Futility.
Came to me in a dream
With little baby hands
And thin and thinning curls
The color of my sister’s
The color they once were
Little baby voice that
Would once have asked
Why I kissed a strange man
With circles in his ears
A strange man that now denies
The circles in his ears
Who told me to look only at
The darkness of my lids
Until I would see nothing
Instead I saw a mirror
Pictured little baby’s body
Inside of my own hands
Inside of my own mind
Thinking thoughts maternally
Eternally thinking
Thoughts of her protection
Those little baby hands
Those coffee drinking hands
That put holes in their own ears
That held me as I writhed
That told me on the grass today
To think no thoughts at all
That told me on the grass today
That counting is important
But only to ninety-nine and
Never to a hundred
Never to the point at which
All questions have been answered
Always one more bead to count
Please stay a little longer
Please hold me, hold me longer
My little baby hands and hair
Aren’t ready for the bathtub
The chlorine, the nicotine
You punished me, you wanted me
You even touched my face
I even touched yours
I even dared to ask you
Why holes were in your ears
To which you had responded
“So I could be more holy”
Which should have been a joke
Which means I should have laughed
I told you that I do not laugh
At things that my little baby heart
Cannot help but fear
And so I must inform you
With my little baby lips
That what you know that I do not
That what I think that you do not
Is the fear that lives so in me.
Instead you think nothing.
Instead I know nothing.
In the whip crack silence it hit me. This town is still a plantation. The time was once Antebellum and these lands were still dense with vapor. The air was still warm. The air was still unchanging. In fact, a lot of things seemed never to change. The ladies with their hats like appendages; the children with food on their plates and dirt between their toes; the men with their voices that seemed never to pause for breath. Their voices, the very loudest, had a great deal of nothing to say. My guess is that they have waited for so long. When they belonged to food on plates and dirt on toes, their voices were told never to speak, only to listen. Only to take and take in. Only to save it for later. The boys became men and had listened so much. They knew exactly what to say, and so they said it. They told their sons what would make them happy. They told their daughters who would make them happy. They told their dirty, fed children that if they never spoke and only repeated, they would always be without burden. They would not need correcting if they were already correct. Leave the talking to the poor slaves we bought. Let them put the food on your plates. Let them talk but never be heard. I trust, my children, you will never give notice to words so silent. They are silent because they are not correct. So long as they challenge words of your land-owning fathers, their voices will never be right. Do not listen. Do not make them loud. If you really want to know why they do the work that keeps us fed and housed and paid, it’s because they cannot be corrected. They are wrong in the color their skin chose to darken. They are wrong in the songs that they sing. They are wrong as the beatnik critics of the utopian dream we correctly dreamt. They are wrong like the Montgomery white-collars who stopped riding the bus. They are wrong like Copernicus who was only right after dying wrong. They are Allen Ginsberg and Anne Hutchinson. They are skeletons in Hitler’s closet. They are witches and communists and satanists. They are wrong. We are right. We are consistent. We have no burdens. We face no consequences. We are only obligated to be and make things correct. We can silence the things that dare speak over our truth. We can put sweat on their backs, pains in their feet, their minds. They will become plows and cash registers and brooms. They will become a process, unchanging, unresting, unthinking. I promise by then they will not talk. We can make them nothing at all. This country is still a plantation.
[video]
[video]
There is the couch
for being still
while everything is running
place to place
THEY SCREAM
They’re being chased
by whatever might become them
but nothing can become you
while you sit upon this couch
this couch that’s marked
by comfort and by weight
the things that keep from running
a person and his preferences
which also mark the couch
with tasks in pen
and checks by mail
and green happiness
in bags and bowls
and pretty things
which sometimes take a seat
upon the couch
pretty things so coming
and going
and never will you leave the couch
to follow them
or find the things you’ve lost
or find more things to lose
but only for the motions of
get up
go to work
buy a drink
but always headed for the couch.
The couch is lifeless, I want to scream
it does not come to you.
But, you say, at least it’s always
waiting there for me
while everything else
is going
and is coming
How is it
with all of this you cannot see
you feel you see enough
with something as impotent
as eyes
eyes with liner
feet with sandals
legs with vulgar excuses for shorts
mouths with vulgar excuses for words
undeserving of these ears
my ears
which for so long have listened
and in listening, seen
yes. seen.
that which you cannot
and so you look at me
secretly
begging me to share
what cannot be
made for you to see
so long as you
fear the words that
make you small
make you temporary
like the ice below your feet
the ice I ate
while you settled only
for what you could see
I smell blood
Fluorescence from all around
The walls and ceilings, canvas skin
Canvas mind, stained with age
I still smell blood
The fluorescence does nothing
These eyes are so open
So looking through a veil
Embroidered so kindly
With terrible, wonderful things
Like grass beds and tree limbs
Dismembered from trunks
By sea storms
That they did not wish upon themselves
But they were brave,
They were strong
They never blamed
The planters and the passerby’s
Who sang them wind lullabies
And never least watered their roots
Or picked up the branches
They walk
Unaffected by sea storms
They do not wear this terrible veil
This elegant veil
Sediment veil
White with fluorescence
They do not see
They do not smell blood
I have never known a floor to be my own
For many reasons
One
Its grout was laid upon the Earth by hands more able than my own
That is to say I am not able
Two
Able to
Call myself the owner of a portion
Any portion
Of the grounds that made me
The grounds which laid me
Up into those soils that they govern
Of shared and gaseous lifeblood
More vital than the heart in us
Which beguile us, our leaves, our stems
Which course through us a nectar
Contemptible a nectar
For men amongst men have spilt the thing
And drawn the thing
And tried to fix the thing
That matters least in spite of what exists
Outside our vinyl knapsack skin
So then at least the nectar
Is more valuable when spilt
A toxin to the soils and the seams
That through all it may run
But only for the way it dries
Should its mess not be concerned for
I have before lost nectar
From my vinyl-knapsack skin
And less desirable a flower is
Without its own sweet nectar
Which now is jarred and boxed and shipped
Or otherwise left to dry
Or left for the taking
On the soils that surround me
That have grown old and weathered
That have seen flash of fire
Flash of rain
Flash of natural demise
Which serve to make it known that
I will fall fondly wilted
Undoubtedly wilted
Do not leave me for the impermanence I am.
mum, i want a computer for my birthday.
Reads more like anxiety