an open letter to readers in the distant, distant future

this post has been deleted by me. 



but on my mind is still the same:  what are the artifacts of love?  what do we abandon, when we fall in love, and what do we retain, when it all falls apart?  what is left.  when.  what evidence is there of any of it. 

and:  in that indescribable, in either fall, what do we gain. 

this was not an autobiography, or at least not one autobiography.  this was the expression of that humanhuman  twist--ever around the finest of dynamic rods running between the additive and subtractive; between the acts of robbing and giving.  between the acts of holding on, and simple unfastening.

and this post has been deleted.  by me.   it's still a story, if you can read it.

and then came abberation

stale bread scowls. 
the taste of brackish water.  push push
repeat.  breathe in breathe out.  brack gasp
repeat.
salt drops somersaults.
freckles magnified.  drink.

breathe in breathe out.  push brack. blink.
stale bread scowls. 
cut the crust.  feel brackish water. 
push push
repeat.
sip dry liquid.  sip wet air.  sip summer without grass.

jaw hurtling body making
not stopping tears. 
damp gaze turn away.  turn away
repeat.  cut the crust off.  the stale.
jumpeye trace a separate tide.
map a separate
dilution

she gave golden lilies

there were
two years of forgetting.
between forgetting and forgetting again.

think:  once, were they tickled?   kiss kiss bitten?

mama soaks and strokes
those baby feet.  coo baby. coo.
and tender touch. sigh, tender sigh.

mama lines up a row
of ten soldiers. 

four will fall.  the smallest.
they will fall.  this day

snap.  and cry.

who cries.  slim determined hands
twist. wrench.  break.
beyond the wicker frame
break.

tiny arches. tiny toes.

think: these are pliable bones.  

folded. 

think:  fold back to the dice and under and wrap. 

tightly.

ten feet of warm water or animal blood soaked
bandages.  to stunt growth.  decompose recompose.
blot the stink.

focus: tight. 

focus think:  old agonies are just

our stories.

a decade of unwrap.  wrap again.  wrap again.

do the toenails curl, and cut?  hope those toes fall off.

are you septic.  

focus. 

think: focus:

there are 48 documented sexual pleasures

these doll feet will experience.  or satisfy.

these will be rare.  erotic hooves.  ecstasy.   

focus:  in embroidered silk slippers, golden lilies.

delicate things:  power, beauty.

focus:  four inches of broken made from nerve and

sweat.  and determined sacrifice.

totter.  perch. 

think:  she will dance

upon a lotus shaped platform.

turns out: the other woman is not other and the wife is not an idiot

i met her handsome man
and then i shook his large warm hand
and when she left we had to smile
and then we chatted for a while.
and then i drove onto her, squatted on her land.

and then she finished up her drink
and put her glass into the sink
and she searched the tiny house
for her husband, her own louse:
he'd fuck any person anyone who'd blink.

and much later in the hall
our swollen lips told it all.
and then she said with shaking head
that which every woman dreads:
"there's not a live thing in this world that he won't ball."

-------------------

i'm kind of enjoying the limerick thing right now since one can be quite direct in that format, and also this adultery theme is stuck in my head in combination with a craving: for the examination of/the notion of power placement in relationships.  so there you go. 

please don't mistake my observations for a sense of rage on my part, because that is not my reaction when i think of adultery or sexuality or power.  please don't mistake the "I" in this narrative for me:  this is not autobiography:  this is just another way of asking questions. 

reverse calamity

what is this

long wings reach. careen
gold bandswidth apart.  avoiding catastrophe
oldest child oldest child
sail. sail. fall.  fall again. fall.

what is this

long wings reach
across gold bandswidth.  hot updraft.  hot lift.
lonely one lonely one.  touch.  touch hot touch. again.
sail. sail. fall. fall again

what is this

fight flight flee.  sail.  sail again. 
long wings reach and reach.  catastrophe.  reach again.
fall. again.  sail sail free.
sail. sail. sail again.

so trying to describe creates indescribability... . the nature of the beast.

“The moment one gives close attention to any thing, even a blade of grass,
it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.”
Henry Miller

a dirty ditty, or:

 the peril of office parties that spouses also attend

 

i meet a handsome man

and see his outstretched hands
then i see his red sea eyes

 and part my bondaged thighs

 for his unfamiliar, liberated land 

we all know someone who has either committed or who is currently committing adultery. if we don't know them personally, we definitely know of them.  i would hazard to say that it's a pretty common practice, though frowned upon by many (reminds me of the line in a film about masturbation on planes not actually being illegal, just frowned upon).   anyway, for some reason i'm thinking about adultery today and have written a little limerick about the terribly terribly serious subject, a subject that people tend to take very personally and become quite upset about--one more to add to the list of topics that should remain off limits when with the prim, faint of heart, or the easily inflamed.  limericks are, by definition, short little things (usually 5 lines with specific aa/bb/a rhyme scheme) that are bawdy in nature, and more:  they violate taboos).  adultery, though usually a violation of cultural taboos, is more complicated than that. 

today adultery is understood to be the same as sexually cheating--upon a marital or otherwise-committed partner of the domestic and/or sexual variety-- and people abhor being cheated, and don't like their stuff to be contaminated (adultery also relates to purity).  men cheat on women, men cheat on men, women cheat on women, women cheat on men.  but long, long ago, somewhere around the the time that the term became one commandment of the ten that christians try to remember, it was a term having less to do with morality (as it is typically understood today), and rather more to do with property rights.  of men.

women were, of course, considered chattel.  as such, if a married woman had sex with any man other than her husband, that man was committing adultery and was the primary offending party, as he was stealing and sullying another man's property.  a married man having sex with an unmarried woman was stealing from the woman's father, and was required to make restitution for vandalizing, basically--the adulterer had rendered another man's daughter spoiled goods, in terms of future marriageability.  an unmarried man having extra-marital sex with an unmarried woman was really having pre-marital sex: when caught he just paid the dowry and then married her--though this was not necessarily a situation less egregious or more simply solved than the others:  this man may not have been what the father considered a reasonably attractive bidder in the auctioning off of his good--thus, this son-in-law was condemned to living a lifetime with a man he had robbed.   but really:  poor, poor women.  all they wanted then was some spicy fun with someone they were actually attracted to for one reason or another.  

i wonder about the ways that women today are still enslaved---regarded as the property of some other bigger entity.   around the world, women are "protected" from their freedom of sexual choice (by the institution of legislation or adherence to custom--i can't stretch the definition of protection to include harming someone who is in violation of the norm) by their paternalistic partners or their paternalistic governments or their paternalistic religious doctrines--.  i am for some reason focused today on the ways that women are still annexed bodies of the power-holding male structures under which we (women) all move (no pun intended).  

a morning with czeslaw milosz, or...

On rolling wheat fields, buttery suns, sunburnt left arms...

so, in Native Realm, my beloved Czeslaw Milosz described his experience of living in a non-native land, and living life well and living not in isolation but instead with people, and feeling at ease--and his sudden realization that despite familiarity and even affection for the people and the place, one is, in this situation, irrevocably “other”. 

This spoke to me. He starts with:

"...Those boards and some floors of red, slightly worn-down brick had already prepared me for something. It all began, though, in the attic. There, I discovered an old chest painted green with red flowers and a similarly painted canopy bed, which had served generations of Swiss peasants. I felt a brief pang of regret then that I was dumb.”

---“Dumb” meaning language ability may exist to express words, but in this case the words are mere shells over opaque meaning.  Lexicons mismatched.  He goes on:

“…Because dumbness is not just physical, and the apparent ease of a conversation in French can mask a gaze that is fixed elsewhere. The fragrance of that attic was familiar, as if it came from the corners of my childhood, but the country where I was born was far away and for my companions my behavior was like a jack-in-the-box's, governed by some mysterious mechanism. Even our mutual taste for old furniture, which somehow retained the presence of bygone persons, concealed a fundamental difference in tone. If I wanted to explain what those pieces of furniture meant to me, what figures they brought to mind, I would have to go back, arduously, to the very beginning and entangle myself in dates, histories of institutions, battles, and customs. ..."


it is in us, our pasts, and our places, and though it is an obvious thing, the realization can come bluntly, and thud into an easy relationship in a most frustrating fashion:  suddenly feeling unknown and not only that, but not up for the task of becoming known.  not knowing how to turn the stains inside and of oneself into a clear painting for the people or person you love, with just words. and the nature of foreign does not have to mean from different countries in the literal sense.  "countries" can of course be metaphorical, even for those not inclined toward flight of fancy and whimsical interpretations. 

how important is it, anyway,  to know oneself and one’s people at that level--be they people from one foreign place or another, but with whom one is—both are, probably-- always other.  how important is it to feel known or be known and what’s the difference; do you have to know deeply or historically to be known; how important is it to not be lonely?

the more i consider it the less sensical it is, the more i talk it through, in english or textbook something else, the dumber i become.

the lexicon of an oyster

in this moment i can’t cluster the images of a lifetime

and i’m not even sure it matters, between us,

to convey across this small table

that my treasure

is an oyster knife.

(smooth wood handle stained with blood,

given me once on a beach

and that is the only one now among my many

that i can actually get to work:  with ease 

i can get it to unhinge and release 

the tightest, alivest creamy crisp, the 

memoried flesh from its smooth inside shell)

so dumbly i sip the sea from its cup,

alone, only one

in a party of strange close bodies

and the spirits of the dead.

hello people

hello people from new zealand,  china, malta, vietnam, france, germany, ukraine, the united kingdom, brazil, canada, denmark, argentina, ireland, romania, singapore, latvia, mexico, finland, india, australia, iran, russia, pakistan, slovenia, the netherlands, taiwan, and the united states,

i'm glad to see you here and wish i could offer you a coffee or martini, depending whether you are reading this before or after 4pm my time.  but, i'm glad we are here together, even if we are not drinking the same pretty thing.

i don't know any more about the people who read stardust and rust other than their countries of origin, so i wonder:  who are you?  what do you have to say?  do you care to comment on the poems you find here?  do you come back and back here?  and more.  i wonder all sorts of things but toss my questions against nothingness, and they never come back answered.  but, i try, try again. 

tell me something.  i invite you to.

but even if you don't, i'm glad to see that visitors from the places you are do come trip around here for awhile, maybe also trying to name things, and by that naming, to figure things out.  after all, we can be unknown to each other and still side by side--isn't that something special about the human condition?

yours from the weedpatch,
suzanne