she says:

write your love letters to other women
commit your regard to pages or  
atmospheric photographs
paint them in watery white
fuck them, grope them, gaze befuddled
set the scene and play the role
reel in all the little moments
then come home to me (reeking of brine)
throw arms round my knees
don’t apologize, but affirm
without these sundry everyday
body parts of mine
eyes seeing and tongue speaking and fingers writing you into being
you don’t exist
you are nothing but a scrabbling little romantic
poking your dick into pretty things

the Nail

I stepped on a nail, in a board. It went in a half-inch. Bright red blood, puddling in the basement filth, splattered on the debris. I balanced there, with my shocking stigmata, electric red flowing off my toes, and I thought of you. I thought of you in the middle of the salt flats. I thought of you when I touched the burnt forest corpses on the mountainside. I bathed in the darkness, naked and vulnerable, a knife nearby, and I thought of you. I thought of you not long after I eased the car around the goat dying in the road; it cried out its fear and pain, cutting me deeper than any nail. In the black night of the interstate, in the lonelinesses of strange cities, in turmoil and in doubt, inhaling the sweet drunk blossoms of spring, walking the wet littered pavements of fall, I thought of you. I’ve been a fool, and I know it.

“Love knows no virtue, no profit; it loves, and forgives, and suffers everything because it must. It is not our judgement that leads us; it is neither the advantages nor the faults that we discover that make us abandon ourselves or that repel us.
It is a sweet, soft, enigmatic power that drives us on. We cease to think, to feel, to will; we let ourselves be carried away by it and ask not whither.”
(Sacher-Masoch)

 

vulnerability

The thing is, most of the time I don’t fear death.  Not in and of itself.  Every time my plane lifts off, I make my peace with it: the frailty of my body, the fragility of my access to life.  If my body is done, it is done.  I am reluctant to be stopped in the middle of something – a journey, a project, a lifetime.  But death has no interest in my little compulsions, and I have no illusions about this. Of course, I am not fearless:  I fear humiliation, domination, torture.  I fear being terrorized, or being put in pain.  I fear being rejected by others, fear being disgusting to them.  But death itself I respect.  I acquiesce to death, before it demands anything more of me.  It will have its way.  I think about all this while walking home from the bus at night.  Perhaps my bravery simply reflects the fact that I haven’t felt a real threat in so very long. But the idea that I might be attacked in the darkness doesn’t make me cringe or cower, or reconsider my route;  it makes my adrenalin flutter, stirs my bloodlust.  I wonder how I can be so mortally terrified of other things, stupid little things. If someone comes to take my life, daring to pose as death’s hand,  I very well may die.  But I will blaze with such glorious rage, such a violent indignation, that I will burn the flesh off their bones.

Demolition

Swing the wrecking bar
And sweat. Adrenalin shudders,
and ragged breath.
My father  shows me how, and says,
Think about that guy, the one you say
doesn’t see you?
If he can’t see you after this, well.
Fuck him.