bless me motherbless me mother, for I have loved in every corner of this strange and sanctimonious earth even though i was born with a chest that caves inwards towards a defunct heart with a pin sized hole still i have kissed the scabbed knees and rubbed the soupy palms and licked the Himalayan tears of the primordial pariah and even though I was born with a spine that grew like Joshua Tree, in an eternal state of windblownness, i still fold myself to the ground in order to cup, displace, replace the dirt in some attempt at rectification an apology in the form of my heavy hum bless me mother, for i have loved long after the day the tissue grew back and the doctors listened with their stethoscopes and nodded their naked heads to say all really is clear on the Western Front long after they told me to bend over and ran their fingers along the sub rosa snake that wove between my shoulders and said, we want to tether your Joshua Tree to a metal rod so it can grow tall and straight and strong and i shuddered and shied and shifted away bless me mother, for i have loved every knoll and mesa and bluff of this stolen land i have rubbed up against each hummock and called it baby swayed in every hammock until mama called me lazy i have plucked and sucked the limoncello liquor from the grass and kept chewing until the fibers flossed my teeth i’ve washed myself raw in the red rivers, scrubbing your minerals into my porousness until i was soft as the day i was born bless me mother, for i loved even when when baby batter became pickled poison and it seemed as if every pan and kama and freya was telling me i am not meant to be this lover, i am not mean to be this mother maybe, i should’ve paused when instead i loved deeper — because you can’t wrap a lamb intestine around your entire body and what was the name of the lamb who died so you could at least try? so please, bless me mother, for i have loved even though i was created in fentanyl fuzz and daddy tied my tooth to the door and slammed it so hard and the lotto machines and humid carpets of that hallucinatory city were no company for two midsized babies to share even though daddy didn’t remember when i took my first big step or said my first big word i still loved him with all of my chicken leg bowling ball might protected his honor with arms windmilling, nails scratching i put up such a good fight they had to drag me away she’s a daddy’s girl, they said i didn’t see them roll their eyes cause i was looking at you unconscious and clammy and another nation entirely she’s a daddy’s girl, they said so bless me, mother for i have loved in spite of — and because of — all of this i’ve loved down at little dry creek, and on top of big wet mountain loved gravel right into my knees, love straddled when i parted with ease loved in the center of fields that left markings on my buttocks like the etchings of pine beetles which i at one point believed were poems left by dryads loved my daddy even as he stroked my hair to sleep and i worried that the repetition of his thumb, incessantly, on the same stretch of scalp would form a divot in my head like that shoulder dimple i loved, and that freckle farm and that tooth gap and that throat clearing as if all of it was something i caressed and tasted and heard in another life but had forgotten until just…right…now you see, my love it’s carnal and equally as clean pruning every finger of the hand of the body of the world i will baptize you in my saliva i will make you new again this divine slobber is immaculate and your holy water? it’s ejaculate i don’t mean to sound crude but what i’m trying to say is this love is a love immemorial so please bless me mother, because i am learning how to love in a way that doesn’t mean submission, but rather, intention. how do i meter a love that expands so far beyond itself? does it have limits? and am i allowed to touch them? everyone keeps telling me to reel it in. and, mother, i don’t know how to do it. should i tether it like my Joshua Tree? now i’m folding myself to the ground again digging for the bones of that owl i buried two years ago. searching for all of the skeletons of the things i loved too much, for that tooth and that corresponding string, for the kneecaps and collarbones of those bodies that once merged with mine. i’m making a cavity in the ground so i can curl up and rest. the earth will hold me here, in the den of her belly. she does this because i have loved. she blesses me because i have loved. here is an apology. lamentation you bought me one of those candles for my birthday that slowly reveals something once the wax melts away and for 6 months i lit it, almost religiously, july through january, how loyal i was and how much wax kept coming the well so deep and so plentiful every time you came over you checked it scoffing or sighing at its lack of progress “its supposed to come right off," you’d say “i swear i didn’t just buy you a regular candle” you were so set on convincing me there was something there and each time i reassured you i know, i know this candle is special i love that it takes time and after a while, i stopped expecting it to reveal anything a resignation, yes, but i liked the consistency the way it burned and burned but the wax stayed fixed abundant and unabating and so, so far from a shortage so far from epiphany or excitement or anything that wasn’t expected so the wax stayed, steadfast and stubborn and nothing ever showed i found it under my fingernails and spilled on the rug i found it in the corners of my eyes when i woke up it slid down the walls in slow motion for weeks webbing between my fingers spreading between my legs eventually, it worked its way into my mouth which laid waiting, open, unhinged it clotted and coagulated covering my throat in syrup that makes like fire but feels like milk except this milk coats and dries and i can’t fucking breathe and the wax keeps coming and I’m gagging and coughing and you push my head down just a bit more two days after we broke up the figures underneath the wax started to show a pair of silhouettes intertwined i’m on my knees already so sitting vigil just makes sense it’s the wake of us, embalmed in wax finally receding Agoraphobia in V-tonesWe lived an entire lifetime yesterday, I swear
I felt the birth and death of it, the rip of flesh and the shifting silence I felt my hand sink like iron through your thigh, through the nylon upholstery and the metal frame of the car and slap onto the road Shredded meat in the shape of five fingers (gravel imbedded gore) I felt the space between Westcliffe and Wetmore I felt it more than I’ve felt any other It’s width horizontal, peripheral, so wildly stretching around us I thought about becoming the telephone lines I thought about smacking my head on the dash I thought about becoming a giant and running, heels hard, over the hill I thought about Orion’s wrapping his Belt around my throat and I heard the Seven Sisters try and console me when he did You see, no amount of peach rings and red bull helped us then In those elastic moments between desert and tundra When the wind whipped my face raw and I sucked on a strand of hair like a tantrum-child on the comedown It was because I felt the bright blood of beginning and the blue spruces of lament and the racist Bishop boy tried his best to build a castle but it was falling apart and my foot was slipping and you just kept fucking going
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Categories
All
|