Found Some Old Poems

I found some poems that I wrote about Felix, most from almost exactly a year ago. They seemed like 1 am rants at the time but upon reexamination I actually think some of them are pretty good. I'm going to post them separately. Here's the first; this is the poem that used used to be a secret:

As you stare at me
nakedly I wonder whether
I would love you
if you were a woman
and in a case of severe dramatic irony,
I often wake up
tragically next to you
from a dream of making love to a girl-

the same girl I've dreamt of
numerous times.
Once I kissed her, drunken sparked-orange
tongue lolling into her perfect Romanian mouth
on a sidewalk, and I remember how
she pulled away
upset despite months of subtle come-ons.

She is grating, turbulent,
petty
so this is not a love poem.

She haunts
me, grimly, a skinny blackhaired reminder
that I will always want something
more.




3.29.09

This is the first time I have ever really told the Truth in my whole life (Admission)

The reason that I'm writing you tonight is to tell you something very important. It's something I've known for quite a long time but have been afraid to share with you. I believe in god. And magic. And spirits and energies, not as elegant metaphors, but as manifest realities. I believe in these things because I have experienced them firsthand. I never told you because I was afraid of you juding me and not holding my beliefs to be legitimate or sane. I projected this fear onto you because you are the lens through which I experience the world when not looking through my own eyes -- yours is the second opinion I seek. For a long time I was ambivalent about the validity or even the reality of these beliefs, and so I used my fear of being judged by you as an excuse to not fully admit them to myself. However, tonight on the way home from your house I finally was thinking about it clearly and I realized for the first time that you want me to be happy, and that the source of that happiness is immaterial to you so long as it exists. This was very huge for me. I'm sorry it took me so long -- I don't want you to feel offended. It's not you. After realizing that I had been raped (and most likely throughout the entire time leading up to that realization), my ability to trust anything was severely retarded and our development as intimate friends was undoubtedly delayed. Coincidentally, it was during one of these times (most seriously, when we weren't speaking) that my passion for mysticism and spirituality really bloomed. That made it easy for me to hide it from you.

But yes; ever since I went to Burning Man, and even before that, I have felt as though I have been on a spiritual journey of sorts, to reconnect to myself and to the Mother earth, the entire bountiful Universe, that I came from. It is very hard for me to write these words, perhaps because they portray a sentiment of vulnerability that I am most afraid of betraying. To say that one believes that the Universe is founded on love, harmony, and symmetry, as I do, is to not only open oneself up very wide in general, but to open oneself specifically to ridicule; when viewed at surface value the world hardly seems to reflect that, so believing in and devoting oneself to accessing all-present love definitely seems more than a little crazy. But I really do believe, and when I open up the shell that surrounds my heart, I feel it.

I hope that you can respect this. It is a very integral part of who I am and has been for years now. I deeply apologize for not telling you sooner. I have wanted to, and have been trying to for a long time, but unfortunately I only felt able to today, and we are no longer together for me to say it to your face. I'm going to leave out details because I do think we should talk about this -- after all, we have both got to both equally see through the mask, and this is the side of myself that I have been hiding from you. To succinctly define what I mean, I will leave it at this:

over the years, I have discovered that I am a reverential person, and am most happy when in the act of worshiping something. You probably know this from the way I used to worship you. However after a lot of thought and processing I realized that I cannot worship people in any form, but rather that all I feel comfortable revering is nature and the great, unknowable, cosmic/psychic/spiritual/

physical forces that form and govern every aspect of our Universe. Pretty much, I love science, and especially quantum physics and geology (fuck it, I love em all, they're all inseparable) and am overwhelmed by the symmetry and organization I see present between and without all aspects of physical reality. What takes this home for me is the way that I feel these forces relating to me emotional being. I believe that all bodies are supersensible resonance chambers capable of being affected on the quantum level. Thus, we are all connected and every shift in motion of the breeze, earth, galaxy, and Universe can be felt within us if we pay close enough attention.

And that's what I'm trying to do with my life, among other things -- to pay attention to the cosmic rhythm and use what I feel to help others do the same, because it feels so good. So I worship the sky, love the clouds, kiss the trunks of the trees and embrace the hot earth that lies beneath everything. I do this alone, but it is truly this sentiment coming out when I call things beautiful. That's why it hurt me so much when you used to tease me for that -- it felt like you were catching me at prayer.

I hope that this does not make you feel different about me. If it does, consider this: all od these feeling and habits have been a very real and manifest part of me for years, and I know that you have still loved me. I don't doubt that love enough to think that this admission would be enough to drive it away; I don't doubt it at all actually, and that is why I am finally telling you this. I really want you to know me for all I am, for what I am most proud of, as you said. To close, I think that Joanna Newsom has a pretty good way with words, so I'll let her sum up how I feel about life:

"Squint skyward and listen, loving him, we move within his borders, just asterisms in the stars' set order. We could stand for a century, staring with our heads cocked in the broad daylight at this thing: Joy. Landlocked, in bodies that don't keep, dumbstruck with the sweetness of being, 'til we don't be."

So yeah. That's all. That's my side of the mask. Thank you for showing me yours.

Love,
Stella

The Same Hands

This entire year has been a re-run
of all the stupid shit I already
thought I'd said and done. And
you can break my heart
'til the dawn comes;

I'll just pick up all the parts
and stuff them down in my pockets
until you think that they're all gone
and you've erased my fear of love
made manifest
in that broken old organ.

And I have held the same hands
for what's suddenly become four
whole years, tracing
the bones
and
fondling the broad palms,
soft as lambs' ears.

But really I know
no time at all has passed
between us, because
everyone leaves for so long:

spring through fall, still
circling the sun's sphere.

And even more harshly, each
decides they were wrong
and they want to come home,
but they'll only love me if
I've completely reformed and developed
telepathy, so
they never have to show me
all their hopes and fears and weaknesses
and we can live together, happy and
blindly
and never have problems
if we don't feel like talking.

And through all this leaving and
reuniting, I can't
grasp why no one will trust me
when I told them softly,
lightly,
that my love is a constant
like gravity.

Yet we repulse
one another yearly, drawing so
close only to find
with great shock and surprise,
our magnetism's contrived,
so we spiral off

to a new network of stars.

And I have held the same hands
for what's suddenly become four
whole years, tracing
the bones
and
fondling the broad palms,
soft as lambs' ears.

But there's one pair of hands
I'll probably never tough again, unless
we're reunited
by that great mystery,
tragedy,

and I have to comfort him
because we've been thrown together
(against our will)
by that force
that can only form death
and beauty.

But considering
my only chance of holding him
in my arms again
would be if one of our friends died, I'd
rather lie alone and whisper
myself a lullaby
made of all the tears we cried
in the corner of my room

underneath the God's eye.

And you can break my heart
'til the dawn comes;

I'll just pick up all the parts
and stuff them down in my pockets
until you think that they're all gone
and you've erased my fear of love
made manifest
in that broken old organ.

You've destroyed my heart just to help me
grow a new one.
You're destroying my heart
just to help me grow a new one.

Around Your Borders / Catlike / I Hope (100th Post!)

I hope that when
you break her heart
you are swift and honest,
and leave her doubtless
that you are gone
or else you'll be at fault
for the grief you've caused.

And she'll lay around your borders
all day-- she'll lay
around
your borders all day, mewling
and clawing, with catlike paws
at the door that just held all
that she loved,

until she collapses for almost seven
months, wondering
in her feverish sleep, what exactly
made you leave?

And she'll lay around
your borders all day--
she'll lay
around your borders
all day.

I hope that when you break
her heart, you
do it early
and do not leave her to linger on,
kitten-blind while you move
on.

Or else she'll lay around
your borders
all day-- she'll lay
around
your borders all day, mewling
and clawing, with catlike paws
at the door
that just had held all
that she loved,

ignoring, willfully,
the new pet you've begun to feed,

and she'll lay around
your borders all day--
she'll lay
around your borders
all day.

So I hope that when
you say you're gone,
you're gone,
and that she does
not hang around too long, skinny
and starving from the gifts
left on your lawn
that should have been her breakfast
every morning that she laid
around your borders all day,

laid around your borders
all day, mewling
and clawing with catlike paws
at the door she knew had just held
all that she loved.

Sparrow and Scallop

A tiny house, up on a hill:
that's where I'll be, still.
And when you feel all overwrought,
I'll be the only soul
who's not corrupt.

And we can lie together
in the mustard and the clover,
and sing each other's praises
over and over,
alone as the loneliest last stars of morning--
plaintive as sparrows
and sealed shut like scallops:
nestled in our solitary loving.

But like dogs on a trail,
our deer-hearts will be hunted
by people with the zeal
of over-nervous mothers.
And we'll vainly
try to hide from them:
lower our eyes
and cover our skin,
grow out our hair and hide nymphlike,
behind
the translucent vestments
like reluctant brides.

We could hide this way forever,
as meek subsistence farmers;
preoccupied with sowing
and nature's simple, sainted order.
Born from the constellation of the archer,
headstrong as stallions
and trembly as rabbits;
united in our adroit
and earthy cunning--

we'll ignore them and laugh.
We'll ignore them and laugh;
let their gaze roll like water down our backs.
We'll ignore them and laugh.

But like dogs on a trail,
our deer-hearts will be hunted
by people with the zeal
of over-nervous mothers.

Each striving to fondle and fetishize
and worry themselves over
the same solitary consciences
lain wasting in fallow fodder,
searching the sky for a limit on its borders,
star-eyed as boatswains
and fate-bound as martyrs,
cradled in a hollow in the soil.

Or, we could ignore them and laugh.
We could ignore them and laugh;
let their gaze roll like water down our backs.
We could ignore them and laugh.

Musings on Kiki Smith / Night at the Batcave (poem)

The ever-present old woman
The glass glitter
The delicately painted mirrors
The feeling of old, white cotton linen
and quiet sunlight in the attic.

A room of one’s own
The space between inhaling and exhaling
The darkness at the bottom of the spaces
between blades of grass
The contained expansiveness of a dandelion.

Space,
mute and white.

The smell of the porch at night
The sound of staring straight into the darkness,
and not being able to see anything
The feeling of taking a trip to nowhere
with the person you love.

Looking up at the milky way at night
Looking up at the moon
The feeling of space
and of looking—
the feeling of experiencing the self
within a context.

/

When the boundaries of this space
are ascribed by nature, we are
happy, and feel like giants;
the space
within us
grows.

But when the boundaries of this space
are ascribed by man or his materials,
we feel terrible, like ants; we are discomfited
and forced to feel
the confines of our fleshly bodies, of
our faces.

We submit to recognition
in the grasp of human hands; we cannot
circumvent the obligations that our common humanity binds us to
when in the presence of our own kind:

We feel small.

:

But I love the greatness of the clouds.
I love the grass that wraps my calves
like a stocking.
I love that I crept, knock-kneed and uptight, into the Gowanus, led, precarious, by expert night crawlers,
over the most sloping and rusted lean-to fences, and scrambled,
scrambled slipshod in the dark grass,
with wind
rushing and sticky arms waving,
to rest at the foot of my favorite building,
the monolith, beautiful
and resplendent in the faint starlight.

We watched raccoons and bats shuffle and flap
fleet-foot and leather-winged
in their nocturnal dance under that purple sky,
all stretched out in the haunted gloom
of the structure’s moon-
wrought shadow and gutted
windows like empty eyes.

Our every shiver in that weirdly consecrated place
was ordained by the crisply painted, revelation-
seeking banner
that crowned the brow of the beast,
that shouted into the darkness:

“OPEN YOUR EYE GIRL.”

Our singular movements across that concrete veldt
were all brought into being,
our skins all wriggled
and our brains all turned
in the way they did
because that order hung above our heads.

:

We settled into the night like deer
that tramp listless circles into the high grasses
to create their chosen torpid nests;
mosquitoes
hummed lazily around us as we sipped our stolen beers
and waited, growing dimmer and stumbly,
for something to happen.
And imperceptibly, it did.The stars shifted overhead
and the dimly glowing hands of the Fulton Clocktower
lazily circled the hours on its invisible face, carving
time out of the blackness
like two small trails of dark blood
swirling in a slow and shallow drain.

Various thuds passed in the night;
we felt as though we were being watched
by all manner of creatures, and more
than once caught looks from a pair of shyly glowing,
close-set eyes
that peered, humble and inquisitive,
from the bushes that sprang
(dark fireworks)
from of the cracks in that abandoned lot.

The only way into the towering structure, full
of holes and trick boards
like loose teeth in the vast and damply shifting floor,
is to scale a wall, catlike and fearless,
until you reach the lone, creaky fire escape
that is to be swung onto
as if it were the bow
of the boat to your salvation

(it is).

:

During the day I am told
the light filters through the blackeye windows
honeygold like pure laughter,
and illuminates the traps and dead zones in the toothless floor.
The light, always filtered through a smoky screen
of luminescence, moted,
and filled with the tranquility of a dead and silent space, alights
on what parts of the walls it can touch, revealing
the forgotten art
that dwells there
in the same way an overheard whisper reveals lovers.

The sheer emptiness of this space,
its ultimate abandonment,
makes the dusty vacuousness that you find there more truly intimate than a
kiss.

Its silence envelops you in a totality
so solid and musty, so clearly unadulterated
that in your solitude you are more surrounded
than you have ever been before.
The surety of yourself, and only yourself, in that place, is a warmth unbroken by all time
and that embraces the entire space of your being.
You cannot think of anything else but the fact
that you are completely alone there,
and that it is truly only you,
for as long as you wish.

You bathe in this silence, luxuriate
in the way it muffles everything
but a resounding impression of your own wholeness.

:

But the infinite quietness is not the deepest phenomenon of that hollow place—after having stood transfixed for an entire day
and slowly losing your sight,
the expansive
perception you have gained from so deeply excavating yourself
within that hallowed space allows you to hear,
with unmitigated clarity,
the tiny sounds of the silent house—you notice
that there is a moth nearby, fluttering
a muted waltz outside the window.
Later you realize, almost impossibly, that it has left
and gone somewhere else.

You hear the minikin squeaks of the sweeping bats as they echolocate, laughing
as you come to realize that the gloom is just as inconceivable
to them as it is to you.

You laugh, and as you do you come alive, and bring with you
that dead space. The whole house rings
with your joyous, triumphant laughter, and the silence is so shocked in its departure
that your tiny laugh, writ so large across the fleeing back if what that space once was, shakes some plaster from the wall.

:

Your laughter shakes up the still summer night—the bats flurry
out around the old, broken windows
and begin feasting on moths and spiders that they would never have caught had you not come there.

The raccoons sit upright in their bosky bowers, shaking off their usual, sleepy affectation
to be momentarily transformed into lean and stalwart sentinels.
Sooty, swaybacked meerkats,
they appear to be heralding the dawn
and for an instant the disparate and wily tribe, scattered
throughout the empty lot and Brooklyn,
is united in their alertness.

The katydids and other clickhumming
night beetles quit
their buzzing as your laughter rolls across their antennae
in a singular, momentous signal
to their robotic brains.
The feral cats that had come to war
with the masked and bandit-like raccoons
in a territorial dispute
lope
away into the distance,
whiskers twitching and backs arched;
they can sense the mood is wrong for a fight this evening.

:

Even the slimy fish
resting at the farthest reaches of the murky canal
are wrested from their slow, cold-blooded delirium.
Your laugh has caught the breeze, and ripples the surface of the water, tinkling merrily
upon the crests of the convex, crested ridges
and circles it creates, and spiraling
down to the silted brown bottom, echoes
in a muffled cascade through the green water:
your laugh, the dispersing
eidolon of its selfsame source,
has gained entry to the stygian depths through the small portal created
by a rising pocket of gaseous levity,
the canal’s bubbly response to your genuine display.

And so the fish stir too, wending
their way among the fragments of broken fruit crates
and rusted anchor chains
that line the muddy, clouded bottom,
smiling slightly as their cold eyes and algae-bearded lips
light up
for the first time since winter’s stilling caress rocked them
resting,
to the bottom,
to sleep.

:

The whole night, quiet but already living, is woken up
by the ghost
of your gentle laugh in the toothless, eyeless, gutless building;
by the recognition that even in total solitude there is
a superabundance of life, perfect
and intricate in all its forms.

As you laugh, you nearly begin to weep—
you have never been to such a beautiful place,
and the cells in your heart feel this, and begin
to resonate with the quiet frequencies of all the secretly living things there.
And your heart beats
newly,
like it never has before:

your chest is filled with the warm
and solid spaciousness
of the man-made building
that has become a precious,
organic cavern.

Musings on Kiki Smith / Night at the Batcave

The ever-present old woman
The glass glitter
The delicately painted mirrors
The feeling of old, white linen
and quiet sunlight in the attic.

A room of one’s own
The space between inhaling and exhaling
The darkness at the bottom of the spaces
between blades of grass
The contained expansiveness of a dandelion.

Space,
mute and white.

The smell of the porch at night
The sound of staring straight into the darkness,
and not being able to see anything
The feeling of taking a trip to nowhere
with the person you love.

Looking up at the milky way at night
Looking up at the moon
The feeling of space
and of looking—
the feeling of experiencing the self
within a context.

/

When the boundaries of this space
are ascribed by nature, we are
happy, and feel like giants;
the space
within us
grows.

But when the boundaries of this space
are ascribed by man or his materials,
we feel terrible, like ants; we are discomfited
and forced to feel
the confines of our fleshly bodies, of
our faces.

We submit to recognition
in the grasp of human hands; we cannot
circumvent the obligations that our common humanity binds us to
when in the presence of our own kind:

We feel small.


I love the greatness of the clouds. I love the grass that I currently wrap myself in. I love that last night I crept, knock-kneed and uptight into the Gowanus, led precarious by expert night crawlers over the most broken corrugated and rusted lean-to fences, and scrambled, scrambled slipshod in the dark grass, with wind rushing and sticky arms waving, to rest at the foot of my favorite building, the monolith, beautiful and resplendent in the faint starlight. We watched raccoons and bats shuffle and flap fleet-foot and leather-winged in their nocturnal dance under that purple sky, resting in the haunted gloom of the structure’s moon-wrought shadow and gutted windows like empty eyes. Our every shiver in that weirdly consecrated place was ordained by the crisply painted, imposing banner that crowned the brow of the beast, that shouted into the darkness: “OPEN YOUR EYE GIRL.” Our singular movements across that concrete veldt were all brought into being, our skins all wriggled and our brains all turned in the way they did because that order hung above our heads.

We settled into the night like deer that tramp listless circles into the high grasses to create their chosen torpid nests; mosquitoes hummed lazily around us as we sipped our stolen beers and waited, growing dimmer and stumbly, for something to happen. And imperceptibly, it did. The stars shifted overhead and the dimly glowing hands of the Fulton Clocktower lazily circled the hours on its invisible face, carving time out of the blackness like two small trails of dark blood swirling in a slow and shallow drain. Various thuds passed in the night; we felt as though we were being watched by all manner of creatures, and more than once caught looks from a pair of shyly glowing, close-set eyes that peered, humble and inquisitive, from the bushes that sprang out of the cracks in that abandoned lot. The only way into the towering structure, full of holes and trick boards like loose teeth in the vast and damply shifting floor, is to scale a wall, catlike and fearless, until you reach the lone, creaky fire escape that is to be swung onto as if it were the bow of the boat to your salvation (it is).


During the day I am told the light filters through the blackeye windows honey-gold like pure laughter, and illuminates the traps and dead zones in the toothless floor. The light, always filtered through a smoky screen of luminescence, moted, and filled with the tranquility of a dead and silent space, alights on what parts of the walls it can touch, revealing the forgotten art that dwells there the same way an overheard whisper reveals lovers. The sheer emptiness of this space, its ultimate abandonment, makes the dusty vacuousness that you find there more truly intimate than a kiss. Its silence envelops you in a totality so solid and musty, so clearly unadulterated that in your solitude you are more surrounded than you have ever been before. The surety of yourself, and only yourself, in that place, is a warmth unbroken by all time and that embraces the entire space of your being. You cannot think of anything else but the fact that you are completely alone there, and that it is truly only you, for as long as you wish. You bathe in this silence, luxuriate in the way it muffles everything but a resounding impression of your own wholeness.

But the infinite quietness is not the deepest phenomenon of that hollow place—you have stood transfixed for an entire day, and the loss of your sight, combined with the deepened attention you have gained from so deeply excavating yourself in that hallowed space, allows you to hear, with unmitigated clarity, the tiny sounds of the silent house—you notice that there is a moth nearby, fluttering a muted waltz outside the window. Later you realize, almost impossibly, that it has left and gone somewhere else. You hear the minikin squeaks of the sweeping bats as they echolocate, laughing as you come to realize that the gloom is just as inconceivable to them as it is to you. You laugh, and as you do you come alive, and bring with you that dead space. The whole house rings with your joyous, triumphant laughter, and the silence is so shocked in its departure that the momentum it gains from your tiny laugh, writ so large across the fleeing back of what that space once was, shakes some plaster from the wall.

Your laughter shakes up the still summer night—the bats flurry out around the old, broken windows and begin feasting on moths and spiders that they would never have caught had you not come there. The raccoons sit upright in their bosky bowers, shaking off their usual, sleepy affectation to be momentarily transformed into lean and stalwart sentinels. They become meerkats for a moment, and appear to be heralding the dawn; for an instant the disparate and wily tribe, scattered throughout the empty lot and Brooklyn, is united in their alertness. The katydids and other clickhumming night beetles quit their buzzing as your laughter rolls across their antennae in a singular, momentous signal to their robotic brains. The feral cats that had come to war with the masked and bandit-like raccoons in a territorial dispute lope away into the distance, whiskers twitching and backs arched; they can sense the mood is wrong for a fight this evening.

Even the slimy fish resting at the farthest reaches of the murky canal are wrested from their slow, cold-blooded delirium. Your laugh has caught the breeze and ripples the surface of the water, tinkling merrily upon the crests of the convex, crested ridges and circles it creates and spiraling down to the silted brown bottom, echoing in a muffled cascade through the green water: it has gained entry to the stygian depths through the small portal that was created by a rising pocket of gaseous levity, the canal’s bubbly response to your genuine display. And so the fish stir too, wending their way among the fragments of broken fruit crates and rusted anchor chains that line the muddy, silty bottom, smiling slightly as their cold eyes and algae-bearded lips light up for the first time since winter’s stilling caress rocked them resting, to the bottom, to sleep.

The whole night, quiet but already living, is woken up by your gentle laugh in this toothless, eyeless, gutless building; by the recognition that even in total solitude there is a superabundance of life, perfect and intricate in all its forms. As you laugh, you nearly begin to weep—you have never been to such a beautiful place, and the cells in your heart feel this, and begin to resonate with the quiet frequencies of all the secretly living things there, and your heart beats newly, like it never has before: your chest is filled with the warm and solid spaciousness of the man-made building that has become a precious, organic cavern.


-----------

this is going to become a really long poem.