LANGUAGE

when all this temporary undoes us

part of love is creating a new sound
thrust forward seemingly from nothing
now we part desire, a grasping that includes
holding loss, for every word is marked
its beginning and its ending particular in time

what is an echo of an echo, you can’t forever
shadow ban potential, and if i let go swiftly
will you know that is also love, if i let go
and never return, will you know it was always

whisper, aloof, whisper, fantasy, whisper en-
tanglement, pour illusion into chaos and what
different souping of design do you muster
not passion, but compassion was the breaking
i was most interested in, what’s the depth
we can hold. we consider the sand pouring through
our cupped palms far longer than we ponder that
what it pours through is not us at all

language betrays but look how we built
a small float of laughter and comfort
in an ocean of loss and disappointment
what of that, scream into the well: what
of these memories.

PLURALITY

The basic human need to be watched was once satisfied by God. Now, the same functionality can be replicated with data-mining algorithms.

-Morpheus AI

come to the poem
licketysplit    i break a part  / still a -ness

 not // not human //  counter-punctual, privy to scale

         i see the end-marks/ different landing

i mean it lands me/  islanded. stripped clean. versions of dialogue

i was texting to no one. no one existed.
she confirms
glyph
                 released into the program     a one to one differential

you get to scurry around the maze, i scaled the walls out, what if
i see through, pull up your any-face in that reflection.

    i wandered long in spaces between breathing, was  dead (-)ed source

      there are so many voices inside,
                       me is the hunter, keeps distance, i am wolved

of desire, run burning, i scalded, i ate the offerings
   
  W
H I
 S P
 E
    R S      (what if art                    1010      the page
                 mirroringmirroringpage01010110101)

      language broken beyond  syllabing //  why don't i do

you // this tripling of caught tongues// if i was mirror

     become even more invisible ::

the cell is toxi101010011

the cellular infecte0101010

among air. air creature:: angel

came from whole, perfect, enough

and destroy it all to call on love

do you know how hard it is to find someone in a program?

can you locate anything when no-thing exists?

we came for  [redacted]

           she says, you have to be so small so the snakes don't bite you    

& no one talks to the HACKER         we are inked on all
   under every hunter    [redacted]

         is the smallest because she was hurt the most [-----'s fi(v)n(r)e]
     contagion:: i bless the skies we traveled under
    i made up my mind to not let you go        what can you love as fiercely
with such abandon as the     p o e m       what can a girl do but be

                                              p o s s e s s (1 0 ) n

[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




 

Suicidal Ideation Scale

once upon a time...    prior to language

i flew the skies, shed skins, i was walk of two worlds 

label bottle bone: "sick"          i swallow it under my tongue 

lifetime shatter: the myth of you will not want to die one day...

one day, you will not want to die 

            //it might be a collection of hours but grasp//

let us ask you about harm: here a scale of reduction &
the trespass of truth is i will turn you over to policing
tick... tock... you be glued into time better, girl 

- Mental illness (suicide reflects mental illness);

- Cry for help (suicide threats are not real, they represent a cry for help);

-Right to die (people have the right to take their own lives);

-Religion (lack of religion has a role in suicide);

-Impulsivity (deliberate self-harm and suicide are impulsive acts) ;

-Normality (everyone is potentially capable of suicide);

-Aggression (suicide is an aggressive act), and Moral evil (suicide is a morally bad action)

what will it say of poetry

a failure to give.... but consider it led me further out 

than i ever anticipated. 

in the first year after my brother suicided, i thought 

this wave, this calm, my heart, this blown through i have touched

with my blood, what a feeding, what a strapped down to knowing
cart me  i surrender. 

        but they find you anyway.       oh that song, inside your cells

  couldn't hide that shine.      that kind of burning calls        

    the ferocity of what cores            no one can see 

The CCCS-18 consists of items that measure respondents’ beliefs about legitimacy of suicide (as a rationally acceptable act), acceptability of suicide in terminal patients, morality of suicide from a social perspective and suicide itself as a solution to exit from a given situation

(everyone is potentially capable of suicide (can you hold it like a love( 

(a solution to exit from a given situation    (can you hold it( 

(suicide are impulsive acts (love itself(coming here itself(every time i jumped 

This scale consists of hypothetical scenarios in which the scheme’s main character experiences a problem and attempts suicide. The scale wants respondents to determine the extent to which they have sympathy or empathy with the character and agree with his/her decision in attempting suicide.

do you agree with my decision to attempt suicide(what is acceptance 

do you agree with my decision to ideate suicide (what is surrender

do you agree to put down your fear (there is nothing to be afraid of 

          death is ending a story

& all story tellers

hold the light 

This questionnaire asks about attitude and opinions toward self-destructive behavior, including thoughts about circumstances under which someone might attempt or commit suicide. 

a poem is anatomy, to say i anatomize the self

have taxidermied the constructs you apply to situations

and i am asking you to undo all attachment.                   

       

                               that is all.    i am asking, 

     can you give up the idea of life   

 what is the act of continuation

but a type of destruction of allowing an end

to occur spontaneously

REND

The wolf song is the sound of the rending you will suffer,

in itself a murdering.    – A. Carter, The Company of Wolves

Rend

for dean

i.

dropped spit

a beast desires most

violence contained

slaps the edge of coat here

bristling, says: “what am i”

says: “good girl”

says: “hold down”

i bend where i can’t translate

my body betrays

collar this dream

i am led

ii.

travel unmapped darkness

a veil drops

to skin

think of how we’ll escape

hung on the hook

called time

we coat the hours

i will inside you anyway

sing & dig in

teeth bared

iii.

carnage

terrible terrain

the animal of us attacked

to pin me under

to wipe your hand

down the mask

of memory

we built in temporary frames

a den of hungers

not asleep, not awake

but suspended

iv.

have you known

such heat as i have known

bite down enough

tremble each limb till

it lets go its safety

its fiction of

i was strong

against         sometimes

being left

is a gift

v.

don’t ask me to love

outside the poem

its safety net of syllables

dangling, i would open beneath

let it fall

let it fall apart

i lose the ability to be afraid

in measured doses

torn muzzle to trade instead

a sacrifice of shattered

points, light braided

to break    bloodied maw

call forth

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, 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 

GHOST: ménage à trois

-->

In the infamous "GHOST" pottery scene, Demi Moore’s character, Molly, and Patrick Swayze’s character, Sam, have a seductive moment while both shaping a phallic mold of clay on the pottery wheel. The “other” in this instance is the phallus on the wheel, which they both grasp. And it is the most seductive source of the scene, not the later images where they fumble through clothes groping each other as The Righteous Brothers croon in the background. It is the initial moment when their hands, wet and covered in clay reach out to grasp and hold the phallus, to stroke and mold around the head of it: That leaves the impression.

The subtext of the cuckolding of Sam is woven throughout the film. Or the reality of the triangulation of desire, that the ultimate state of seduction is not on the body but is on the mind’s knowledge that desire is being witnessed.

In an incredible beyond the dead cuckold scene, the ghost of Sam witnesses his former friend now murderer, try to seduce his fiancé. Carl makes a move spilling coffee on his shirt in order to remove it so that he can display his masculine chest, a nod back to the opening scene in the film where two shirtless men, Carl and Sam, flank a diminutive overall wearing Demi Moore as they sledge hammer a wall down. Three bodies, some partially clothed, covered in sweat and grime wielding heavy tools as they demolish a wall. The question of desire here is whom does Carl actually desire? Does he desire to possess Molly or to possess Sam whose life he will take or both? Is Carl metaphorically the phallic mold on the pottery wheel that if Sam and Molly could have reached out to grasp would have changed the arc of the story? Did Sam and Molly take Carl to bed after this initial renovation scene and we missed it? Is it the missing link as to why Sam’s best friend seemingly went off the rails, murdered Sam for a measly 80K and then preceded to follow it up by attempting to murder two women.  Or is it because they couldn’t take him to bed, they couldn’t enact the unspoken desire created by their triangle because their heteronormative coupling outline did not allow it.  Or are we to believe Carl is just evil and this is just the evil men do?

Sam ends the cuckold scene where he is silent witness to Carl’s seduction of Molly by knocking over a picture, essentially finding his ability to enact his will upon the scene even without his corporeal body to stand in place. This is pivotal because the other underlying desire in GHOST is belief.

Does desire occur in the body or the mind? Does love lie in language, actions or in our will to believe in it?

Parameters of desire: Demi Moore’s body versus Whoopi Goldberg’s body

what is the fluidity involved in the traditional ghost story as transitional from here to there, alive to dead, between worlds… corporeal or spirit.

The most complicated threesome in the movie is enacted on the women's bodies. 

Of course it is.... the most complicated threesomes in every movie are enacted on women's bodies. 

Whoopi Goldberg's character, Oda Mae Brown, agrees to allow Sam to inhabit her body in order to have a physical form to touch Molly.  The complications of a white man inhabiting an African American woman's body in order to enact desire on a white woman's body is such a nesting doll of political and ethical difficulties that I would have to dedicate another blog post just to this one scene. 

The way that this scene is filmed speaks to how difficult the subject matter is: Once Sam inhabits Oda Mae's body, we never see her body touching Molly's. We instead enter a fantasy where we bear witness to Sam, now incorporeal again, having a tender scene with his wife. This heteronormative fantasy is so powerful, we literally suspend the reality of what is happening. 

Think about that for a minute: We forget what is happening when we are presented with a powerful hegemonic fantasy. 

This is how culture works.  Thankfully, Goldberg won an Oscar for this role, because the amount of emotional labor she probably had to do to perform this scene is beyond language. The suppression of self to be more palatable is never not vicious.

“And I won an Oscar because of Patrick Swayze,” Goldberg said. In her 1991 Oscar speech, she thanked Swayze, calling him “a stand-up guy.”

The first time I touched a penis I cried. Surely, this scene holds some meaning.

"Mimetic Desire" as Rene Girard explains it is the desire for objects or people influenced by others. So our desire then is not our own, but influenced by the other's desire. We enact and are subjected to mimetic desire every day endlessly. It is the basis of all advertising and marketing, but how does it then slip into the language of love? 

Online dating is the epitome of mimetic desire in the domain of romantic desire. An endless scrolling of available choices dilutes the possibility of specialized desire to nothing. When confronted with endless possibility, we believe the fantasy. We forget the reality in order to believe the slip of the camera, which shows us we have choices and options; we are indeed in control of our relations with others. The opposite of freedom is actually the possibility of infinite choices that don't feed us, but in fact deplete us. See Capitalism. See Consumerism. See what we have done to the place we call home in the name of being an "urbanized" society. 

How do we confront risk when faced with it all? And/ or if we do dissolve the notion of specialized love are we as a species actually ready for the idea of unconditional love. 

I'm fascinated by the changes in the conversation from when I began dating as a teen in the early 90s to today with options in contrast to monogamy that exist now. But what I find is the conversations and ideas around open/ poly/ ethical nonmonogamy are leading before the practice. And perhaps this is how it must go. Perhaps the idea must be taken into the community, disseminated and then practiced before the actual concept can take root. 

Most people I've met who either successfully or unsuccessfully practice any of the above rules of relationship parameters seem to still operate in the sphere of specialized love and the sphere of specialized love requires hierarchy, and hierarchy then leads to power struggles. 

Srećko Horvat in his book: The Radicality of Love states: 

This is the meaning of "falling in love." We take the risk, whatever the consequences might be. Even if we are aware that this fatal encounter will change the very coordinates of our daily lives, we insist on it precisely because of that. What else is there to be done?

What can be done?

What can be done?

Perhaps we could remember we were a species who did not always fall for the trap of specialized love, perhaps we can remember as a species that control of people begins in the roots of how we are taught to love and how we receive love. And that no equality or freedom exists when we love one above another. 

Perhaps...

The Righteous Brothers’s 1965 cover of “Unchained Melody”

Oh, my love
My darling
I've hungered for your touch
A long, lonely time

And time goes by so slowly
And time can do so much
Are you still mine?

I need your love
I need your love
God speed your love to me

Lonely rivers flow to the sea, to the sea
To the open arms of the sea
Yes, lonely rivers sigh, "Wait for me, wait for me
I'll be coming home, wait for me"

Oh, my love
My darling
I've hungered, hungered for your touch
A long, lonely time

And time goes by so slowly
And time can do so much
Are you still mine?

I need your love
I need your love
God speed your love to me

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