I was just a girl then,
no street sense at all,
not about boys, sex or love.
My mother warned, “Beware of them;
they just want between your legs.”
My father didn’t say anything;
his voice was my mother’s,
his opinions hers.
He worked all night of 7 days,
so she spoke for both of them.
The aim was not to get pregnant.
Since she had four daughters,
the first at sixteen,
and had to marry then, she knew.
Her drive was singular,
her message the same.
Don’t let them near enough to you,
for temptation is deep and wide.
Once you start, there’s no stopping.
And when I kissed my first boy, I sighed,
his lips were soft,
and my stomach felt a jittery sick,
while his face remained stoic.
I couldn’t tell if he felt the same,
the mystery of he-ness exposed.
My world was closed,
exclusively inside my head.
I had no perspective, no insight.
I was 12 only, then.
Later, with interest running high,
I craved the unknown compelling,
like claws to the depths of me,
ripping up sacred rites of initiation,
summoning darkness before light.
Too much love for the flame,
I slunk too close, singed my wings.
He was 8 years older than I.
A former love, the one that cracked my heart,
for I couldn’t believe he would even look at me,
that he did and was so beautiful,
and I was so flustered,
as we walked along Candlewick Road,
under the moon half lit in the sky,
split by clouds,
when I repeated my mother’s words,
“I am waiting until I get married,”
which didn’t fit, but I had nothing else.
I wanted it to be right, to keep him.
I thought he’d sense a romantic heart,
the sincerity of pure intent.
But he disappeared after that night,
and I tore open, needed to throw down,
discard a piece of me to the gutter.
So when he told his drummer friend,
so much older than us, a man,
“She doesn’t give,”
and that friend took it up,
made it his challenge,
I lay down, no mistake this time,
and he prevailed.
I bled in fear.
Why didn’t she tell me,
arm me with something more,
she with no belief
but the curse?
Sayat Nova is an Armenian-Georgian 18th Century poet and musician whose creativity abounded as seen through a short portrayal of his life’s work as poet, musician and troubadour, and according to the scant information I found in lightly researching his name. His life’s work/biography apparently is not readily accessible to American culture judging by the comments to this Youtube slice of the larger 1968 work entitled The Color of Pomegranates, a film depicting the poet’s life, in a stream of consciousness that appears more like a series of still life shots, courtesy of Russian director Sergei Paradjanov.
Admittedly ignorant of the poet’s work other than the short film on Youtube and a shallow delving into Internet write ups on Amazon, Wikipedia and Youtube, I am fascinated by this clip for its sheer intensity of suggestion and superb acting. Only vaguely familiar with folkloric representation through symbol, I can see just the glaringly obvious like the mechanically spinning Cupid, the overt machinations of demonstration of love, purity or wisdom (white flower over the man’s face), the book (probably references to the poet’s writings) and projections of desire.
My uninformed interpretation (and I am loathe to do more research until I have fully delved into and purged my initial uninformed impression) is the immediate interplay of the male and female characters, one as object of adoration–the woman–and the man’s supplications to her with his offerings, but concomitantly, the other–male–as the projected object of desire. The words, “I search for treasure, something a little bigger or greater” (my rough translation from the subtitled Italian) are the only lines overlaid by the flashes of stills of faces and seemingly incoherent actions of winding, circling and supplicating.
The words evoke a lack of fulfillment, a seeking of something valuable, perhaps in another human being or in life generally. Thus, the book, flower and other artifacts, including earth are thrown before the seeker as demonstrations or offerings. I thought of how we seek something more in our relationships, especially long term relationships, due to boredom or the temptation of forbidden fruit or the need to fill a hole inside of us that cannot be filled with another human being or things. Perhaps the search is for spiritual fulfillment.
The final act of this clip (from the larger movie) is the holding up of the ring by each, another circle and symbol of marriage or betrothal of some sort, whether to each other or to some idea. So, it seems that all of the communication between male and female actors, is a kind of courting with the male trying to figure out what floats her boat, what will make her heart turn to him, both being so taciturn and severe in expression. The flatness of character isolates the ideas from the personalities/characters, which effectively underscores love, connection and the projection of desire on to the other.
I particularly like the mechanical production reminding me that sometimes courting and relationships–or searching in general–can be a mechanical application of relating, manipulating, knowing what makes another tick, what moves the other to come to love, another human being. Being in the gaze of the other produces fantasy and desire as the object of the gaze becomes the screen of another’s projections of what she wants to see based on her needs and wants.
Before I spoil my initial impression with reading more qualified opinions on this clip, the movie, the poetry and life of the creators of the words and film, I wanted to share this piece, raw and untainted by more informed parsing of the presentation, which I enjoyed tremendously in its peculiarly stylized overly dramatic presentation reminding me of the Kabuki theater of the Japanese.
This five minute clip is worth a few spins to get over the initial offputting oddity and appreciate the artistry of the production. Happy Sunday. Namaste.
Here’s me being you (simply so):
I pull out of you, expelling seed
crash-down heavy, a filled need
with a groan and a sigh of relief
satisfaction of weariness sweet
I croak, “You’re so good to me,”
and then close my eyes to see
the vision still coursing headily
inside you, mouth to your ears
deep in silk skin-soaked tears
licking drops from your cheeks
like swallowing the salty seas
with your joy, your melted glee
all wrapped in arms so lovingly.
Here’s you being me (deftly so):
A hand slides across your spine
as you leave my warmth behind
and lie beside me in heavy sigh
of deep satisfaction and release
in closed eyes; in smiling peace
you rest in muscle soft respiring
in mind less darkness dreaming
of you, me and endless teeming
pant and chuff, a heart pounding
too softly now in brimming chest
a storm passed by, ocean’s rest
calmed to gurgling stream’s lies
unheard above a chasm’s cries.
A small voice nags inside persistently some days, pecking at her brain like the woodpecker’s drum, “This cannot go on.”
But then it does: the constancy, the clinging-to-life braided bodies in sweet scented addiction blind, the quelled fiery imagery, soothed, enraptured in repose, all dissolved in calm lines of the heart’s monitor metered in metronomic jive of the universe’s mysterious patterns dancing.
“How do stars live so far from one another and yet reverberate from their mates’ light?” They seem so close and crowded all at once in the blanket black. At least it seems to those far below, minds upwardly poised to glean the wisdom of the sky.
“They just do.” Finding their light, knowing they are there is enough for them, he believes.
Some days the abyss yawns loudly from eons below my ribs. The aches gathered in bits and sounds from all who ever lost and lived creeps in through my ears, slides the canals and permeates the tissue so all that I hear is gaping vacancy inside the hiss and hum of respiring pumps of tedious be.
You toss me up like a rocket launched to space, not by chunky booster hands alone but the aid of my twig arms in slingshot urgency, and the quickness almost kills me, knocks my senses clear removed from silky parachutes’ inevitable return.
And when my feet finally alight upon the earth again, the descent is steady, deliberate and long, my lungs filling fat in measured whiffs of the dirt and stained ammonia air. Hitting me slice-wise along the spine is the reminder that we watch the enemy from opposite sides in distant trenches, staring down perceptions from a line never crossed.
You see me in my blindness. I blind you with my sight.
Now that the pressure’s gone, I wake up,
reach for my phone and push pause
before my eyes open.
Can’t be sure what time or day it is.
I’m in between worlds.
Vaguely, there is a sense of somewhere to go
but not urgently.
I fall back in the wispy strands of the dream:
You and Carmen and Rick stood in a circle
at the end of the street
breathing in the thick of the night.
The air around you was smoke
dotted with tiny red flares,
a mixture of fog and tobacco fumes.
I thought you quit years ago.
You did.
I remember the sound of the scraped butt
smashed to the ground
under your cowboy booted heels,
sizzle to a stop.
“I’m finished,” you said.
And then it was as if you had never smoked
those last fifteen years.
I never could keep a forever mind like that.
Everything is conditional and environmental
like a chameleon, something I called you.
But when Carmen, who smoked a pack a day then,
stole your glances and eventually your heart,
you never resumed the habit.
And there you were standing with them
at the corner of my block.
Maybe you weren’t smoking.
It was hard to tell in the nighttime mist.
I wanted to say something to you,
Something about how it has been
since you left,
not a complaint,
just to make you understand something,
a notion about passing time
and diminished threats.
But the block was too long
and it kept getting longer
each step bringing me farther from the circle,
closed circle you made in a ring of fire.
I don’t know how to write a love poem.
Overwhelmed by the subject’s ubiquity
the words shutter up tight inside of me
What can be said has often been bled
in quills to pens to one-zero roses red.
Silly tries at gallant sighs’ leapt rhyme
cry exalted emotion in schmaltzy lines
stain greasy tears of the intended eye
betrothal splaying bony legged signs.
A love poem says love like you might
by washing dishes in bone tired quiet
rubbing fingertip slight atop knuckles
barely notice my hand amid chuckles
elicited by stories through eye sparks
waving white long fingers flying larks
across meadow flap furiously in form
appears to my observing notice long.
Love wordlessly fills rhymes unheard
in flit glances, amused co-agreement
where two lives’ knowing nod is silent
an inner smile that never creases lips
like brewing heat stirring deep in hips
or scent infused of twin desires’ pours
room-filled chew open olfactory doors
body skins bleed beads of love drops
drying while our expulsive airing stops
leaving imaginary atomic pieces afloat
drifting like the sleep shared alone two
covered invisible love’s image we drew.
The portrait of a love poem fast asleep
rests in legs’ and arms’ entwined keep
in vision dream-scapes painted alone.
“A virus she had,” is all that was spoken
one that addled the brain, blurred sight
and entirely enervated. A toxin floated
on a pin head slid down to the pricking
point and stabbed her, the poison flow,
its silent torrent of spinning warheads
secretly shot through her blood. She,
in substance, infected by invisible vile,
deceptively imperceptibly close, inside,
it’s like a secret stalker gone mad or
an embezzling friend, a trusted insider
and adviser to the company president.
After it struck, she felt the beginning
sensed the destruction, a slight itching
her skin, which escalated to a burning
atop the nerve endings that swelled up
and made her hands twitch with tremor
a palsied pantomime of a confused cry
“help!” or an indecipherable wave ‘bye.
And eyes dried up, had nowhere to turn
for the lack of tears to lubricate. Her lids
rasped heat across them until they were
forced open. And just as she felt flame
belching forth from her ears and feet,
trying to listen and run, the big balloon,
inflamed with too much floating-ful gas,
the bloated being she had become yet
the cellular spread like ink on water or
heartfelt lies to a congregant, popped
and shrunk, shriveled to the ground
with no chance of sky born flight again.
She could no longer hope about falling
and cashing checks and trips to a cafe
or her dreams of graduating cum laude.
She was downed. No wind could carry
scraps to the trash can, beyond repair.
A low creeping agent kept repeating it,
again and again and again, sucking out
her cells with lies and fleas, a skin fleck
disease. The potency was in a constant,
the endless duplication and replication,
ever in her face, in her mind, her heart
with words that buzzed and whirred and
shrieked love and calamitous pitiful fear.
She could not help but move her fingers
this way and turn her head a quarter turn
that way, and smile that sly forged smile.
It was insidious.
The antidote clear.
Only it was too late.
The virus never left her.
Even after her skin cooled
and her mind clarified
her body reformed.
It blemished
like a scar
stained
rusted
ruin.
My name is witness.
I am called so by all.
I watch you spinning
by my feet in haste
and watch you go by
slow in circles around
my head nodding too.
My name is patience.
A heartbeat proves it.
Fear never outpaces
for I have no worries
to chase in nighttime
tooth-losing slow-mo
nightmare of despair.
My name is yearning.
Senses cry longingly.
Your eyes miss mine
though my face sees
every move you are
each word you make
and I do wait for them
your eyes your hand
your stroke of smile
and grin of hands on
this back and neck
ears and nose and
belly and butt of tail.
I am yours though
you are not mine.
I belong to you.
You not to me.
I am dog.
I am.
You.
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on”;
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man my son
In the gaze of the other 
