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you measure my poetic gestures as too clever by half
and
i can't fight you on that
in one instant
i committed an unwitting hysterectomy against my breathless innocent
pen
suckerpunched my song into distant dissonance which floated into a hollow
sour note barely audible above the buzz of ear infections and fever
dreams
i silenced my vibrant screams
unbeknownst to me by begetting my own bloodletting
ending as potential tumbled akimbo
and down the canal
now
i lay fallow in the dark
now
i lay
a curled question mark
unanswered
wrapped around my sad atlas
fallopian arms outstretched, arching under the weight of the world
sad atlas
sad
mute useless confused little uterus
clueless how to continue
words don't come
the price i paid for silence
less than a wisp of flesh
here, scalpels equal calculators
exacting subtractions
that add up to worthless if i can't even birth my verse
this is my fate
this is the price of denying what i create
this is my chemically dilated and wasting inside
this is me
deliberating my own destiny
map it out like a starchart:
look a gift horse in the mouth
and
kick his teeth out
and
stab him with a piercing glance
and
when he's dead and still-wet-bleeding
continue to beat him
i decided
my ruthless universe is cold emotionless exacting and
fair
now i can't make sick sixth sense
of any of this
and at night sometimes
when the constellations are iced bright
and i happen to be flat on my back
i'm still astride that starmarked outline
of pony in the sky
a cursed perseus and bedridden andromeda
at the same time
hiked into forbidden stirrups
saddle sore
from vacuum tubes
and in the dream sometimes
i'm purging in reverse
everything back inside
plugging tight
and then
i'm just silent
amniotic quiet
fruitless
apologizing
to a hollow black atmosphere
where sound
has nothing to bounce off of
just
understand me
when the firmament is glittering
understand i am trying to navigate my way
by these twinkling buckets of brightness
above whose light
has already extinguished
before it's even reached us
understand i have only this limited earthbound vision to work with
forgive me
copyright 2003
Rachel
Kann |
