"Anticipation is Imperative"

"We the precocious, we the repressed of culture, our lovely mouths gagged with pollen, our wind knocked out of us, we the labyrinths, the trampled spaces, the bevies--we are black and we are beautiful."

Helene Cixous ( The Laugh of The Medusa)

strangers are cruel in their strangeness. and their strange ways. caring for them will always feel (e)stranging

dear stranger,

I draw a blank,
try and squeeze
your name

on to it.

It refuses
to fit.

Heritage

We shall turn our faces
to the sky

like the sunflowers
that came before us.

a reminder for both of us. 

the sea

1.

 ever changing
 never changing

2.

my mother, braiding my hair
with sea weed

3.

my father, taking flight
in a stork's beak

4.

my sister, laughing while
slipping fingers from mine

5.

my love, writing garbled
notes on bubbles that pop

6.

fishing nets and plastic bottles
refugees taking refuge

7.

my darlings grabbing
ankles while playing catch

8.

my mother singing
her off key songs to a rock


9.

my healer, his
scriptures inscribed
on the side of his boat

10.

this much is true:

my heart is always
floating

like algae
it is a continent of love,

it shall not sink.

I am emptying the world
of mourning,

and filling it to the
brim with melancholia.

Only crooked trees
shall grow

in my garden.

To the woman down the stair way

There was a poem dying
on the staircase where you were found:

I.

lying on your back
gazing at the spider webs that covered your face
like tatted lace.

Death was terrifying to everyone but you
so you hid behind the shroud
for isn't that what all inert bodies must do--
                                         not upset the unstoppable?

You want to remember God
but you returned his scriptures, his prayer beads,
his house of worship long ago,

and though you had looked back since
                           but you were strange to his word
and he was a stranger to your need.

                                                           Why repeat recriminations now?

II.

It is indecent the way the light is dimming
                                           fade to black any moment now
you have played in the theatre long enough
to be bored by this cliche of an ending.

Someone once raised their glass to you
your performance was 'magnificent'
'a flair in comparable',

you want to remember better
this greatest role yet,

but voices are beating down on you.
                       
                              Why is it that you already feel beneath the ground?


III.

'How like a marionette,
arms akimbo
back half broken'

You have been moved into the sunlight,
'let us banish the smell of decay'
                             say the living.

You want to be special

you care nought for those gone before
this desire is far too naked,
                                    where on earth is your shroud?

it is indecent the way this darkness settles in
you were always a puppet to

another's strings.

IV.

One poem
                living
on the back of the other

dying

absence

friend,

where were you,

when the music

stopped playing?

Who knows what a face us for?

Could you tell
that the smile and the veil
came from the same room
inside her heart,

that someone had broken
down the wall
between the two

and now she no longer knew
which was speaking when?

Or that she asks
herself everyday

if her face
was a book
to be read on an open bench,

leaves flying in the wind
in confession

or if it was the curtain
she would have to draw to a close
when the sun sets

and the birds returning
to their nests

pondered the cages
within their homes?

rinse. repeat. rise.

I read your
poems
over and over

like a prayer

what kind of a heretic am I?

I Think I am In Friend-Love With You

Illustrated and written by Yumi Sakugawa via Sadie Magazine

Sometimes the internet offers you grapes (why grapes? I like them okay?) instead of lemons (I like these too). Now there are obvious problems with this. The constant reiteration that sexual desire between friends is somehow 'weird' (like that never happens and if it does, is something to be ashamed by) or like S says the distinction between friendship and love ought to be an obvious one, you know what, I'll just quote her:

but i dont know how i feel about the constant "in a platonic way of course", "that would be weird" parts. you know? its like we constantly have to reassure ourselves about our heterosexuality and monogamy and the boundaries between friendship and "love". :(

what do you think? as you know its because of my love for you that i am sharing this thought :D (LOVE, not just friend love)

Yeesh I love her.

And that well, it sounds a tad bit homophobic. But since these shapeless blobs look pretty gender-less I'm going to put that aside for a while. The reason why I love it, despite its problems, is that it's so much about desire between friends. Something we never talk about. A desire that needn't be sexual, maybe erotic, but is desire nonetheless. Friendship can have its deep pains and pleasures and needs and wants and it's all navigated under this heavy sub text that it can be quite exhausting. Personally, the major relationships in my life have been those with friends, the most exhausting and enriching? Between my friends. So I have friends who I have wanted to exchange saliva with, some with whom we've just talked about it and then with some, hand holding is just about perfect. And talking about all that pain and pleasure when I first saw this I sent it to nearly all my friends, expect one or two. And I want to send it but, the pain oh the pain and the rejection and oh gosh did I mention that friendship was exhausting?

analysis

for once, the head and the heart are both blooming with aches unknown 

ambivalence

in and out of love

like a cat

in a box

like a box

in a cat

yearning

I have slept

far 

too many nights

my foot

dangling
                over
                         this
                              branch

waiting

for your hand

to reach up and

ankle 

        my

               up

                      run

Why do we wake?

I was sleeping
quiet

in a tree
when a bird song
woke me

I saw the sky
for the first time
it was white

a bird's egg
                white

I knew I had
seen

and heard all
there was to beauty

so I curled up
and went back to sleep.