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| first summer cycle these poems are the product of the first poetry class i ever took, in the summer of 1997. the artwork is by gustav klimt, chosen to accompany my writings in the final portfolio. a brief description of each poetry assignment precedes the final poem. enjoy. this was written prior to my class, but with my instructor paul's help in editing, became a much better poem. not one of my favorites, but it shows where i started in my journey. twisted limbs falling on the hard edge of despair so many bruises that bear your name broken into so so many halves each separate part belonging to you each drop of sweat your sweet candy all my rotted limbs working for you all my power given by you it's yours fucking take it away fucking use it use me fuck me throw me so i may not be the prime specimen your romanticized soul had hoped for but let me tell you i've had enough the deeper i fall the more you want never at my best my so fragile best but you'll find that with all my pieces all the twisted sick and gorgeous parts control does not come so easy and so i give you this my very self and watch to see what you'll do with it but do not put me together again no i will not let you erase your craft too much of your pride has gone into making me exactly who and what i am live with your own handiwork i will not let you make me whole no not again another previously written poem. i think it's got a few good phrases. snake me he carries me bids me swallow before i can drink sticks my innocence to my face and i come in his arms looking for all the world as if i had been abused but i say no - look - it is only my self i have given it away and he may do with it as he sees fit occasionally he will laugh and assure me that no one but he is fit to carry me this hard promise never ends throat raw i release him and make his life my own he always ahead he always the victor and i love it yet another. if you hadn't noticed by now, a lot of my early scribblings were quite dark. my naked beast my demons breathe heavy they love a good chase and in their frantic eyeballs i see the challenge to run but i cannot cover my scent anymore they giggle and become in an instant flirtatious catching my hands far from my face undressed they stand naked before me they know i cannot expose myself like that and i can feel them in my mouth my hands taste their honeycream sickness and their sex turns harsh and grasping and i see them now i see them flayed they will not own me this numbered beast will not defeat me i take up the challenge and shoulder it heavy into my night i run from these drugged demons from this white beast i run an exercise in stream of consciousness writing. reduction drive me god-man drive me drive me i'm wild i'm wild and i burn drive me to the edge of myself and turn my head to the blank-eyed future i haven't eaten for two days and you haven't spoken in twice as long you haven't spoken and i am hungry so hungry feed me tell me tell me speak pound me pound me into the form of what you want what you want me to be i know why i'm not in your heart i know that i don't fit in there into there i take up too much space too much the room i take up is too much for you you think that if i made myself smaller much smaller to you that i'd fit i'd fit i would fit into your small space i would finally fit into your smallness for you i would shrink i would shed everything i would take the corner you grudgingly give and the dim light and be happy be happy in you i would be in you at last for your voice on my name for your name i would make myself small make me small i don't really have an aunt lilith. i just liked the name. aunt lilith used to eat chocolates i looked for you in the amber smoke-mist i closed my eyes and looked for you in the putrid budding of an already half-dead bloom leaning no dying with the sweet stickiness of beauty just like aunt lilith used to each chocolates in her green velvet chair in the half-breath of night you call me ugly and shout my name in curses and i am lost whirling i hit my hard hopes and am shattered as sunlight you are blinded and call me fool and love me and speak to me your thoughts through red-colored eyes dark and hard-rimmed with despair just like aunt lilith used to eat chocolates with her wispy grey hair and wispy grey intentions life went by while we were eating a banana repulsed by the brown little bruises as aunt lilith used to eat chocolates with her eyes far-seeing and her living hands steady i looked for you today in the red cloud-dawn of once again and never before and eternal ennui i closed my eyes and looked for you like aunt lilith used to eat chocolates reading the words that weren't there on her rose-covered walls she liked the dark ones best an exercise in historical writing. i chose my great-uncle rusty, and his own very personal experience in world war I. death march from scurelli to sicily, 1918 it is high summer now, two months gone, and even with a bullet hole in my ten year old leg, i am still walking. my brother joseph, he carried me until we could find a crutch - i was not very heavy, for without food i had become like ghost-bones. my mama, she walked behind us; i know if we were to fall, she would carry us both. i think of my papa as he left on the boat to america; i see him waving at us, and his shaded eyes, and us waving back. how could we know that his was the last boat out? once again i ask my mama what we have done wrong, once again she can't answer me, can't tell me why our own countrymen wish us dead. i look at these men who keep us going with their hot and sweaty guns, and i think of vittorio who stopped yesterday afternoon and was shot in the head; his price for a few seconds of rest. every other step i take is a little death, but joseph, he keeps walking, and my mama, she keeps walking, and i can hear my papa calling me good son, good son, so proud of me because i kept walking. a word exercise inspired by my friend femi corazon emiola, who's name means "heart" and "love." corazon my heart, she said, showing it c-a-r-e-f-u-l to him making sure he knew the proper way of holding it as she slid it gently over. love me, she whispered, but he only stared d o w n at his hands wondering how suddenly they seemed too small. as he looked closer at its slightly irregular form he thought, this isn't love. this isn't the way it should feel. opening w i d e his fingers he felt her heart s l i p to the floor; walking away he reasoned that his hands had been the perfect size - it was her fault that her heart had been to large. a form exercise, ending in this variation on a sestina. the song of the ancestors a hundred years have passed yet i hear the distant beat of my father's drums. i hear his drums throughout the land. his beat i feel within my heart. the drum shall beat so my heart shall beat. and i shall live a hundred thousand years. - shirley daniels Let me sing to you tonight of your Ancestors, of the proud Fathers before you, my Son. Tonight, in your distress, allow Mother to wipe the nightmares and brush the tears from your head, and hear no more crying from your lungs, no more fear from your heart. Let Mother give to you the works of your People until she is hoarse, so you will know of the Warrior's watered eyes, downcast in the sorrow of their full mistreatment, and of how their nation was stolen with whiskey and guns forever. Let me sing to you of my Mother, who hovers above us now. Much wisdom did she give, much hurt did she heal, for she was Clan Mother of Red Earth, a large tribe in past days. The Creator blessed us then with corn and honey, and the forests were deep with peace, and silent. Let me fill you with my story, where miles from my home I dreamt, and from the dust rose a painted man, tall and fierce. A hundred times over I knew him. This was my missing part. Many nights later I dreamt again, and water flowed from my body, and you began to live. Let me sing to you of your Father's release from his earth-life, of the Smallpox rising in him, and how he spoke of you as his Treasure. Even as his final words wandered, he spoke of how you would become a great Chief, talked of you in many good ways until the setting of his sun. Let me rock you in my arms, and from them receive peace and contentment, and think on this - that the ghosts over us in the night will watch for you always, will forever guide your path, and when you are lonely in your hunt of manhood, see the spirit of your Father, and have courage. So hush, my little Son, end your crying. Let your tears be stopped by the voice of your Mother, singing to you from the heart of your Ancestors. a different voice exercise, where i tried to write from a masculine point of view. the orginal version is first, followed by the final draft. a fifth of jack daniels on the way to hell sometimes when i hit you i want you to break other times when i hit you i want you to love me i suppose it's the same thing do you remember our first moment? i don't did it have something to do with band-aids? or was that my first ex-wife? i don't remember offhand but i guess you think it's funny that i came home in the middle of the day and put my father's gun to my head 'cause when you found me you laughed you jumped up and down and did a ridiculous little jig shaking your body so hard that beneath your skirt your underwear started to fall down --------------------------------------------------- you fucker don't you know you gotta break when i hit you? you never do any goddamn thing right and you're supposed to love me you're supposed to make me feel special 'cause i'm the man and you're just some stupid fuckin' bitch but no you can't be bothered but i guess you'll have to get off your ass 'cause when i put my father's gun to my head there's gonna be one big fuckin' mess a language exercise. many classmates stuck phrases of another language into an english poem. unlike the rest of the class, i wrote the poem in lakota first, then translated it. kihnapiodowan lakota tasiyagnunpa kin mia yelo hanhepi kin ewaglega hancokan mia yelo hanhepiwi ihate na waci kin kichi ica mi na cincala mia yelo tuwe wasteaka isto inari ye magazu mia yelo mni luta mia yelo mastincapute to hu sbu winohinca ota mia yelo cante kokala awanyaka wo ot uyacin maku mayozan, ista mayozan cantograkapi nichi awatonwan ninape makipazo ye i ha canl wakan maku miye ye ceye sni yo! kokepe sni yo! tasiyagnunpa kin mia yelo miye etan kinyan ilale oyakihi sni ye! iyuhe uncin pi ---------------------------------------------- i am the meadowlark i overtake the night i am midnight laughing and dancing with the moon i am a young storm hurrying to its lover's arms i am the rain i am the scarlet water dripping from buffalo berries i am your woman of plenty watching your empty heart in vain my chest hurts, my eyes hurt i seek your love show me your hands give me your cowardly lips do not cry do not be afraid i am the meadowlark do not fly away from me we need each other an imagery exercise. self-explanatory. boxed heaven i used to pray to orange-can angels and a tin-foil christ watching my mama through the keyhole to make sure i got it right every night the same ritual dragging the box from under my bed i would open the lid on paradise and on my knees for hours in the dark i would throw prayers upward from my numb little body sometimes i could hear my mama's prayers drifting from the other room her eyes closed, on her knees just like me i still have my boxed heaven taped together and shut in my closet i don't need them anymore their prayers are filled-up and they wear white shrouds of tissue paper now i say my mama's prayers in my mama's room with her hollow plastic angels and glow-in-the-dark christ and sometimes i can hear her voice praying beside me a slant-rhyme exercise. no second coming the Devil often sleeps in my house and sometimes lingers long enough for breakfast "the Lady is a Player..." He softly murmured when He first saw me, first laid His hands upon me and months later, when i watched Him walking the crowd nodding and provoking beauty with His every word i knew i was lost in His soft-spoken lies and felt myself slipping down His sweet little laugh yet, still, every morning i would up on my hope as if to dress myself up for the man who would rape and every long night i would quarrel with god and become less of a stranger to the bottled sunrise as i thought of the dirt i have lodged beneath my fingernails and how i'm not so sure that i'm real without Him and once more, like in this sorry morning light when He came to my room with that Fuck-or-Fight look the blood seized up in my too-shallow veins and i crashed into Him, whimpering viciously and as He turned from where i lay destroyed on the floor with the brand of the Stoics upon my broken brow i thought of my childhood's wish for rosebushes and i pretended that the Devil's whore deserved roses a myth exercise. the last pasture of the paziks it is said of this land that it was the Pazik's final stop the Nomad's last resting place that their souls reside here above the high Russian Steppes and on that deep winter evening as we lay on top of the snow we talked of their hidden land beneath us and their spirits watching us from above everything was sacred every word its own separate song i kissed my own lips with your name i gave you all my white-armed love and every time you turned your wet body to mine i could not say no shaking from cold and your beauty i thought that this would be a good night to die and when i asked you for your love when i asked you to promise and swear yourself away it was not in you to say yes you pointed to the sky and i saw my winter Orion and as you explained that the Hero would be gone before spring i looked over at you and saw my winter of ruin reflected plainly on your face accusing me of wanting too much i saw your eyes closing to me and i knew that your heart was closing as well that the Hero would outlast the man you left me in this field and here i have stayed dancing with my midnight shadow squeezing all the blackberries until they died and biting the budding leaves from the trees tonight i lay in this garden and dream of you with my legs wide open and my eyes shut down can't you hear how my springtime is calling you? i know you must hear my cries, but you do not come throwing stones at god to pass the time all i can hear are his cross-talking angels all i can think is that this would be a good night to die a character excercise. i believe this to be my best poem of the summer. feel free to disagree. my cliffed and shining island when my voice was born, my mother knew i would sing: sing clouds across the moon, sing fog in from the sea - sing men to their deaths. because my mother knew this, she said to me early: "beware, my little lovely one, beware of this gift you have - beware that it will not bring ruin to you." and because i loved my mother, i made freely to her this promise: "for as long as the sun kisses the sea at dusk, and as long as the leaves comb gently through Sister Wind's hair - for that long i will not sing." so when i gathered lilacs in the night, i would bind up my mouth with rags: and also when the fire sought to devour the sky, and when my grandfather flew to the heavens - the urge was great, but i did not sing. but as the years ran breathless ahead, i learned easy to ignore the beauty in my throat: i became just another young girl in blue, just another young woman with sweet eyes - and my mother smiled to see the ordinariness of me. it would happen often that i would not speak for days, when no sound was born from between my lips: and when i saw bluejays making love, or pine needles stroking their own dark cones - there was no great urge in me for song. but when i met you on that one windy day, when you smelled my hair and tickled my ear: bile rose bitter and musty and sour, and i knew this to be all the unused songs within me - their necessary life constrained no more. as my song was severed from me, it clawed its way up in jagged-edged haste: and when it emerged pure and clear, i held it up to Father Sky in joy - and he rejoiced to hear the beauty in me. and as i offered up my siren song, it shone brighter than all the unadorned stars: your lit and lovely face warmed me, and i sang to you of honey dripping from our lips - and of the violets you might have woven through my hair. and as my song grew in the deepening sky, i saw the wind rise and the earth turn dark: i watched clouds tumble across the moon, and fog flood over the land - and i remembered the fate bestowed by my mother. i think of you these days, i walk the shores and see your pale face: i remember how i sang for you my deathly song, and how your grasp crushed my hand - bruises still linger faint and reproachful today. my mother tries to coax words from me, tries to tempt out a whisper: and i do not speak, but wander by the sea, adn sit in my dark room at night - and record my songs on these shivering walls. |
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| bruce the bard |
| with swift and nimble fingers i ply my trade... |
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