I have just been taking stock of the past ten days and am amazed how the first poem I posted, based on Marina Abramovic's live exhibition at MoMA, seems to have set quite a precedent. I wonder what the next ten days will bring... K xx
The human lover
protects her fleshy tail
as if it were his own
soft thing dangling
limp against small rocks
or lithely swimming
hard against rhythmic,
muscled streams.
The assailant says
she must have legs,
takes his blade,
tears through
perfect scales,
plump, salt flesh,
parts her ventral-to-toe
to pound and leave
her freakish and bleeding;
b(r)eached, unable
to walk or breathe.
Based on Tabitha Vevers’ art entitled
“When We Talk About Rape”
an powerful metaphor Kate -- for any female reader, abject fear must surface -- so graphic the implications -- peace and love be with you my dear friend -- Jon Michael
My unfinished mind can hardly cope with this scenario. Like Axilea, I keep trying to finish the story in a better light-- to "fix" it. I am actually crying for your poor maiden/not-so-maiden anymore. But since I cannot move on until I somehow finish the nightmare, I turn to the only source that can fix such a tear. That would be Amazing Grace. When after all we can do, He'll just do the rest.
And isn't it liberating to know that we are NOT maidens under glass--living in a two-dimensional world? That there are other dimensions of which we are not constantly aware. So here goes:
Deep underworld, it was Triton
heard the lowest of moans above the waves,
multiplied a thousand times by liquid lens.
And it was Triton
dividing the deep
to bring her back to drink in breath--
to riffle her sea-weed hair
and whose own hands stitched up the seam
with impossibly patient care.
He carried her home on his broad shoulders,
and there he carries her still,
and damned her assailant
to the slime pits of Grist
where a millstone presses on him.
So there, with his face two inches from slime,
his every whiff as vile as his deeds.
While she rides like a queen
on the shoulder of a God--
her every breath a forgetting
in the beginning of a new song.
Having been a victim of this violent crime, your words refresh memories that I have long locked into a box in some other woman's attic. We emerge changed, innocence lost as well as the sapping of that inner strength that told us we were powerful against evil. There is an emotional crippling, that comes to the victims, from the actions of those who commit this crime. Our strength comes in letting go of that woman we used to be and becoming a new woman. If we do not do that, we would surely spend the rest of our days, paralyzed, mourning the death of who we were born to be. Powerful write, Kate. You bring the reality of this into a light where, perhaps, it can be understood by those who have(thankfully)never experienced it first-hand.
Take care,
Sherry
And I was just wondering "where do we go from here"? What does this graphic reality to the poet and the reader's mind? How can we give this reality a poetic aftermath? Hmm, thinking...
Early Works is an exhaustive compilation of the first decade of the poems and stories of Z.B.McClure. Included are family photos, rare personal photos, photos of 1st draft manuscripts of many of his early poems. Also some biography and memoir materia
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Newfie Hugs, Rose
And isn't it liberating to know that we are NOT maidens under glass--living in a two-dimensional world? That there are other dimensions of which we are not constantly aware. So here goes:
Deep underworld, it was Triton
heard the lowest of moans above the waves,
multiplied a thousand times by liquid lens.
And it was Triton
dividing the deep
to bring her back to drink in breath--
to riffle her sea-weed hair
and whose own hands stitched up the seam
with impossibly patient care.
He carried her home on his broad shoulders,
and there he carries her still,
and damned her assailant
to the slime pits of Grist
where a millstone presses on him.
So there, with his face two inches from slime,
his every whiff as vile as his deeds.
While she rides like a queen
on the shoulder of a God--
her every breath a forgetting
in the beginning of a new song.
Take care,
Sherry
Much peace, love,and light,
Amber "V"
Regis
Axilea