and what the hell..here's another one

Also should cite a segment of Sufjan Stevens' song "Come on, Feel the Illinoise!" which has haunted me for a very long time- it rings so true for me.

Even with the heart of terror and the superstitious wearer
I am riding all alone
I am writing all alone
Even in my best condition, counting all the superstition
I am riding all alone
I am running all alone

And we laughed at the beatitudes of a thousand lines
We were asked at the attitudes
They reminded us of death
Even with the rest belated, everything is antiquated
Are you writing from the heart?
Are you writing from the heart?
Even in his heart the Devil has to know the water level
Are you writing from the heart? Are you writing from the heart?

piece of inspiration

Ok, so the following words don't come from my own pen, but as I played this song about a million times as I wrote my last two poems, and since I feel it's particularly relevant to my current life situation, I think it's necessary to copy down the lyrics. For those of you who don't recognize them, they're from my favorite Tori Amos song, "Silent All These Years":


Excuse me but can I be you for a while
My dog won't bite if you sit real still
I got the anti-Christ in the kitchen yellin' at me again
Yeah I can hear that
Been saved again by the garbage truck
I got something to say you know
But nothing comes
Yes I know what you think of me
You never shut-up
Yeah I can hear that

But what if I'm a mermaid
In these jeans of his
With her name still on it
Hey but I don't care
Cause sometimes
I said sometimes
I hear my voice
And it's been here
Silent All These Years

So you found a girl
Who thinks really deep thoughts
What's so amazing about really deep thoughts
Boy you best praya that I bleed real soon
How's that thought for you
My scream got lost in a paper cup
You think there's a heaven
Where some screams have gone
I got 25 bucks and a cracker
Do you think it's enough
To get us there

Cause what if I'm a mermaid In these jeans of his
With her name still on it
Hey but I don't care
Cause sometimes
I said sometimesI hear my voice
And it's been here
Silent All These...

Years go by
Will I still be waiting
For somebody else to understand
Years go by
If I'm stripped of my beauty
And the orange clouds
Raining in head
Years go by
Will I choke on my tears
Till finally there is nothing left
One more casualty
You know we're too easy Easy Easy

Well I love the way we communicate
Your eyes focus on my funny lip shape
Let's hear what you think of me now
But baby don't look up
The sky is falling
Your mother shows up in a nasty dress
It's your turn now to stand where I stand
Everybody lookin' at you here
Take hold of my hand
Yeah I can hear them

But what if I'm a mermaid
In these jeans of his
With her name still on it
Hey but I don't care
Cause sometimes
I said sometimesI hear my voice
I hear my voice
I hear my voice
And it's been here
Silent All These Years
I've been here
Silent All These Years

second poem from tonight...guess i'm feeling inspired.

Also unedited.

Mother, you’ve torn me apart-
You’ve made me a stranger to this world.

The day you ripped me from your womb like a parasite
you simply couldn’t bear,
My heart swelled up like a bulging balloon.
Bruised and blistered,
Fat and full.
I walked around like a leper,
Always traveling-
Ragged and worn.
I searched for a house with lights that glowed warmth
Through whose frosty windows I gazed at cheeks rosy with joy,
Imagining what it must be like to be light-hearted.
But they threw me out,
Said there was no space for my bags of dirty clothes and rotten food.
Said I would always be a cripple,
That I was deaf and dumb to the world of the normal.

Mother, you’ve made me this way.
Shot me up with poison and lies,
Made me mourn for 22 years,
Made me walk cloaked in black
In which I joined Cain in his solemn, endless stroll.
Banished, I sought shelter in pools of waste that would kill me over time.
I punctured my heart that was plump and pulsating,
Till one day, I didn’t feel anymore.

Mother, you took away my senses-
Made me see what wasn’t there.
How long did I wake at night in my haunted sleep,
Crying for something I never had,
Longing for something I never even knew?

Mother, you left me on the lonely banks of the Styx,
Where I tried to float my raft to some place better-
Always, somewhere new.
But always I found myself
Thrown overboard by a God that despised me,
As I gasped for air- for just one breath of life.

Mother, will you wake me up?
Will you open my eyes and let out
This little girl locked I a hollow, putrid hole.
Cuz she’s screaming inside and ready to throw herself away.

Free me from your chains,
Unbind me from your heartless spell-
I’m cutting the cord,
I’m untying the knot,
Once and for all, Mother-
I’m ripping our crooked souls apart.

written 12/30/07

I haven't really edited this one but I'm posting it anyway.

Let’s see if you can handle this,
Me and all my beauty, darkness and gloom.
Did the snake bite you too hard?
Did you assume I was a vixen?
I can tell-
You don’t want no Magdalene.

Well I’ll take you down paths you’ve never been before,
Through evergreens and seas that sparkle bright and blue.
My eyes will sway you back and forth
Seduced,
You will find yourself in a vortex
Far from this grey, cold city.

Your first sight of me was fuzzy,
Did you too think I was the secret?
Some frightening but hypnotic paradox,
A crooked mystery?
You started down my labyrinth of passions and dreams,
Got so lost you searched desperately,
Trying to find a way out.

I know it’s hard for you, baby
Cuz sometimes my heart bleeds an ocean of passion,
It flows like lava, leaking out of my gaping pores,
So be careful when you’re near-You may slip and scrape your baby-soft hands.
You’d never seen scars like mine,
Till you peeled my layers off,
Stripped from green to blue to red
Searching my bleeding, beating heart for meaning-
A morsel of magic in your jaded soul.

Do I make you believe in heaven?
Do you see the angels in my eyes?
And when you kiss my ivory skin,
Do your eyes light up like shining stars?
Does the world topple and spin,
Only to bring you tumbling down?

Yeh there’s no straight line with me,
But you’ll never find a love like this
(So you’ve heard a thousand times before).
Search far and wide for such a woman
Who’ll lay you down on tender beds of grass,
Who’ll press your fingers deep into the earth
And show you why this life was made.
I’ll flow through your veins like a drug you can’t resist.
Your poison and your oxygen at once.
I’ll be your muse, your art-
You can make me up like a doll,
Press me flat on your naked canvas,
But I’ll come bleeding through every time-
Leaving messy ink stains on your fingertips.

So now are you terrified-
To sprout wings and soar far above?
Is it Earth you desire or the great beyond?
Cuz I’ll trap you like Calypso,
So best to dock your boat on some other island,

I won’t be your paperdoll,
Your trophy wife
Donned with pearls and perfect eyelashes,
But I’ll be your fire-
And I’ll warm your cold fingers when they’re tired and numb.
And when you can’t find your way through a foggy night
With just one headlight,
I’ll be there to guide you along the way.

I’ll take you to your childhood,
When you licked cherry popsicles down to their chalky sticks,
And opened your mouth wide to taste the gentle rain.
I’ll be the woman who visits you in the night,
The passion you can’t deny.

I’m no easy ride baby-
But I’ll be the best you’ll ever have.

This one was written in April 2007 for someone I should have never bothered loving at all.

"April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
"The Wasteland"- T.S. Eliot


Tell me when our love went sour,
In that tortured head of yours.
I have a right-I want to be vindicated.

Did it crumble apart like stale bread
you used to sop up your thick stewed confusion,
Or did you crack it open to see the inside,
Oh my Orpheus, clarity but parts the clouds over love's brewing ocean-It leaves no room for rushing water that wets the heaving, thirsty shore.

Our tempest poured down not from the wringing hands of an angry god,
But from the pus-filled cavities of the heart you would never disinfect
You let your wounds fester,
Licked the scabs to prove you could still feel-
Though you couldn't.

Do you remember when we were wrenched from our perfect shell
Leaving mirrored question marks in their slick shiny skin?
Or had you left already,
Seeing with your eyes of foreboding- the sting of severance
One squinting towards the lonesome future,
The other avoiding my gaze that saw straight through you.
Tell me, dear,
What have you felt,
have you felt, truly?

Because I remember lying cushioned between lazy mountains
Drinking ambrosia from the Mother's endless fountains
I can see them there-
(Not us for we have passed)
Humming tunes of hearts unbroken,
Soft, virgin loves still untouched by raging roses
Whose thorns you would one day use to wake me from the dreams
Of my wide-eyed slumber.

I remember secret passageways
To the haven forged from spoiled earth and poisoned waters
Our artificial home-
It felt so real in the shade of plastic palm fronds
Their cellophane fronds tickling our tear-streaked cheeks,
But no hole in the sand could replace our happy shell.

We saw Aurora's yawn break into a pale and gentle light
Through our future-gazing window
Saw her stretch her flaming arms into a barren sky
Though we never could tell the day from night,
For you were my great Star,
And I your tide invoking Moon.

"Oh draw me into your hard heart,"- I said,
Covered by layers of ice
And steel
And thick, reeking liquid
I'll melt away the frost
And burst a fresh bud from your concrete, almost dry.

"There will be time", you said, first
As you peeked at your watch,
Excusing yourself to an engagement far from
Tree-hung paradises of lovesick contemplation;
Later you dismissed from me from your heart's sterile prison
Built bars and locks and iron doors to keep me fighting the winter wind without;
Finally you sold my photos, our memories, our life,
To buy hours unattached to primordial roots
Free to dance and play like a foolish child
Ignorant of the world that only stretches it and molds it into its frightening grown-up form.

I remember a time untainted by jealous sneers and slashes
A fusion of souls, a heaven of hearts.
But your numb amnesia keeps you on a diet of
Safe reminders-
Tasteless coffee with unwrapped company
Only to be disposed at the end of the hour;
Cheap wine on an overcast day,
Drinking straight from the bottle-
I know how you look to the bottom,
Mistrusting even the drops that refuse to reach your parched tongue.

So while my heart breaks beaten on dirty city pavement
Stains the snow that covers up your petrified heart
Beneath their cleansing layers,
You go about your day,
Each moment losing a piece of me,
First an eye,
Then a mouth,
Then a whole hand.
Tell me dear,
When will you have room in your curtained chamber
For the visitor who comes by tonight to wipe the dust from your sleepy eyes,
Tell me dear,
When will there be time,
For me?

I wrote this poem after my great-grandmother's death in October 2006, about nine years after my grandmother- her daughter's-death.


Mother of mothers,
Nine years later and I still hear the rough purr of your voice,
Scolding your children with matronly regard.
Nine years later and I dance across your oak floors in frilly lace socks six sizes too small,
I play with paper dolls and scramble through books of decades past
Passed from your hands to theirs to mine,
Only to burn away in your urn of memories.
But the smoke never leaves my room
For sometimes it suffocates me in my dark slumber.
It's true-I could never really sleep
After you entered my cold room and held me close to you,
Whispering desperately that you loved me
When how stupid, stupid, was I to never realize why you would care about
the little unwanted yellow- headed runt.
I was never to you what I was to them.
For when my fingers ran amok on the cracked ivory keys
You heard angels surround you with their perfect harps.

I never knew what you knew-
That you drank from the crimson fountain that seemed to run in our blood like water,
That you tried to save her from that poison that would one day drown her-
And leave me playing in tainted puddles, not knowing where else to splash with my oversized yellow boots
I never knew how inside you were fading,
Your skin was patched and sallow,
Your spirit strong but your voice caught like a lion in a toothed trap,

I liked to pretend I could spin and spin on that floor forever,
That I could lie on fuzzy carpets and sleep on worn pillows
In your safe womb warm haven

How could I have predicted
that I would see you dead in your own body-
the hollow face, the ammonia stinking white tiles,
Death creeping down corridors waiting for you to release your fistful of strength and life
How could I have known
that nine years later I would be the same Big Girl in a tiny frail body with knobby knees
that I would still be waiting for the woman inside to sprout like a fat rosebud,
Only to find that there was no Goddess within,
For with you she had taken one big silent yawn
And fallen into a slumber of preoccupying nightmares,
Exhausted from the same scenes that actually pricked and poked her tender skin.

So as I flip through yellowed papers
I see they are remnants of a past not so far away,
Not even gone, not even dead,
But feeding that same fire from which your ashes flicker and fly
For I can smell them in that smoke that sets off no real alarm-
It is like oxygen to me now.
I no longer know now what is present and what is passed,
I no longer know if it matters.
For maybe, just maybe,
As long as I can remember the feel of slick floors,
Of deep gentle voices muffling the cries in the other room,
I can at least pretend to sleep
and rest in the technicolor glow of the lights in your gingerbread house.