Run to the Water

Flood

i. Mary
wits, my brain has left me and i cannot
wrap my lips around the words
to ask if he’s asking what i think-
if i could think
that he is asking,
or if he’s telling what i think
if i could
that he is telling.
and i am split down the center
as the fog parts to make way for the rain.
hail.
and now nightfall
and no one can see because there
is no light.

ii. Centurion
Bold Judas marches forth and kisses
the girl on the cheek.
We guards descend, picking her up
and taking her away: this is the one.
This is the one who dare
challenge Caesar.

iii. Mary
in the morning she finds cloudy skies
painted on thighs, and wetness.

flood after thaw.

iv. Centurion
We took her
in and when she woke, she cried.
We took her in.
And she cried. We took it
upon ourselves to help her
understand the error of her
ways.

If she had not flaunted
it before us, we would have
never taken it.

She should have never challenged
Caesar.

v. Chorus
The morning the girl woke, she returned home
with videos and pictures of Judas
in every hand of every passerby:
evidence, but not only evidence
publicity.

And it got buried, so she dug it out.
And it got swept away, so she anchored it.

The media began to sing and some sang
that she was the hunter and others said
she was the prey.

vii. Centurion
Magdalene wants to pretend she’s not a whore,
but we have video evidence.
We didn’t have to choose her, she asked
us to choose her.
She challenged Caesar.

We had our pick of the liter
and we chose the one that bites.

viii. Mary
your honor, i could have sailed and sipped
of any sea, and they would have found me.
they are waves of the same water
and

I am a boat to be devoured.

all women are devoured with me
we all float in the same sea.

ix. Chorus

The Gods took Judas and the Guards
but they did not take Caesar.

Edited: Stock (orig: Bones, Bones, Bones)

All of the intervening space between
the tenses
that I plowed and planted and harvested
-you devour.
I alone, was left to the gathering up
of faults and success.  

You left for the harder part,
and returned to consume the rest. 

Edited: Release

I.
One day the dam will break
and this brackish water
will sweep down out of my mind,
and rush out of my mouth.

II.
“You should have just drowned yourself.
Now you have flooded us all, 
and we are all drowning.”

Edited: Well-Stocked

I know
the sudden outpouring 
of kindness
that I am supposed 
to pickle and somehow store
to eat during our
winters.

I know
to prepare,
to harvest every last
bit of goodness
from you
so that you are barren
when you leave,
but I am well stocked.

Easter Is Not Named After Ishtar, And Other Truths I Have To Tell You

baduhenna:

For more on this, please visit: http://bellejarblog.wordpress.com/2013/03/28/easter-is-not-named-after-ishtar-and-other-truths-i-have-to-tell-you/

Please make sure you educate yourself about this. Mythology is amazing and there are so many amazing stories!

(via brasssnuggles)

Tea-loving Bibliophiles

Tea-loving Bibliophiles: If you accidentally spill tea on a book, are you more upset that you wasted the tea or damaged the book?

I have begun to believe that the fundamental impetus of writing is the incapability on the part of the writer to successfully and completely communicate with human beings in any other way. Poems, novels, nonfiction, all arise from the simple desire to be understood and to understand.

Writing is a way not only to make sense to others, but to make sense of others and of ourselves.

I think most of us tried everything else we knew, but we kept failing at it. So this is our last ditch effort, our final call. And for some of us, people only get it once we’re dead- and that’s probably because we can’t correct them any more.

Task

I love a machine, and you have become
a pacemaker, 
quietly continuing the movement
of my body, which has forgotten how to move. 

You have become
a thing that completes its task
and its task
and its task
and nothing but
its task for the sake
of its task.

I love you, and outside the context of that love
you are not real, and so
that I love you
is itself not real.

You love a machine, and I have become
a pacemaker.