Marie Anzalone
what I write
My mouth says good morning.
My fingers type good morning. My hands write good morning. and what I mean by good morning could not be interred in a hundred years' writing by all the best novelists in Europe and North America. you might as well try to fit a quasar inside of a light pen. When I say good morning, I mean that this day I awoke smiling because your feet walk in my world I placed my hand upon my heart and imagined it, yours. I drew breath and thought I tasted you in my air I ran my hands down my sides using your fingertips I touched between my thighs and was warmed by your heat. I remembered dreaming pink roses and wanted to paint them in oils, in dewy soft understated brilliance, for you. As with so many other things I could find to tell you, if I tried. How inevitable annihilation is less scary if some part of you, would remember me; how golden light and morning mist make me want to be lost in a forest primeval, with you. How sometimes I am so certain you are there, I feel your weight shift off the mattress when I return to this world. And how none of this is anything I could ever actually say to you. So instead, I simply write, with a fond mental caress: good morning, my friend. smoked tortillas and revueltos
Breakfast should be profound, he said
emphasizing with gestures that embraced me, and the whole of the room, a laugh rumbling; but you my friend, knew that already. and then she brought the tortillas in a small woven basket, hand embroidered, emanating the scent of wood smoke, and I asked him, well, what does this mean, then, us two here? He paused to savor the aromas of chili and fire Take these revueltos, he said at last, motioning to his plate and think about how you got here TODAY; and how they came to you, here, with me, in this place, this day. and I was struck by a coincidence so strong that I almost fell from the memory of all things unsaid Destiny, I whispered is but the minding of small details of the journey. [The scenery passed by, unhurried, as it always does here] and he handed me a tortilla from his plate, laden with rich offerings- eggs and piquins tomato and smoked maize, and responded: why else did you come here, but to find me today, so I could feed you tortillas from my plate? We Paint the Sky
for EP, may you live your dream
We paint. We paint because we see. We paint because we feel, hear, smell and taste more. We paint because 250 generations of oppression; the sight of machine guns pointed at our knees and the smokestacks of crematoriums has never been enough to silence the voice of a free man or woman. We paint. In colors, and tones, and in clay. In voice and word and prayer and deed. We paint in synch, we paint outside the lines; we paint each other, and our selves. We paint what we feel, we write what we see. We paint because to stop painting is to permit ourselves to die. We paint the walls that encircle our bodies, we paint the doors that permit us entrance into sacred spaces, we paint the births of genius and the death of innocents. We paint bones. We paint the sky. We paint ourselves into corners, we paint our minds free of traps. We paint because we love too much, and we are too much present with the nature of things. And when our hearts feel broken enough from grief and the despair of not knowing we paint our emotions in bitter crimson slashed with electric blue. And when we sing with joy, we paint that, too... golden tones and golden notes and golden words dripping honey. We paint our anger into black swords to pierce our enemies and we paint our desire into the shape of the spaces of those who would fill our hearts. We paint our wishes for the world on the feathers cast by doves and let them fly into the morning breeze every dawn. We paint because there have always been those who would hold us down and break our spirits between the rocks of conformity and we've learned to just say "fuck it," there is no guarantee of anything in this life so get busy living it. The road of most resistance starts at the doorsteps of our hearts, and we have painted every bleeding foot along the way. And still still, there is more to describe- we paint because drawing breath is an agony and exhaling an exstasy and somewhere in the space in-between we think we once found a truth; and the eternal part of us desires to share this truth at all costs only it's never quite how we pictured it, and it's never quite received the way we want and the paint drips with our own blood the handles of our brushes are our own bones our own tears become the words to our most beautiful love songs and we know we'll never get it right before we die- getting up every morning and facing our own limited truth is a courage so divine most men quell and women stay enslaved in silence. As transgressors we are punished for our audacity and we are shunned by our families- our excesses are weighed in pounds of flesh, and those who love us most for our art also hate us for what we do to ourselves to hold on it and yet... with every last breath we draw in this life, we somehow look out into the world and pick up our brushes sharpen our tools, and with bent and broken spirits, faltering hands, and despairing minds... ... we put pen to paper, brush to canvas... and we paint. |
Off Track
Thank you no-
I am NOT 20 years old, with a tight little size 2 body, barely there ass and virgin opening. MY hands can trace heaven's gates on all your parts; they could make you faint, and there is a little more of me to enjoy, especially up top where you claim to like it. I have ALSO spent those 20 years learning how to rock your narrow prissy world sideways and completely off track. It is all natural, and the shame is... if you asked me that question- you will never get a chance to appreciate any of it. like that
Like that, then-
wrap my body three times around and then the dust will swallow me whole, like ground corn piquant and trusting in the smoke but then there was you, once- your tongue maybe tasted of pears ripe and sweet like a shattered high note and a lazy piece of satin marked territorial boundaries. We stood as the ground shifted and we saw the view from below through tiled floors and concrete stairs, our feet burning holes in the foundation while you whispered of dreams. But I think I imagined it all, too- call it the vision of a being devoured by a poem; my core, my heart intact but my thin onion skin peeled in layers. Like that. Liquid heat, and static cold you met me there, in the thin space indescribable, but known to those who have been. and if you really were there, and you decide to sneak back again, I tell you- another kiss, like that; and I will give up to you all of my dreams, and set them in your waiting hands. Gently. Firmly. Intuitively. Just like that. formless
para DP, whose style inspired this
formless, formless... we fall freely into one direction or another: suborbital spin, probability functions- we come from stardust formless until awakened by a stellar orgasm and dust coalesces to dust ashes to ashes we were thus formed of nothing perhaps we are lonely because our cells' DNA's atoms' quarks' electronic forces remember being formless: a thought before thought. time before time. out of chaos, more chaos this thing, then called love and all we have ever had to give each other, as fellow humans- is, after all, stardust imbued with the essence of trying to impose an order. any order on that which is empty and open and formless; yet so potential so filled with probability so rife with possibility within our beings between our beings around our beings. Maybe then if you make someone explode tonight- you'll catch falling stars and set them, ablaze, in your hearts and your souls will forget, just for the barest instant the loneliness of formless. 
|
Washed by Rain
el sol llora para nosotros esta tarde
[the sun weeps for us this afternoon] and all the laundresses in the land could haul these muddied shirts up to the washing place, and scrub them on the rocks until their knuckles bleed yet still not remove those stains we put on them today. a blouse, just the width of a man’s spread fingers, palm flat, as if to strike a blow, the blow we do not dare turn on the ones holding rifles to our machete wielding forms and figures. Figures, then, silhouetted in flames, and another blouse, split up the front, in slices newly embroidered with a fresh application of fine scarlet along the jagged seam, its owner’s unborn prize taken as a token of our passing. Dios nos perdona manana, por lo que hicimos hoy [God forgive us tomorrow for what we did today] I wrap these images and sounds and places now in silence so deep three generations will not make me speak, ever, of the burning chapel smell because the mind slips sideways when a man beholds the crookedness. I learned today a knife carves arms like cornstalks, splits abdominals like a gourd skin into this, the land of maize and trees, were we led by los locuras- as men asked to do murderers's deeds, for our state long after it abandoned us- and I keep a remnant of a charred anciano’s shirt, solely for remembrance that you never know what you can do until demanded by a uniformed soldado holding a torch to your home and a knife to her throat. Their work here is done, and the ashes settle into the afternoon sky soon the seasonal evening rains will wash the hallowed ground clean because when survival is tantamount, you no longer care that your side is right. solo cuida lo que permita que exista un otro dia. [you only care for what lets you exist another day] I will ask my wife to take these pants to the laundry stone to fade the stains- and pray they never think that we support the guerilla here, but will tell my children about the place I know they can run to, just in case. There is now a field of loose dirt in what used to be the neighbor’s town and there are probably none who will ever think to look there, again- for any trace of the living. |