies in a corner meaning nothing but what we meant to each other.
Think me not too forward or too impractical.
Please don't think anything about me, because I will disappoint you for sure.
I thought before that right now, because before I was walking fast & breathing fast & now I'm writing fast, I thought before that right now I feel joyful in my misery. And now I can't find the misery. And now I've found it and I tell myself it's not so scary after all.
I imagined that I would need to enjoy my misery now if I had any hope of enjoying it later. I thought that since my left arm is sore from holding baby, I better write more with my right hand.
I better write more so my right arm is sore too.
I better never stop writing.
I better look out the window.
Breathing fast during aerobic activity such as the one recently undertaken and aforementioned reminds me of the idea that I am replacing all my old and tired oxygen with fresh stuff, creating more blood even. I am generally unaware of my blood being created, but I think I need to make some more of it. Feels like I'm missing a couple pints.
No redwoods are waiting for me at home and none will be tomorrow or ever again.
At home I am awaited by lack of mattress, lack of bookshelf, jupiter retrograde of hugs and kisses.
At home emptyish refrigerator waits to be opened by me, waits to be looked into and sighed at. I wouldn't feed myself even if It was full.
I'm missing a very important picture and a very important poem.
And you better be making that corned beef because it is the last hope I have of any of my dreams coming true.
I'm sorry I don't believe anything you say after you say it. It is my way of trying to kill any goodness or love or any connection between us. How disconnected do you feel? Because I tend to feel pretty disconnected, but maybe I expect connection to feel different and it doesn't.
Can anyone be happy in Baltimore? I don't really believe that they can, except possibly by sheer force of mighty will.
I don't know why I feel like I could never love this place. It can't be essentially unloveable. We just haven't really gotten to know each other yet.
This will be a slow to start, slow to burn, not very bright or warm but certainly existing flame. I hope.
This will be a Baltimore Orioles colored flame in a Baltimore Ravens colored darkness.
This will be the Spring of my new skin.
Thank you scabies for digesting my old one.
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