i am tired.

i am too tired.
i am too tired for war.

i am too tired for the sameness of change
& your voice droning on & in
about the victimization:
the victimization of the process,
the fire that raps/ at the window
begging you/ kissing between your
knees & sighing

to you,

i say it is time for bars
on your eyes. you have seen no thing!
until you've seen from behind
your self, your inescapable self,
the slow soft ragged rough wrought iron
fence of your self, until you've
burrowed & looked out from
with in the opalescence of your flesh
caressing the orbs in your muscles
like onions, with
your tongue.

i have told you, time
& time, again.

i cannot make art from this:
i cannot make art from sleep,
from the sleep & sudden waking,
from sleep.

i do not believe you
when you speak of tragedy
i do not think that you know what tragedy is.
your vision has become distorted &
lost its purpose, so that even your voice
develops barbs around the edges
& screams:no, no, keep away.

i have not forced this upon you.
i have not fed my self to you, or taken
my self from you. death
is not a tragedy. let me show you brick.

let me show you ash & rubble & bodies
buried in cities
still alive. pulsing out wards
& rubbing fingers across your arm.

this is not tragedy. no.
you do not understand what tragedy is.
you believe too much in words.

you have told me this story too many times;
you are just making noise now.

noise like the grinding of calcium,

& i am too tired
for talking, so
let me show you the silence that comes
after silence.
let me show you the remains, the innards
like litter & bones like shrapnel
of an unbuilt building.

here:

here are the rooms below the rooms.
here are the sounds below the sounds

the sounds of some thing pushing through
your vocal chords, some incredulous metal,
some yellow flower written out
& hammered in to your skull.

your tragedy does not live here, any more.
it has made its home on some other street,
in the flickering of lights,
in the tick tock of self
infliction. your tragedy has grown

in to every one else's tragedy.
it is every one's & so it is no one's.
don't you see
it's not any one's!,
now.

it is no longer possessed & has
floated up your esophagus, past
your uvula, & out from
between your lips.

you speak the word
& it is gone.

it tips the scales & touches the surface
of the sun
with one brief finger,
touches the sun

like a single piece of paper thick with
the scent of your crumpled palm, the lines
that lead you in to lines,

the identification, the subtle motion of acknowledgement.

i have turned the television on now
& am watching it with out sound.

the voices have been stolen &
given to the trees.
the wind makes them speak
& when i listen, they make sense
to me.

it's true.

no thing has changed.

& if it has, i cannot tell:

the scent of a match being lit still makes me sick.
i still become bored easily
with the math of my body & concentrate
in stead on the space that surrounds me.

you see,
some thing has come between my legs
& made me two:
every thing in half.

& so
there is no innocent: no victim with hands
like flags, swaying slightly
to the rhythm of the leaves speaking
in three/four time.

there is no tragedy,
no small hole, no
great absence. there is
only the split: the simple division
of a single sphere: there is only this:
there is only: death
there is
only: life.

09/23/2001

Posted on 09/23/2001
Copyright © 2024 Marina Dawn