Badly Done, Allison

in the mornings i don't feel good. i just don't, feel good. i just don't.
when i wake i don't feel good. i just don't, feel good. i just don't.
i feel like a bottle of champagne someone knocked off of a shelf
to go rolling rolling round the floor. i'm all shook up.

the book is described as containing a 'comically helpless masochism'
i don't want to read it.
i do not think that the words apply to me, the thoughtless words,
so stupid.

a ‘comically helpless masochism,’ oh, go fuck yourself, you,
whoever you are who could believe in such a thing.
i am bleeding from my mouth, it pools beneath my tongue,
i clutch the gape in my chest that is blown through,

my eyes roll back, i dream in pain of you,
ecstasy, ecstasy, ecstasy, says the page.
when i wake up i don't feel hate or rage.
i just don't feel good. i just don't.

you could at least get out of my dreams
you're a very mean thing. you're a very mean thing.
while i endeavored to be the lady in green
i was getting all dressed up to go nowhere.

vera and deanie

my prize

Bury your face in my lap until I have a heart attack, my cynic. I want to die with someone in my arms.

With your nose in my skirt, unveil your hurt, inhale my vapors and grow slack and warm, no longer to come to harm although you won't believe it.

And your pain has become my pain, cynic. Like when you pulled me onto your back and we tumbled into bed. The cynic in you became the cynic in me, and drunkenly it went straight to my head.

And your darling features belie your bitter heart like a ravaged cypress which will not be torn apart but simply stands there, bowed and broken, and begging for support to deny.

This is who I am, cynic. And this is where I have arrived. You've seen the shaking of my body and known the stones in my eyes. And cynic, I don't know what you think, your misanthropic mind. What might have been or what lies down the line. To steel myself toward something that I cannot yet recognize is what awaits me now, my punishment, my prize.

hypothetical conversations with the cynic part IV

dark clouds are rolling across the sky, obscuring my vision, cynic. what i thought would be simple was a painting perceived from a distance. in front of me it is rough, the texture beneath my hands feels like clotted pigments. the truth tastes like a mouthful of whisky, like old espresso.

each person walking by can see through to me and through me, my vermilion pout, kissed a million times, split and bitten, abandoned, like a pomegranate. each person peers through the glass into the very stones of my eyes, steals what they can and, fortified, strides off.

i will not blow the dust from the surface of a memory, cynic. i will not recall the freedom of two strangers on that very street who neither knew nor cared, then, who did not know: that the cynic in you, my darling, is the cynic in me.

and so the fruit was torn in two and out were sucked the seeds. it is not impossible that at some point, one got what they needed. it is not impossible that something new was seeded, but i cannot tell the future any more than the next beautiful, wounded cynic limping down the street.

hypothetical conversations with the cynic part III

All I want to do is sleep, cynic. This waking life is too sharp and I am too frail to withstand it. And I have seen you in your nakedness, so wounded, while you have seen me disarmed and charmed and weak. You would say, what does that count for, Allison? You would say, I’m glad you’re entertained. You would say, I know myself. And I would know your thousand fragments and your chains. 

Let’s be light, a little lighter, cynic. The droning insect can be batted away by a hand. We can try, can try to understand. You would say, what does that count for, Allison? You would say, I understand quite well. Your loneliness resounds to me, its disastrous bell. Your dissonance resounds as it screeches and swells.

Some people say that they feel like death but I feel more akin to dying. Not in the sense that I am trying, but in the sense that I'm on some dark doorstep naked and bent. You have chewed me to the quick and spat me out, contorted, cynic. You are embittered beyond any light of sense.  The droning insect circles you and wraps you in its web.

You would say, you do assume to know, don't you, Allison? Perhaps you'd say, yet you don't know a thing. Perhaps you would be right, adored cynic. I can only know what I can see. There was once a day, bore some pollen which whispered a notion of happy. But for your scorn it has evaded you as it has denied me. 

                                                                          sandy denny
                                                                                            says ouch

what may be last, my cynic

what may be last, my cynic
is considerably more

than what i so open- armed and ill-informed
had bargained for

turning my pockets inside out
and showing what remained

bare and undulating
was a stomach churning drop, a burning yellow plain

the grass grew high all summer long
it waited for its flame

and what is parched, what is reduced
is all now that remains.

i read it in a book, my cynic
that ecstasy is pain

shocking the body in waves
on nights that beg for rain

i've been a fool and been a fool
and poor as could be conceived

what has burned and loved me
retrieved, my cynic, and hardly believed

hindsight shows me some ophelia
tumbling toward the reeds

the present shows me only
what may be last

and what i need.