Winter smells
Seep through my closed window
The pure white fire i see
Closer with closed eyes
Winter smells
Burning midnight, so far away
From my window.
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Yet I left…
Yet I left: why does it feel like she
abandoned me? She
follows me but still is
always leaving
(or if I am the timeless
departure?)
Anyway; I know
I’ll see it for days.
(Train platform poor poetry
this won’t carry names.)
Second version
Well you see
the thing with the Dyke is
she only exists in a language I’m not fluent in
yet
There was this time I almost drowned
in a lake first day of May but
water’s still cold water’s still dark
My language had abandoned me
I stood up I still do
before frosted glass
current had
been dried up or maybe
redirected the Dyke
didn’t exist at the time
And I grew defiant
of the spring that had clogged
first step towards her
Now the frosted glass’ been tagged with
words I cannot write
my name was a slur everything
I thought had a slurry taste
But the Dyke still
didn’t exist yet
Will I ever know her?
Am I really looking for her?
Rather than cleaning
the frosted glass
I left it behind left it
for a clearer one
(I fear I really do the spring that clogged some time ago)
Is my current
a pond now? I
won’t check I still
hold that grudge I know
they put something in those waters
that almost drowned me
Still, I didn’t break
the frosted glass.
I’ll tell you a secret…
I’ll tell you a secret
I won’t say how
the absent words became a story
in a language I’m not even fluent in
but I will tell it if I can
when I was fifteen I spent three months in Germany
so as to learn their language which
was like being perpetual and vivid
Übersetzung’s the only word I truly said
I woke up every day and time was clearer more and more
light-like until one day
I woke up and my language had departed me
I stood still do sometimes in front
of frosted glass
what was my crime that my thoughts were
isolated from me could see me but
I couldn’t see them? or maybe
they couldn’t see me either
really, I had no idea
Suddenly there
was no time no self no more
no books no voices no more
no more, really, nothing
I ate apples I think I lived in a
thick mist not even a fog
there was still light and I told you
all things were clear except for
what I thought were my thoughts
I couldn’t even speak German all I was left with
was this muddy drought where my current had passed
was language protected from me and my
knife tongue? did it
protect itself? this
would take too much faith in me, this
is hubris I know but why
did my language quit? At
this time I almost drowned in a lake
all was so cold it had snowed all winter and
this was the very first day of May sunny and warm
but water still cold water still dark
I almost drowned I couldn’t swim anymore I was alone
all waters were like glass frosted glass again
but what saved me was that
I thought if I die here none’s gonna
speak French to me ever again
by cleaning the glass language slowly
came back but
I’ve been defiant ever since
defiant of springs that clog sometimes
maybe the current’s a pond now I haven’t checked
think I won’t and it can rot
gave up on me once and for all
Crossing
I think we are
just the crossing of the lake
a lake that can’t be crossed
still runs through us
its waters still
there’s a room you forgot
in which lie shards of all sorts
you’d lie by saying they’re rotten
or sharp enough to cut
the very fabric of language
there are others. people. I tell
the stories that claw
and cry out
on which I haven’t put the gentle words yet but
think it’s enough to have them
made into entertainment
I’d believe I’m weaved out
of this laughter and
it’s funny how
crazy I am I used
to lie down in the highway after school
I used to talk to a goddess
I used to have three pedophile stalkers
but we grasped their teeth the stories are
(are they even stories i don’t remember making them
into grammar and meaning it just had happened)
unarmed now you know
when and where to put the words
so as not to frighten others
so as to show you’re a tamed one
there’s a room maybe
I haven’t seen it yet
the woods cross you you cross the woods
(it’s all a metaphor
I don’t know if I ever saw)
I think we don’t examine
what crosses us I don’t mean
it in a therapy kind of way
make your life brighter make it colorful
follow the tips of some new man you saw on the internet
I mean we have this little stream we can dig in
I know I won’t find any gold
as I stand here crouched with sore limbs and my empty bucket
as I sit here near the river
what I’m looking for is the current
the current that comes and goes
in the room lie shards
that could cut through
all of my limbs and also
through the current
I should tell you
about the one I abandoned
Suffocation
She comes every night
And weeps
Or laughs
Like a maniac.
*
She wears
A ragged gray shroud
In her shaking hand a torch
Has you crying
Every night
*
She comes
And calls – what
What for ?
She rubs her knees on
The bloody soil
*
The nights she weeps
A shiver goes down the trees
She puts her head
Into your pond
She can’t breathe but her tears
– what tears ? Under water
Life doesn’t exist.
*
She prays
Does she?
She screams
She’s rotting
And the gods don’t answer
– don’t believe her
She thinks.
– Does she ? Under water
At least
Lies the calming void.
*
The bloody soil
You hear it
It wonders if
She killed someone or if
Someone killed her.
It wonders if she is a ghost
And she does, too.
*
She
Is lost
And yet tomorrow
She
Will…
Voir l’article original 609 mots de plus
this may or may not have been thought before
The psychiatrist asked me
how it feels like when she comes back I heard how
does it feel when she comes back home? She’s
wandered a lot she’s a stray who comes at night
like she meant to but
I don’t know how to answer the question I say
I’m scared and I can’t sleep but really
she’s got death behind her or beneath and
she tells me all about it and how
smooth it was when she reached it which is
maybe why there’s a pure white light
between or behind her teeth and she
doesn’t cast any shadow
Then there’s the one who’s never stared at death
she comes in early in the morning the psychiatrist
tells me I’m scared of losing
control which is why I don’t sleep (there’s no me
there’s no we there’s a light with no shadows only)
She tried to grab my hand tried to introduce me to death but
I never knew how to react when meeting someone new so
I just spat out shadow I think
that death watches over me but how do I explain this
The psychiatrist gave me meds that make me puke and faint
but the door’s invisible door’s locked
so she’s away at night always
she’s still a stray and
I can sleep
I sleep again I take my pills
I miss the light between her teeth
Alice Notley – Diversey Street
I’m in a house that’s too big
the Diversey St. house
Ted sees a ghost a young girl
cross the kitchen and disappear
through the door that leads upstairs
I don’t exactly believe that or
maybe I believe I’m the
ghost myself, asleep, and
awake at the same time
haunting my house. I see two
pieces of shattered glass full of light
you and I sleeping. Climb down in the dark
down into the basement or
up where the guests might lie.
Only walk free, only released
from fear in my sleep.
Aureoles of lamps are too bright, awake.
I’ve written a failed poem of lilacs.
Can I ever forgive myself for my thoughts,
for my fear of a crazed demise?
In this pointlessness of modern
physicality, this body, admired house.
And then someone says,
I think you should write happier poems.
More than once I’m asked to deny
my experience.
The weight of this house’s shadows.
I’m so in it now
As a ghost I am perhaps from the future.
Ghost in an own life of mine.
Because fear blocks the door
And can’t I bring the baby to the future.
I can’t believe the future comes
except as tragedy
I let smug men say things about my poems.
Am I trying to turn into
a smug man so I – fear sits on I
so I won’t be afraid, I guess.
And deeper still
who’s afraid, It is I.
Below who’s afraid’s the one who isn’t.
The ghost from the future. I almost
believe I will prevail
when I’m asleep and the future
haunts this house.
– from Mysteries of small houses, 1998
Morning routine
What are you, exactly? I’m
on the train and people are quiet
there’s no sky the cement’s gray but
the machines that make it gray are pink themselves
I can feel you, and know
that you’re a voice, just
time passing by, I wanted
to write a poem but you stole it
to make it yourself
I am nothing but a walking one, you say
my phone died I am alone
without my love who lives
far away in another city
You follow me, and you think
« Yes, this is about sex, and this
is a metaphor about inadequation,
reclaimed monstrosity, yes
this is about the space
bewteen your thighs or between you
and what you think is you »
You
Describe. That’s what you do, right?
You’re not even a voice, true voices
speak clumsily and spit sometimes, really,
you’re not even time passing.
You’re quiet, too, suddenly.
Do you direct
what I write? Are you an auteur
of your own life? making me write
in italics. Oh, why so quiet?
You’re in it too, and don’t think
you know enough
to stop time.
I don’t even know
what pedestal you were talking about. What I see is a train
full of tired grumpy people
in the middle of their morning commute.
I’m the emotional one, you think – and will stay in italics
to emphasize your cleverness.
Do you think
you’re God?
It wasn’t you I called
in the quietest moments.
It wasn’t you.
Dust, and broken light…
Dust, and broken light –
Flat street, at noon, in spite
Of winter – who do you lead?
