"They Said I Must be One of the Wonders..."

[psalm_onethirtyone]

I think your scars are so beautiful. I understand their impulse
and why they lie on your skin
and I forgive you for everything and anything,
I am not society, I will not call on any judgement,
I can read the pattern as surely as I know my own patterned heart.
There’s always something dancing around
in the background, I forgive you for that, even though you won’t let me look at it.
You can tell me nothing explicitly, you cannot read your fortune
out of a cookie
or scratch it in the snow of a crystal ball,
I am not asking you to.
I have my own. They curl quietly on my shoulders,
nowhere near their god-given eighty percent,
(your skin will only heal eighty percent)
(and that's where it stops; no more, never what it was)
white and slender and almost invisible, my own obscure fortunes,
my own sad patterns,
every day I ever found fault with myself. I am not asking you for
anything concrete or any solid words,
truly I am not asking you to tell me any secrets,
this is just the truth.
This is no declaration of love, this is not my eloquent love poem, this is not
a request for what’s yours to be mine. This is
just the truth, which is that
I remember falling into the pond, falling and falling, because my feet couldn’t
grip the lining, because my hands couldn’t find an edge,
I remember trying over and over
and my head going under and under in warm cloudy water.
This is just to tell you that my sheets are stained with my own blood, this
is just to say that I read a thousand little slips of paper
looking for myself,
this is for me, I am not society, I am not your fellow man,
I bear no judgement bound in my clothes,
I hold no answers fastened in my hair like combs,
but I forgive you for every bifurcated epidermal cell
and every wound weeping your red blood, and in return (I
will be wholly honest) all I ask is that you
forgive me also.

---

Play harmonica, play harmonica with a mouth
I swear is sweeter than my own mama’s dried peach pie.
I will wear a blue dress for you
and dance until my feet want to fall off,
I will dance until my head bows down in a mess of curls and sweat.
Play me harmonica and I will listen to music
the way some folks drink wine. My mama came from the South,
we don’t stint on noise there, I can laugh with the best of them.
You can make me laugh.
You sit on the steps and play harmonica, and I will get my hair up
and show you what a Southern girl looks like
when she’s maybe a little bit in love. I will be straight out of
Langston Hughes. I will walk in the sound of trumpets.
I will forget to try and fit in. I will be a bright carousel
like you never saw outside some pair of
theme park gates, all painted lunging horses and flower-strewn chariots,
I will be goddamn.
If you play harmonica, I’ll teach you a couple new songs.
My mama gave me a piece of Tennessee to lie pretty in my eyes.
She poured hot weather and good music
into my tiny naked body
when I was a crowder-pea sized lump in her belly. When you play me
that harmonica
I swear
God Himself says That’s a Southern girl who’s maybe a little bit in love.
And why not? when your sweet mouth is kissing music
out of a piece of cold metal
and it’s singing hallelujah.

Comments

[little-lady-d.livejournal.com]

'our eighty percent' touched something true in me, something maybe painful to touch, painful to look at, but in looking and in looking back i see pain, but i see grace, i see honesty and beauty, i see forgiveness that comes not from society, from safety, from wanting everything explained and nothing understood, but from the tug of knowing (this is just the truth), knowing deeper than skin. and that's all rather obscure, but thank you for writing it.

and 'love song for a harmonica' is gorgeous and delightful every line and playful-sweet turn of phrase -- i like 'i will be straight out of langston hughes' and 'when your sweet mouth is kissing music' -- <3 this is why your crushes are good things --

[tomecatti.livejournal.com]

You are such a beautiful poet! (Do I see a hint of Whitman?)

[gileonnen.livejournal.com]

Every time you write, you touch something pulsing and shivering with life--never stop writing these, lady. Never.

[raanve]

Lovely.

You are really very, very good.

[eremon-lass.livejournal.com]

Beautiful.

[the-chloroplast.livejournal.com]

Um...WHOA.

Wow, so those are two very wonderful poems and I loves them. And they are amazing, like their author. I especially liked the "Southern girl who's maybe a little bit in love."