Excerpt- Communication, Meaning

     "... in English classes I hear from students, 'Well if that's what the author meant, why didn't they just say that?' Because I am also a student in these situations, I sympathize with that sentiment, and have made a point of trying to write only exactly what I mean. But it is also the case that in order to keep the truth of what I try to say when I write intact, some of it must be vague, contradictory, without context, sometimes even without sound (as in some of my poems which are more collections and arrangements of punctuation than they are sounds composed of letters of the alphabet). It's like looking at rocks in shallow water on a sunny day. If I focus on the rocks, I can't see anything of the reflection of the sky; if I focus on the reflection, I can't make out the rocks. But if I let my gaze go hazy, the whole of the image, both the rocks under the water and the reflection on the surface, is clear to me.
     But then how to communicate that experience? Thinking about this question and trying to come up with even a temporary answer always leaves me feeling alone, wholly alone. People are so far away. One answer is to try to arrange a situation (a poem, oil on canvas, sound) that makes it possible for the audience (a person) to enter the same mindset, have the same experience, feel the same thing as I did. For me, the search for this kind of connection is desperate..."

The Flesh

You, thing.

I am convinced there is a God

because of the perfect cruelty of being lashed to you,

thing.

You, abhorrent tumor, cancer d'être.

I have spent my nights in an ongoing orgasm of mutilation.

Lashes are the only kind of pleasure you afford me.

Thing.

Your serpentine lashing inspires awe-

some, awful

divine or demonic, depending-- fitting

for such a

thing           as

you.

The Wanting

It is all I want.

It is all the want.

It is all the want I am.

The want is all I am.

The want has the godliness of knowing me without my ever having known it.

The want has one simple object.

It has not been found.

I cannot conceive of it.

Wherefrom comes the want?

I am perhaps reduced to this one thing, expansive.

Without me it is not.

Without me it wants not.

Without want it is not that I am.

I am without, without, without the wanting’s it.

Excerpt- "Meg"

This is an excerpt from a story I've been working on for some time now. I've grown to adore and revere the short story, and have desired and endeavored (so far, in vain) to create one. This is the dream sequence that comes just before the end.
-

     All around her wheat is growing, so tall. The tips of the stalks just touch the pool of golden light above her, making ripples there. A stalk quivers, rattling- a little man appears. Tentatively, he peeks at her. She is okay, she is like him, and he goes skipping and dancing, skipping and dancing on his way to see the man. Now more stalks are quivering, rattling, producing more little people. Hesitant steps quickly become leaps and cartwheels, and they are all off, skipping and dancing on their way to see the man.

     Her face is the whole sun and the whole air is wheat, and feet aflight, arms spread and eyes closed she hops and spins through the amber light on her way to see the man. She stops. Eyes open, she sees the wheat has, shrunk. But no, something, like a pebble hitting her ankle, she feels, looking down, it is a little man. He dusts himself off and hurries back on his way to see the man. She's big. She looks around. At her feet hundreds of little people skip and dance on their way to see the man. She steps back, back, back, she runs back to where she was beneath the wheat. The wheat rises above her, and, back to her starting size, she stops. She takes a few steps forward, she grows a few centimeters. No. She will outrun it. Eyes closed, feet pounding, she runs as fast as she can, legs burning, heart pumping, on her way to see the man.

     Her breath's a roar, now all around her, and it is the sea. The man is there in his rainbow sombrero and painted on eyebrows and mustache, thick and black. The little people are in a line, chatter rattling, waiting for the man to tie one of his balloons to one of their legs and send them up over the sea, and they giggle and wave from up high filling the sky with hundreds of shining balloons. It is her turn, she smiles, so wide, for the man has a candy pink balloon. He looks up at her.

     “Look, giant, none of my balloons are big enough to float you over the ocean. Find some other way across, and in the the mean time step aside so I can tie these little guys to their balloons,” he says. 

     She tries, but please, to ask again, maybe he could just give her two or three? but the man only gives her a wave of his hand as he's already bending to tie the next little man to his balloon. She moves into the sea. Overhead the little men make all the sky a celebration. Although she is huge, the tide overtakes her. She struggles in the knot of waves which threaten to consume her.

     Red. Rises and seeps into the sky, until no sea, no sky, explosive red is only, a volume erupting at the base of her skull which is infinity because she too becomes the redness which is everything.

]fuck[

Hallucinate headlights to stay alive, for tonight, for tonight, anyway.

Only the day should be cold, and the night soft.

His arrival.

He arrives without streamers, and without confetti, and without bugle calls.

Without him the house has walls.

Traffic.

The tide is jealous of that great roar of traffic.

Villains hide their victim’s screams in it.

Tomorrow starts us over.

Poems from my childhood

Today I decided to include three poems I wrote as an elementary school aged child, before I had that crushing awareness of myself as a separate entity whose creations made a statement about her value to the rest of the world. I miss being in a state of mind where it never could occur to me that my checking out the (same) best book of children's poems from our school library week after week after week, or escaping to our driveway to write my way through spiral notebooks meant anything.


This first one is from third grade. We had just finished a lesson in Haiku, and we went off to sit on the lawn, write Haiku, and share in small groups. (During this same exercise I wrote another one about a waterfall, but I have since forgotten that one).




Roses


Bright bursts of colour
Against the swirling blue sky
Hear the silent song




Two things about this poem. First, my mother and grandmother always kept huge, famous (to me) rose gardens. I spent a lot of time there smelling the roses, stealing their petals to fling into the air, and, later, when two eucalyptus trees starting growing at the bottom of the hill in our yard, I learned how to make potpourri from the leaves and rose petals. These rose bushes were deserving of an anthem. Second, I must have read a lot of English verse as a child, because I always spelled "color" as "c-o-l-o-u-r." It actually took my conscious effort to begin spelling the word the using the usual American spelling.


The next two poems were written outside of school for a fifth grade event the fifth grade class held every year called the "Author's Tea." On one afternoon, we spent the whole rest of the day after lunch sitting in a circle, eating treats each student brought, and listening to each other read poems and stories we'd written throughout the year. I think the "winner" of the day was a story by a girl in the class named Kelly about a girl's mother in the hospital-- she didn't make it. The room full of children and parents was silent until somebody asked if it was a true story, and Kelly laughed and said no. Here are the two poems I read that day-




A Wonderful Day


I ran through fields with skies of blue,
My feet were wet with drops of dew,
My heart went wild with the beauty of Spring,
Today Mother Earth decided to sing,
And then I lay down in a pile of hay,
And think to myself, what a wonderful day.




My jumpy verb tense and confusion of "lay" and "lie" are almost cute. What I remember about writing this poem is that this is an entirely fictional day. I never ran through any such fields barefoot in the morning and then rested contentedly in any barn. But the image of all those places and things, and the experience of all those events were salient, were real, in my mind.


The second poem I read that day was about moving on to middle school- a new school with new kids to meet and understand.




Farewell


Farewell to all I used to know,
Fate has called, it's time to go,
My mind keeps saying it can't be so,
But soon I'll have to go.

{M & Meop} [title pending]

Yes, that’s probably it, I’m certain.

One hand washes back out

to sea, washes back out to sea,

while I sit beached, my will the tide

pulling, pooling

infinitely into such metaphors

overly ripe, overly sweet

voluptuous of course and all that.

Yes, I’m probably certain.

I keep a his smile

I keep a his smile

in mind

at nights

at intervals

a his hands

a his disintegrated

body bits

swirling in

brine, my most peaceful

most constant, brine.