Jeremiah Chapter 5 is Hard To Write About

It is. It is so hauntingly beautiful. I guess that sounds strange, because the chapter is about injustice and war, but I have just been chanting it to the rthym of the rain*, feeling it reverberate within me like pheonix music in Harry Potter. (I feel kind of lame making a Harry Potter reference in blog-life. Oops.)

Everyone is either freaking out about the hurricane, or trying to ignore it. This is a night when one looks out the window and thinks, "How magnificent are your works God". This is a night when one shares beauty with a stranger, and epiphanies melt like orgasms into the night air. It is a night when the winds crawl up your thighs.

This is a night when, after numerous mistypings, I finally get connected to the link with Jeremiah chapter 5, and decide to cheat on my own assignment, because, like a storm, sometimes words suffer when humans try to tame their beauty:

http://www.mechon-mamre.org/p/pt/pt1105.htm


* I can never manage to spell that word correctly. I blame you, Spell-check!

"Why did you sleep with me?" she asked.
"I was curious" he replied, as he licked her lipstick off of his bottom lip. He could see the blue walls, and her bare back with black hair peeking out from the white sheets, reflected in the mirror like an odalesque. "I wish Rembrandt were here", he mused. "Really? I would have thought our relationship is much more Renoir." He laughed. "Since when have you ever been interested in art history?" "Since I made out in the Temple of Dendur." He laughed again, then started searching for his hat.

He looked so handsome, his carved cheekbone and grey eyes crinkled together as he squinted across her bureau. She hated him at that moment, a hatred that started in between her thighs and spread throughout her entire body. "You have to be attracted to someone to hate them", she had always said, and he had always laughed, and asked if she thought that the US merely had an S&M fetish for Bin Laden. "I don't appreciate your sarcasm.", she would say. "Maybe I am just jealous because you don't hate me yet", was his reply. For that, she never had an answer, but would avert her eyes, the way she had when she was a little girl and came across sex scenes in movies. He, on the other hand, had always looked - "That's why I am so knowledgeable", he joked, stroking her hair and squeezing her thighs.

But now, she could see that his hands had moved with surgical precision through her body - expert and cold - detached. Now that he had finished the operation, he was meticulously collecting his supplies; the only hint that he had been there would be a slight crease in her new sheets, the way that on the operating table, it is only the faint smear of blood on the gurney that tells the patients' story - at least until the nurse comes in with a bottle of alcohol, swabs the metal, and is gone, leaving the space gleaming and silent, waiting for the next body to lie on its flat stomach, hungry for the taste of bones and thighs.

Conversation Fragment

"I miss him", she said, "you have to save me."
"Why do you miss him?"
"What's the reason any woman misses a man? Because he's good in bed."
Sherry shot her a scathing look. Sometimes Sarah forgot that she was gay.
"Sorry - I meant - I know that was hetero-normative."
"It's ok", Sherry sighed, placing her hand on the back of Sarah's shoulder. Her hand stayed there a moment too long, and when she lifted it, the look between them was awkward.

Nearby, the fountain fluttered, and the trees were silent. Not the listening type of silent - it was more like they were asleep, dreaming, oblivious to the silly human dramas taking place beneath their branches. Sarah stared at the water.

"What are you thinking?" Sherry asked.
"How much fun it would be to flow away, seething into the earth like a lost dream."
"God you're deep" said Sherry, taking a drag from her cigarette.
Sarah shrugged. "I try", she said.

Their kiss tasted like raspberry.

Meta-ness Once More: I Feel Positively Post-Modern

Aside from the cliched and pretensious heading, written by a lady who can not spell "pretensious", I have a few notes on my poem from the previous post:

1. This poem was inspired by a moment in Central Park in which I did in fact dissect a man, but not like a frog. I was merely admiring his behind.

2. The "bald"/mold rhyme is slant, but in my head it was a perfect rhyme, because I actually pronounce the word "bald" like "bold", in order to overcome my natural inclination to pronounce it bau-wd, which is how it sounds in a Brazilian accent (au dipthong + ls are pronounced like ws if they follow vowels). I actually had to go to speech therapy at age six to acquire an American accent. I guess its interesting, the way someone's pronunciation can influence their poetry - that's why a lot of Middle English poetry doesn't work unless you know how to read it - accents and pronunciations have changed. It's why we have words like "winged", with little accents over the e.

3. I have also been reading a bit of Edna St. Vincent Millay recently. Her poetry is a bit more structured and rhyme-y, and I feel that crept into this poem. Also, currently (re-)reading the book "Western Wind" - the only poetry textbook I ever liked.

I am watching images of battles in Libya on TV as I write this. I have gone from feeling post-modern to feeling surreal within the span of one blog post.

Break-up Poem

"To you, love means dissecting a man like a frog." - Anonymous, Central Park, 2011.

I dissect your spindly legs
that once were made of gold.

Now they are a slimy green,
reminding me of mold.

Once I kissed your curly head,
and whispered you were mine.

Now I wish that you'd grow bald,
and saggy from behind.

Once I loved, beneath your bed
and in between your thighs.

Now my dear, I do not hate -
I merely despise.

Revenge

"Goodbye.", she said, sticking out her hand, "it's been nice faking orgasms with you."

As his hand continued to pump hers, he had no reply. His smile was still frozen when she closed the door, like the idiosyncratic lips of a foreign character in a dubbed movie, the sound ending always just a second too soon, leaving the only sound in the theater that of a teenage girl's hands rubbing up against the inside of her new boyfriend's thigh, her hands chafing against the cloth of his trousers.

When the sound comes back on, he has grown soft in her hands, his adolescent body unaccustomed to the touch of fingers other than his own. He stares at the screen and laughs too loudly, just as you now stare at the door behind her. Have you forgotten how to act when the curtain falls? You remember the night at the theater, her shoulders in between your arms, how she smelled of jasmine. You remember applauding, your hands getting stuck in her hair. She was the only one who insisted on an encore, and you felt that mix of shame and pride that comes when you realize your girlfriend has been marked by an audience.

"I went to see the theater, but instead we were put on stage", you whispered, and you thought she would find that charming. She didn't - which is why you are standing here, staring at an empty stage, when the actress has already left the theater. Maybe if you rub a rabbit's foot against your cheek for good luck, she will come back to you, stick to your skin like rouge, whisper that you were her best lover.

After a few minutes, he decided that she was a bitch and went to the kitchen to make himself a cup of coffee.

Beauty

I used to feel beautiful: Swathed in white lace, bedecked in blue willow patterns, I sank into the wall like an ornament ashamed of its own glory. I grew bored of the shelf, fell onto tables, shattered. And each time, her hand coming down to piece me back together again, with crazy-glue and scotch-tape, each rendition of my form slightly uglier than before, as I became an imitation of a mockery of a rewrite, and the vase's original shape and hue were lost in the veils of adhesives that stung my tongue. I grew to know the contour of each finger, to hate the taste of salt beneath her nails, to bite at the cuticles.

Now I lie on the shelf once more, preening each glistening of jade in the sunlight, ruffling each inch of faience that still shines, longing for the days, when, like a sleepy peacock, I tried to hide my own glory - longing for the days when I still had glory to hide.

I Have Read the Marquis de Sade

The blood glistened like rubies."God, I even think in cliches", he thought, as the crimson painted her rib-cage, and he could see the rising and falling of her breasts with each inhalation, a strip of black silk stuck between her thighs, and hair that looked like a pile of disheveled hay - "not exactly attractive", he mused for a moment, but then the whip was swinging down again, and he was lost in the rush of coils and skin, and was falling on her, licking the blood that dribbled down to her navel, painting the insides of her thighs with his red kisses. Salty.

"Tell me how bad it was", he said, panting slightly, as he straightened himself up and sat down at the edge of the matress that lay on the floor, his knees touching her toes. "I told her if America didn't have better jails, I would take out my gun. I told her I only spoke to her out of pity." "And what did she say?". The laugh was worse than anger, and he could see the blood dripping stronger with each sound, each wave being pushed forth through a messy passage of lungs and diaphram. "She said she did not need anyone to speak to her out of pity - she was not that worthless." "My baby, my baby" he was cradling her head in his hand, kissing the top of her head, kissing the wounds like a pilgrim, like some kind of male Mary Magdalene. "Mary Fucking Magdalene", he thought, fingering the black cross that hung around his neck.

"Punish me", she said. He turned aside. "I can't for tonight." She laughed. "I've had enough - let's just try to get some sleep", he said, reaching for the light. She laughed once more. "What's wrong - aren't you man enough?" He remained silent. "You fucking hypocrite - you can't even wear that cross around your neck - hey, I just violated the fifth commandment!". With effort, she raised herself a bit, struggling against the black satin that bound her to the sagging matress. "Don't you want my flesh?", she whispered, "can't you taste it?" She licked her lips. "Salty".

His hands were trembling. "Get out of my house." "What?" "I'm serious - put your clothes on and go."

He remained seated, staring at a stain in the sheets, as he heard her writhing. "Untie me", she said, so he did so, but he kept his eyes on the stain the entire time: It was a stain from blood. As he heard her bandaging her wounds and zipping her dress, he thought the stain was moving, and by the time he heard the clicking of heels and the slamming of the door, he was convinced that the red had learned how to Samba, and was dancing a duel with the white cotton. He could still taste her blood on his lips as he closed his eyes.

Jeremiah: Chapter 4. Free-Writing.

http://www.mechon-mamre.org/p/pt/pt1104.htm

I do not feel like writing today. The wind is too calm and the sky too blue, and the men to gentle in between my thighs. The knives have been packed into carriages. I hear the winds how like jackals, and know that the thunder will come soon, bringing a rain that will break the backs of wheat-stalks, like heartache breaks the backs of old women, who go begging in the streets, remembering the days when men painted their bodies in kisses, and jewels crowned their eyes. I know that one day I will be such a woman, as surely as tomorrow, this lover will rise from the canopied bed upon which we lie, and reach into his pocket for a moment, before drawing a dwindling gold and throwing it on what was once a white silk sheet. I am told that often, before they are about to be butchered, the calves close their eyes. But I (a lifelong vegetarian, except for sacrifice-days), have long learned to go to the slaughter with my eyes - and legs -wide open. Only the wind will hear my cries.

Friendship

"Friendship, like love, can wax and wane", she said, and I could see the blonde fuzz as she crossed and uncrossed her legs, which were reflected in the glass of red wine that rested in her palm. Her voice had grown deeper, it seemd to me, with ever sip of inebriation. The garnets on her neck matched the wine in her glass, and her blonde hair was tubling out of the bun that framed the nape of her neck.

"I suppose so", I said, remembering, three years ago, her saying, "Zach and I are working towards our I-love-yous". I have never been a woman to work on my I-love-yous; they slip from my lips freely, like kisses, and it is only afterwards, lying by myself at night that I wonder if my love was real, or some mistaken for of lust I could not recognize. "You always choose the wrong men, because what you can't have is easier to let go of", she said. "And you always know you want to let go in the end", she added, playing with the diamond on her finger.

Now, she was sitting here, her legs crossed, her lips red with wine, and I wanted to taste the drunkeness on her cheeks, to suck the intoxication from her lips, like a lover sucking venom from the wound, the snake long slithered away.

"You are so beautiful", I said with a weak smile, "surely the love will wax again." She sliced me with her eyes. "That is the lamest thing you have said to me, in six years of friendship." I laughed. "Well, I guess the moment had to come some time." She shrugged. "Yeah, well, I probably should get back." "But I thought -" "God, Janet - he's my husband! I'm not just gonna leave him!" "Yeah well, I'm here if you want to talk or if - you know - if you need someplace to go.' "Yeah, I know, and that means a lot to me Janet, it really does." For a moment I was enveloped in a cloud of soft silk and gardenia-scented perfum, with yellow hair that tickled my cheeks - then she let go.

"See you." she said, "I'll probably try to call later this week". Her back was turned to me; already her heels were clicking on the linoleum as she made her way to the door. "See you", I said, and as I stood at the door and watched her turn the corner, I thought how never had I been turned on by a pair of such poorly clad feet.

Jeremiah: Chapter 3. Free-Writing.

Your eyes sliced into me like diamonds,
the pure carbon that is whiter than your teeth,
which have become stained from tea and sugar,
imported from countries I can not name,
paid for by men whose footsteps I hear at night;
I measure time by the cadences of their bare feet,
by the rythms of the oohs and ahs coming from your tent,
by the camels I hear trotting away in the morning.

Sammarra is to stay awake all night
but it is also the swiftness of a camel,
and it is this swiftness I listen for
as I lay awake, looking for the camel
that will bear me away from you,
from your thighs that are two pillars
holding up the palace of a life that refuses to crumble,
of walls I can not tear down,
even though I have let my hair grow long like Samson's -
you stroke it now, sometimes at night, when my hands rest
on the curve in between your thighs and your breasts.

Your laughter is worth more to me than diamonds,
even when you are laughing at my tears,
"Men pee rivers", you say, "but why are you peeing out of your eyes?".

I did not marry you for your sense of humor:
I remind myself of this, on those nights when I stroke the camel's fur,
feel its brown breath against my cheek, finger its rope,
and whisper that I will come back tomorrow,
that the wind will bear us both away on the wings of eagles,
knowing that in a few minutes I will shut my eyes to the sound of your laughter
rolling over the belly of a man I can not name,
that I will picture you naked, and know that tomorrow I will lie here again,
pondering your eyes that slice me like diamonds -
pure carbon that is whiter than your teeth,
which have become stained from tea and sugar,
imported from countries I can not name,
paid for by men whose footsteps I hear at night;
I measure time by the cadences of their bare feet.

http://www.mechon-mamre.org/p/pt/pt1103.htm

Mound

The frown starts at the corners of her mouth, creeping up the curve of her lips that smell of jasmine.

"You have lost your magic", she says.
"No - you have lost yours", I reply.

The coffee grows cold beside the mound of papers on her desk.

"It's funny, isn't it?" I ask.
"What's funny?"
'The way the word mound can mean a pile of papers, a dirt grave, or a breast".
"I suppose it is", she says.

Her lips graze my neck as her fingers worm their way up my thigh. The white edges of the paper are hard to keep in focus, but I force my pupils not to look away.

"The paper is raping your eyes", she says, her voice tinged with anger that matches her perwinkle eyeliner.

"Are you afraid to kiss me?" I can feel her breath on my cheek: The jasmine tea is mingled with the scent of the cherries we ate for desert.

"I wish I were afraid", I reply.

She recoils.

"The mound of papers has grown larger since last night", I say.
"Yes, time tends to increase papers - unless you lose them, like you do lovers."
"Do you think you could shred me?" I ask.

Then I am being pinned against the beige sheets; her lips are on my lips, her thighs on my thighs, and each kiss is the pricking of a needle.

Once, she would have whispered, "Come lie on my mounds", and I would have folded myself into the crevices between her breasts. Now, I stare out into a night that fades into red, as her hands work their no-longer magic in silence. Beneath the tangled sheets, our bodies grope for each other, knowing that after tonight, our love will be buried by the mound of time.

Hear Murmur

I always was protecting you, like a child who could not be exposed to the night's storm. But who was there to protect me from the rain? I sit here, surrounded by the faded trophies of a glory you never really hoped to acheive - or did you, does the pain sit there in the recesses of your memory? I am the most prized trophy of all: You keep me in a box, like a charm, even though I have shattered the glasses of your window, with notes too sharp to hit you in the spaces where I aim my words. I listen to songs whose sounds are jumbled, trying to relish in the irony of pop hits as my background, but I am too delicate to enjoy the pain, like the S&M fetishist who is afraid of chains. Where will this road take me? Only away from you, I hope, but I feel you clawing into my skin like a tiger, feel the blood before I see its red. I no longer feel the wounds; they have grown too deep inside, like plankton lining the sea's soft floor, softer than a love I could never hope to have. If anything, time has only given me the ability to dissociate myself from my words, to notice the corniness of my own tears; I am told this makes me self-aware. I am also told it makes me a horrible lover. I can ruin an "I love you" with a smile, but after the words have faded, their sound-waves reverberating into the air's soft memory, they stay embedded in me like the shards of glass that forever ruined that boy's vision in the Snow Queen, that made him see the world as grey instead of pink, until his friend rescued him from the ice that had grown around his heart. When I read that story, even at the age of five, I feared that this could happen to me. "You are no longer my sugarplum", my mother told me, "you are no longer sweet", and then I heard her talking to her friend about sleeping with my father. I had a hole in my heart, I was told, and I knew then, that I would never be able to love you, even before the cardiologist came with his scary charts and mentioned words I could not understand, words that have been burned into my chest with wires and x-ray machines, and technicians feeling up my breasts. Their hands were cold, like zombies, but of course, since this was before the zombie fetish had become popular, I had no terms with which to phrase this coldness to myself, and nothing to distract me from the sounds of sharp nails scraping against my skin, and I could feel the weight against my areolas, and now the images of hands and metal are blending with the images of your hands against white sheets, and I feel like flowers, a heap of roses and lily-petals to line the walkway to your chamber of self-congratulation. And all the time, the beating of my heart, a gentle rythm to the silences of your betrayal, the beating of my heart, murmuring and inconstant, between a shifting weight I can not fathom, the beating of my heart as I mock the cadence of my words, as I type these letters that suddenly seem devoid of meeting, a mockery of the concepts they can not encompass, with their thin, black bodies, shriveling in the wind like the leaves of a dehydrated tree, shriveling like the skin beneath your eyes, on the day I saw your face for the last time.

Jeremiah: Chapter 2. Free-Writing.

you stagger in like a whore, feet shuffled bare, heels held in your hand,
white slip slipping off your shoulder, past the alabaster fountain,
you trod on wisteria leaves on your way to the kitchen,
and your hair has grown wild like the lotus-plants and pomegranate trees
that have taken over the garden, only in the moonlight, your face glows
green with desire, sick-looking, like the face of a prostitute,
syphilitic and senile.

Once, I called you the red-haired whore of the vineyard; I insulted the mothers of the men
who dared to dance in between your thighs.

Tonight, I watch you in silence,
knowing the day will come when you will pine,
not for my body, but for the sound of my voice
gently berating your cunt that slithers like a snake between the legs of men,
for the words I hurl at you like knives - for the wounds,
fresher than the pineapples that farmers bring to morning markets,
redder than the pomegranate seeds that I crush between my fingers,
watching their juice bleed down my palms, like your blood once bled
down my thighs.

http://media.snunit.k12.il/kodeshm/mp3/t1102.mp3

http://www.mechon-mamre.org/p/pt/pt1102.htm