writing for pleasure

So, about this time last year, I sat down with my poems and decided to finish my chapbook by the end of 2007. Obviously that didn't happen. I mean. I have several poems that I feel are complete, and I have a general idea of the layout, but I just haven't been able to piece together this work. Then there's the problem of what to do with the naughty poems. I can't very well publish those poems in my real name! And yet I want to be able to share my writing with the people I grew up loving. I also have hardly written in my paper journal since July, and I'm sure you've all noticed the lack of posts here, as well. I'm supposed to write four times a month on The Femme's Guide to Absolutely Everything. I have only managed to post three times (although I do have a post in the works).

I have to write. I have to. I mean, I'm writing for my classes and all. But I am not writing for pleasure, and that is insufferable. So. Will you all cheer me on to begin writing again, perhaps to complete my chapbook ten years in the making? I need to speak, and I need to speak aloud.

tentative/definite

This morning as Dana was dreading going to work, I was asleep in the bed, wishing that she could stay with me. I watched her face move between irritated, sad, tired and angry in cycles. It was just one of those days. Last night I brought up "dating" with her - I wanted to see what all this business of dating more than one person and being "okay" with it is all about. It didn't sit very well with her. I'm not disappointed, it's more of a curiosity for me than anything else. What disappointed me was that I made her sad. I don't want to stop seeing her, or sleeping with, or spending my days with her. Not yet, not for a long while, I hope.

Her eyes swept over my naked body and decided she would have a taste of me for breakfast, mouthfulls of my flesh and moisture and energy. She pushed my knees apart and brought her mouth down to my waiting, wanting clit. I was still a little bit asleep but each stroke brought me closer and closer to that release of energy. She brought me to the edge of myself and with a big deep breath, I brought my arms down to touch where it feels best, and from there I jumped into a bottomless pit. It seemed like minutes, 5 or more, I pulsed and my stomach contracted, and that nonsense speak, these incomprehensible moans erupted from my voice until finally I found something to grip. Instead of pulling out her two (only two?) fingers from my melting pussy she left them in, pushing them in and dragging them out - this is that sex organ that floats in the open for all to see (if only i could possess them, cover and dress them and keep them my secret). She fucked me this way for a few more minutes, but there was a rising tide of emotion gathering in my throat and my cheekbones and my neck. I lifted my arm up and rested it over my eyes and started to cry.

I want her, and I've been trying to say the things that will convince her but I think because of the shortness of the time we have been together, things still feel so tentative. But that is not how I am thinking of it. It is the opposite of tentative. Definite.

She held me and told me "it's okay" a hundred times until I believed her. I'm waiting now to see her again, I'm waiting now to hold her again.

down the long hall toward the O. R.

So, update on the fam. My one remaining parent and my one remaining grandparent are both having surgery in two different states on the same day. Which is today, Friday, leap day, 2008. They're going down my mother's throat for some reason, to fix a slipped disc in her neck, in her spine - something's slipped off her puppet strings and she's weak. Grandma has a slew of gall stones in her gall bladder and throughout. Is it so many years of black coffee, at least 3 cups before noon every single day since coffee was rationed, since we were not a wealthy family and one time Grandma fed her husband and four children with a big sack of potatoes. For a month. The telephone company went on strike and my Grandpa was in the union. 3 cups of coffee before noon, and coffee until lunchtime. In the afternoons she switches to water, and at dusk she switches to wine and starts it all over in the morning.

coffee
water
wine

So, these, my two non-feminist feminists - my grandmother, until recently, approaching 74, has been mowing yards, hillsides, murdering weeds with a machete, built a house after grandpa went on. Will not tolerate disrespect. my mother who left my father after years of manipulation, control and calling her an idiot [imagine! she still thinks she's not very smart!] She left him in tears because he finally realized that she didn't meet his standards, but as we visited him in the hospital, in the cardiac ICU 5 years after he divorced her, he realized that she surpassed all of his expectations. He lost the most special gift that life had ever given him. He was her friend, but that's all she allowed. He had not earned her love, but she gave it to him anyway.

My mothers are sick, and I can't be with them. I think it's outrageous that my employer will not grant me leave time to see them. It's a great company, sure, and if it were the parents of someone in management, you wouldn't see their face any day that a family member were ill. Nosirree.

And my homework is piling up, but there's too much on plate... There's just too much on my plate...

heartbeat can't catch up, parched my singing cave,
i ripple down hill in search of cold water.

crave - poetry

she left nothing
by which i could remember her
not a trace
not an echo
not the outline of her
body in my bed
where little deaths
brought new life
she left no note
no crumpled paper
from her pocket

i keep looking at my chest
where she left her mark
the bruise has faded
and all i see is shadow

i've searched my room
looking for some piece
of her, lingering
but there's nothing

today, i drink coffee from her
unwashed mug, i drink of memory
the burn of fingers on skin
the sting of teeth
biting my tender bottom lip
her hazel eyes that knew me

perla

There is a pearl that I love. I do not possess it, but sometimes I am allowed to hold it in my hands. I move my hands and it rolls around in my cupped palms. The colors shift in the sunlight. I cherish it.

I do not possess it, but sometimes she lets me hold it. Although she takes her hands off it, her eyes remain locked onto the treasure. The pearl came from the center of her heart. Some grain of sand, some shard of bone got stuck in there the last time her heart was broken open. This produced a round, shiny, translucent pearl.

While she hides it from her boys and mothers and casual acquaintances, she shows it to me. Little girls are born with hearts of flesh, but the first heartbreak isn't far away from birth - in fact, sometimes little girls get their pearls from their mothers first.

We show each other our pearls
when we exchange names.

I do not possess it,
but some times she has
let me hold her pearl.
The love shifts in the
sunlight, I cherish it.

You are safe, baby girl.
I always have room for you.
Don't bother calling,
just knock on my door
You are a very brave girl.

Girls Write Now

Founded in 1998, Girls Write Now Inc. (GWN) provides a safe and supportive environment where girls can expand their natural writing talents, develop independent creative voices, and build confidence in making healthy choices in school, career and life.

Now this girl is jealous and wants a writing mentor. If I should ever have a social life again and can go to workshops and submit my poetry. I'm chomping at the bit. Er. Pen, rather.

genius

Fastforward to minute 3:35 ish, there are two other poets in this segment.

Today I have stumbled upon a genius, Stacyann Chin. She is the bold, vivid, improper, and loud woman I wanted to be when I first realized I was a poet, and a few years later when I realized I loved women, and then a few years after that when I named myself a feminist (I had always been one, but I had no words for it - little girls can be the biggest feminists by simply telling the truth).

See also, Catalog the Insanity

poetries

I have some recordings of my poetry that I wish I could share with you. Collective, you. And there are many new poems that haven't been recorded, haven't been tied down to tape, grabado. I have some ways to simply record them but it's not going to sound so great. But I think poetry takes on a different texture and character when spoken aloud and perhaps they communicate most fully and roundly with sound.

Apparently there may be an advanced workshop like the one I'm still recovering from. Perhaps as early as January. But I haven't really been able to lay beside anyone to process what I learned and felt and saw and accomplished. I've still been lying naked next to myself asking myself if it were a dream, you know? I think January will be too soon for me to tear open that wound again. Can't imagine what they must mean by "advanced".

But I almost don't think I can escape the lure of the warmth. I need to buy postage stamps and send love and tenderness to the women I met.

My body aches for touch, haunted by memories of smooth strokes spanning vast miles across the highways of my legs, my thighs, the way she pressed her palms into mine as I lay there, supine, needing to feel the struggle, needing to know that she would not let me escape even if I tried because I knew that escaping wasn't what I wanted.

The weirdest thing about the whole workshop is that when I was deliciously enveloped in touch, I wanted so much to kiss the fair muses who had their hands all over me. I wanted to feel lips on my breasts and shoulders and hands. But I felt like I couldn't ask for that. I didn't think that would have been okay, so I didn't... I felt like ask for what you want didn't apply in that moment. Because a kiss would have made it too intimate maybe? I don't really know... Something to think about.

yawn

When I yawn, lying in bed in the afternoons before I get up for work... I yawn with my whole body. My arms fly up over my head, my back arches into the mattress and my legs extend out, out, reaching, pointing toward my bookcase (instead of a tv at the foot of my bed, I have a bookcase...) I yawn and inhale sharply, stretch myself wide, and toss and turn and exhale.

and i think i've just eaten the last of this year's strawberries. they weren't as sweet as they were in July. at least I can look forward to pears and oranges. until next year, my tart, red, berries...

Attitude Adjustment

Without even revising, polishing any of my poetry - never mind submitting it for publication, I found myself thinking this afternoon that my writing is simply unpublishable. Like this blog, my poetry is self-centered, way too personal and abstract, and totally lacking in theses. All of my poems these days have I's in them. I this, me that. Who am I to say that my work is no good? Or that it is any good at all? I've been such a fatalist. Let me take it one step at a time. Being in a poetry workshop again would be helpful. Avarice, why haven't you done that yet? Put that on the 43thingslist. Ugh. My list is too long.

I want to polish these poems: Siren, Do it With Tenderness, Secrets, Peaches, and even Wants/Needs - there seem to be some journals who may publish such a thing...

I skipped school and made some revisions to Not a Skinny Girl:

I am not a skinny girl
I can take up space.
I like being able to
spread out my borders
like a blanket on the beach

I am not a skinny girl
And. I. Love. My. Breasts.
The pair hang suspended,
thick, heavy and expectant.
Saturated with power,
they attract, warn, bless, curse.
But more than anything,
my breasts show appreciation.

I am not a skinny girl.
And. I. Love. My. Belly.
She is round and sweet,
leans over the balcony
of my jeans trying to
breathe fresh, fresh air.
My belly hovers, vigilant above
such tender flesh below.
She guards, gentle, alert.

I am not a skinny girl.
And. I. Love. My. Legs.
They have stamped out injustice,
the musical beat of a revolution.
They are strong under my weight
strong as I await a deeper freedom
Marching me into the future,
My legs know the truth.

[it needs a resolution. it just ends. what does it need? do i need encourage big girls to be themselves? how do i say fuck the man and his wiry definition of beauty?]

I wish I could always explain why I wrote a poem in such a way. Purposefully, I never said [in so many words] "I'm not skinny, but..." anything. "but, i don't mind being big", "but i'm still beautiful", "but I have other redeeming qualities."

Being "not skinny" and being beautiful or sexual or strong or proud or confident - they are two separate ideas. So I use -AND- to bring them together. I am not a skinny girl AND I love myself. AND I'm not afraid to take up space. AND I'm not afraid to take up space... in fact, I kinda like it. The word BUT would have given it a sense of apology. I'm sorry I'm not a skinny girl? Hell no, and Far from it.

bleeding

I want to write for pay.

I stopped writing poetry after I graduated from high school. Didn't pick up the pen for a poem again until after my first year of college. I had been severed and the pen drew back the stitches that eventually healed up my wounds. But writing poetry, journaling, writing scholarly papers for my degree - it's not enough.

I'm salivating from cover to cover over someone else's name printed on the spine of a book. I lust for the breeze of my pages being flipped, fanned. Give me the ink, bleeding through the binding, beauty.

But I've been censoring myself. Writing in my journal instead of writing here, because I feel like what I write is too scattered, too thoughtless, and certainly not blog-worthy. I hesitate to even write that I haven't been writing because it seems trivial. And I've purposed in my heart to publish my poetry by the end of the year. That's so soon...

Does anyone know where I can submit some of my more polished poetry?
I haven't made that effort in some time, and I think it would be good for me.

naughty

there once was a girl with a curl
right in the middle of her forehead

and when she was good,
she was very, very good

and when she was bad,
she was horrid. [better].



I've had a naughty little curl
getting in my eyes all weekend,
just sprung up out of nowhere
when I boarded the plane! ;)

I'm sad that I'm leaving New York.
I feel like we have only just met,
and I haven not learned your name.
I think I need to see more of you.

ritual

The taste of strawberries
lingering on my tongue
swirling, mixing with a
bite of chocolate...

I was clutching my pearl
necklace in my left hand
and my piece of chocolate
in my right hand. smiling.

Who knew muses could be so strong?
I should have know the hands of
the graces could so eloquently
cradle, protect what is delicate.

I was holding an image in my hands.
A sprite strolling beside a deer.
Inviting me to explore the trees.
Encouraging me to unfold myself.

Oh the hips, the petals, the stamen, the nectar.
Where I wear moonbeams. Where I am breathless.

Don't worry, I've been breathing.
Oh, have I been breathing.

wants/needs

i want a string of big, thick pearls
fastened too tightly around my neck
i want a shiny, silk tie, knotted
around my wrists, behind my back,
my shoulder blades reach for each other
and push my breasts up, out, accessible.

i want one fist entangled in my hair
pulling. gripping. unkindly. harsh.
i want your cock in my mouth from above
so you can watch me, mouth stretching,
opening to receive; opening to give
my eyes shuttered by a rude handkerchief.

stacked

i woke up just now
naked under a pile
of women's studies
and gender theory
books. sexy.

slacks

You were dressed up so handsome
for dinner the other day.
Walking along the sidewalk and
holding your hand made
(makes) me feel visible
and validated.

If I could, I would always hold your hand.
You in general. You with short locks
clipped so close to your ears, your neck skin.
You in the pinstripes, in the Dapper Dan getup.
You with hands so like mine. Hands so unlike mine...

"There are a lot of people here... a lot of straight people."
"Yeah I think we pretty much make up the queer contingent."
"Wanna make 'em uncomfortable?"

not a skinny girl

i am not a skinny girl.
but i take up space.
and like being able to
spread out my borders
like a blanket on the beach

i am not a skinny girl.
and. i. love. my. breasts.
the pair hang suspended,
thick, heavy and expectant.
they are saturated with
so much power. to attract.
to warn. to carry blessing.
to curse trespassers
but more than anything,
they show appreciation.

i am not a skinny girl.
and. i. love. my. belly.
she is round and sweet,
leans over the balcony
of my jeans trying to
breathe fresh, fresh air.
she hovers, vigilant above
what tender flesh lies below.
guarding. alert. and gentle.

i am not a skinny girl.
and. i. love. my. legs
my legs can stamp out
injustice, the beat of
a musical revolution
my legs are strong under
my weight, strong as i
await our day of freedom
my legs know the truth.

discovering patience

since I have known touch and pace,
the earliest movements of desire.
it is this desire that finds reason to
occupy the space of my imagination

my desire overwhelms me
for fullness, completeness,
my longing for the truth
behind these wordless
expressions of contentment.

yet for these to be known,
a worthy conduit of passion
must meet my gaze,
must break through the
faùx resistance that so
characterizes my behavior.

but my guise is too heavy, too convincing.

how shall I emerge from behind brocade drapes
to enshroud myself only in satin and gauze?

how shall I lure wary souls into my own
uncharted waters when I am still learning
to chart my course, to engage my sails and
navigate coarse oceans of desire and truth?

Siren

I am a myth, a legend, a fairy tale,
a siren calling out above clear waters,
pulling, drowning, drawing in the
eyes of men and women, entrapping,
the twinkle in my eyes, mesmerize,
their screams, their tries to break free...

I laugh, half wishing, half hoping,
that one day they'll catch me, hatch me,
peel back my flowering hips,
the petals, the stamen, the nectar,
my glimmering eyes, still, the sighs,
mesmerize, mine to theirs,

catch me if you dare
satisfy my stare
catch me with care
where i wear moonbeams
where i am breathless

the siren, a wave caught upon the sand,
as hopeful as sailors are to capture me,
i am that they would succeed

my greed, my lusty lips, lashes,
lascivious stares, glares,

catch me if you dare
satisfy my stare
catch me with care
where I cry heaven
where I can breathe again

their screams their tries to break free
from my eyes, a gaze, the lies, mesmerize...

Do it With Tenderness

If you wish to arouse desire in me,
do it with the tart red strawberries of summer
with sugar and cream and clean, wet fruit
you can bring me to knees, begging
the taste of raspberries,
and smooth, dark chocolate
you can make me tremble, softly
sipping at chilled chambord

If you wish to arouse my affections,
do it with grace, with tenderness
speak to me in the language of delight
you can make me smile, bashful
just run your fingers through my hair
kiss my hand, my palm, my forehead
you can make me blush, I'm easy
leaning on your shoulder