You can't wipe your tears

[redacted] is my l_v_ language

i mask so fine the brittle hinges

the hand that sweeps it letters and the voice says to me

a window opens, i forget time moves               i'm writing just to you

tell me i'm not insane. i think about a day & realize i am hardly

i was wearing this mask all the time          for you

i'd cease to live but there's the pain, i'd have to hand it all to you

i think maybe you feel the same

instead we write these routes to clues

tell me you understand the song: under every gesture i was wrong

                   [don't say this part out loud]

i must be in love with suicide because it's all i think about

           be in love with suicide               it's all i think about


                in love         suicide               it's all i think


                    love         suicide                          i think


                    [EXIT]


to pull her up to speak [we must]  be that sick, we must be that sick
tell me how you border the safety of a mind always at work to undo
so you talk to me about love,


                   she doesn't exist her[e]      i couldn't feel     i t    anyway


and now you couldn't hear me too

      there was nothing i could write that would ever reach into you




 

LAST POEM

Because I want you to see me as I take myself apart. 

-R. Froude, Your Love Alone is Not Enough

LAST POEM 

for dave

here is the root of it

[_____pulled up

it took me over 5 years

to be able to shape the sound 

of it _____]

i gave you the best parts of me

we gave the world the best parts of us

we made together the best parts of us

we gave to one another the best parts

pulled 3x from my body

i gave you the best parts of me

portal of my body, between us we made sacred

outside any poem we wrote, we made beauty 

beyond telling, the heart of it

nothing existed before we poured 

into one another all we took for granted

& all of the light & what we thought of 

was love               was love

& you hated me

words collected like knives

we destroyed all of it 

you wanted me to die

that body that pooled life 

you wanted it to not exist

to douse, to eradicate, to allow 

to slip away, you hated each part 

as if it is possible 

to be both the best...

it is possible 

to be the best & the worst

collision of my life 

closed circle: i gave you the best parts of me 

that is what islands us (me) 

where no one can reach

& i could not open to feel ever 

again in the not safe 

cave of plenty, you rolled a rock in front

of the entrance 

&

the wilderness 

of things 

she sings inside the darkness

    i hear her even now 

                                   i whisper to her: escape, rescue, abandon

she mirrors back to me:   

                                    all of your wor(l)ds hold no meaning 

Random Disruption :: Contained Object

Border /
                      Line


i.

i want to show you the moutains
holding up the phone, the screen fills
with desert, your voice suspended, they are farther than they seem

            i know          about running out of space

 the world not wild enough  
  can’t we still get married, you laugh

       we can do anything            if it comes to cruelty
                       scenery slipping past

                   i have $20.00 left and nowhere to go and HIV
                     & echo: what kills us
   wherever you go, there you are

ii.

look, she tells me over the cards, you are never going to get
what you needed        
       i get on stages flowing over, what is constant
is the way i can’t hold     the memory of any sweetness  
   i forget that love exists in the absence of a body before me
       they call it splitting: the way i fold down between acts
                  i pretend to understand cues.    


iii.

you will turn on me or i will turn on you       & then time passes

     loneliness makes a small rip, then grows to erase even safe

     i know something about people who no one can love

         it’s dry and hot and cold at night   (endures)
            we are stuck here. it seems (untethered) the sun melts

i will never find you. and you will never see me.  that is what family means


iv.

                                 The observed cannot be separated from the observer.

i think i am beginning to understand              that we are not dependent on the universe

           as much as it is dependent upon us               to see it clearly        

i named every tear after a star. i tacked them to the night sky
above our heads and sang to you across death valley

           a barycenter contains an inherent two-body problem  
                                neither holds, either is the shifting space that threatens
a double star is just an illusion of light            it is hard to measure
      what any one person ever gives another person in this life
       
                     

       

New Dollbaby Piece up at Jacket2: EXTREME TEXTS

From:

 Extreme texts

Edited by Divya Victor

Dollbaby

The poetics of hysteria and motherhood

MEGAN BURNS

Trigger warning: abuse, suicide

The following document is an archive of two years of my life when I lost custody of my children after I tried to end an abusive marriage. The court took my kids from me based on the art I create: appropriately, the art in this case centers around historical instances when real women also lost their voices, autonomy, and their lives due to their own inability to have freedom and safety in this world. It’s 2019, and women are still not safe. I want to send the song of this text into the future until the answer is sure: when are women going to be safe in this world?

Read full piece at Jacket2:

http://jacket2.org/poems/dollbaby

DOLLBABY: Hysteric

--------------------------------------------------------TW--------------------------------------------------------



ANATOMY OF A DOLLBABY:: [Category of Display, Madness in the Physical Form of this Female Body under excavation of language] or is this real life.

explicate the construction of the doll

each doll is a book of existence

                                   a piece of hysteria

drawing a familiar  -- linear digression 

connecting us all into one

dear love,

i am losing my mind. it's not alarming yet. here i am still in your sight lines, in this shatter. i am listening to the voices in my head like i never have before. i was always afraid of what they would have me remember. what they would speak of and to speak of it until eternity, we cannot ever erase what happens to us.

all dolls are the same dolls

dear seraph,

you run a code along a line, a sound, you follow the exact path you create by sounds you pay attention to --it's not a telling or a retelling, it's a channel. to open new paths in your mind. a virus cracks it open. an angel is a virus speaking inside your mind. what are you to me. you mirror. watch the way a program runs you.

Construction of the performance: 

what is the poetics of what happens in a bed. what is a hysteric performance. how does the plaything allow for narrative to structure.

you look just like a dolly

can you make safe happen
it's not a wound/ it's a door

 i need you to see me clearly/ this side of sane/ i need you to see me before sound tears it apart/ the last bits of what makes it a story of her/ she disappears / that’s what happens/ she disappears/ know that it’s a choice/ like suicide/ but instead of erasing the body/ i’m erasing identity/ attachment to self/ made up of sanity/ made up of the structure of sound

a poem can be a spell that slips veils. i saw them last night, by candlelight and so you can tell me i'm mad but i know what i see. i know what i am. made by what you would have me be to carve a path to i will heal this damage if it kills me. i am dead and you make me want to be alive.

we want to be sung back into truth

i cut nelly loose after 5 years of being caught in the chair of secrets. who can keep you from holding a secret. why even a gun can't shoot me clear for years, dear brother. dear brother, how many of us die under the stars alone before we can scream. and so now i am the haunting of you.

a new voice enters {HER} the poet's mind :: beyond the angel. another who holds an ancient tongue.

we learned to forget who we are. we learned to never speak. to wade into the quiet of this is a house. this is a table. this is a morning. we are eating breakfast. tell me mother, why i have no memory of ever being a girl.

was  i born into this life not a child. but a plaything. a doll.

she has nothing but eyes to tell you what she’s thinking. but no one is looking.

no one sees her at all.

the doll will not admit what scares her.

show me on the doll where they broke into your programming.

show me on the doll where they broke into your programming.

show me on the doll. show me the doll. show me the doll.

we make everything better for her.

there's a reason the body remembers what we forget. 

there's a reason the mind knows what the body can't feel. 

there's a reason we take the doll from the chair and hold her mothering all we are. 

she can't close her eyes unless she's laying down. 

and we should lay down now brother, we should lay it all down for the world to see. 

ADDICT

"maybe the people who come to you can handle your darkness"

said someone to me this week. a friend. i say to myself things like

"only broken people come to you, you attract damage"  forget perception

forget we paint the moment we are in with the brush of the past

and it colors everything with what was, not what is

i went to a presentation on healing from sexual trauma

and listened to a room full of women, are you surprised it was

a room full of women but of course we are

my brother was sexually abused and now he is dead

i cry in the bathtub because last week i was having sex

with someone who loves me and who i love but

we can't be together so now i am alone again

it hurts: i go online and in ten minutes find a stranger

to fill that emptiness, fix it: My deepest wound is invisibility

no one can see me and that is how abuse gets in

no one can see me and so too i think of ways to be seen

no matter the cost: i listen to a radio interview with a therapist

on sex addiction and she talks about volition, about whether one

in the moment dissociates and can even make a conscious choice

so tell me how consent works when all i know is other people's bodies

are a way to danger, cloaking what i am worth i seduce abuse b/c i

am in love with the way it consistently wants me back

i don't have to wonder: you love me like you want me dead, you love

me like i'm not real, you love me like i don't exist at all

and yes, i say yes and yes and yes: it's all bloomed inside me

first kiss to fist

SZA:: DREW BARRYMORE:: HYSTERICAL GIRLS

From Rap Genius: 
"In pop culture, Drew Barrymore has become synonymous with ideas of insecurity and pursuit for identity. In the late 1980s and 1990s she often played angsty teens in movies like Never Been Kissed and Poison Ivy."

POISON IVY
Drew Barrymore was 15 when she filmed Poison Ivy.  The male lead in the movie played by Tom Skerritt was 58. Poison Ivy is the story of a bad teen (played by Drew) who befriends an awkward teen (played by Sara Gilbert) with a dying mom. Ivy then later seduces the father and kills the mother. She is then murdered by her friend.

Tom would be our Dick here.

Drew is, of course, a child and like every teen believes she is not a child-- both in real life and in the story. In the story, she is the evil seductress, not the victim of the father of her friend who exploits her need for attention. She is the hysterical Augustine allowed out of the hospital to play, unmitigated lust which destroys the American Family, and she can only be stopped by killing her.

I was 15 when Poison Ivy was released. I wanted to be Ivy. Ivy was beautiful and cool and collected and wild and alive, and she got everyone around her to do what she wanted. And she used her body to get it. And she said things like: I'd rather live one day with the top down than a lifetime in a box.

I wrote that in my journal. I wanted to live a life with the top down. It didn't matter that she used everyone she met. It didn't matter that real love and respect were unattainable to her. It didn't matter that she was poison and that she died at the end. All that mattered is that everyone wanted her, even the dog wanted her.

These are how narratives of girlhood are absorbed, not by logic and reason but by images-- by slick cells of seduction and beauty and desire.  Whose fault is it that everyone who meets Ivy sexualizes her? Where is her family? Where are her caretakers?  Are we to fault her for wanting to survive in the only way that she knows how to survive?

It's easy to forget that she is a child in the sex scenes. But she is a child. 

SZA on her album Ctrl has a song titled "Drew Barrymore" presumably a nod to the woman who gave us these characters that we devoured in the 90s from the misunderstood Ivy to the perky, loveable blond of later love comedies.

[Verse 1]
Why is it so hard to accept the party is over?
You came with your new friends
And her mom jeans and her new Vans
And she's perfect and I hate it, oh so glad you made it
I'm so glad you could come by
Somebody get the tacos, somebody spark the blunt
Let's start the Narcos off at episode one
Bring the gin, got the juice
Bring the sin, got that too
Won't you just shut up, know you're my favorite
Am I...


But SZA turns the narrative-- the beauty of SZA's lyrics is that she can lay out a whole scene in a few lines. Here we are at the party, the scene is set and the subtext of the scene lies in the back and forth play that occurs in our speaker's mind. She is at once at the party, and the party is over. She is aware of the new woman but can't speak her emotions. She has to accept her role; she plays the role of the girl who is cool. Too cool to make a scene, cool enough to accept the way things are.. and still in her head, we hear her ask: "Am I...." Am I your favorite? What's the conversation beneath the conversation, what is happening between the lines....Is it all in her head? What kind of fantasy are we in?

[Chorus]
Warm enough for ya outside baby, yeah
(Tell me that it's warm enough here for ya)
Is it warm enough for ya inside me, me, me, me
Warm enough for ya outside baby, yeah
(Tell me that it's warm enough here for ya)
Warm enough outside, inside me, me, me, me


The chorus seems to confirm that the sexual relationship between her and the man was the focus of their relationship. He either replaced her with a new woman or she is the side piece, but in any case the question of is it warm enough remains the tie. How can you be warm inside my body and then so cold to me as a person is the subtext.  How can a woman's body be a site of comfort and relief for a man and then once it is used, no longer needed. The story of Poison Ivy rests upon this; the father is watching his wife die, so of course he is weak and needs the comfort and attention of the young Ivy. But it's not her as a self. It's not a 15 year old that he needs to talk to or to share some experience with; it' s just her body. Her body becomes the dumping ground for a middle aged man's life expectations that haven't been met. Her body becomes the source of his rage, his desire to be rid of the dying wife, his desire to be rid of his troublesome teen, his desire to feel powerful again. The entire story isn't about Ivy at all; but about a man's desire to colonize a young teen body to enact his needs. And at the end, he wins. He surfaces as the victim, not the perpetrator in a confusing sleight of hand that solely lays the gatekeeper of sexuality on the woman, or in this case the girl's body. Her autonomy is both taken from her when she is sexually abused by this adult,  and then thrust back on her when it is time to lay blame.

What does SZA do to turn the narrative?


[Verse 2]
I get so lonely, I forget what I'm worth
We get so lonely, we pretend that this works
I'm so ashamed of myself think I need therapy-y-y-y
I'm sorry I'm not more attractive
I'm sorry I'm not more ladylike
I'm sorry I don't shave my legs at night
I'm sorry I'm not your baby mama
I'm sorry you got karma comin' to you
Collect your soul, get it right


There's a vulnerability and a strength to these lines that have a Drew Barrymore aspect to them. Drew was the child star of ET who we all watched descend into drug addiction only to emerge emancipated by 15 and in control of her own career and life, where she continued to thrive.

So, was she a child still at 15? At what age does a girl become a woman and under what duress. One of my favorite lines is: I get so lonely, I forget what I'm worth

And this is where the Dicks come in. All the Dicks.

That a woman forgets her worth in loneliness and tries to fill it. That is a type of hysteria. We are trained to follow its path.

SZA turns the tables from the simple narrative of girl loves boy, boy uses girl, girl gets hurt and writes sad love song. She sees right into it. She sees the nature of why we do self destructive things in love and lust. She not only sees it in the speaker, but she says "We get so lonely, we pretend that this works."  And once she sees it, she can't unsee it. She jokes (or not jokes) I think I need therapy followed by a string of reasons that are apologies (sorry, not sorry) as to why she isn't the perfect girl.

Each line of apology topples the narrative of what she should be to attract the man: attractive, ladylike, shaven, the mother of his children... she isn't these things. And then she steps even further back and places accountability squarely on him: I'm sorry you got Karma comin' to you/ Collect your soul, get it right.

Collect your soul, get it right.

This is a love song. This is the epitome of a love song where the speaker can see into herself, can see into the actions on the surface and beneath the surface, where she can take accountability of her actions and where she cuts her losses. She asks her lover to pull his energy back, not for her sake, but for his.  She moves from asking "Am I...." to taking back her power and telling him: "Collect your soul, get it right."   This is beyond the mere infatuation but dwelling now in the realm of how we mix energy with other people and how those choices infect every part of our being. In this case, SZA writes a spell in verse II. It's a love potion in reverse. It demands that "he" release her and take back what is his.

Words are magic. Images are magic. We are seduced/ we are amused/ we are bewitched.

Sing the last verse of Drew Barrymore in a warm bath of epsom salts surrounded by candles and hold the lover who has not held you right in your mind, and I assure you, those bonds will loosen.

There a million ways to be a girl and most of them

ALL AT ONCE

Day 12: American Horror Story

"That time allows us/ to see what we were blind to/ and to become blind to what we've seen."
- Kate Greenstreet, case sensitive

"One out of 8 Hollywood movies depicts a rape theme"
-"Violence Against Women: A Report on Life in Our Times" MS 1.2 (1990)

American Horror Story

what is it about a woman's body that is so rapeable, that the telling is apparent so it whips, once upon in the house of holy, in red tented diabolicals where ran this fluid, what a calling, she can be a nevering, she can be thrushed, (hush), the lickiest lulla-bye, dreams are full of unspeakable desires, can you have a story without the bending of her, without the undressing, without the insertion, without the subtle cues that speak, speak what is power, what love in the face of: the end result of cultural misogyny is socialized murder. but let's recall that fiction excuses male violence when it's caused by evil forces. twin peaks this plot line so the infestation is excusable. in this one, she gets a baby, in this one, she gets fame, in this one, she gets revenge and to be born again. see, rape is a way for a woman to get ahead:: this horror show. this our american horror story in any century, in any city. the script stays the same. Foucault claims that social mores kept people in line historically. line by line, this abuse stays golden, media pool, this news refracts. you get to see how it looks. the raping. you get to pause it, you get to rewind it, you get to fast forward it, but you can't have the tale excised of. you have to participate if you want in. you have to participate if you want in. and everyone wants in. who doesn't love a good scare?