{december 23, 1999} ......,........................<--ramblings, observations, & mistranslations---
this has been a year of firecrackers. i could pontificate, but i have instead decided to post the following poem, it describes my experience better than i ever could, of course. happy holidays to everyone, and of course, a glistening new millenium!
love, kat
* * * * * * * *
small madness
-- sandra cisneros --
i swear, i will not
let go to these
small madnesses
at two a.m. i will not
be manic as a
marilyn monroe
seeking her savior-
executioner. i will not
love like heroin,
be martyr of extreme self-
inflicted grief, nor
romance myself into a
tired "fin."
this i swear this near
year of my life's end,
my life dangling,
a live wire, some
fierce and likely
trick, a mexico city fire-
eater's deep and desperate
breath. i swear,
life of mine, thick as a
foreign coin, beautiful
as money and as brutal,
you are my first allegiance.
i have no other lover.
i press my mouth to yours,
my faithful wife-beater,
and stifle this mariachi
howl.
{december 11, 1999} ......,........................<--ramblings, observations, & mistranslations---
i suppose one must always be essentially meditating on death when one attempts to meditate on anything to do with life. the negative defining the positive, meaning only derived from a certainty that one's cold corpse contributed more than just a bit of fertilizer to this grand planet. but i'm not certain if i've actually thought on the life in death and what it holds, however secret or benign.....however wordy.
death was a tawdry and faithless skunk which followed after me in my eight-year-old-dream conversations. chased through any number of forests or oceans, death was an unlikely compatriot, but always seemed far more intimate than the schoolgirl playmates i hung around with at recess. it was not the nudity or pronunciation of death in it's most grieving and pitiful state that i felt an affinity for, rather the flirtatious, unpredictable death who would choose a wild horse over a soft inky carriage drawn by docile and quite insane circus extras. death with her lips drawn back and forward-thinking to superstar, supernova, grass stains and bony knees poking through the guitar riffs or tambourine of semi-detached consciousness. (i help spiders out of my house, forget to water the house plant, don't leave the cat alone for a moment, and admire with a magnifying glass the fine velvet dust coating all the objects in this cozy little abode.)
only red lights burn in this apartment, mexican rose string glow and spotlights of rich crimson warming the white washed walls and cool creamy kitchen tiles. light a candle: my lungs ache and i dream of pine needles and glorious, wax papered christmas ornaments, an ocean of society that itches as much as it burns, leaving tiny, wordless scars along the brow -- aping a long-beaten wife or a rustically antique armoire.
i want to stop things and watch them breathe without a sound. silence or temperance or death, i desire to sing into the mouth of sadness and slide across several planes, landing point blank into the arms of forgetfulness. it would be a fine journey, but not without it's wrinkles and warts.....
words are borne of wrinkles and warts, for only in the presence of adversity do we stop to stare into the hollowed out areas of our hearts. words watered and sprouting through a soil rich with distress. fuck the pH. it's just a syllable, not a definition. but do these same words lurk and flirt in the mysterious avenues of death? a fog falling on all consonants, shadowed vowels and pronouns that alter with the change in the weather, of which there are many thanks to the cool hand of humor. a chilly death, or the thought thereof, must incur the most brutal wordiness, as i have well demonstrated.
yours, kat