5.24.2004
For the Dead
I dreamed I called you on the telephone
to say: Be kinder to yourself
but you were sick and would not answer
The waste of my love goes on this way
trying to save you from yourself
I have always wondered about the left-over
energy, the way water goes rushing down a hill
long after the rains have stopped
or the fire you want to go to bed from
but cannot leave, burning-down but not burnt-down
the red coals more extreme, more curious
in their flashing and dying
than you wish they were
sitting long after midnight
1973
Adrienne Rich
Shattered Head
A life hauls itself uphill
through hoar-mist steaming
the sun's tongue licking
leaf upon leaf into stricken liquid
When? When? cry the soothseekers
but time is a bloodshot eye
seeing its last of beauty its own
foreclosure
a bloodshot mind
finding itself unspeakable
What is the last thought?
Now I will let you know?
or, Now I know?
(porridge of skull-splinters, brain tissue
mouth and throat membrane, cranial fluid)
Shattered head on the breast
of a wooded hill
Laid down there endlessly so
tendrils soaked into matted compose
became a root
torqued over the faint springhead
groin whence illegible
matter leaches: worm-borings, spurts of silt
volumes of sporic changes
hair long blown into far follicles
blasted into a chosen place
Revenge on the head (genitals, breast, untouched)
revenge on the mouth
packed with its inarticulate confessions
revenge on the eyes
green-gray and restless
revenge on the big and searching lips
the tender tongue
revenge on the sensual, on the nose the
carrier of history
revenge on the life devoured
in another incineration
You can walk by such a place, the earth is
made of them
where the stretched tissue of a field or woods
is humid
with beloved matter
the soothseekers have withdrawn
you feel no ghost, only a sporic chorus
when that place utters its worn sigh
let us have peace
And the shattered head answers back
And I believed I was loved, I believed I loved
Who did this to us?
-Adrienne Rich
This is all I can do. I read poems when I'm sad and when I'm in love.
11:58 AM
5.23.2004
broken heart.
broken heart.
1:04 PM
5.19.2004
Robin gave me these poems, photocopied out of a book, two months ago. I don't know who wrote them.
Tattered Kaddish
Taurean reaper of the wild apple field
messenger from earthmire gleaning
transcripts of fog
in the nineteenth year and the eleventh month
speak your tattered Kaddish for all suicides:
Praise to life though it crumbled in like a tunnel
on ones we knew and loved
Praise to life though its windows blew shut
on the breathing-room of ones we knew and loved
Praise to life though ones we knew and loved
loved it badly, too well, and not enough.
Praise to life though it tightened like a knot
on the hearts of ones we thought we knew loved us.
Praise to life giving room and reason
to ones we knew and loved who felt unpraisable
Praise to them, how they loved it, when they could.
1989
XIII (Dedications)
I know you are reading this poem
late, before leaving your office
of the one intense yellow lamp-spot and the darkening window
in the lassitude of a building faded to quiet
long after rush-hour I know you are reading this poem
standing up in a bookstore far from the ocean
on a grey day of early spring, faint flakes driven
across the plains' enormous spaces around you.
I know you are reading this poem
in a room where too much has happened for you to bear
where the bedclothes lie in stagnant coils on the bed
and the open valise speaks of flight
but you cannot leave yet. I know you are reading this poem
as the underground train loses momentum and before running late
up the stairs
toward a new kind of love
your life has never allowed.
I know you are reading this poem by the light
of the television screen where soundless images jerk and slide
while you wait for the newscast from the intifada.
I know you are reading this poem in a waiting-room
of eyes met and unmeeting, of identity with strangers.
I know you are reading this poem by fluorescent light
in the boredom and fatigue of the young who are counted out,
count thewselves out, at too early an age. I know
you are reading this poem through your failig sight, the thick
lens enlarging these letters beyond all meaning yet you read on
because even the alphabet is precious.
I know you are reading this poem as you pace beside the stove
warming milk, a crying child on your shoulder, a book in your
hand
because life is short and you are thirsty,
I know you are reading this poem listening for something, torn
between bitterness and hope
turning back once again to the task you cannot refuse.
I know you are reading this poem because there is nothing else
left to read
there where you have landed, stripped as you are.
1990-1991
11:07 PM
I can't speak. I miss you.
12:17 PM
5.14.2004
We stopped to buy a veggie dog from the Dawg Stand in front of Dal’s Student Union Building.
“Can I toast your bun?” asked the hot dog making boy.
“Ummm….ahhhh…oh. OH! Yes. Please,” I said, blushing.
He looked at me and smiled. “What did you think I said?”
“I thought you asked me if you could touch my bum.”
6:17 PM
5.11.2004
Dream at UBC
She had wrinkles around her lips and gold hoop earrings that clinked against a pink phone from the 80s. She smoked and told me I was an idiot for waiting so long. I sputtered and said "I have something to learn."
"Well," she said. "You should have applied a long time ago."
12:27 AM
5.09.2004
There’s no name for the game but I was the official commentator/rule maker. I’m bossy as fuck.
Drunk and bossy. We threw a bouncy Superstore ball at the drum kit from behind a line. The object of the game was to hit the cymbals. Two Points for one clean swoop if it landed on top, no bouncing thank-you, one and a half points if it undercut beneath the cymbals, half a point if it skimmed the cymbal, one point if it hit the wall and then hit the cymbal. We developed strategies and stanch. The Hackey-sack (balance the ball on your foot and gently hook it up and kick it), the Crane (hold it in front and tap lightly, takes balance) and a couple of others. Dave was a star for a while and then his career nose-dived and he lost corporate sponsorship, I sucked form the beginning but I made a great fan and a great heckler. “YOU SUCK!!!” “Why Stephen, what great form you have.” Clap, clap, clap. Then we lost interest, Dave ran around the house making sheep noises and then puked. I walked to Eric’s to have a beer and fight with someone about the difference between good writing and good journalism.
Last night I went to A’s 40th birthday party. There were lots of people I knew and others I didn’t. Some crashers, like the twin (?) crust punks.
“What’s your name?”
“Claudette.”
“And yours?”
“Joe.”
“Well, Joe, what are you doing?”
“I’m a traveler.”
“Riiiiight.”
Three more times, Joe came up to me, at least once an hour.
“What’s your name?” Oh this is a fun game, I thought.
Each time I pretended we had never met.
“Claudette. And yours?”
“Joe.”
“Well, Joe it was really nice meeting you.”
And then the same guy with a different haircut. “What’s your name?” JESUS!!!!
I ate water chestnuts wrapped in bacon, strawberries, carrots and gin. Saw a guy there who looked just like Tweedie (scruffier) but the same laid back smile and the beautiful cheek bones and I missed him like a gulp in my gut. But I know he’s different now. I guess I missed the Tweedie who used to call me at work and say “Hi, Beautiful” every day. Or maybe I just miss my friend.
It was fun to hang out with a different crowd, but I left around one, slipped my hood over my head and out the front door without saying goodbye.
5:40 PM
5.07.2004
The doctor called Tuesday and said she wasn’t in Wednesday and to call her on Thursday, so Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday I freaked out and read the Life of Pi and half of Love in the Time of Cholera, rode my bike, went to the gym and scrubbed my ex-boyfriend’s bathtub so I could take a bath and got water on the floor and it came out the other end through the light fixture in the kitchen and I stared at the water quietly while he said “Welcome to the REAL world, Claudette.”
Thursday morning I cried on the porch steps because my doctor had to deliver a baby.
And I would have to wait until god knows when to hear from her and the anxiety made me feel unwelcome in every space, even the air, except the pages of the book I was reading. You know, the big, fat tears that roll down the cheek, and the incessant blinking because you’re a brave girl and who cares if your friend got mad at you, coldly, this morning and said “So. What exactly are you doing with your life?”
Let’s just change the name right now.
Pap Smear is a disgusting word couple. Pap makes me think of diapers full of poo or grandfathers in wheelchairs and smear makes me think of blood on a knuckle or ruined reputations. I think Cervical Exam is better.
I was dreaming about a lover I had last year.
We were holding hands and it was just nice, nothing sexual, just the texture of another human’s thumb, so that was my dream, the rolling of fingers and skin, when the phone rang. A few years ago I went to the hospital for a Cervical Exam before I went to Korea. The doctor asked me if I would mind an intern. No, no I don’t mind, I’m comfortable, not too modest and besides there are lots of pussies in the world. He looked like this kid from high school, the rubbery lips, the round, fat, pasty face, the thick glasses, the black, straight hair sweating on the forehead. But this one tried to disguise his smile. And took way too long.
For three days I thought the doctor was going to say, “You are a mutated woman and you will never give birth.”
I go from A to B to C in a sprint with spongy sneakers. All or nothing. All or nothing.
“You have abnormal cells in your cervix and you’ll have to see a specialist and they’ll give you a colposcopy” (which means they put acid vinegar in my cervix which turns the abnormal cells white and then they put a microscope inside me to look at them and scrape them off for a biopsy) “and you’ll probably have to have laser surgery to remove the cells or cold coagulation” (which means they freeze my womb and send a hot beam of light to burn off the cells and I will smell burning and there will be a machine in the room to remove the smoke, which I imagine curls up like a cat in the corners) “and you’ll have to wait 2 to 4 months for an appointment but cancer takes 20 years.” (which means the cells have not penetrated the lining of my cervix which means these are just pre-cancerous cells which means they caught them in the nick of time, so they say, or well, probably a long time before the nick of time, and really I just have to worry about feelings of vulnerability, invasion and general ickiness).
1:08 PM
5.03.2004
Disappointment is relative. I have to remember the only reason I am disappointed is because of expectations. If I expect nothing than I will not be disappointed. This is all fine and good. But I can't help slicing you all off, and watching you fall, like blossoms from my limb.
11:22 PM
“Why does someone have to die?”
“Someone has to die so the rest of us will value life more. The poet. The visionary.”
'The Hours'
I parked beside the little brown church. It was so quiet.
When you watch the road ahead you can see it, the floating snake. It’s coming. You’re in it, it’s around you. It’s a ghost and I suck it in.
We walked down a path. It was dark but I could still see. We had no idea where this path went. I could hear the fog drip off the branch. I felt still and alive.
Lower we went. The waves screeched against the rocks. I could see something form through the haze. A roof, stone walls and two look-outs. “Keep off. Danger.” I stepped onto the roof and walked to the edge. Just to see. It’s not so far down, but I knealt because I didn’t want to slip. The waves gulped the rocks. It was so dark and so beautiful last night.
11:05 AM
For the Dead
I dreamed I called you on the telephone
to say: Be kinder to yourself
but you were sick and would not answer
The waste of my love goes on this way
trying to save you from yourself
I have always wondered about the left-over
energy, the way water goes rushing down a hill
long after the rains have stopped
or the fire you want to go to bed from
but cannot leave, burning-down but not burnt-down
the red coals more extreme, more curious
in their flashing and dying
than you wish they were
sitting long after midnight
1973
Adrienne Rich
Shattered Head
A life hauls itself uphill
through hoar-mist steaming
the sun's tongue licking
leaf upon leaf into stricken liquid
When? When? cry the soothseekers
but time is a bloodshot eye
seeing its last of beauty its own
foreclosure
a bloodshot mind
finding itself unspeakable
What is the last thought?
Now I will let you know?
or, Now I know?
(porridge of skull-splinters, brain tissue
mouth and throat membrane, cranial fluid)
Shattered head on the breast
of a wooded hill
Laid down there endlessly so
tendrils soaked into matted compose
became a root
torqued over the faint springhead
groin whence illegible
matter leaches: worm-borings, spurts of silt
volumes of sporic changes
hair long blown into far follicles
blasted into a chosen place
Revenge on the head (genitals, breast, untouched)
revenge on the mouth
packed with its inarticulate confessions
revenge on the eyes
green-gray and restless
revenge on the big and searching lips
the tender tongue
revenge on the sensual, on the nose the
carrier of history
revenge on the life devoured
in another incineration
You can walk by such a place, the earth is
made of them
where the stretched tissue of a field or woods
is humid
with beloved matter
the soothseekers have withdrawn
you feel no ghost, only a sporic chorus
when that place utters its worn sigh
let us have peace
And the shattered head answers back
And I believed I was loved, I believed I loved
Who did this to us?
-Adrienne Rich
This is all I can do. I read poems when I'm sad and when I'm in love.
11:58 AM
5.23.2004
broken heart.
broken heart.
1:04 PM
5.19.2004
Robin gave me these poems, photocopied out of a book, two months ago. I don't know who wrote them.
Tattered Kaddish
Taurean reaper of the wild apple field
messenger from earthmire gleaning
transcripts of fog
in the nineteenth year and the eleventh month
speak your tattered Kaddish for all suicides:
Praise to life though it crumbled in like a tunnel
on ones we knew and loved
Praise to life though its windows blew shut
on the breathing-room of ones we knew and loved
Praise to life though ones we knew and loved
loved it badly, too well, and not enough.
Praise to life though it tightened like a knot
on the hearts of ones we thought we knew loved us.
Praise to life giving room and reason
to ones we knew and loved who felt unpraisable
Praise to them, how they loved it, when they could.
1989
XIII (Dedications)
I know you are reading this poem
late, before leaving your office
of the one intense yellow lamp-spot and the darkening window
in the lassitude of a building faded to quiet
long after rush-hour I know you are reading this poem
standing up in a bookstore far from the ocean
on a grey day of early spring, faint flakes driven
across the plains' enormous spaces around you.
I know you are reading this poem
in a room where too much has happened for you to bear
where the bedclothes lie in stagnant coils on the bed
and the open valise speaks of flight
but you cannot leave yet. I know you are reading this poem
as the underground train loses momentum and before running late
up the stairs
toward a new kind of love
your life has never allowed.
I know you are reading this poem by the light
of the television screen where soundless images jerk and slide
while you wait for the newscast from the intifada.
I know you are reading this poem in a waiting-room
of eyes met and unmeeting, of identity with strangers.
I know you are reading this poem by fluorescent light
in the boredom and fatigue of the young who are counted out,
count thewselves out, at too early an age. I know
you are reading this poem through your failig sight, the thick
lens enlarging these letters beyond all meaning yet you read on
because even the alphabet is precious.
I know you are reading this poem as you pace beside the stove
warming milk, a crying child on your shoulder, a book in your
hand
because life is short and you are thirsty,
I know you are reading this poem listening for something, torn
between bitterness and hope
turning back once again to the task you cannot refuse.
I know you are reading this poem because there is nothing else
left to read
there where you have landed, stripped as you are.
1990-1991
11:07 PM
I can't speak. I miss you.
12:17 PM
5.14.2004
We stopped to buy a veggie dog from the Dawg Stand in front of Dal’s Student Union Building.
“Can I toast your bun?” asked the hot dog making boy.
“Ummm….ahhhh…oh. OH! Yes. Please,” I said, blushing.
He looked at me and smiled. “What did you think I said?”
“I thought you asked me if you could touch my bum.”
6:17 PM
5.11.2004
Dream at UBC
She had wrinkles around her lips and gold hoop earrings that clinked against a pink phone from the 80s. She smoked and told me I was an idiot for waiting so long. I sputtered and said "I have something to learn."
"Well," she said. "You should have applied a long time ago."
12:27 AM
5.09.2004
There’s no name for the game but I was the official commentator/rule maker. I’m bossy as fuck.
Drunk and bossy. We threw a bouncy Superstore ball at the drum kit from behind a line. The object of the game was to hit the cymbals. Two Points for one clean swoop if it landed on top, no bouncing thank-you, one and a half points if it undercut beneath the cymbals, half a point if it skimmed the cymbal, one point if it hit the wall and then hit the cymbal. We developed strategies and stanch. The Hackey-sack (balance the ball on your foot and gently hook it up and kick it), the Crane (hold it in front and tap lightly, takes balance) and a couple of others. Dave was a star for a while and then his career nose-dived and he lost corporate sponsorship, I sucked form the beginning but I made a great fan and a great heckler. “YOU SUCK!!!” “Why Stephen, what great form you have.” Clap, clap, clap. Then we lost interest, Dave ran around the house making sheep noises and then puked. I walked to Eric’s to have a beer and fight with someone about the difference between good writing and good journalism.
Last night I went to A’s 40th birthday party. There were lots of people I knew and others I didn’t. Some crashers, like the twin (?) crust punks.
“What’s your name?”
“Claudette.”
“And yours?”
“Joe.”
“Well, Joe, what are you doing?”
“I’m a traveler.”
“Riiiiight.”
Three more times, Joe came up to me, at least once an hour.
“What’s your name?” Oh this is a fun game, I thought.
Each time I pretended we had never met.
“Claudette. And yours?”
“Joe.”
“Well, Joe it was really nice meeting you.”
And then the same guy with a different haircut. “What’s your name?” JESUS!!!!
I ate water chestnuts wrapped in bacon, strawberries, carrots and gin. Saw a guy there who looked just like Tweedie (scruffier) but the same laid back smile and the beautiful cheek bones and I missed him like a gulp in my gut. But I know he’s different now. I guess I missed the Tweedie who used to call me at work and say “Hi, Beautiful” every day. Or maybe I just miss my friend.
It was fun to hang out with a different crowd, but I left around one, slipped my hood over my head and out the front door without saying goodbye.
5:40 PM
5.07.2004
The doctor called Tuesday and said she wasn’t in Wednesday and to call her on Thursday, so Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday I freaked out and read the Life of Pi and half of Love in the Time of Cholera, rode my bike, went to the gym and scrubbed my ex-boyfriend’s bathtub so I could take a bath and got water on the floor and it came out the other end through the light fixture in the kitchen and I stared at the water quietly while he said “Welcome to the REAL world, Claudette.”
Thursday morning I cried on the porch steps because my doctor had to deliver a baby.
And I would have to wait until god knows when to hear from her and the anxiety made me feel unwelcome in every space, even the air, except the pages of the book I was reading. You know, the big, fat tears that roll down the cheek, and the incessant blinking because you’re a brave girl and who cares if your friend got mad at you, coldly, this morning and said “So. What exactly are you doing with your life?”
Let’s just change the name right now.
Pap Smear is a disgusting word couple. Pap makes me think of diapers full of poo or grandfathers in wheelchairs and smear makes me think of blood on a knuckle or ruined reputations. I think Cervical Exam is better.
I was dreaming about a lover I had last year.
We were holding hands and it was just nice, nothing sexual, just the texture of another human’s thumb, so that was my dream, the rolling of fingers and skin, when the phone rang. A few years ago I went to the hospital for a Cervical Exam before I went to Korea. The doctor asked me if I would mind an intern. No, no I don’t mind, I’m comfortable, not too modest and besides there are lots of pussies in the world. He looked like this kid from high school, the rubbery lips, the round, fat, pasty face, the thick glasses, the black, straight hair sweating on the forehead. But this one tried to disguise his smile. And took way too long.
For three days I thought the doctor was going to say, “You are a mutated woman and you will never give birth.”
I go from A to B to C in a sprint with spongy sneakers. All or nothing. All or nothing.
“You have abnormal cells in your cervix and you’ll have to see a specialist and they’ll give you a colposcopy” (which means they put acid vinegar in my cervix which turns the abnormal cells white and then they put a microscope inside me to look at them and scrape them off for a biopsy) “and you’ll probably have to have laser surgery to remove the cells or cold coagulation” (which means they freeze my womb and send a hot beam of light to burn off the cells and I will smell burning and there will be a machine in the room to remove the smoke, which I imagine curls up like a cat in the corners) “and you’ll have to wait 2 to 4 months for an appointment but cancer takes 20 years.” (which means the cells have not penetrated the lining of my cervix which means these are just pre-cancerous cells which means they caught them in the nick of time, so they say, or well, probably a long time before the nick of time, and really I just have to worry about feelings of vulnerability, invasion and general ickiness).
1:08 PM
5.03.2004
Disappointment is relative. I have to remember the only reason I am disappointed is because of expectations. If I expect nothing than I will not be disappointed. This is all fine and good. But I can't help slicing you all off, and watching you fall, like blossoms from my limb.
11:22 PM
“Why does someone have to die?”
“Someone has to die so the rest of us will value life more. The poet. The visionary.”
'The Hours'
I parked beside the little brown church. It was so quiet.
When you watch the road ahead you can see it, the floating snake. It’s coming. You’re in it, it’s around you. It’s a ghost and I suck it in.
We walked down a path. It was dark but I could still see. We had no idea where this path went. I could hear the fog drip off the branch. I felt still and alive.
Lower we went. The waves screeched against the rocks. I could see something form through the haze. A roof, stone walls and two look-outs. “Keep off. Danger.” I stepped onto the roof and walked to the edge. Just to see. It’s not so far down, but I knealt because I didn’t want to slip. The waves gulped the rocks. It was so dark and so beautiful last night.
11:05 AM
