Written by
Frank Bidart |
"When I hit her on the head, it was good,
and then I did it to her a couple of times,--
but it was funny,--afterwards,
it was as if somebody else did it .
.
.
Everything flat, without sharpness, richness or line.
Still, I liked to drive past the woods where she lay,
tell the old lady and the kids I had to take a piss,
hop out and do it to her .
.
.
The whole buggy of them waiting for me
made me feel good;
but still, just like I knew all along,
she didn't move.
When the body got too discomposed,
I'd just jack off, letting it fall on her .
.
.
--It sounds crazy, but I tell you
sometimes it was beautiful--; I don't know how
to say it, but for a miute, everything was possible--;
and then,
then,--
well, like I said, she didn't move: and I saw,
under me, a little girl was just lying there in the mud:
and I knew I couldn't have done that,--
somebody else had to have done that,--
standing above her there,
in those ordinary, shitty leaves .
.
.
--One time, I went to see Dad in a motel where he was
staying with a woman; but she was gone;
you could smell the wine in the air; and he started,
real embarrassing, to cry .
.
.
He was still a little drunk,
and asked me to forgive him for
all he hasn't done--; but, What the ****?
Who would have wanted to stay with Mom? with bastards
not even his own kids?
I got in the truck, and started to drive
and saw a little girl--
who I picked up, hit on the head, and
screwed, and screwed, and screwed, and screwed, then
buried,
in the garden of the motel .
.
.
--You see, ever since I was a kid I wanted
to feel things make sense: I remember
looking out the window of my room back home,--
and being almost suffocated by the asphalt;
and grass; and trees; and glass;
just there, just there, doing nothing!
not saying anything! filling me up--
but also being a wall; dead, and stopping me;
--how I wanted to see beneath it, cut
beneath it, and make it
somehow, come alive .
.
.
The salt of the earth;
Mom once said, 'Man's ***** is the salt of the earth .
.
.
'
--That night, at that Twenty-nine Palms Motel
I had passed a million times on the road, everything
fit together; was alright;
it seemed like
everything had to be there, like I had spent years
trying, and at last finally finished drawing this
huge circle .
.
.
--But then, suddenly I knew
somebody else did it, some bastard
had hurt a little girl--; the motel
I could see again, it had been
itself all the time, a lousy
pile of bricks, plaster, that didn't seem to
have to be there,--but was, just by chance .
.
.
--Once, on the farm, when I was a kid,
I was screwing a goat; and the rope around his neck
when he tried to get away
pulled tight;--and just when I came,
he died .
.
.
I came back the next day; jacked off over his body;
but it didn't do any good .
.
.
Mom once said:
'Man's ***** is the salt of the earth, and grows kids.
'
I tried so hard to come; more pain than anything else;
but didn't do any good .
.
.
--About six months ago, I heard Dad remarried,
so I drove over to Connecticut to see him and see
if he was happy.
She was twenty-five years younger than him:
she had lots of little kids, and I don't know why,
I felt shaky .
.
.
I stopped in front of the address; and
snuck up to the window to look in .
.
.
--There he was, a kid
six months old on his lap, laughing
and bouncing the kid, happy in his old age
to play the papa after years of sleeping around,--
it twisted me up .
.
.
To think that what he wouldn't give me,
he wanted to give them .
.
.
I could have killed the bastard .
.
.
--Naturally, I just got right back in the car,
and believe me, was determined, determined,
to head straight for home .
.
.
but the more I drove,
I kept thinking about getting a girl,
and the more I thought I shouldn't do it,
the more I had to--
I saw her coming out of the movies,
saw she was alone, and
kept circling the blocks as she walked along them,
saying, 'You're going to leave her alone.
'
'You're going to leave her alone.
'
--The woods were scary!
As the seasons changed, and you saw more and more
of the skull show through, the nights became clearer,
and the buds,--erect, like nipples .
.
.
--But then, one night,
nothing worked .
.
.
Nothing in the sky
would blur like I wanted it to;
and I couldn't, couldn't,
get it to seem to me
that somebody else did it .
.
.
I tried, and tried, but there was just me there,
and her, and the sharp trees
saying, "That's you standing there.
You're .
.
.
just you.
'
I hope I fry.
--Hell came when I saw
MYSELF .
.
.
and couldn't stand
what I see .
.
.
"
|
Written by
Pritish Nandy |
1
Come, let us pretend this is a ritual. This hand
in your hair, your tongue seeking mine: this
cataclysmic despair. Let us pretend tonight that
you are mine. Forever. For when daybreak returns, we
shall realise once more that forever means an
empty room, a tired night swirling into nowhere,
when I shore up to your tattered skyline.
2
At midnight I move in on strangers, for the caress
or the kill. I have come to terms with shadows,
I have been assaulted by gentler lovetimes: once
in a long while a face comes near, our eyes meet
in challenge, or is it love? Our bodies come alive
in secret oneness: one spring ago, terrified to be
touched, you draw me tonight, at last, deep within
your frantic countryside.
4
The wind disentangles itself from your frenzied body as
hurricanes of dreams follow me: eternity is only a
river reaching towards the sea. My tongue travels to
your navel, and downwards: I cling to your body, my
mouth breathes in the shadow of your breath. Someday
perhaps the sea will reveal itself, the delirium of
the flesh fatigue at dawn.
11
It hurts to say I am sorry. So let us use unfamiliar words.
The summer has gone the ground's turned cold. The old
road calls me back again. Anothertime we shall meet again:
as strangers or as friends, or perhaps as lovers once
again. Now turn, turn, to the rain again.
15
Tonight I draw your body to my lips: your hand, your
mouth, your breasts, the small of your back. I draw
blood to every secret nerve and gently kiss their tips, as
you move under me, anchored to a rough sea. I cling to
you, your music and your knees. I touch the secret vibes
of your body, I fill my hands with the darkness of
your hair. This passion alone can resurrect our love.
|
Written by
Adrienne Rich |
The autumn feels slowed down,
summer still holds on here, even the light
seems to last longer than it should
or maybe I'm using it to the thin edge.
The moon rolls in the air.
I didn't want this child.
You're the only one I've told.
I want a child maybe, someday, but not now.
Otto has a calm, complacent way
of following me with his eyes, as if to say
Soon you'll have your hands full!
And yes, I will; this child will be mine
not his, the failures, if I fail
will all be mine.
We're not good, Clara,
at learning to prevent these things,
and once we have a child it is ours.
But lately I feel beyond Otto or anyone.
I know now the kind of work I have to do.
It takes such energy! I have the feeling I'm
moving somewhere, patiently, impatiently,
in my loneliness.
I'm looking everywhere in nature
for new forms, old forms in new places,
the planes of an antique mouth, let's say, among the leaves.
I know and do not know
what I am searching for.
Remember those months in the studio together,
you up to your strong forearms in wet clay,
I trying to make something of the strange impressions
assailing me--the Japanese
flowers and birds on silk, the drunks
sheltering in the Louvre, that river-light,
those faces.
.
.
Did we know exactly
why we were there? Paris unnerved you,
you found it too much, yet you went on
with your work.
.
.
and later we met there again,
both married then, and I thought you and Rilke
both seemed unnerved.
I felt a kind of joylessness
between you.
Of course he and I
have had our difficulties.
Maybe I was jealous
of him, to begin with, taking you from me,
maybe I married Otto to fill up
my loneliness for you.
Rainer, of course, knows more than Otto knows,
he believes in women.
But he feeds on us,
like all of them.
His whole life, his art
is protected by women.
Which of us could say that?
Which of us, Clara, hasn't had to take that leap
out beyond our being women
to save our work? or is it to save ourselves?
Marriage is lonelier than solitude.
Do you know: I was dreaming I had died
giving birth to the child.
I couldn't paint or speak or even move.
My child--I think--survived me.
But what was funny
in the dream was, Rainer had written my requiem--
a long, beautiful poem, and calling me his friend.
I was your friend
but in the dream you didn't say a word.
In the dream his poem was like a letter
to someone who has no right
to be there but must be treated gently, like a guest
who comes on the wrong day.
Clara, why don't I dream of you?
That photo of the two of us--I have it still,
you and I looking hard into each other
and my painting behind us.
How we used to work
side by side! And how I've worked since then
trying to create according to our plan
that we'd bring, against all odds, our full power
to every subject.
Hold back nothing
because we were women.
Clara, our strength still lies
in the things we used to talk about:
how life and death take one another's hands,
the struggle for truth, our old pledge against guilt.
And now I feel dawn and the coming day.
I love waking in my studio, seeing my pictures
come alive in the light.
Sometimes I feel
it is myself that kicks inside me,
myself I must give suck to, love.
.
.
I wish we could have done this for each other
all our lives, but we can't.
.
.
They say a pregnant woman
dreams her own death.
But life and death
take one another's hands.
Clara, I feel so full
of work, the life I see ahead, and love
for you, who of all people
however badly I say this
will hear all I say and cannot say.
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