Bellinger, DeMisty D.

DeMisty D. Bellinger

Neo-blues Song

What keeps me awake at night
lulls you to sleep at ten.

There are ten bars more,
but I can’t sleep.

There is a key change,
but I won’t hear it.

I can’t keep up with the tempo
I have forgotten all the words.

Things are changing too fast for me
shifting when I’m sitting

I’d get up, but I’m so down.
That’s how the blues go: I’m so down.

Who knows what repeats--
what keeps me away at night,

Lulls you, lullabies you.

Superhero Tendencies

Tending to directives from somewhere else—Meanwhile
and Suddenly and Next time--
Placing her into a trajectory
She can obediently follow, with thought:
“In a way that is sudden, something acts
suddenly, I react equally
and here is collision, against a collusion,
for the good. Here: I can be heroic!”

Meanwhile, she sits because this is what she does:
Sit here at work, sit here on bus, here at home.
At times, she is in the path of cleaning, cooking,
Grooming, being. With obeisance, without
Question. She looks up at those directives, hand-lettered
And Nietzscheian. Or anti Nietzsche. She can’t figure it out.

Harvest Cycle

Apples so fresh, they snap when you bite into them. The thin juice runs down your chin in one line. “I’m afraid of worms,” you say, smiling around the flesh of the apple still in your mouth. I just picked it. Reached up high, and you’re acting like that was good of me. I’m so proud for picking that apple, feel like I grew it myself—from ground, to root, to trunk, to branch. Feel like this tree is here because of you.

Gingerly

A pungent plant--
Gnarly root
Pulled before purply flowers
Populate the head of a vine
Creeping up from under ground
papery skin lighter than my own,
And the flesh inside office supply color.

A versatile plant--
bite as sharp as pepper
almost unpleasant, a taste acquired
a coveted spice
this root too sharp for
caution. Too hot for
care.

DeMisty D. Bellinger's profile

Neo-Escape Chant

Her curtain caught on something old when she ran with it down the street screaming for some man called Peter or Paul I can’t remember which but I saw her get caught on something rusty—the curtain—and jagged and her left leg raised in flight “Peter!” or was it “Paul!”? her lips drawn back in ways that writers say that a character’s lips are drawn back in what looks like a grimace but if I pictured her here: look—a smile? A long ‘A’ sound or maybe a long ‘E’? her left leg raised with knee bent as if to step down and as if to go further her right leg behind her like running but she’s caught with her curtain holding her back and keeping her here with the rest of us, that curtain curled around a jagged, rusty, ancient thing that looks like tetanus.

June 19, 1865

emancipation has too many syllables and I don’t have the words for syllables yet / I haven’t the experience to understand what it could possibly mean and would be for me / major general has too many titles and none of them are master / he says free and some of us laugh / I step gingerly forward and nothing / for two years, major general granger says, we been free / and I take another step forward and I hear / nothing / I walk on and I don’t even hear / a dog / I’m still walking.

Nasty Girls Pantoum

“Do you think I'm a nasty girl?” ~Vanity 6
“The only nasty thing I like is the
nasty groove.” ~Miss Jackson

Am I such a nasty woman?
I’ve cleaned my hair, I’ve clipped my nails,
I have made sure to smile and baby,
I’m not being so mean.

I’ve cleaned my hair, I’ve clipped my nails
I washed each inch of my body
So I won’t be so mean
And dressed in well-laundered clothes.

I washed each inch of my body
And didn’t linger on the special parts
Got dressed in well-laundered clothes
Left the house with good intentions

I didn’t linger on the special parts
So I wouldn’t hurt anyone’s feelings
I went high, I stay high
When the rest of the world went low.

So I wouldn’t hurt anyone’s feelings,
I acted like a perfect lady
When the rest of the world went low.
Am I such a nasty woman?