... and I am still here. Surprised by the journey
stilled by the quiet
that surrounds my name
my face
my house
my plants-
some did not make it through the year
others thrived and bloomed
aloud
white blossoms
ringed with purple paint
slender necks
elegant in the dying
living is the reason we have to go
but we must wait
always
for the ripest fruit to fall
we must pick the flower
most flushed
and in all of this I am still budding
still alive
alive
still
I am affirming
life
even in death there is beauty
the strange
bedding of old sheets
tangled in these new legs I am still growing
T'is Christmas
and I am celebrating my own arrival
marking the minutes
leading me
to my own birth
hours older
and a whole year has passed
and I am still alive
alive
my friends and I
are still
alive
I think I might ave a glass of wine
South African
reisling
semi-dry
wine and the memory of why I have grown to cherish the sting
of alcohol on my tongue
the strange heat
the quickening
of pulse
the breath cut short in uneven intervals
under the spell of you
I close my eyes-
see my face-
full yellow moonstone
reflecting
the prism of pleasures I took away from you
May all your comings
mirror more than the bodies of Hedon
Staceyann
The Birthday looms large. And for the first time in years I am awaiting it alone. It is good. This alone-ness.
The view here is better without the yen for some woman or other blocking my line of vision.
31 years ago I suspect I was alone
contemplating
the craze of a life
destined to follow strange paths
the world is quiet
these hours before the well-
wishing
the polite gratitude
for the phonecalls
the pretense of family
and all being well
if only for this moment
my mother
remembers
I hope
my bloody entry
into the life she did not want
what a sacrifice
it must have been to bear
the bundle unwanted
I fancy myself
a Christ
Black
lesbian
coming before anyone expected me
missed my intended zodiac
by two months
and two weeks
what a thing
the child unloved
is committed to telling the tale
of how city after city meets under her breath
and Ani
is writing again
her own voice ascending
the wild ladder
of finding
the self buried under all those pictures
people take of her
I never like the pictures
true as they might be
it is me
who stands/sits
grins/frowns
pensive bitch
leaning away from the camera
in my 32nd year of survival
I am grateful for the parallax
the hint of what else it could be
that sees me
reaching for more
every year we wish for more than we had
less of the things we did not want
we always want more
or less
what we accomplished yesterday pales
in the fluorescent glare of tomorrow
and all is tenuous
all is miniscule
nothing of value
is visible
only the inadequacies
the shortcoming of milestones
carved out of imposssible
my best friend spends her birthday
alone
every year
she considers
weighs the length of her year
against the one before
so I await here
practising
the art of being alone
with one year ahead
one behind me
each cluster of days/weeks/months
posing questions
yet to be anwsered
low words queried in this quiet dark
barking
failures and triumphs alike
and all of this wrapped into Christmas cards
and gifts sent in the mail
spread out on my wooden floors
the new lamps
unfamiliar
the rainbow cushions fumbled into a kind of constructed disorder
my mother will hear from me tomorrow
always
I am of two minds
around this woman who left me so she would not die
there in the carnival
of poverty
and discontent
if she were not my mother
I would call her feminist
raise issues
of how brave she was for walking
away from tradition
but I will call her
and make small bits of laughter
with my sister
and the year will pass
peaceful
for now
I am here
swiveling round these notes I am sending to you
thank you for reading
for writing your own stories
for letting me read them sometimes
here's to another bloody
year of picking at myself
and finding the flesh
rotting in places
muscled in others
always I am human
and erring
barely surviving
but cheers to all the drinkers
the clinkers of wine glasses
may the Christ child bring more than you need
may Kwaanza
be all you envisioned
whatever the occasion
or lack of it
thereof
when you go under this season
may there be more than enough breath
for those you love to come up face for air
Peace
and all that Jazz,
Staceyann
...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
...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
...and the alone still beckons. Turgid like the tight pull of night and death calling like Sylvia and I am here wishing I could work up the disgust for her dying
copping out
like black girls don't have the courage to do that shit
everybody's sorrow is heavier than my own
do you have a suicide plan
she asks
what do you do
if you get close enough to the knife
and I have more tha a dozen sharp edges
in my kitchen
two pairs of scissors
and the courage to wait
and see
what happens if I should choose to go this way
and I am flirting with death
and how she no longer asks
how I am doing
and I conclude she does not care
or cannot carry me
and how heavy I can be
when I go crazy
in strange rooms
I pay too much rent for
and how I have become more at home
in hotel rooms
more at home in the stark clarity
of water streaming strong from the gold taps
of beds I pay way too much for
I feel like a prostitute
one night here
another there
and I can still smell you on my fingers
the bug you are bit
me
swollen like the child that will never grow from your body
or mine
how I love you
more than I will ever love my mother
who left me
with a ready excuse for all the shit I could ever do to my wrists
or you
to yours
you always loved life
more than I loved death
and surviving these nights is a game I play
with one breath
two breaths
three breaths
rest
but not too long
you have to keep breathing
have to keep writing
you don't want to find out
what might happen if there is no word
vomitting from these fists
gotta find new shit to say
don't matter who be listening
don't need nobody listening
to the sound of me trying not to die
inside these walls
looking out on this slush of a city
that was white
just minutes ago
where did all the time fly to
and this winter has begun uglier than the first time you left me
and how I am writing because I promised
a woman I never fucked
that I would not call you
would not press those seven/ten keys
so I dial this alphabet
spread my palm holy
across the keyboard
and make up things to say
ways to tell others all I am not prompted to say
to you
I love you most
when you are not looking
safer to cradle you then
claws buried under you unaware
love you better
when you are sleeping
when you are weeping you will always be mine
I know what you feel
when I am inconsolable
breaking all that holds the sorry tale that was/is us
shards raking the pelvis of what we cannot yet
give birth to
I wait for you
but I cannot tell this to you
huddled in Brooklyn
back bent and aching
I wait for you
wait for you
for you
and all the while I tell you
I am leaving...
Staceyann
The rooftops
cliche
covered in white
the night seems to creep closer
and all these lines have been written before
Sylvia Plath
and her strange name
batting left innings in my head
dreaded things
clawing notes of suicide
and I am not even brave enough to answer
whisper bad echoes
from Gothika
bad film
bad writing
pretty black girl underwater
and all my exes are beautiful today
you exquisite
as always
me trapped in Brooklyn
in an apartment
bigger than I need it
smaller than it could be
I could be anywhere
and it wouldn't matter
where are you
my body drums the question
day after day
cold
tits
witches
and romance
I love you
world
would give anything to be able to leave you
and come back still
coming back is always
sweet
like thick milk
in Westmoreland
canned
tinned we are wont to say in the Caribbean
love and a bottle
and me
finally drinking wine
I feel like a writer now
know what it feels like
with more than the heat of passion in my blood
you have always been fire
in my thin veins of truth
I have always wanted to own all of you
you
were too big to be held by my small arms
babies and what might become child
not mine
I am sure it is not mine
might never be mine
with the tiny hands of Sylvia and her pen
pinning me to questions
I answered long ago
writers
spinning tales of how they remember things to be
how they wished things were
before the loss
before the breaking of small things
gone whole
missing you is a constant
dumb plug
of water against drain
and rain is just snow
in a warmer place
and I am not writing enough
meetings about CDs
and production
and the lack of money's to do things right
the bell Jar calls
and I am it's bitch
watch me run...
Staceyann