Thresh: Hole

 Thresh: Hole

stand in the sound of angels

threshing like the palm fronds we painted

& held over our dead poured into the river

wherever grief channels its narrow

coursing, there we go & are, always

at the crossroads aware

 

come to me, find me untroubled

necklaces of skulls, i call each by name

must we always want to see more stars

in a doorway once, we stopped

& i took a picture of the wooden seraph guarding

i thought anything was possible between us then

we swim in never imagined nows, the landscape

of survive is can you breathe, can you breathe, can

you

we are dangerous in a way we rarely dreamed

now to one another, like i would sit far enough

away to feel you near me is a type of affection

to kiss is a poison, touching derangement

disordered of melody, the sound of us in the past

echoes so loud i lose sight of where we’re going

12.16.2020

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 

GRAVEL

many is the blood and now is the place
imperfect circles we cannot deny

how stillness ellipses
counter weight to death

count me in that number
not sainted, but torn free in my failings

you hold deep in the body all unsaid
secret griefs roll inside me, a rocking

to sleep for the lullaby babes, shush
he says, i'm doing the best i can

& it's never enough, this recitation
prayer me to song or whisper by name

this temporary not remembering
turning to stone, i turn

aperiodic crystal and the rate at which sound
moves, precious heart, genetic inheritance

what could not touch me, led me
apart, a breaking open of portals

"What is life?" they ask
i non exist, where the wings

meet, seven scales that octave
the universe: i came to shift

on the field in one generation
terror to bliss, the rain of suffer

held off course: i heard her speak
inside my head: Love hard

no matter the choosing
the trick to unlock a word

like spirals caught in the tubing
i pass like the light of a star still

wishing, i pass under covers
the night of your hand still moving

in a question of time, i rip off course
i am dreaming of being the answer

Wanting to Die

and the love, whatever it was, an infection

i tried to last as long as you in the shatter
memory, a lip drooling, i have sliced
off more sounds than most

let me taste it, not rotten, a low
hung bruised fruit no one wants
palmed into violence, i have cut

my way out more than once, that song
sings inside my head constant, silence
is what takes the shape of love here and no

one touches, no one sees, till you disappear
and then let me tell you, bit by anger
planted inside you, i am one more line
written where you left, i emerge to surrender

excised from the deep tap root
you asked me to take in damage
say the woman was forty two and dear
how much time do we have left

put this blood angel up to my ear
we enter their star, they've all gone away
i whispered but you were gone too

anne, i will enter death a light
anne, fur and rings, it's lovely, tell me it's not lovely
how you will look and look for me
in ways you never tried when i was right here

where light meets light creates a darkness
and i like it more than i like me
i am unbalanced, to meet the bleeding trees
i've wiped the program

i am in torment and have no place here
i know your blades of glass, the shock
of sunsets, how i have loved you and all of life
is not up for discussion, it's how i could not

feel any of it, how numb can you swim
forever: how could love ask this of me
ashamed is the life i can't live

the way love will fall around you
riddled with the desire of it
and you falling, can’t grasp on to anything

   

Dear Poetry, a list of reasons...

Dear Poetry,

1:   inside of   (say ear

                                (say dream

                                        (say, insert pronoun, we digress

2:  fingers slipped, the poet reads a poem about war & insects   

                        (drones a diagram of how we arrived:   once i was alone

    you, outside time                         appear (how ghosts continue

3: sound edges, a fingerprint identifies,                               (of what handled

            touch in place of genocide, touch in place of where the bullet carved

4: clearly not, the treble of sound, or images rising in a throat of huddled, we secret, unsaid pressure of caught      (and to not fly, or this not skied vision, i have no idea if that’s the way it works, you reveal) 

5: once i made a promise. it went like this: i won’t kill myself until i have seen every Bergman film  

6: your thumb is never fair in the language of undoing how sure i am.

7. in your story, the woman fades. it’s not clear which of us is her. we both want and fear permanence and so, we are clearly both him, the artist painting desire into folds,       looping eyes on  (& here we churn waters deep enough

8.                                              (press into me where we mimic           your grasp shutters

9: i’ve been in this story so long, i think i am the poet, am the girl, am the one held, am the one trying to disappear, am the other pushed aside, am inside you whispering, can you hear                (i am the instrument with the mark of

                                    –you, transparent quartz

10: duality of poem’s staccato & squeezing the tip of my finger between your own

                                    (i hear what those around us secret but

                                                  w/ you           i am afraid   of what holds 

11: and the seven angels who had the seven trumpets prepared themselves to sound

12: puncture wounds caress along inseams of doubt         (touch the string softly 

                                                                                                                i stop moving

13: un/sound  :: dark eros links form, you warm against & don’t lie, i can pocket anything unnoticed, even sing memory into being, even sing a discarded collapse into light

love still, 

Megan 

Prompt 2: Brakhage

Examine Light:

"It isn't only what is unsaid, you see, we have very few words to express the scientifically recognizable phenomenon of life"   -Stan Brakhage, (from Brilliant Corners Interview, Spring 1979)









"Oh yes, you don't get angels without devils, because that's the nature of life." -Stan Brakhage, (B.C. Interview, 1979)

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