Idiot child of broken clocks, you once again brandish your prop razor
and my pretense skin curls away in shavings of apple peel red.
Glitter-eyed goblin, my adopted doppelganger monster,
here is your furious holiday for inmates.
I wave my frayed pennant and slide soggy sophistry down the coin slot
of the arcade game called Ouroboros Hoola-Hoop Boomerang For Dummies.
I like to think that my heart is not an unsafe toy.
I like to think that my blood is made of milk, my fingertips of cotton swabs.
Idiot child with the air raid stuck in your throat, fire-bug goblin,
do not call me sister, or mother, or twin.
There is an oven filled with cakes and loaves,
another with needles and broken glass.
Why scribble my name in static on the sunspot glass of the door?
Why not go die somewhere,
dissolve into tiny scrubbing bubbles of amnesia,
or while away the empty hours on the locked ward birthing lexicons for lunatics?
Why stand in the sudden mirror like immolated Jaycees
wearing Hello My Name Is Me stickers on your smoldering shoulders?
Why pen me inside an iron zodiac
with my temper and PTSD that rips me rising, screaming from my sleep?
The medical term for all this is Spiritual Infucktion
with features of Recurring Ordinariness,
and Impotent Fury.
Idiot child, horror goblin, my teachers and punishers,
the term I am searching for is
sorrow,
is failure,
is not again not again not again.
The word on the tip of my tongue where it is so badly burned is
HUMAN
and it binds me like a bandage made of water vapor and shrapnel.
________
"Why not go die somewhere,
ReplyDeletedissolve into tiny scrubbing bubbles of amnesia,
or while away the empty hours on the locked ward birthing lexicons for lunatics?"
I wish this for the little devil that sits on my shoulder who keeps poking me with his fork. Sometimes being human ain't all it's cracked up to be. Or at least he keeps telling me that. Vulnerability is as painful as being burnt with cigarettes and then an embarrassment while waiting for the blisters.
You have somehow managed to combine Hughes' shattering dark talent for personal suffering with your own personal, wide-ranging fury and flare into the right razor to cut your template of wounds into something equally sharp, clear and jugular-opening. I couldn't begin to quote, because I would never stop. Line after line brings an internal cascade of tears that can't fall because the heat of the language evaporates them into a scalding steam of metaphor and experience. Who can ever hurt us more than ourselves?
ReplyDeleteI will just say these two lines were the ones that pierced me most: "I like to think that my heart is not an unsafe toy./I like to think that my blood is made of milk, my fingertips of cotton swabs..." I don't know how you do it, or whether to congratulate you or comfort you because you do it so well.
Absolutely f**king WOW. This has blown me away. I don't profess to understand it entirely but that doesn't matter, it is the overall punch-in-the-gut sensation your words give me, the image-rich tapestry and the rawness. I've read it three times now and honestly, there are too many good lines to quote. There are bursts of satire (and I always enjoy your satire, the title here for one) but overall, you have filled me with compassion. If I had to choose the lines that really moved me, I choose the same one's Joy has quoted above but also this stanza:
ReplyDelete"The medical term for all this is Spiritual Infucktion
with features of Recurring Ordinariness,
and Impotent Fury."
And somehow your poem made me think of the film Girl, Interrupted - have you seen it? It gave me that same out of control type of feeling I got from the characters in that film. And yet, there is also beauty here. Love your work, Shay <3
Thank you so much! And yes, I love Girl, Interrupted, both the book and the movie!
Delete"I wave my frayed pennant and slide soggy sophistry down the coin slot
ReplyDeleteof the arcade game called Ouroboros Hoola-Hoop Boomerang For Dummies."
that really set me spinning, love that, so many great lines in this, i'm going to highlight a few
"The medical term for all this is Spiritual Infucktion"
yes, i get that, very nice!
"the term I am searching for is
sorrow,
is failure,
is not again not again not again."
love all the conflict here between inner and outer selves (or whatever we may call it) i like all the collisions and wreckage you morph into language, looks and sounds like chaos but it makes a clear picture. and i really like the reconciliation in your ending, all of it colliding into "human" or rather "HUMAN", not a thing really, but a universe onto it own. i've read this 3 or 4 times now that's what i keep coming to. very well written shay, very raw and powerful... that's the stuff i like!
This is a deep dive into a really dark place ~~ I am not certain I fully understand. Only you could produce a poem that goes where other angels fear to tread.
ReplyDeleteThis is absolutely above and beyond awesome Shay! You are the only poet I know that can take life's crazy hurts and make us see them from a unique perspective. Imagery is your sharp cutting edge of poetic brilliance!!
ReplyDeleteI don't know where to begin, or end, other than these lines that blow through the body with words like shrapnel, giving up the ghost like vapor: "the term I am searching for is / sorrow, / is failure..." Every single line is amazing and would have to quote it all, but these two lines bring us into a stark, human moment. All is lost, and all is saved.
ReplyDelete