because really, this is humanity: the sum total of all we are is far greater than our ambition as to what we could >would/should< be.

(be.)

and this, she said, this is what i want, want to be come to be-come-be; she
draped beauty around her sunrise shoulders like a shawl disproportionate to her little
mangle-toed chinese footprints and, ever the most considerate child, soft-
spoken  and fragile-
boned, proceeded to

master the art

of vanishing entirely.




trying golden locks with stolen silver keys, i.
find it rather humorous that pens are symbolic of power but
anything
can simply infiltrate my pores like arsenic (which we need
some of in our bodies
in order
to sur-vive) and write down i instead of me, engrave
it on the wedding-white page, stained -


constant battle between self and alter, super and sub, and what is an identity when it can be reduced to an empty shell attacked from all sides, simultaneously starved and instantly devoured, how, how do you find the strength to lift an aching foot out of your roomy bed, the comfort and safety of what is dark and blankets in a doomed attempt to ward off the chill stemming from a sulfurous source next to your heart, truly, what is an identity, what is an i and what is a me, and how can you stare straight ahead and say "i know better than you who and what is me" and mean it, and know it, internally, infernally, how can you lift a steady hand and let it fall again, pacified, satisfied, confident
that you are in
control
of you
and
of
y
o
u
r

l
i
f
e
i
(can'tdothat)((yet))





her fingers are made of porcelain, they chip and fall
off; there
is nothing
underneath
to catch them.



and i, i looked into the mirror
one fine day
and
what
is me
there is a poet who
looked away she
didn't care about my hair or my
skin she
just wanted the space
between my
reaching fingers and my
outstretched palm
to hold the sun to hold the
moon  to hold the world to hold you
[r heart]. because she thinks that is what
matters it is not the matter that i am so
much as the matter that i
write and i
should know there
are certain
sacrifices
to be made

-and do i matter do you matter does this matter this who we are who we were and who we should be according to bergson we are the sum total of our past but i don't want my past
to overrule
the empty shell

that seems to be
(me)


and welcome, you are very welcome
to consumer society, where every_thing is
about what you buy and what you
sell and what you
make and what you
lose and i
life would be
simpler if we were not human if we were
reducible to functional, stream-lined
biology - and do you object
to objectification because honestly, honey,
the objective truth of the matter is that all we are
is the leftovers of all we have failed to be, just
see, see, SEE -




and i said, i want to write using thoughts and
imagery, i decided and i learned how to make my feelings seem ever so
pretty, and i forgot
to write about
the things that matter, to
write about truth and
lies and the tint of
air between your cheek and your hair, how it can
shimmer without even being visible, really, proving that what is does not come down to what appears to be, does not come down to what we individually can or cannot see -
i made it my mission to define
beauty as if boxing it in with structured words
like my heart trapped in this  cavernous cage, my capacious ribs,
- as if boxing it in with structured words were not already to take it away from itself, to mold it into whichever shape struck my fanatical fancy and fantasy -

to expose the bare bones of the matter, i realized later, that is what i want to need to do, but pray tell from between moulded teeth and infected tongues, pray tell where is the border between writing and reality, and what is the price one is required to pay, at the gateway, if i were willing to risk the journey, and please, give me a sign - i have the words, crawling between my contorted skin and rose-thorn veins - just a little sign to help me find my way;


consumer society, so everything must be bought must be
earned like womanhood, how when you are young you learn that italics are used to convey either what a subject is or what it can never be, no matter how hard it tries, It will never be a she -
either we lie or we hide or we try to change in some way, any way, me i went for beauty, from girl to woman there is a transition and that transition is called pretty -
-from girl to woman there is a transaction that transaction is called blood first the mother's on virgin sheets the mother's upon giving birth the mother's upon giving pain then the crimson all the crimson she will extract from her little girl then finally, finally the daughter bleeds of her own right and here again we see a separation, she is declared independent now and ready to care for her own, but if, if, if that blood stops coming, it represents the end of life, the end of femininity, and how, how can it be that a not-girl could die at seventeen and still be, somehow, somewhere stranded in that grey genderless no man's land and no woman's either -

-and i wanted to write
about the wind-blown, glorious beaches of
lofoten, norway, cold and proudly stowed away above the arctic circle, write about incense smoke curling around me and freud's sublimation theory, but trust a poet with a crooked spine to be absorbed by the scoliosis skyline,
and for a time i was lost in the blue, it is a painter's shade and that is not my nightmare, mine is not to picture mine is to describe, to explain, to feel, to be -



the little girl, now, her toes are no longer
bloody. she was going to grow up somewhere and be successful, somehow, and be a part of a family. she would have watched the sun rise some mornings, when she wasn't sitting down to breakfast with her friends and family. there was have been death in her laughter and life laying beside her in her coffin when she died an old woman with decrepit gray hair, life would have stroked her cheek gently and said okay, honey, you've seen the sights and thought the thoughts and now you can have some hard-earned rest, but -
there are worse fates than being alive. the little girl, now, i heard like a repressed echo from the embryonic phase, she looked in the mirror, saw a person and sunk to the ground, and there is nothing left, now, nothing but glassy eyes staring off into the distance, out at thin air, because she thought she was right, she thought she was right and now she is not anything at all

to hear the song of birds, notes interspersed, in the distance, spreading feathered wings and floating far away but always returning, somehow, to the nest that they have constructed, solidly, solidly, because birds are not only poets' dreams they are also objective entities, and when it comes down to it, you can lose sight of what's really there if you rely solely on your own perception.


(be.)


[i wrote about the sky-red flames flickering in the doorway, and how they rent my arm apart. i wrote about beauty and how it cannot be defined, because it consumes people and leaves only vestiges behind. i wrote about eden, about how eve would not have bitten the apple if she had been taught to stay properly safe, or if she had already been in possession of the knowledge in the first place - i wrote about you, and how your wrists bear your heart much more admirably than they do mine - i wrote about midnight and forget-me-not flowers, about heraclite and how everything slips away - it is time,
time i wrote about being found again.]