its a kind of beauty that constantly escapes capture.
It hovers perpetually on the horizon of our vision and our conceptions and while it remains in sight, it is always out of hands’ reach. And it is monstrous.
It incites desire but not lust. It is a beauty that borders ugliness, that toys with the repulsive, the grotesque, and the foul.
It is a discomfiting dis-ease that does not incite or excite the sexual but makes us feel it nonetheless.
When you are weaker, never fight for honor’s sake; choose surrender instead. Surrender gives you time to recover, time to torment and irritate your conqueror, time to wait for his power to wane. Do not give him the satisfaction of fighting and defeating you – surrender first. By turning the other check you infuriate and unsettle him. Make surrender a tool of power.
1. The meek shall inherit the earth
Jesus comes to people in dreams and toast and preaches meekness.
but I stomp with combat boots and scream and come on strong and you never apologize.
you cover your tears by smashing your palms into your face. (and they say Jesus healed blindness with tears)
but you punch them into your face
and I scream.
I guess all is fair in war, and so what if love follows?
I scream and tears get punched into sockets
as we surrender in blindness and silence.
2. I would rather
Nobody know my final moments. I would pay a million bucks to die, but I would be a coward to leave you here without my suffering.
3. Bring me tears
The argument raged for minutes at a time in between coffee breaks and cigarettes until the male could not contain it and it just came out.
4. Cunt
"you cunt!" gasp* what did you just say to me? you heard me. No, i don't think i did. What was that? I said You are a cunt.
5. The Big Man
I've heard Kungfu masters teach you to use the power of the big man to your advantage to pull when he pushes to dodge when he lunges to hide as he chases.
what is this that pulls you towards me as I fall backwards? what is this that forces me to dodge?
6. Asunder
I scream and scream and scream and stomp and rip from myself a thing that collapses asunder.
tears get punched into sockets
and I love you. (a weakness I rip from myself, screaming.)
This sort of lightning slapped drunk from my lips that speak of tears as objects of punching.
until the final moments, nobody will ever know.
(written by me last year)
November 22, 2010
i judge people based on who they choose to fuck.
the guys who are genuinely interested in me are boring and all the rest who like me like me because i am a romantic bullshit colorful piece of ass.....and then they get disillusioned if i indulge their fantasy.
(I’ve never prayed to god, but I believe in the power of artful prayer)
Hear me, my friends, for the Olympian sire hath given me pain exceedingly beyond all women who were born and bred in my day.
-Penelope, Book IV, The Odyssey
At sixteen, I began the shroud for you, weaving and unweaving strands of pubescent selves.
Devoutly , we’ve all waited, lonely, and in love with love.
But we become tangled by night horrors
Athena, armored one, un-tasted feminine,
I am naked, I grow thin within the slivered and splayed skins of wasted girlishness
River Stix, erase us, waste me,
Beautiful Helen,
With bitterness, I beg you for reprisal of the hours. could the allure of my figure tease the arousal of self righteous browsers,
Our lady of remedies,
Could I ignore the tears ripped by violent extremities though I kept the torn bra and trousers,
Sad Circe,
Make me an island, give me powers,
tastefully angry, but oh no! not distastefully man hating,
Silver tongued Odysseus,
Reason with me, let me forget the viciousness kissing can be, unpin me from this bed I did not make, un-sedate the dead in me,
Something haunts this place, followed by a rank boozy shadow and wafting breath of slurs, the issue pressed until it became a bed of yes, so small impressed there, pray this prayer remains silent, saying nothing, speaking to no one.
Poseidon, earth shaker,
Protect my friends, let no more awake in terror beneath the excused blundering of a bender, guide us home, guide us home, guide us home,
And within the gross tomb of body, my heart beat like a bled sacrifice
still living, my heart
beating and beating like the beast on top of me.
Blind as I fade
I forget the future,
though in secret, listen to songs of prophecy.
Still but wrung un-silenced,
give back the night to slumber:
may daylight be woven green, may night breathe its infinite black
without the dark threat of detritus.
young, hunted,
kicked in the absence of the beloved,
Penelope, you grow old,
Remind us of your faith again:
How it was woven with the threads of night terror,
How you found the scarred body that belonged to you,
returned to bed with it,
And it was yours again at last.
----
DISCLAIMER: I myself have not actually been raped. I have been sexually harassed, of course, because it is impossible to be a girl and alive (or maybe just alive) without this happening at some point. I have been attempt date raped and I fought tooth and nail to escape. I have also been sexually attacked by a taxi driver I was riding with in Costa Rica- but escaped against the odds (I was on crutches because I'd just had my first knee surgery.) I escaped this unharmed god knows how. Furthermore,the surgeons who performed my first knee surgery inappropriately handled me not realizing i'd requested to remain conscious during the surgery with local anesthesia. they stopped when they realized i was awake. I've also been attacked and beaten by three tweakers on campus (directly across from slocum.) I escaped this because fortunately there were people around who came to my rescue.
That aside, I've encountered many cases similar to my own at college. It breaks my heart that this is so common. but it is. Colorado College is NOT at ALL safe to walk around at night, and this too, is terrifying.
Anyway, the issue is important to me. The poem is called "Two thirds prayer, one third answer" because 2 out of every three college age women have been sexually harassed or worse at some point in their lives.
Its important to recognize that "college age" means women below the age of 22. After 22, that statistic is insufficient because the numbers go up.
My other issue is this: I know good guys who, technically, have comitted date rape. Under the influence, it is a somewhat easy crime to commit. The line of questioning follows, what violence or biological drive in man is perpetuated by evolution or despite it? If date rape is different, entirely, than rape, then should we rename it? Who is capable of it? Why are they capable? How responsible is the individual? How responsible is society? To what extent should forgiveness be offered? What is the correct route in persecution of this crime?
Personally, I hate the man who attempt date raped me because he is irresponsible, despicable, disgusting and out of control. Personally, I pity him. I don't think his life should be ruined but I also don't think he should get away with what he did. he got away with it. He continues to behave similarly toward women- though I do not know the full extent of his behavior. He does not claim responsibility and acknowledges nothing. However, his life is unraveling because, as I said, he is irresponsible, despicable and disgusting in general, and you can't get away with that kind of living forever.
Men who are persecuted for something that occurred somewhat accidentally and under the influence of substances are ruined in the community they belong to.
However, the victim who persecutes is often then persecuted by the community.
What the fuck are we going to do about all this? As usual, the only answer I have is being as honest and vocal about my own experience as possible. As usual, I do that best in my writing.
SO there you have it.
p.s. I gave this post the title that I gave it because I wanted to immediately directly communicate the harshness of the subject matter. Additionally, by immediately claiming authorship, I wanted to claim the subject matter and not hide behind the initial shock of the subject matter. I wrote this poem (but probably needed to write it for a long time) because I was inspired by a poem submitted and published in this year's first addition of the leviathan. The poem inspired a lot of debate amongst the editors because the word RAPE was used repeatedly, unabashedly and as a rhythmic trope for the poem. The word RAPE did not hide within this poem- and so many poems about Rape commit themselves without committing to the word RAPE (nor should they, exactly. claiming the word Rape is not always the point.)
However, the author of the poem chose to remain anonymous in the publication. which, of course, is perfectly reasonable. The author, first of all, did not want to claim the emotionality of the subject matter for herself, she did not want to draw attention to the identity of authorship and furthermore, she was also probably a little bit uncomfortable dealing with the association of her identity with such touchy subject matter.
HOWEVER I wanted to claim association. I wanted to bring my personal perspective to the poem. and I don't mind association with the delicate subject matter. In fact, my experience with the subject matter has made me a better human being. a stronger human being. and a more careful human being.
My poem doesn't use the word "Rape" though. So first I wanted to claim the word in the title of the post. and second, I wanted to claim authorship before anyone read it. if anyone reads it.
but truthfully, if anyone checks my blog in the next 48 hours or so, how could they not be seduced by the taboo of harsh diction? they'll probably at least skim the poem (and maybe even this explanation) because of the attention grabing quality of the title of this post.
try to tell me i look silly after seeing what the rest of these fucking fashionbloggers wear:
susie bubble is soooozi bubblin' it as per the usual in bloglandia and jane is kILLIN' the rich girl via tavi look
but i wonder, whoooz the fool in the suit??
p.s. JANE DEAREST,
your new header is ugly as shit. but bad art is from the heart, right girlfrieeeen?
P.P.S. i became possessed by the spirit of fashionbloglandia and did outfit pictures. today i dressed like the night sky grandma slut. a little bit wacky. a little bit tavi. a little bit roomi. THE NIGHT SKY the stars the moonless night, the central poetic trope of my thesis ars poetica:
serve it up on a platter, what are we gonna have, dessert or disaster???
THIS
is my NIGHT outfit. grandma by day grandpa by night. i like to call it biker raver grandpa (those ARE my grandfather's old shorts. he was giving them to good will and i rescued them from the junk pile they definitely belong in. the jacket i got at goodwill for 10$, the belt, somebody left at my house...and i cant remember who and the shirt was given to me by one of my favorite people in the world, REBECCA REILLY. tequiero becca. can't wait til you visit me! DECEMBER 17!!!! WOOOHOOOOOOOooowowowowo!!!)
sometimes i actually think im in this scene forever and ever. and then i snap out of it and get sad.
you know you're an emotional and mental disaster zone when your advisor calls you up on 6pm friday evening to see if you haven't regressed into a state of listless despair...
and she instead finds you
agonizing over the following passage by derrida:
“The poet Tiresias would have received blindness as a blessing, a prize, a reward, a divine “requital,” the gift of poetic and political clairvoyance, the chance for prophecy….in losing his sight man does not lose his eyes. On the contrary, only then does man begin to THINK the eyes. His own eyes and not those of just any other animal. Between seeing and weeping, he sees between and catches a glimpse of the difference, he keeps it, looks after in in memory—and this is the veil of tears—until finally, and from or with the same eyes, the tears see:
one time i had really bad insomnia so i did fridge magnet poetry for hours. another time i had really bad insomnia and looked through all of gabrielle's pictures. going through her pictures is a really good activity for insomnia. they're just nice to look at. easy on the eyes. just like her. gabrielle, you're awesome!!!
but anyway
and also:
these are like golden cleopatra nightmare monsters...and they are my favorite shoes on the whole earth.
these are like vampire orgy shoes. the dark uncle of the psycho cleopatra.
these fucking crazy things from alexander mcqueen. i prefer them to his "mcqueenadillo" things. the mcqueenadillos scare me. They are kind of too perverse. they look like foot binding shoes for aliens. or something.
but anyway...BALLY design brand had never been on my radar before today...and it seems bally is the functional mcqueen who went to therapy and got well:
also, the dolce and gabbana posted below sort of remind me of barbie shoes for the meanest girlfriend. I like them a lot.
also, if you want more hedonistic entertainment in your life, you should probably watch the movie posted below. ONCE gabbana of dolce and gabbana ATTACKED the comedian pornstar jenny mccarthy:
every time I wear or see or think DOLCE AND GABBANA i think of this interview. specifically jenny's face when she says the following: "YOU BETCH...LOOK AT ME ITS GABBANAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!"
skip to 3:32 to hear the story. OR NOT. cus jenny mccarthy is a filthy filthy lady and AWESOME AS SHIT. porn star turned comedian.
as Fall turns to Winter, Summer is all but forgotten so i guess it's kinda relevant to post the following poem.
This is the season I have to fall on my ass in order to save my knees from aching for a week. catching me fall is too strenuous an activity for them. I'd rather fall than limp for a week. its not ski season anymore oh no its iced bruised ass season.
September Bones
for my mother, for her mother, for me
she sings
slow, slow, willow-dear, fill the spaces between your roots with elder-down, down, down, drink the air above the cupped earth, suck your phloem teeth and sup the hollow hiss, sipping the whispers of summer’s fermented grape. the wrath of winter follows: willow, your roots go deep into the earth but who remembers the shivering of your september bones as they lost their leaves?
She remembered yesterday as though incantation bound the calendar pages and amnesia were the sweetness of smoke as it rose from the turning of days—
the kind of creature who knelt in blonde grass and stroked the pale shadows of the tree branches wishing for springtime and kindness. her cold breath rose as the hours grew darker.
all the while, the september bones rustled in the catacomb where youth once tossed them like playthings. the crinkling of wind broke the dry veins,
and spokes made splinters into the earth. oh! the bones splintered so as they tossed. they could carry her no further.
sometimes, the dark earth is a brutal lover, sometimes, a cold Mother. the year is gone.
The Border Language: article written by me for the cipher. the theme this month is "borders." but i turned this thing in too late. cus i suck.
First of all, to clarify, I am a person who has always been somewhat oblivious to borders and all related connotative significance. I don’t try to give them to myself and I’ve grown up wandering from place to place. Yes, I was always aware that borders create mountains of cultural and political chaos, but then again, in my life, as in many, the only thing that does not change is the thread of chaos that has strung me along all the way to Colorado College. I was born in California, moved to Japan, moved to New Mexico, moved to Singapore, moved to China, moved to Costa Rica, moved to California, moved back to Costa Rica, moved to Colorado. And here I sit in Tutt Library: a somewhat intact human being and professional CC student. Regardless, 2nd block of this year (my senior year,) I took a 200 level “Poetry of the Southwest” course. It should’ve been a pre-thesis vacation but it ended up opening my eyes to the significance of “place” in the creation of identity and the prevalent displacement felt by those who’ve placed themselves and “home” in the Southwest. Right now that means anyone who might open up the Cipher and take a gander.
I want to be a poet and anything I write genuinely I must write from the perspective of a displaced woman-girl-thing. I might not be any of the following, but in my life I’ve often found myself token white-girl, token American, and at CC, perhaps token “girl in crazy outfits and high heels,” token feisty blonde, token “crazy Ali” or token not-exactly-typical-white-American-girl. I guess this places me at home in the Southwest’s culture of displaced peoples: a people of 1, just myself.
The language of my people of 1 is modern English. When I am drunk, I speak it with a very slight Australian lilt (my grandparents live in Australia) and sometimes use Costa Rican international school Spanglishisms because, when made comfortable by college elixirs, I am less self conscious about seeming pretentious. I am self conscious about seeming pretentious as I write this. Do I seem pretentious? Forgive me, speaking sometimes makes me anxious.
Contrarily, the languages of the peoples of the Southwest are not so easily definable and the anxiety of speaking in their mother-tongue is not so easily exposed as such (anxiety.) My culture is self created and can be whatever I want it to be because when it gets right down to it I am a white American English speaker at Colorado College and the world loves me despite my own feelings of isolation and anxiety within it. Unlike me, many peoples of the Southwest are repressed by embarrassment or anxiety when speaking their mother-tongue in their homeland, the Southwest. This mother-tongue I speak of is not Spanish, is not merely “Spanglish,” and cannot be confined to Spanish or English. In fact, it is not an it, but a various, interconnected, evolving organism that includes many different English, Chicano, immigrant, Mexican, Latin and Native American dialects.
The organism has no name and is unacknowledged by the public school system and the U.S. government. Anxiety is weakening it, belittling it, making it ashamed of itself. How often have you heard somebody say “THIS! Is America! Why don’t they learn some English?” To ease this, the speakers of this mother-tongue water down their natural speech so that it might fit within one of the definitions of it we offer them. These definitions place speakers of the numerous mother-tongues of the Southwest on one side of a border or another.
This could be the border between Europe and the Americas, Central America and Mexico, Mexico and the Southwest, reservation and non-reservation, or those between the states that make up the Southwest: California, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Texas and our beloved Colorado. The life of this organism (the languages of the Southwest) is dying. It is being disconnected from itself. It is suffocated by borders. We need to accept it as a whole organism in order to save it. To accept it, we must understand it, or at least attempt to understand it.
In truth, the identity of this organism (language) may not be understood without knowledge of the whole. Furthermore, the identity of this organism cannot be understood without knowledge of the evolution of its individual parts. Tragically, anyone who attempts understanding of either becomes paralyzed by a chaos of contradictions.
Let me remind you: I want to be a poet and my contemplation of language as a thing that is confined and bastardized by invisible borders was inspired by a course called, “Poetry of the Southwest” as well as my own life and preoccupation with language. What I discovered in this class is that many Poets of the Southwest have individually created non-traditional forms of writing poetry. They’ve presented and structured their words uniquely and these words speak a language beyond borders: neither traditional Spanish or English and definitely not what is often thought of as “Spanglish.” Many poems studied in this class exposed identity as intrinsically tied to “place,” and a tragic loss of identity in place and language. All this, expressed loyally and proudly in each poet’s most comfortable tongue, whatever it was.
And so, I ask you in my own mother tongue, the language of displaced -wannabepoet-crazyoutfitwearer-blonde-andetc, to speak with conviction, to listen, to reflect without borders, isn’t Colorado beautiful? And damn aren’t we lucky to be at home here?
The other thing I might ask you is: please submit your poetry to the BlockPartie integrative arts blog (http://www.ccblockpartie.com/) at blockpartiepoetry@gmail.com, or to CC’s Leviathan literary magazine, leviathan.magazine@gmail.com, so that your beautiful words might speak to a larger audience in whatever form or language you see fit to present them in.
"For how long now the French poet has been writing as if the French public did not exist-- as if it were, at best, a swineherd dreaming of that faraway princess, the poet; yet it looks at him with traditional awe, and reads in dozens of literary newspapers, scores of literary magazines, the details of his life, opinions, temperament, and appearance."
-Randall Jarrell
(poetry, the faraway princess. an audience awed by the tradition of awe. the french are such beautiful shitheads. i love and hate them. as in, i hate the french poet and i love the french audience. but i love french poetry and hate the french mass as hysterical and reactionary. etc.
according to me, it is base betrayal to write without regard for your audience. you love them, right? you want to communicate something to them and maybe even for them a little bit, right? I mean, do not DO NOT write for the critic or the workshop BUT it is impossible to write without your audience in mind....even if that audience is an audience of 1 and even if that audience of 1 will never see what is being written. what is expressed in the quote above is actually kind of disgusting to me...because the poet is arrogant and self centered, taking up the role as divine interpreter as it is thrust upon him. but the quote above is beautiful to me because a society so romantic as to idolize a poet is absolutely doomed and absolutely one that I empathize with (because I idolize master poets.) so frequently the beautiful and the disgusting exist together, one and the same, don't they?)
