dear poetry, otherwise it escapes

                                           (Unica Zürn)

dear poetry,

read a poem to me in whispers at a crowded bar, the part of my life that does not fit, it was crazy to fall in love but harder to keep our tongues in place, let's talk about the way you speak and are spoken to, the holographic mind that palimpsests every other on top of you, every gesture a cascade of where i remember most traveled, land to seascape a wanting, let's talk about shame rooted so deep in the consciousness of beings and what our human bodies have done to other human bodies and how some of us keep thinking we can escape that ancestry and how do we forgive ourselves and how to not seed hate in us that we call other people or why don't i know what lies between us, how many times in your life have you realized it was you that stole your happiness, snatched it from your lips at tasting and drove yourself back into that cave of doubt, oh we plenty in fear, watch the fall and what is it about the folding of time that makes you nervous, my heart made lonely grows weary, i fear there's not enough of anyone to keep me planted. & you, what are you afraid of.

Dear Poetry, no such vulnerable

Dear Poetry,

to poet naked against the backdrop of moving pictures we call the world
we will not see things tomorrow the same way that we saw them today

like i told you don't speak to me again
than i called you over only to lay down on me

dual girl, she rushes & the trap of trap language
coined edges of glistening, i hear you panting so near

consider the loss of selves drained in coming
candle light near the yantra of kali

and you'll want to pretend you aren't scared

happiness is slippery, not worth shooting
yourself over or for and yet we addict suffering

alone in our heads, the echo of where have you
gone, my love, empty moan of strange handling

against my skin, threats of permanence skidding
why is it any different what you put inside

or what the throat offers mocks cutting me
off in mid-song, mid-flight, like I culled my wings

down so you could fit & i whispered
i am taking: don't be so
afraid

of the noise rushing, the bite of surrender
where do you want but you already are: right here

Dear Poetry, boated to grief

Dear Poetry,

Do you ever run out of words for a breaking, the way language falls short yet we squirm inside the telling, desperate, a can-you-pull-me-free from the container of loss plunging under.

Do you know how a sibling will slip so birthdays become times of both where did I meet you and some stranger takes your place, touching me.

Do you remember the weight of a child laid on your chest, the sweet scent of you emerged from the cocoon of a place I considered land mine, a terror, the horror show of riddled fate.

Do you know how seduced I was by longing that I swallowed my name, went long silent in the draught of learning to speak double edged, forked tongue, spells loosed the swept hysteria of she screaming whose voice I can't echo.

Do you recall whole cities disappear, the past washed under watercolor, all of it traced as heart shapes in the sand near the coming tide.

Do you know that I looked for love and couldn't see it around me, my shame I held before me blocking my view as if good enough even existed, as if the notion of deserving was no more than a fiction.

When I controlled the poem, I thought I was writing my truth. I was writing a death sentence because my cells coded that lust in the making, what I grew into as legacy, mud and dirt of country houses held up by secrets names.

For you to have kept me in your sight.

Lined to the castaway. Even now I think what life carved into by love, the fissures of sound knifing beneath even bone.

-M

Dear Poetry, Now I lay me down

dear poetry,

to poet is less about language and more about sacrifice
to say i will look so you don't have to
at the atrocities of life, the damage of this place
the cruelty, the blatant disregard, the aches the heart breaks against
look, i will peer deeply into the horror and pull back up
underworld of my very sound, hooked skin to lipped tonguing
so be it.

so be it.

make the terror beautiful, it won't hurt
as much when i hand you truth
i have wrapped it in my love, here take it

do we move closer in the gaps
the dead make

we keep believing separate
we keep believing
difference
we keep believing in I vs us vs me vs us vs them

and to poet is to say: wake up
to use your body and your life to say: wake up

every program you've been handed doesn't matter
every code that says suffer, that says less than, that says not enough

to say I would give my life is not to say I will lay down and die for you
to say I would give my life is to say I am here minding the changes
to say I keep coming here, I keep taking on this pain and this hurt and this loss
to say while we are here, let us sing
are you listening?

to walk each other home
quiet and still enough to recall
we are nothing

nothing but vibration
without end

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 

Dear Poetry, Cloak & Dagger

Dear Poetry,

The cup of gratitude is always full and washes away other projections. It is always full. When you talk to the dead, you spend a lot of time examining doubt. Am I my skin or the failure of my skin? I'm looking down a deep well at what I believe is the surface of water but is really emptiness. I have trouble with domestic life. This island is where you get one caress, one caress only. Use it well. A poem is like a peck on the cheek usually until hunger for another's mouth on yours swallows all sense of decency of taste. We are the accident of nature disobeying its own laws. What you show up for every day that no one sees: That is who you are. I have as most do an appetite towards what harms. I think it is suffering that means I love or that I love means I must know suffering. That code keeps us. Here is the secret: When you see me I am loving you. When you read to me I am loving you. When I read you I am loving you. When you are in the room with me I am unconditionally loving you. I am clear channel to open heart seeing you as you step onto the stage, into the shape of the word and what carried you there. I am in there. We are on that field. It is all the same path. Where there is poetry: There is this without condition. That is the bargain I made.

M

Dear Poetry, Post-Sorry

Dear Poetry,

remember sweetness,


first sound strum in the womb where dark you world
and water carried across, warmth the held spark
inside being, inside a no break from other culling
song less dense abyss


remember opening,

skinned nerve jump a field of no remorse
outside containers of trapped times spun tales
lipped start thrum a trap till sprung you
slip past rooted noun

remember spurati,

chanted whirl to discern where you capture
to suffer your choice you draw close a kiss
simply we worded a bride of drift
wash foam dusty lens

remember a-joining,

slick wet of edge jointed when you enter to meet another
a retelling you forge slow plant of gross
intent, hunger jawed this grasp till netted a duality
sick shape swollen light

remember rupture,

life leaking time's rift to constellate
matched patterns in every story familiar
come again, come again, come along here
we alway be infinite

not congruent, your name brushed aside
broken ash consumed a biting

always,

M

Dear Poetry, Each A-Muse

Dear Poetry,

this life has been a learning of what you can't ask for/ like i can't ask for the safety of other people to touch me/ i can't trust anyone to be near me for any reason other than their own absorption/ i watch other people navigate the space of relationships/ where someone cares if you get home safe/ where someone thinks of you throughout the day/ where someone really wants to know you/ and no one wants to know/ except you, poetry, where we travel/ or the dead who keep us never alone/ or the way even when i don't want to/ and i never want to/ that's the trick of it/ don't want to know before knowing/ it's over before it begins/ don't want to read scenes so clearly/ i don't need you to explain/ don't need you to context/ i don't need to be more than 6 inches from you/ and scented i can smell where you break/ what you hide/ what you take/ there is a-nothing hiding from me/ so i can't swallow/what hurts most/ the minute i am happy/ in the space with you/ the minute it rises up from inside me/ and what you don't realize/ is long before days later of abandonment/ i read the regret inside you/ i read the fear and doubt/ your own insecurity/ the confusion of being not enough/ of wanting a back to sleep life of repeat necessary/ who can blame you/ i don't as you tamper it back down/ unconscious of your own designs/ i play nice/ act like nothing's happened/ and walk to the car/ there is the life we lead surface sided in our bodies where almost two more weeks go by before you leave/ but for me, inside the energy of what broke/ i tightrope the unreality/ barter the borrowed time of slippery joy/ it's all i know of tenderness/ a stolen object/ not designed for me/ not made for my hands/ i scavenge what i can/ i horde what i know isn't even a shadow of what i imagine/what exists inside a space of ignoring what is true is what i call care/ but close as close i museum this land that wonders/ we look like anybody else who has someone/ and i can pretend/ poetry keeps me caught in plenty/ i can imagine a just about anything i will never know/ the best part of other people is never what they are/ but the lesson they give


sometimes i think enough.    


but you don't care how much it takes.


-
M

Dear Poetry, I Took My Life

Dear Poetry,

This is where I thank you for saving my life.


Thank you.


Do you remember the bargaining?

believed in silence then/ the way the world hurt/ touch me not this cutting is a way of keep me here/ i will dissolve/ i will explode/ i have no wor(l)ds...

What you did was rearrange the game: The price was high. Such a jealous lover. Such a one. Such a possession, you hold me like no other held.

pulled me up from sleep of dying/ washed dreams for new skin/ no lovers tread here/ take this shatter and swallow/ what you make beautiful/ unbreakable girl thing/

I paid the toll. Go into the poet, go into the poet, go poet into the land of neglect and keep your wits about you. Go poet the deep crevasse, pluck naming poet, create these beastlings, wage war against what love. Make a doll of it, and they will take everything you cherish. And I will be all that you have left, is what you told me. And it all came to pass, truth dribbles.

I trust you like I trust nothing else in this space of suffer.

this lively/ underwater singing/ watching it burn/ in the tinder aggregate/ to say/ i built this/ i built this life/ with nothing/ but what you told me

committed/ i fold down my fiery wings & listen


-Love

Dear Poetry, I Draw Damage

Dear Poetry,

I draw damage to me. No matter how the story starts, ends some same. Now when they close in on me, I play how long till I can see you for what you are. The poem I wrote last week has a hole in it. When I look at it taped to the wall, the white space is screaming. It's my heart. It's the wrecked space of what it should be. Or it's the warped space of what it has become. It is so quiet between the end of one word and the next syllable sharpening.                                                                                                              What they give me is silence. and what they don't know: I have enough silence to fill lifetimes. I say thank you anyway for the lesson and keep to the page. Come here where you tender. I pay the fee to cross with what I break apart, how artful to come asunder. You never say you love me, which is safer than all lovers who say it and not one meaning. They think they can handle language in front of me, the way they think they can handle me. We are inside one another, and I don't need to hear you coax me, love. When I wake up, the poem is on the wall, the hole in the text is visible across the room, the guesswork is gone and my heart doesn't have to wonder where you'll take me. There's no hope for girls like me. We signed off & what you get is a revolving door of lovers where only half are even good for a poem. It takes an incredible amount of damage to make it sing; I never tire of packing my bags to wander. I will go so far for you, so far under: Can you see how the light dances. I was trying on this narrative of being human for you; it's been nothing but disaster. I'm near the edge looking for escape routes, but we all know you took death's caress from me too.


Megan

Dear Poetry, You Don't Tell Me I'm Beautiful

Dear Poetry,

I wanted you to be some other kind of lover: a ledger of sounds lapping. You go off, I get off on the nerve of language where stringed you trip against smoothness. Snap baby, way you pucker up under the image: Sliding into your finger tips. Screen dream of make my grief holler, I'm willing to bet I can take whatever you have to give. When someone says, manage your feelings what they mean is: i don't, i can't, i need you to be smaller b/c i feel so small. I've lived too long to be scared, tempt me with the twinning of barb wire round my throat, silencing: that action ghosts me most. You never asked that much of me, you wanted to watch it go in. You wanted me to perform under dissection, the hollow of warring myself into a shape you would contemplate. I was in love with you before I was in love with a device I could hold in my hand. I was in love with you while other lovers tried to wear your face & shove their hearts inside. I was in love with you because you stayed but mostly you were all I could stand to have stay. And you used me as best as any, I had to jump, I had to fit, I had to follow your lead and what you took as payment for the boat ride was to never turn away: called it save your life and then save someone else's. But you wanted me under you, wanted me to fight my way up as you pinned me. I could take all of these beautiful dreams called other people and smash them into a narrative that colored this truth: My life like any life has been two choices/ you can make your way out of anything.

xoxo,

Megan