Staceyann Chin

Why do we obsess...

...possession without reason?

Need is the axle upon which our frail insecurities turn.

Halfway through Sylvia's Bell Jar and the spiral shoots poison into the vein of possibility. Drunk on the opulence of audition we perform for everyone. We wear our roles on our sleeves and those who come close enough are disappointed to find the crisp veneer is all they had hoped it would not be.

Fraud is the fuel that feeds the fire of love. Love is nothing but the borrowed dream of what we wonder when we are weakest.

Meandering

the metal thick
and sharpened with rain and sleet
I am able to see myself clearly

for the first time in years
I wish there was less of me to consider

bagels and brie
mastication
the base ingestion of sustenance

food sex god

Winter not even here yet
and I am under the microscope
again

my friends are worried

I am less so
too vain
to cut any of my parts into pieces

I worry about surviving
my left side dragging sluggish up some staircase or other

I fancy I have one child to yet come from my body
why would I maim the vessel

today
I am too concerned with my own vices
to hear these voices urging me to the other side

pulling me
always pulling me

to some imagined silence

what if there is nothingness
no silence
no peace
she asks me why I would want to do something like that

late night and the phonecalls come
everyone calls
everyone but her

and needing her is just symptom
a fever cloaking some infection of mind or heart or both

a mother gone too early
a father
stepping in too late

fate is a two headed sword swallowing all we dream when we are children

I wish you sunshine and silver rings with your politics tattoed in gold. I wish you ink and pen to record all that means more to you than I

I wish me well
and the courage to look under why I write these rants to strangers who are not always compassionate

the kinder comments I keep
mutter them under poems spilling from the dark circle of a laptop planted sturdy upon my beautiful desk

the others I obsess
consider their indictment
and berate my self indulgent pre-occupation with death

when I had no money for wine
I cheerfully plotted my next fare for the poem
read by a blue-haired lesbian from Chicago

I don't write enough
too much room given to brooding

poets write he tells me
and I think I could fall in love with him
if he were more female

if only he were older
younger
braver

if only he could see this fear
and the reason it remains overfed
and living beneath the small of my back
growing thinner
now that I am able
to afford the luxury of ignoring meals
unless they are mandatory

with friends
who insist on this base digestion of soy
and salad and sweeteners in decaffeinated tea

I am not ready for what might be coming

I should go prepare

Staceyann

Posted by staceyann at December 15, 2003 04:14 PM