not to you, not for you, but maybe of you?...a

So deeply have i loved YOU
that there is little that can come
to usurp your place
as holder of my hand

So deeply have i loved YOU
that my erasure is secure
of course, it is pure
now an absolute thing

So deeply have i loved YOU
that i scarce see the point
of clinging to a half life
content without the whole

so deeply do i love YOU
that soon there will be
no reason for 'i' and 'me'
...after all...

were they ever really...

applicable?

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.

A Lament

A Lament


With eyes that once
Held the spark of suns
And lips that spilled
Gems from unspoilt gums
I watched in proud fascination
Your growth
Your passion…

O wayward child, 
O wilful babe!
Weaned from milk -
now venom you crave.

I must say that
And it is true
Your change it did 
Stem from me too
And thusly I present of myself 
My back
For lashing

O wayward child
O wilful babe
weaned from milk
now venom you crave

I sit and watch,
I stand and gape;
And worried, I,
Myself did hate
Until I did with clarity
See you
And not me 

O wayward child
O wilful babe
you chose your ilk…
You, I cannot save

I Saw Her Break...

I saw her break...
In the light of dying day
from desperate hope
dashed to a slow burn of despair
how will she cope?

I saw her break...
as the lights dimmed
her eyes red rimmed
from her compulsive rubbing
dry rivulets she forced not to swell

I saw her break...
as I itemised, stacked
made real her isolation
as I swallowed the bile
salting my own March to damnation

I saw her break...
as the room became the cell
cold and austere, her haven a hell
and for a moment I felt it
I acknowledged my fractures...

I saw her break...
and I lost my indignation
lost all reason for upset
I...lost, and yet never knew
that there was reason for "winning"

I saw break...
as the minutes ticked by
a lonely little girl who never dreamed
she could feel so alone...
and I broke with her
...as did the seemingly shatterproof universe that ensconced us...

Untitled

I see you across from me
and I wish that distance would span
to the furthest reaches of time
because then,
and only then
could I run far enough to keep sane

There's a disservice of self
that takes place
when I stand in your presence
willing myself
and killing myself
with the idea that hell is nigh

Undo me, undermine me, time me
and cut me up sublimely
because then I could turn
and possibly run
I really should run
why do I feel tethered to this spot?

Slow burn of an age
this I hope, the turning of the page
would dissolve the endless night
and yet we are unwise
again, the refrain "unwise"
as we play in this brimstone's rain

The Silence that I carry when we speak

THIS will not do
what do you take me for?
this idiocy IS maddening
I will not comply
WHY should I?
when your hate,
YOUR bitter dislike
your thinly veiled contempt
threatens to suck the LIFE out of me
and boy!
DOES it ever sear at the "propriety" that masks it
I do NOT play this game
and frankly...
this fracas is resolved in my head
now to make action sync!
I never signed up for this
...and that's all I shall say on the MATTER

Carl-Anthony

An Old poem fast returning to prominence in my life

I Am

I am: yet what I am none cares or knows,
My friends forsake me like a memory lost;
I am the self-consumer of my woes,
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shades in love and death's oblivion lost;
And yet I am! and live with shadows tost

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life nor joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;
And e'en the dearest--that I loved the best--
Are strange--nay, rather stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes where man has never trod;
A place where woman never smil'd or wept;
There to abide with my creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept:
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie;
The grass below--above the vaulted sky. 

John Clare          

Feeling...tired

I run...
clutching that parcel so close to my chest
My breath ragged gasps
barely enough to sustain my effort...
I am sure I will expire soon
one can operate on borrowed strength for so long
and the miracle that I have not yet collapsed begs that I continue
that I hold on despite all that would have me expire
I owe it...
to wherever this energy springs from

...right?

Peaceful night...

Sitting in the afterglow...
mired in my post happenstance musings
I smile inwardly...
the glow rises from inside me
to make the duchenne* a physical manifest of my pleasure
I enjoyed my quiet evening, and look to the repeat of many to come
the calm that has its own fire
never an ember, and so easily made blazing...
Kyrie, Christe Eleison...
Mercy on my soul
for all my mind creates in the lull...
as I watch you...

(*Duchenne- genuine smile)

Untitled...

As I stand before you,

the spindly glass of my world trembling

facade of stone shaken...

I reach to you-

then see the recoil-

that instant of rejection

that green tint

of an aura's retreat

and you maintain the distance

and why not?

after all, clearly its my fault

nothing of me

naught of me at all

well...

I'll stay in my corner

til my corner evaporates

with the morning sun

night's crimson death...

-Carl-Anthony

To Ayala...

Ayala,

I have dreaded writing these lines, though they were an inevitability I knew I had to face, despite my terror that in doing so I make it finality; I show acceptance of your transcendence from material to ethereal. It has been a very interesting Journey, and one of the most long lasting and stable links I’ve held to anyone: days spent in idle rants about the awesome yet often despicable nature of people, paralleling persons in our lives to characters from favourite tomes; bemoaning the damage or loss of a treasured book due to lending, though unable to refuse anyone who showed an interest- I remember vividly the soliloquy you rendered on how your favourite Lewis Carroll book was a little over two years overdue but you would never ask the person, who you saw daily, to return it. After some pushing you went to enquire after it, only to find that it was assumed that the book was gifted. The look you had as we walked off was priceless; we headed to the classrooms adjacent to the Drama room and there was nothing for it, we simply joked about it and laughed. Looking back, I believed we had a way to laugh about anything, from the (there is no better way to put it) retarded hand flailing and ululating used to refer to things that excited, disgusted or intrigued us, to having a song for every word that ended a sentence - it was in these instances Hanief was co-conspirator and, naturally Karim ever present if even for a second to make an utterly mind boggling though no less hilarious reference to liking eggs. There was a particular conversation that moved from eggs to bread to buttermilk and dragons (A. Lang’s Violet Fairy-book, a new addition at the time to my collection) then to cheese and the dangers of moving someone’s cheese, and after, mapping the conversation that could only be considered seamless madness.

Wondrous times there have been, but life is, in its duality sure to swing down. It is these moments, though few, which left me with very profound respect and instinct to protect one so much younger yet so clearly equal- and in many ways above me mentally and spiritually. One instance while in a floating period between classes I was told by friends in your form who had sought me out that you weren’t okay. I ran up to your classroom; saw you sitting by a wall, a small group of your classmates hovering worriedly. You were mumbling with your head down for a while, and I waited…after a minute of silence I started singing “Don’t Worry Be Happy” the song that was usually a surefire way to make you smile, especially when it got to the bridge, because I couldn’t whistle so I sang the part In whistle like fashion- not a beautiful sound- I went on until you joined in at “he might have to litigate” – I swear I don’t even know why those lyrics after that day made me feel like giggling…we sat for a while and you asked one question repeatedly. I assumed you wanted no answer initially, but then I ventured to respond:

“Why?”

“Because he is, you are, and it is, completely human.”

“That doesn’t make it right. Why? He saw me… and now…what?”

“Now, you get through right now, he did what was possible though unexpected, you do what you need to do to feel ok again.” you raised your hands, little trembling fists attached to wispy thin yet graceful arms and pounded my chest, punctuating each blow with the alternated “why” and “it’s not fair” I was either now the vision of what was causing the pain, or the idiot who dared be rational at a time like this… I let you continue, your fistfalls[1], though steady, were not at all harmful. As your pace slowed, we talked, the flow becoming less and less abridged and abbreviated and full paragraphs detailed the scenario. After having spoken, the heavy stuff now in the air and before the awkward anxiety this should bring, a gesture and a funny sound had us both giggling and we walked off in search of food as we whiled away the time it took Hanief to find us. The next week in rehearsal you apologised, looking as if expecting to see scars and bruises. I shrugged it off, it was fine, and for the whole day you kept inspecting my hands and neck for signs of abuse thinking your methods discreet (though one can only glance at someone’s hand and neck casually so many times).

You were ill a number of times physically as well, and it is in those moments that I feared for you most. There was the big issue of your fleeting and often ignored appetite, and the quasi arguing about the importance of eating followed by the need after to go ensure another certain person was doing the same, unified in our projection of this shared fault on someone else. These moments usually petered out well, except in the rare case of a blackout, and then I’d be the manual ferry if Hanief hadn’t already been so, to a place of safety or rest until you were professionally seen to. Then there were those evenings you were beyond my scope of assistance. The pain of contact for you was unbearable; you would lie there in the lowest darkest part of the room you were in and shiver, wanting comfort and warmth but having to refuse coverings or blankets of any kind, as even the contact of just your uniform was torturous. I had no use, and that was terrifying, knowing I take pride in being ever handy- yet comforted very little that I could only sing to you, only heartened when you joined in, selfish that I wanted to hear you trying, feeling a little more reassured you would be okay, despite the knowledge sleep would probably serve you better as you waited on your mother or father to come take you home.

Amidst all these happenings there were myriad memories, so many paths my mind wanders, the speed of thought lightning to my tortoise fingers on the keyboard, and the recollections beyond possibility of full transcription; how can one describe the joy that one’s soul feels at the shout of “Cheese!” or the sight of a wildly waving arm advancing in your direction from the library? There are no words and likely no space to capture such things. If I were to give tangibility to the epistle which would encompass my interaction with you, I would speak to your heart…your heart, the makings of which far exceed being called mere “gold”. I would need to mention your undeniably infectious laughter, your quiet wisdom housed simultaneously with your beautiful innocence, and the “Matilda-like” way of interacting (Roald Dahl, *heavy sigh*).

I could speak to your immensely beautiful creativity, to your wonderful, picturesque, flowing haunting poetic gift; your ability to artistically manoeuvre objects in a space, whether of words or of physical things; your silvery light soprano and the long journey it took to “draw it out” of you while u lazed in the alto line of Music Club, the earnest with which you approached the Keyboard as your assigned instrument in the club. I could write on your transition to the Jamaica Youth Chorale, where your Bow-ties were something of a favourite of your fellow choristers as you navigated the ranks and carved your spot within the hearts of the members, assimilating into the family. I seek to remember you at this point, close to the actualisation of a serious step in your academic life, sharing your art and gifts with the world, being awarded for- and more importantly accepting graciously that applause- your brilliance and hard work; a life coming together as it should, as all should aspire to live and be. So while I admit to your passing, permit me, dear friend, to have you in mental stasis, at the wondrous place you were, on the brink of exactly where you wanted to be…it is painful that God had other plans.

“That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet.” - Emily Dickinson

To a life well lived, by a girl well loved, at a place and time she was well needed.

Love,

Carl-Anthony

---

[1] Coined by Rene Depestre- pounding with closed fists