Sunday, October 09, 2005
I have not forgotten the blog.
I have not forgotten the blog. Sometimes, in dreams, the blog comes to me and says "Amy," for that is my nickname. "Amy," it says, "Why have you done nothing to make me beautiful? Why am I all orange and ugly and why are your posts so stupid and why hasn't anyone visited me?" I wake up in cold sweats all the time. This blog is an albatross, except that it doesn't have the enormous wingspan and it isn't remotely interesting.
Nevertheless, I have made a commitment to this blog and I will keep that commitment, if only because I have one of the most profound senses of guilt I have ever seen.
In the next few days, I will be printing a small collection of poems, all about mental disorders. Here is a sample:
Lycanthropy
I.
It’s always the same dream.
You, crouching on the forest floor,
A small warm heart
Falling to pieces between your teeth.
Summer, and the air is too thick
To breathe. You feel the eyes
Before you see them,
Like tiny bulbs
Lighting the spaces
Between the trees.
But when you wake,
Sweating into your striped pajamas,
There is only you
In a half-lit bedroom.
You can still feel the fur
Blooming beneath your skin,
Pricking like the acupuncturist’s needles.
II.
At the office, they whisper
About your cubicle’s décor:
Those magenta-tinted faux-Navajo
Posters of gray dogs baring their teeth
With eyes like bug-zappers,
Glossy photos of prize deer
Torn messily from hunting magazines.
And your lunches are enough to turn stomachs,
Parts of the animal no one else would
Think to eat. You think, so what
If a little blood drips down my chin,
Everyone likes their meat cooked rare.
But they don’t know how you prowl the aisles
Of Winn-Dixie, hoping to find something
Still warm beneath the cellophane.
III.
Your wife turns over
And exposes a moonlit flank
From the folds of the sheets,
The white of her skin broken
By the bites she takes for
Passion. You rise
And go to the backyard.
The damp grass reminds you
of something you can’t quite name,
And you run the only way
You can remember, using all
Of your limbs to push off
From the freshly-mown grass.
When you reach the fence
You can’t remember what it
Is called, and you turn to run back again.
The collection is called "A New Compendium of Anomolous Behavior".
Nevertheless, I have made a commitment to this blog and I will keep that commitment, if only because I have one of the most profound senses of guilt I have ever seen.
In the next few days, I will be printing a small collection of poems, all about mental disorders. Here is a sample:
Lycanthropy
I.
It’s always the same dream.
You, crouching on the forest floor,
A small warm heart
Falling to pieces between your teeth.
Summer, and the air is too thick
To breathe. You feel the eyes
Before you see them,
Like tiny bulbs
Lighting the spaces
Between the trees.
But when you wake,
Sweating into your striped pajamas,
There is only you
In a half-lit bedroom.
You can still feel the fur
Blooming beneath your skin,
Pricking like the acupuncturist’s needles.
II.
At the office, they whisper
About your cubicle’s décor:
Those magenta-tinted faux-Navajo
Posters of gray dogs baring their teeth
With eyes like bug-zappers,
Glossy photos of prize deer
Torn messily from hunting magazines.
And your lunches are enough to turn stomachs,
Parts of the animal no one else would
Think to eat. You think, so what
If a little blood drips down my chin,
Everyone likes their meat cooked rare.
But they don’t know how you prowl the aisles
Of Winn-Dixie, hoping to find something
Still warm beneath the cellophane.
III.
Your wife turns over
And exposes a moonlit flank
From the folds of the sheets,
The white of her skin broken
By the bites she takes for
Passion. You rise
And go to the backyard.
The damp grass reminds you
of something you can’t quite name,
And you run the only way
You can remember, using all
Of your limbs to push off
From the freshly-mown grass.
When you reach the fence
You can’t remember what it
Is called, and you turn to run back again.
The collection is called "A New Compendium of Anomolous Behavior".
