locked into / out of [self-portrait]

All right, Go ahead!
What's in a name?
I guess I'll be locked into
As much as I'm locked out of!

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay ~

A Work Of Artifice [self-portrait]

The bonsai tree
in the attractive pot
could have grown eighty feet tall
on the side of a mountain
till split by lightning.
But a gardener
carefully pruned it.
It is nine inches high.
Every day as he
whittles back the branches
the gardener croons,
It is your nature
to be small and cozy,
domestic and weak;
how lucky, little tree,
to have a pot to grow in.
With living creatures
one must begin very early
to dwarf their growth:
the bound feet,
the crippled brain,
the hair in curlers,
the hands you
love to touch.

~ Marge Piercy ~

think like a tree

Soak up the sun
Affirm life's magic
Be graceful in the wind
Stand tall after a storm
Feel refreshed after it rains
Grow strong without notice
Be prepared for each season
Provide shelter to strangers
Hang tough through a cold spell
Emerge renewed at the first signs of spring
Stay deeply rooted while reaching for the sky
Be still long enough to
hear your own leaves rustling.

~ Karen I. Shragg ~

tenho fases

Tenho fases, como a lua.
Fases de andar escondida,
fases de vir para a rua...
Perdição da minha vida!
Perdição da vida minha!
Tenho fases de ser tua,
tenho outras de ser sozinha.

Fases que vão e que vem,
no secreto calendário
que um astrólogo arbitrário
inventou para meu uso.

E roda a melancolia
seu interminável fuso!

Não me encontro com ninguém
(tenho fases, como a lua...)
No dia de alguém ser meu
não é dia de eu ser sua...
E, quando chega esse dia,
o outro desapareceu...

Aquilo que ontem cantava
já não canta.
Morreu de uma flor na boca:
não do espinho na garganta.

~ Cecília Meireles ~

about dying

I'm not going to beg you pardon
(for all that)
neither for my way of surviving
nor for the fact that I don't fear death.

I'm not going to tell you
(anything)
neither about my fear of dying
nor about the way I do
(die).

I’m not going to let you see
(ever)
neither the wounds you caused
nor the bandages I’m creating
(every minute of your absence).

I’m not going to break
(again)
neither the silence
nor into pieces.

I’m going to lose
(unrecoverable)
either my words
or my voice.
And if you ever knew
(more than this)
my words are my voice is my life
you should know
(tacitly)
that I’m going to die.

~ Abra ~

killing the love [self-portrait]

I am the love killer,
I am murdering the music we thought so special,
that blazed between us, over and over.
I am murdering me, where I kneeled at your kiss.
I am pushing knives through the hands
that created two into one.
Our hands do not bleed at this,
they lie still in their dishonor.
I am taking the boats of our beds
and swamping them, letting them cough on the sea
and choke on it and go down into nothing.
I am stuffing your mouth with your
promises and watching
you vomit them out upon my face.
The Camp we directed?
I have gassed the campers.

Now I am alone with the dead,
flying off bridges,
hurling myself like a beer can into the wastebasket.
I am flying like a single red rose,
leaving a jet stream
of solitude
and yet I feel nothing,
though I fly and hurl,
my insides are empty
and my face is as blank as a wall.

Shall I call the funeral director?
He could put our two bodies into one pink casket,
those bodies from before,
and someone might send flowers,
and someone might come to mourn
and it would be in the obits,
and people would know that something died,
is no more, speaks no more, won't even
drive a car again and all of that.

When a life is over,
the one you were living for,
where do you go?

I'll work nights.
I'll dance in the city.
I'll wear red for a burning.
I'll look at the Charles very carefully,
weraing its long legs of neon.
And the cars will go by.
The cars will go by.
And there'll be no scream
from the lady in the red dress
dancing on her own Ellis Island,
who turns in circles,
dancing alone
as the cars go by.

~ Anne Sexton ~

underneath [self-portrait]

Up, up you go, you must be introduced.

You must learn belonging to (no-one)

Drenched in the white veil (day)

The circle of minutes pushed gleaming onto your finger.

Gaps pocking the brightness where you try to see
in.

Missing: corners, fields,

completeness: holes growing in it where the eye looks hardest.

Below, his chest, a sacred weightless place

and the small weight of your open hand on it.

And these legs, look, still yours, after all you've done with them.

Explain the six missing seeds.

Explain muzzled.

Explain tongue breaks thin fire in eyes.


Learn what the great garden-(up, up you go)-exteriority,
exhales:

the green never-the-less the green who-did-you-say-you-are

and how it seems to stare all the time, that green,


until night blinds it temporarily.

What is it searching for all the leaves turning towards you.

Breath the emptiest of the freedoms.

When will they notice the hole in your head (they won't).

When will they feel for the hole in your chest
(never).

Up, go. Let being-seen drift over you again, sticky kindness.

Those wet strangely unstill eyes filling their heads-


thinking or sight?-

all waiting for the true story-

your heart, beating its little song: explain. . .

Explain requited

Explain indeed the blood of your lives I will require

explain the strange weight of meanwhile

and there exists another death in regards to which

we are not immortal

variegated dappled spangled intricately wrought

complicated obstruse subtle devious

scintillating with change and ambiguity

~ Jorie Graham ~

out of my head

Get out of my walled infinity
Of the star circle round my heart
Of my mouthful of sun

Get out of the cosmic sea of my blood
Of my flow of my ebb
Get out of my stranded silence

Get out I said get out

Get out of my living abyss
Of the bare father-tree within me

Get out how long must I cry get out

Get out of my bursting head
Get out just get out

~ Vasko Popa ~

who knows

Who says that all must vanish?
Who knows, perhaps the flight
of the bird you wound remains,
and perhaps flowers survive
caresses in us, in their ground.

[...]

~ Rainer Maria Rilke ~

sense of something coming

I am like a flag in the center of open space.
I sense ahead the wind which is coming, and must live
it through.
while the things of the world still do not move:
the doors still close softly, and the chimneys are full
of silence,
the windows do not rattle yet, and the dust still lies down.

I already know the storm, and I am troubled as the sea.
I leap out, and fall back,
and throw myself out, and am absolutely alone
in the great storm.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke ~

madness and a bit of hope

8.
what is madness
the smell of orchids stronger than the smell of blood
how many pieces of glass embedded in my feet
i mustn't stop to look

no, i mustn't stop to look
i want these flowers
i want this sweet touch
risking life for beauty

risking sanity for love
a bit of hope covering my wounds
a bit of hope covering my wounds

~ Safiya Henderson-Holmes ~

voices

1.
what is madness
is it an outbreak of dawn, a wild blood sun
killing this night
this touch less night

it is the wale of a full moon
over the breast of a homeless mother
or the shriek of stars
witnessing murder

to risk living
you encounter madness
broad based and picking its teeth
the insane sigh
and pull you to their chest

sometimes, you must stop breathing
to leave them
and leaving the insane
is again, madness

a run towards orchids
blooming in a field of broken glass
a terrain too dangerous to walk over
and running doesn't avoid the danger

but then, this is
the risk of living
the blood letting among flowers

2.
what is madness
a cacophony of voices
in our armpits
hurling us into stillness
banging our heads with memory

i remember when small
the voices were crystals
easy to hold and pray to
at night they were bells
listening to the wind in my breath

when small
the voices taught me how
to ride my bike down steep hills
how to turn sharp corners

the voices made me
laugh at the dark
and the darkened places
kept the voices hidden

from pointing fingers
of mommy
she - wanted to know
who i was talking with
she wanted to know

why I sang even when
daddy was drunk
beyond a reason
being here

she wanted to know
what allowed me to sleep
the middle of her crying
and why i never awoke with tears of my own

the voices
I never told mommy about the voices
and how they whispered me
into dancing to the edge of everything

how they hummed
as i curtsied for the old ladies
and kissed the sunken cheeks
of old men

how at times they riddled me
to a windowsill, or a bridge
or a razor, or daddy's whiskey
but just for fun

just to see me dance to
and away from another edge
the voices are such testers
when small, i never thought of failing

3.
now, tapping
behind my ears awakening
too many pieces
the voices are rivalry

jarring, rampant
between my fingers
between my toes
i hear them

even as i run towards the orchids
i hear them
belittling my escape

4.
what is madness
a seagull impaled on a fence
a cat walking into a river
a baby sucking needles in the center of a room
rain beating holes into the eyes of a dead dog

when did the voices
become
so diseased and angry
and whose strength do they use
to carry us to such unfamiliar place

they can pull triggers
they can throw us off rooftops
they can split us into uneven halve
whose strength do they use

6.
a man i know
is fighting these mutant voices
he is scraping them from his walls
dragging them from under his bed

somehow they have read
his books and his mind
they quote his fears
hear them, whose strength do they use
hear them, whose strength do they use

they are charging up this man's back with swords
an army paranoid of his every blink
they bulge his eyes
see them, whose strength do they use

the voices are taking this man's dark brown skin
and stretching it across his memory .
he stands before himself like a crucifix
his palms showing the lines of too much and too many

a mother, two fathers, three brothers,
two sisters, two daughters, one son, two wives,
three college degrees, no job
i hear this man shouting at the voices

a cacophony of his own
a litany of statistics
of dark brown women and men
the number on ships

the number killed by whips
the number in chains,
the number swung from ropes
the numbers, every number heavy in his throat
a malignant phlegm

i've seen this man try
and inch his skin away from the voices
seen him count the spots of light
left by other dark skins

and carry this number as if a
candle to his brain
illuminating the horrors
and when he speaks

it is of the women and men
ripped open in front of their mothers
it is of the fathers crippled by
the weight of silence

this man's tongue is thick
with the silence of dark brown fathers
and the voices dare him to speak
dare him to dare

these voices jealous
of this man's 46 unbending years
threaten him with death at any corner
threaten him with the lethal stare of a stranger

7.
what is madness
hot tar cooling on dark brown skin
pickled genitals in a jar

and when we run from these voices
we wish for the wings of eagles, for the grasp of hawks
a caravan of warriors in our sweat
our eyes screaming madness be still

not another dark brown body
will it take, not another
will it take to its rage ridden room
not another foot, tooth, or strand

of tightly coiled hair
this man and i poised against our walls
ready for attack
see us, our skin, our only weapon

8.
what is madness
the smell of orchids stronger than the smell of blood
how many pieces of glass embedded in my feet
i mustn't stop to look

no, i mustn't stop to look
i want these flowers
i want this sweet touch
risking life for beauty

risking sanity for love
a bit of hope covering my wounds
a bit of hope covering my wounds

~ Safiya Henderson-Holmes ~

she [all the same]

it is all blood and breaking,
blood and breaking, the thing
drops out of its box squalling
into the light. they are both squalling,
animal and cage. her bars lie wet, open
and empty and she has made herself again
out of flesh out of dictionaries,
she is always emptying and it is all
the same wound the same blood the same breaking.

~ Lucille Clifton ~