To go, advance, proceed, travel, move along, progress.

Saturday, August 25, 2012

Invitation

And so the Pity Party shall commence

You shall all arrive
And I shall tell you of my woes
My unfulfilled desires
And my complete lack of belief
In dreaming

Because dreams are for sleep
And awake is for parties
The parties that celebrate
Realism and Pessimism
As if the two were attendees

I bake cakes laced with strife
And iced with bitterness
I serve slices that seem incomplete
Without a scoop of resentment
A drizzle of unforgiveness

I play games that poke needles
Into dolls
SURPRISE! You've hit the spleen!
I ring around the rosie
And pay special attention to the part
About ashes
Because ashes mean endings
Dust
Soft in between my thumb and finger
Becoming nothing
Against the friction of itself

The elastic holding on my party hat
Snaps
No one has come
Nothing has changed
The cake is gone
The games are old

I should really start cleaning this mess.







Friday, August 10, 2012

I Wish I Had Written This

Apologia
By Jill Essbaum

I have been sodden with wine.
I have been confused by wine.
I have been lied to by men,
And yet, I lie down upon such men,
Still and willing in the manners that they please.
Lord, I’ve been the blemish at your love feast.

And I’ve been tangled in nettles and brambles,
Have dwelt in seamy hotels, have ambled
Down roads that once, so necessary,
Seemed. And I’ve prayed, hot and overloadedly,
Having meddled in such matters
That ought be closed to me.

Darkness. I have done dread deeds in,
Hearkening to apocalyptic heathen,
Even as I cocked my lips to yours. And I have slept
On floors. And I have crept along on all fours.
And. More. I have lived briskly in nice houses.
I have swigged whiskey in icehouses.

I have been June, July, and August.
I have been riotous when I felt like I must
Or I could be. And I’ve hung on your tree like a ripe fig.
Desiring to be plucked. And I’ve flung my body to your bed
Like a white bride pining to be rubbed up against.
Like a suckling child hungry in a viper’s den.

And I have been Dismas, the penitent
Thief. And I have been Judas. And I’ve spent
My plenty silvers chiefly on my hells.
In that, I have seldom, if ever, failed.
It’s just as well. For as the ibis devours her carrion,
I feed upon what queasy defeats I carry on

My back. Thus the beggar becomes her bowl.
And the hangwoman surrenders to the scaffold.
And irrevocable acts of god and doom consume me.
Can this be mercy? I fear there isn’t any
Left. Even the chrism is bereft.
Wretched, most wretched it says.

While my guilt unfolds like a napkin in your lap.
Will a dog grow fat on crumbs the master drops?
I have been a grabber at your garment hem.
And I have been a Magdalene outside your tomb.
And I’ve bathed atop roofs, have pounded with rue,
Have pooled my pearls, the sorrowful few---

Like milky mea culpas they rattle fragile on a string.
Christ: Forgive me everything.

From: “The Best American Poetry 2010,” pages 51, 52