Love is..
...plunging yourself into darkness toward a place that may exist.
You are here, somewhere. I heard your ghost strangling its howl into an anxious tension knot at the base of your dead throat. The sound of breaking fingertips, as you ran your empty hands along the walls of this city. You are gone. This city is mine now.
Oh, heart..baby bird in an iron box...let me go
let me be weak..let me sleep..and dream of sheep.
A strong woman is a woman who is straining
A strong woman is a woman at work, cleaning out the cesspool of the ages, and while she shovels, she talks about how she doesn't mind crying, it opens up the ducts of the eyes, and throwing up gives her killer abs, and she goes on shoveling with tears in her throat.
These days spent luxuriating in the palace of my studio, having discussions about booksemptinesslovedeathartdreamspoliticsetc.. with people at cafesbarsparks.. Summer coming. Silent sunlight spills over shoulders and legs. I watch the limbs of strangers peep out of tank tops..blind and pink as baby rats. I am happy, I am touched by my own sorrow. I wish I didn't forget so easily the way you smile. I wish I had that. Your letters are soaking in a dump somewhere, filled with words that always seemed like a fist reaching out to make me pay.
A strong woman is a woman determined to do something others are determined not to be done. She is pushing up on the bottom of a lead coffin. She is trying to to raise a manhole cover with her head, she is trying to butt her way through a steel wall. Her head hurts. People waiting for the hole to be made say: hurry, you're so strong.
My heart is locked within my head now. Everything the life of the mind. I am selfish with my time. So much work to be done, so much work to be done , I feel I could run forever and collapse on another planet. I miss who I was when I loved you, I miss how much I wanted to share, to show you.. but how did I starve myself for so long? Sometimes I feel like I've escaped the thrall of a vampire.
A strong woman is a woman making herself strong every morning while her teeth loosen and her back throbs. A strong woman is a mass of scar tissue that aches when it rains and wounds that bleed again when you bump them and memories that get up in the night and pace in boots to and fro. A strong woman is a woman who craves love like oxygen or she turns blue choking. A strong woman is strong in words, in action, in connection, in feeling. She is not strong as a stone but as a wolf killing for her young. Stregnth is not in her, but she enacts it as how wind fills a sail.
What comforts her is others loving her equally for the stregnth and for the weakness from which it issues..like lightning from a cloud.
It is good to be beautiful, to be funny, to be charming, to look good on paper here's someone who I can take home to mother (given that the mother is reasonably fashionably modern and liberal maybe she wears earth tones and a small quartz crystal around her neck those women love me). But like any lost continent, I revel in my mystery yet still long to be discovered. No one pulls the covers off, asks the questions that are dipped in compassion, draped in a hope of understanding, no oceans just the same shallow tin of rainwater. All but one. but that was a long time ago and maybe youth had too much a hand in that. I used to be a giver, but I think this scab is sticking around longer than I thought was necessary.
You are here, somewhere. I heard your ghost strangling its howl into an anxious tension knot at the base of your dead throat. The sound of breaking fingertips, as you ran your empty hands along the walls of this city. You are gone. This city is mine now.
Oh, heart..baby bird in an iron box...let me go
let me be weak..let me sleep..and dream of sheep.
A strong woman is a woman who is straining
A strong woman is a woman at work, cleaning out the cesspool of the ages, and while she shovels, she talks about how she doesn't mind crying, it opens up the ducts of the eyes, and throwing up gives her killer abs, and she goes on shoveling with tears in her throat.
These days spent luxuriating in the palace of my studio, having discussions about booksemptinesslovedeathartdreamspoliticsetc.. with people at cafesbarsparks.. Summer coming. Silent sunlight spills over shoulders and legs. I watch the limbs of strangers peep out of tank tops..blind and pink as baby rats. I am happy, I am touched by my own sorrow. I wish I didn't forget so easily the way you smile. I wish I had that. Your letters are soaking in a dump somewhere, filled with words that always seemed like a fist reaching out to make me pay.
A strong woman is a woman determined to do something others are determined not to be done. She is pushing up on the bottom of a lead coffin. She is trying to to raise a manhole cover with her head, she is trying to butt her way through a steel wall. Her head hurts. People waiting for the hole to be made say: hurry, you're so strong.
My heart is locked within my head now. Everything the life of the mind. I am selfish with my time. So much work to be done, so much work to be done , I feel I could run forever and collapse on another planet. I miss who I was when I loved you, I miss how much I wanted to share, to show you.. but how did I starve myself for so long? Sometimes I feel like I've escaped the thrall of a vampire.
A strong woman is a woman making herself strong every morning while her teeth loosen and her back throbs. A strong woman is a mass of scar tissue that aches when it rains and wounds that bleed again when you bump them and memories that get up in the night and pace in boots to and fro. A strong woman is a woman who craves love like oxygen or she turns blue choking. A strong woman is strong in words, in action, in connection, in feeling. She is not strong as a stone but as a wolf killing for her young. Stregnth is not in her, but she enacts it as how wind fills a sail.
What comforts her is others loving her equally for the stregnth and for the weakness from which it issues..like lightning from a cloud.
It is good to be beautiful, to be funny, to be charming, to look good on paper here's someone who I can take home to mother (given that the mother is reasonably fashionably modern and liberal maybe she wears earth tones and a small quartz crystal around her neck those women love me). But like any lost continent, I revel in my mystery yet still long to be discovered. No one pulls the covers off, asks the questions that are dipped in compassion, draped in a hope of understanding, no oceans just the same shallow tin of rainwater. All but one. but that was a long time ago and maybe youth had too much a hand in that. I used to be a giver, but I think this scab is sticking around longer than I thought was necessary.
posted by Human at 7:48 PM
2 Comments:
This reminds me of that other poem you wrote to your heart quite awhile ago. I love that you always personify your heart and write to it as if it were a person you were addressing. I miss our discussions/writing group. When things settle down let's start it again, okay?
Hey there lady! Yeah, this is to my heart but more to myself in love, or really even love itself. I often write to parts of me as if I were writing to different people. I don't know why, I guess it helps me isolate something and really examine it. Yes on the group, but probably not till next month.
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