SetYourJaw

Do not forgive me my impertinence

and I will not further scrutinize

your egocentric harping.

How can you tell me that I am invisible?

...if I see through your honey words,

beneath the glaze, to your deepest insufficiency,

to your intent to make smaller versions

of yourself, using methods for which you

can later be congratulated with

dreams of lofty crowns,  of golden mansions, of well done

tender steaks made from the meat of those who

starved to death while you looked on, telling them

of a heaven: without disease, with rewards for suffering,

with release from The Deep Burning...(in their bellies?)

You have never burned for anything except

the sound of your own voice, echoing off of

parchment walls and plush chairs,

off of bad shoes and the ears of children

you neglect in order to make yourself useful

to a kingdom which has no use for Hubris.

She came to bring me circles

imprinted with sounds

of breaking hearts,

of glories lost,

of circumstances

to match my pomp.

She came

to remind me of

the light across her face

the table under her nails

the sense of a dithyramb

I could barely hear.

And then she left

me here alone

with ironies

on pots and pans

and no time

on my hands

to consider

where I would have

been if my feet

had found a path

a little brighter

than our inheritance.

I am reminded

that we are very tall,

with strong backs

and open minds,

with steel and whiskey

entwined in DNA

wrapped in bone,

bound by fate

to keep the secret safe

(of our compassionate humility)

while we say between ourselves

and then out loud to the world

that we will bow our necks

to no one.

He cans my indecision

and sets it firmly on a shelf

he made from quiet missives

and loud commandments that

I almost mistook

for esteem or something gentle

in the way his eyes looked

through my words,

across the table,

under our misunderstandings,

over my highest ideas of the Self.

Sometimes he exists, animate,

while I am but a liquid

he takes out

to pour into containers of lengthy discourse,

to boil into vapors of remembrance

to freeze into a solid sounding stone.

And in our simple meetings

and clever earthbound epistles,

we both are at our best,

for he gives me honest anwers

and I give him attentive ears,

he takes from me nothing

and I take from him great wisdom

and new ways to paint the world.

How long will I wait

for a sultry day to saunter by

to remind me of my youth

or help me forget that

I am not a hedonist?

It will never come.

For what could ever happen

to make me think that

happiness is The Bottomline; 

or help me forget that

I only value myself

if I am:

compassionate,

responsible

or suffering

for a cause

I don't believe in?

I have heard it said

that Eve was a crown

placed easily atop a head

and as easily cast aside;

that she was a foot,

meant to be protected

or trampled at will;

that she was a rib,

meant to support

but never enforce;

that she was a neck,

meant to turn

but never talk.

I have heard

such sentiments

with a musing twinkle

in my softest eye,

and thought to myself

"She who is not selfless

is not woman."

I see her in perfect

shades of green,

I see that she was not

meant to be

idle or passive,

sighing heavily,

standing merely

for decoration,

like a little knome.

No, she was built

for babies at breast,

toddlers at hip,

phone on shoulder,

full notebook in bone weary hand,

with business on her lips

and dinner on the table.

She was meant to be

someone who saves the day.

Whether or not she is

worn or trampled,

supported or turned,

loved or hated.

I have no time

for competition,

nor the heedless

rambling of 

shiftless tongues

whose mouths have

always been fed

sans mortal connection

to hands which grew the wheat.

I have no desire to live a life

consumed by my conceit

troubled by silly vanities

of face--or worse--of mind.

I would rather live,

sequestered,

on a hillside,

under tree tops,

on wheat I've grown myself.

But if I look hard into

my best efforts

to be both

the silk and blade,

I see mostly

my own wit,

an exquisite gold patina

worn to a lovely sheen

by the hands

of the chattering Vanities

who live near me,

unrepentant

under rocks

on wheat they never grew.

I see my life in circles

of  arriving in the spring and

not knowing those whose names

I had often called in winter.

And all those circles swirl

to become a composite

picture of the way

I thought Things would be,

and the people

and the places

and the time

become to me a great haze

of philosophic irony:

as if I had picked up marbles

and peered into them as universes,

and not understood that they were

just marbles, after all.

I dreamt tonight, of dying--

of songs in minor keys,

of streaming tears on ashen faces.

And I wondered if they would say:

"She loved much, but forgave nothing"

"She worked hard for little pay,

and complained about it daily"

"She leaves only

the legacy of dreaming

during daylight hours,

while others tried to talk"?

And when, (upon waking)

I set my eyes to search

for what platitudes

I might deserve,

I could find nothing

worthy of honor,

except two tiny nodding heads:

one of ringlets spun from gold

and one crowned with tufts of stardust.

She lives in war zones

wrapped in tattered shawls

and digs through ashes

that she made with her

best weapons, while trying

to extinguish either

the gypsy or the mother.

There is always a battle

for her, between

nostalgia and security,

between what is steady

and that which rolls about

and pauses--only to flicker

mildly when too great a wind has come.

So she digs, to find those who were not

wholly consumed the last time the

great war made fire.

She thinks that if she could find

a single pair of steady hands

to lift her face toward heaven

she would then have one final chance to

set at peace all that remains of the woeful war.

And she is right, with one exception:

those hands must be her own.

[I liked him too much

 to tell him the truth, but...]

If I were being honest,

I would have told him

that I thought he was

a startup. A carpetbagger,

who was only making use

of his deep hunger

for gold, for love, for vanity,

but who had not the fate or fire

of one who follows through.

He stands now, on stages,

in dimly lit rooms, sailing through

dark nights on a little raft he composed

of black tar and tumbleweed

and people come to hear him

because they cannot hear themselves.

He has lived a charmed life.

He has (a thousand times)

put his hand to a plough

too big for him,

to sow single seeds of doubt

among those who didn't believe.

My shoulders are tired

from carrying too much

weight without enough

sleep or help or strength.

And all my doubters come,

to watch me at my work.

If they were being honest,

they would say that I

am a startup, a carpetbagger,

one who has lived a charmed life

without faith or fire,

one who has not properly

failed at anything.

And if I had a stage

or a little raft,

people would come

to listen to me,

and I would tell them that

through all these dark nights

they have been mistaken:

I have (a thousand times)

pushed a plough too big for me

and though they did not see

my twisted limbs,

my tilted head,

my eleventh hour,

I was still there

chest deep in mud and mire

sowing seeds of doubt

for gold, for love, for Vanity.

"If you can't ring me up, what exactly do you do?"

...........

"I hang the clothes you wadded up

and threw on the floor because

your mother never taught you

to value a human life that was not

your own, unless that human life

is worth more than $30 an hour.

Though my job description is

mostly Mediocrity, and though

(at times) I wax Monk-ish,

I do not mind the job at all.

I have lots of time for thinking

and I don't care about pleasing

you, anyway.

If we met on the street I

would probably help you

change your tire,

but I don't get paid enough

to spend half an hour helping

you find the perfect sundress

to impress a guy whose

name you won't even

remember in five years."

I have a hard time understanding:

God as one who wonders

at me or revels in himself.

God as one who trades

faith for healing or money for power.

God as one who hears,

but requires met conditions in order to be moved.

But if I begin to think of God as One who is:

as Steady and Selfless as my grandmother,

as Loving and Beautiful as my daughters,

as Capable and Forgiving as my friends,

as Generous and Clever as my grandfather,

as Earthy and Inexplicable as my husband,

then I begin to feel that

no matter how many shiny stars

or witty breathless astronauts

have invaded his vast heaven,

maybe I could call on Him sometime,

just to sit and let myself feel small

just to give myself a little while

to think of Him--

not as a Giver,

for I have known of no givers who were not deeply bitter,

And not as a Lover,

for I have known of no lovers who were always wholly faithful.

But as one who exists, outside of my best interests,

without regard for whether or not I can think of

a convenient way to file Him in my simple head.

And suddenly, I begin to wrap my mind around

the reasons for an answer of "I Am".

I did not give him Caspian’s credit,

But considered him only as stairs

Consider a slinky,

A Great Chattering Coxcomb

Meant to inconvenience me

With plumage I could not appreciate,

With noise I could not comprehend.

But when I had occasion to hear him

Talked of in earnest tones,

By one who makes masterpieces

From matters of soul,

I saw in him something of The Prince---

The tragic lovely face of one who travels much

And never reaches anywhere.

It was on,

when I first saw her

and thought

that she would never be

as clever as me,

or as cute as my friends.

She would never be a person

for whom I would have a use.

I smiled cruelly.

She was passive aggressive,

and I wondered whether or not

she would fit in my coffee cup

so I could drink her down,

just to spit her out.

When I walked away,

she was heavy in my head,

I was passive aggressive

and passing by girls

who wondered whether or not

I would fit in their shot glasses,

so they could drink me down,

just to spit me out,

and then smile cruelly,

nod their precious heads,

and say among themselves

that I am not clever,

that I am not cute, 

that I will never be a person

for whom they have a use.

And then I understood

that I should have gloried

in her aggression,

I should have

put it in my coffee cup,

and fed it to my ego for breakfast.

I remember

seven snakes with silver smiles

slipping on their sultry swords.

And me, standing there:

breaking oaths,

helplessly naked,

beginning to understand

that you considered yourself

merely a vibration in the room,

a wavelength who reached out

to grab my wrist,

a pair of bloodshot eyes

that looked to see me deeply.

And sometimes

(while you struggled)

I saw myself,

Dependent & Doubtful,

shaded in greens I did not deserve.

I saw you, 

burnt red, bloodshot, fumbling--mad,

screaming for a sail boat...

I came to  know

that though

I would suffer

much with guilt

for the Indiscrepancy,

I never could

have been the one

who saved you

from Crazy or the Drug.

Tonight

I hear Love,

a vibration in this room,

a wavelength

clasping my head,

peering up with

eyes that see me fully,

without dependency or doubt.

He, soft brown and lovely,

who made me both a woman

and a girl who broke your heart.

Still, I remember,

and I am sorry

for your suffering,

but certainly not

for my good fortune

in finding one who

sometimes slips

but never dies from it.

He said I could never be a poet,

because a poet must be honest enough

to see that which repulses

and assign it a name.

She wore her hair like Joni

and told me I was a feminist.

I could not agree because

I was not angry at the time.

But now that I am tired

and daily combating the belief

that my chest pulls too much

blood from my head,

Now that I see my tongue grow

sharper (daily) on whetstones

of "sweetie" and easy dismissals

of even my true statements,

I have decided

that I would rather

be a bitch

than bowled over.

If I were younger you could push my buttons,
restart my frames, re-sew my loopholes,

write me letters with open endings

that pluck the better of my heartstrings.

You had said, "I'm glad it was you." I calculated
your symmetry and formulated a strategy.
You traced the motion with your heartbeat
and were suddenly the saddest girl I'd ever meet.

Years later, when I saw you drinking
you were pale and nicely painted
and I wished I had been the one who tainted
our solemn hymns with sordid history.

If we were younger he could play us tunes
that keep our hearts from early tombs,
But I am not so young and now you paint me blue
with a kind of quiet I've only found in you.

What I wouldn't give

to turn it on its head

to tell you that when I said

I had called no man father,

I didn't mean you.

There was nothing further

from the truth.

I looked at the sky that day

 and thought of someone else.

The endlessness required volume,

no newly distant desire

was ringing through my mind.

And he, he was still beautiful,

but no longer the beauty I required.

He was fleeting and remote,

a vision I had once reached out to feel beneath me.

I wouldn't have chosen him then.

I would have chosen the trees,

the storm to the south,

the echoing difference between

life and mere existence.

There, in those exquisite shades of truth,

I knew that maybe he had never 

really existed in my realm.

And suddenly, all of the sunsets I had

proclaimed to him as Beauty

might have been frescoes.

This is Immortality you've called from silence,

breaking the heavens with your ideas of existence.

This line is metaphysical.

You are the nothing that crossed into being,

and I, the being who crossed into nothing.

You shove me toward impalement.

I clothe the nameless with value.

We reject each other without ever speaking.

And who are you?

You are my epitome,

my reflection and my response,

standing across from me,

in shoes I never would have bought.