December 17, 2003

Coming up...

...for air.

and the ground looks manageable from here.

large chunks of the rock that pinned me
flailing
to the killing floor

are falling

and I am above such crumbling truths
things I believed were lies
are now showing themselves

as gold
silver lined puffs of rain

slivering to dust
and I am up and running against the grain again

how could I have faltered so fully before
rain is only water
falling

a cup of it could quench all desire I cradled as holy
parts of me

weak and flesh
still wish to hold the memory of you
as perfect

but we are all human and we fail

err

survive
and some of us are better at telling the tale

therapy is a sweet stick of salt/sugar/sucked dry

licking the stiff lip
of what could have been
and why we did not do better than our mothers hoped for us

grandmothers become softer as they age
they fold furry
into the arms of some small terror
screaming abandon
from the body

of a daughter/woman become
invisible

we accept
the cloak of not being seen

beg for the feral shape of our offspring
to flower

feed the child
please
feed the child

suckling at the throat of society's monstrous inequities

nothing is bolder than living all the way through
the drowning


the small gasps
the closing of all things imagined
for after this moment

we become dust

and I am content with my lot today
a friend
lounging careless on my living room couch

the soft shade of avocadoes casting light
on our faces

good friends and food
and what I have come to know as family

my poems
and my back crashing against my own floor

my own fingers learning to play an old instrument
again
my own cunt
full with the flesh of my own possibilities

calling me
I am calling me now

and forever
I will always own myself

my voice
mine

my body is mine

my heart
my year
insurmountable
and the beauty of the few things that went
just right

fight with me woman/child
you are only
me

outside of a collective voice
can you hear me

Staceyann!

can you hear me woman

with broken body
smaller than she can see

can you hear the small rumble
the yawp becoming
music

morphing into madness
the circle

the scent of me
walking backwards

sometimes this is the way to undo
the inevitable

it will happen

but only as I choose
only as I choose
only as I choose

only as I...

Staceyann

Posted by staceyann at December 17, 2003 05:25 AM
Comments

woman... i hear you. sometimes, when all alone, but not entirely lonely, i feel the need to connect to another, just to know that i too am heard. we need each other to confirm each others existance, and woman... i hear you. i know you hear me,m cuz you write to me... you write about me... and i keep coming back to read from your infinate understanding of woman... and believe me... more women need to hear you roaaaar!
good food and friends have become family, and so have you - i welcome you with open arms into my life. thanx for keeping on keeping... mak.

Posted by: makgano at December 17, 2003 07:09 PM

"I took a deep breath and listened to the old bray of my heart. I am. I am. I am." Sylvia Plath-

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love cannot fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution's power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would.
Edna St. Millay

And so it is. You neither sell nor trade--

Posted by: lesoules at December 18, 2003 03:43 PM