Because I won't

But she will.

Poem by Carrie Rudzinski.

Because I've lost my words. Because now my tongue is only for tasting and not for testing out similes. Smile anyways. I've still got a tongue to bite, and that's better off than most.

The Summer Day

by Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?


---
(k)

give a shit

Let's take the ballerina example. I keep thinking back to that limber age of five when I really did have the whole thing by a string, that perfect pointe-learning age when I could have been anything, but really one thing in particular we're talking about, the esteemed ballerina, when I was five, I could have started to be her, costumed and consumed within a life of dancing, of body-machining, of lipstick smearing and hamstring measuring and one-two-three-fouring, and a handful of image disordering, and a furrying back and a balding head, but beautiful, beautifying, I could have been just this wonderful dancing thing with fractured toes and a spine bubbling up out of the surface of the skin like some terrifying trilobite, a drying vagina and a nodding empty head, bobbing to the beat of that swelling orchestra moving in time beneath my feet, all for me, all for those performances, the ones that would have carried me through high school and college unthinkingly, just movingly, just following directions like a good little dancing duckling, and then landing me on some stage for a few golden years, batting my eyelashes and charting the strength of my thighs, all until just about now, this age that I'm in, when, should it have happened like that, my body would finally be giving in to the strain, giving up, done, finally. Right about now, if that had been me, I would be taking my final bow, waiving my last goodbye, catching my last bouquet and heading into bed, you've done it, you've earned it, pretty, just stop trying now, stop thinking, stop moving, enjoy the act of giving up, rest now, finally, resting assured that my body had reached its limit, done all it could, god bless you, you're beautiful, comforted by my body's done-ness, no more trying, no more thinking, just thanking. Just breathing. Just having had done everything I could in that world, everything my body allowed until this point, this glittering finish line, I've made it, I made it out just fine. But this is not what happened. This is not how it went. When happened is that I quit dancing when I was five, thinking I didn't have time for tutus. What happened is that I read books. What happened is I became infected by words and this disease spread quickly, making me think I was a thinker, an artist, an emotional intelligent, someone who writes, feels, moves with the mind and just happens to have a body, rather than the other way around--and I would turn it around in a heart beat, have my body dictate my life rather than my brain, because how devastating it is to know that the journey has just begun, that I am no where near done, that there is so much more trying left to do, so much more begging, but I would never turn it around, even if I could, if that meant that I couldn't have met you.

---
(k)

locked into heels

Toes

locked into heels.

An absence,

occurs in spurts.

Haze,

vague,

colorless,

as if of

perception

devoid

of color.

A sense of focus

up,

a perception

devoid of direction.

Stones

shoes, conservative gate,

coerced

smells of charcoal,

leaves,

he had a similar hat,

she gestured obscene.

In a recognition,

awkward

swing,

as if to say “I wish to abandon that occasion”

seasons

say

summer,

air is cold,

clothing hangs 

veils,

armored layers,

gusts,

like the wind,

like a charm.

She tempts,

pangs

avert themselves,

they are seldom,

I am few.

viscera,

the eyes 

composed in layers,

dots, vibrating with the sound,

absolute.

Time is long,

tall,

the appendages of a cloud,

wandering

in

space.

The smell of salt

lost his resolve

white

rocks

repel

the ocean.

Too much, its directly above us,

feeds the smoke,

red

wine

blood.

Sitting backwards,

in a caravan,

tuned

to the wind.

Ugly.

One can sense apology,

he called it

voluntary,

the retina drops,

burns,

where else could it happen, what happened.

Clock flips,

ends

time,

under

a wave

he finally clears his throat,

stiches his side,

sets his teeth,

because its finally over

[A]

Guest Poet - Frank O'Hara

SONG by Frank O'Hara

 I am stuck in traffic in a taxicab
 which is typical
 and not just of modern life

 mud clambers up the trellis of my nerves
 must lovers of Eros end up with Venus
 muss es sein? es muss nicht sein, I tell you

 how I hate disease, it's like worrying
 that comes true
 and it simply must not be able to happen

 in a world where you are possible
 my love
 nothing can go wrong for us, tell me

(1960)

What I Will Say

1. She says my stomach aches because I take too much of the world in. She says I keep coughing because I smoke too many cigarettes. Both of these things are true, which means I won’t admit them. What I will say is that I wish so much I could control the kinematics of trauma, play the physicist, or the magician, find the right hat to wear, some surgical mask, that would allow me to transfer your pain, remove it like an appendix, you won’t even miss it. 2. I wish I could find a cool lab coat, create a new transfusion, one that would allow me to hurt so badly for a few hours, and you can worry about which shoes to wear. It’s true that no matter the accent, cancer cuts the same way on every tongue and it never comes out cleanly, we have to pluck it from our teeth like pieces of meat, hold it with two fingers, and figure out just what it is, and then how to deal with it. 3. This morning, it was so quiet over the Longfellow Bridge, that I could hear my blood moving, and my heart beat so damn well under my sternum that I felt guilty about it. And as my feet pressed down on the pedals, I thought of Andy moving his leg with both hands, and as my hips shifted over my seat I swear I heard my father’s pelvis cracking against a Chrysler windshield, and as I put my cigarette to my lips, I saw your mother’s mouth moving to make a joke, and when I put my hand in my pocket, I thought of the way you pull your collar down with your index finger before you pinch your shirt up by the shoulders, and as I sat down to write, all I could think of is how you’re in my gut now, and I have never been so grateful for this ache. -- (k)

Naked Thoughts

This is not about the figure.

She builds me a jail out of string, some
ball of yarn found on
the studio floor that suddenly
inspires her to tie
all the easels together, wrapping me into
this prison I'm paid to remain in

What we do for a buck. This joke
will make more sense
in a second

Sit still, be here now,
The only
freedom I have lies in my eyes
darting from one paint
patch to another, breathe in,
behind me, breathe out,
a plastic skeleton and a plastic
deer sniff at the backs of my legs.

The light from the window
washes onto my right tit and she
declares, no erasers. And then,
The mind is tense but
the hands are free
how true that is in
every other of my circumstances

I am dripping with discomfort,
muscles tense, eyes darting,
me thinking of how she would look
should she be looking at me

There is nothing I can do
to stay awake save
shoving my incisors into the skin
of my inside mouth
I bite myself to stay awake
but no blood comes
I would know, I'm the one
who would taste it. My jaw
is so strong, but my mouth flesh
is stronger, or maybe my
self-preservation is strongest,
and I wonder
is it possible to sustain
oneself on oneself?
To stay alive would you try
to drink yourself in?
I am lucky,
I think, that I am not
the only one
taking me in.
Don't worry about assigning
words, she says,
draw the air around her
to find her


---
(k)