What word of grace
in such a place
could save a brother's soul?
- O. Wilde,
Ballad of Reading Gaol

Poetry to make you go "hmmm"...

Little Beast

By Richard Siken

1


An all-night barbeque. A dance on the courthouse lawn.

The radio aches a little tune that tells the story of what the night

is thinking. It’s thinking of love.

It’s thinking of stabbing us to death

and leaving our bodies in a dumpster.

That’s a nice touch, stains in the night, whiskey and kisses for everyone.


Tonight, by the freeway, a man eating fruit pie with a buckknife

carves the likeness of his lover’s face into the motel wall. I like him

and I want to be like him, my hands no longer an afterthought.


2


Someone once told me that explaining is an admission of failure.

I’m sure you remember, I was on the phone with you, sweetheart.


3


History repeats itself. Somebody says this.

History throws its shadow over the beginning, over the desktop,

over the sock drawer with its socks, its hidden letters.

History is a little man in a brown suit

trying to define a room he is outside of.

I know history. There are many names in history

but none of them are ours.


4


He had green eyes,

so I wanted to sleep with him—

green eyes flecked with yellow, dried leaves on the surface of a pool-

You could drown in those eyes, I said.

The fact of his pulse,

the way he pulled his body in, out of shyness or shame or a desire

not to disturb the air around him.

Everyone could see the way his muscles worked,

the way we look like animals,

his skin barely keeping him inside.

I wanted to take him home

and rough him up and get my hands inside him, drive my body into his

like a crash test car.

I wanted to be wanted and he was

very beautiful, kissed with his eyes closed, and only felt good while moving.

You could drown in those eyes, I said,

so it’s summer, so it’s suicide,

so we’re helpless in sleep and struggling at the bottom of the pool.


5


It wasn’t until we were well past the middle of it

that we realized

the old dull pain, whose stitched wrists and clammy fingers,

far from being subverted,

had only slipped underneath us, freshly scrubbed.

Mirrors and shop windows returned our faces to us,

replete with the tight lips and the eyes that remained eyes

and not the doorways we had hoped for.

His wounds healed, the skin a bit thicker than before,

scars like train tracks on his arms and on his body underneath his shirt.


6


We still groped for each other on the backstairs or in parked cars

as the roads around us

grew glossy with ice and our breath softened the view through a glass

already laced with frost,

but more frequently I was finding myself sleepless, and he was running out

of lullabies.

But damn if there isn’t anything sexier

than a slender boy with a handgun,

a fast car, a bottle of pills.


7


What would you like? I’d like my money’s worth.

Try explaining a life bundled with episodes of this—

swallowing mud, swallowing glass, the smell of blood

on the first four knuckles.

We pull our boots on with both hands

but we can’t punch ourselves awake and all I can do

is stand on the curb and say Sorry

about the blood in your mouth. I wish it was mine.




I couldn’t get the boy to kill me, but I wore his jacket for the longest time.

I release you...and ask your forgiveness as I freely give mine

I refer here to my true self, the one unafraid to live, laugh, love...to be, do and help


It has always served me well to be myself. Even in such moments where I pay the price of ostracism and loneliness, it has been as a refusal to lose myself at the gain of hollow offerings of companionship or material gain. What need have I of the company of those who sought to remove aspects of me that denied my right to personhood? There is a line between those changes that may enrich or otherwise benefit an individual or society, and the changing of a person to have them simply aligned with your view of them - usually an abasement to serve your ego. This interpersonal colonisation is often not readily recognised for what it is, and indeed can be enacted without even being seen as such by the perpetrator.
I previously wrote about treading softly around the dreams of others. I expand that thought to the treatment of the sanctity of personhood and individual choice: insomuch as a defining trait does not infringe on the rights and freedoms of another, it may be taken value-free as is.
THIS DOES NOT MEAN ONE SHOULD TOLERATE THOSE WHO ABUSE THIS ARGUMENT.
it also does not excuse one from being beholden to ones thoughts feelings and most importantly, the consequences of one's actions and opinions. My generation has taken to feeling their words and deeds, flung carelessly into the ether are at once ex cathedra as well as free of ramifications so long as they bear the "It's my opinion"/"it's who i am" cadence...no

BECAUSE they are YOUR thoughts
BECAUSE they are YOUR deeds
they WILL be used to come to a conclusion about YOU
THEY WILL NOT always be aligned with your true self or even your self-concept
they will sometimes be ordinarily abhorrent to you
but honour the realisation that they will be all persons observing will have to go on
UNTIL they are greeted with the true you through interaction.
It would be lovely if we all waited until we had full pictures before we judged...but the world is not such a place.


So...this rant may be foolish, may be disjoint...even pointless.

I accept all of those likely definitions, as well as the truth that it is simply a rant. it is a manifestation in cyberspace of my current mental ruminations.

All my Mind
CH