I live now
with my head in my hands
clutching it to me
as though it would otherwise roll away.
I hold it
manically
as a child strangleholds
a kitten
giving it no choice
but to grab back.
I pound this head
with my fists
Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!
I am surprised at the pain of it.
I rub the temples
trying to raise the genie
I am certain is imprisoned within.
To no avail.
Moisture leaks from it
My fingers come away
warm and wet
I am startled to discover
my fingertips free of blood.
I live now
with my head in my hands
clasping it strongly
as though it were a life~raft
I am stunned to find myself still drowning
as though it were, instead, an anchor around my ankles.
I cling to it
with all of the innocent selfishness of a child
“MINE!!!!”
refusing to share her toys.
The truth is
I live now
with my head in my hands
for I have nowhere else
to lay it.
5:22pm Wednesday
20.February.2002
© Melinda Chambers. All posts are the creation of the author and, as such, remain the author's property with all rights reserved.
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“It doesn’t make sense”
There are no other sounds in my mind
but these.
The last time I saw you,
truly saw you
your face was but an inch from mine,
leaning to spill breath into my mouth
in a tumble of gasps and sighs and moans.
Your eyes were alight
you were so near we were indivisible
and yet
so very far away ~
I wanted to feel your smile
from the inside,
wanted to taste my own breath
in your lungs ~
You were as close as flesh allows,
cohesion and division in one
you were so near
yet still not near enough.
I have not seen you since that moment
when the earth tilted off its axis
and we both felt it
in the same instant
and I can still remember that feeling
of being overwhelmed
and wanting to laugh and cry
both at the same time
and for no reason
but innocence
and beauty,
for no other reason other than the fact that
you are
and I am.
I haven’t truly seen you since then
and I divorced myself
in the moment of your withdrawal.
I couldn’t bear the hollowness,
couldn’t stand the weightlessness
~ I should have been floating
after you lifted your body from mine
the heat and intensity of you taken from me ~
I am weightless now, yes
but meaning
irrelevant
and without
consequence.
One floats in zero gravity, yes
but there is nothing to hold me here now
no one to hold me here
there is no oxygen and I cannot breathe.
“It doesn’t make sense”
~ a world screams its dying
as you let go
The flesh separates
and I send you divorce papers
all cold logic and legality.
Separating myself from you,
in hindsight
and grief, I recall
love holds to no laws
and logic is nowhere near the same
as sanity
or happiness.
5:47am Thursday
12.December.2002
© Melinda Chambers. All posts are the creation of the author and, as such, remain the author's property with all rights reserved.
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aphrodisiac contraceptive. coming without consequence doesn’t keep you from going. fever pitched edged scream right on the borderland of delirium stranded I cannot go back from this stranded I cannot move on sterile my love is sterile you are driftwood at least you can be used a fire shelter I am barren I am masturbation begetting nothing. your mirror? you’re getting off on your reflection in my eyes nothing comes of this but you I am becoming nothing and nothing becomes me. I am solitary rape I am 10pm steel trap lock down lights out. twisting breeze bended knees never kneeling open wound freshly bled never healing. I jumped out of my skin and ran naked through the streets. no one noticed I am point break, breaking point. snap. your deal, ace is high, served at 208 kilometres per hour. I tried to give up today. another thing I don’t know how to do. I get all the basics wrong. sleep – can’t do it. talk…um… um… I don’t know the question to that answer. breathe – little gasping angel fish stranded on dry land. I like the wet. all of it. me you ocean sea rain river flood perspiration exhalation elimination orgasm. I like the wet. all of it. aphrodisiac contraceptive turn me on hold me back the consequences of coming – negligible I am barren, infertile introverted independent beyond reproduction, duplication. all the mothers keep their lovers. in their beds. on a string. with a monthly cheque and another small request. relationships only ever last by accident. I wasn’t one. I was planned. some relationships should die. little heart string never quite severed. here are the scissors, mother. I couldn’t keep a relationship. I’m careful. no accidents. no six pound three ounce blue eyed accidents. aphrodisiac contraceptive. you can come inside. I always abort. or am aborted. same empty feeling at the end of the day. same bed too big, back cold, cold hands and who gives a fuck about the warm heart anyway? warm hands are all that count. keeps you coming back for another touch. keeps you coming. warm hands cheating heart. I have photographs all over my house of myself holding other people’s babies. I have decided to keep it that way. It’s neater this way – a shrine to a sterile dream.
9:24pm Tuesday
17.September.2002
© Melinda Chambers. All posts are the creation of the author and, as such, remain the author's property with all rights reserved.
- Stream II: Legacy
- Clayton’s Fuck
- Stream IV: Raw Intention
- A Life In The Day Of…
- Stream III: Justified
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Passion is the forgotten word you never touched on. Love, the habit you wear, sacrosanct and virginal and therefore unknown. Have you tried it, tested it, pushed its limits to fraying point? and recovered? Your acid fury, your caustic pain. Spill them across me the scapegoat you tarred and feathered and adorned with a bright gash of red. The letter, the shameful letter ‘A’. And shall I wear his guilt also? Shall I bear his responsibilities, pay in blood and tears and unending pain for his crime? Do this. Let him escape the claws of your rage. Keep your rending nails from his too precious flesh and sink them, savagely, into my heart. I’ll bleed for you. He won’t. And you will pay with the scars you wear, they will fester and eat you until your entire world is riddled with cicatrix. And he will remain untouched. This is what women do best… protect others from themselves. Bearing witness, I understand why praying mantises eat their mates just moments after loving them. It would be a relief to not have a male around to undo the sweet talk, to smash the illusion. We could grieve their deaths, keep them on their pedestal, believe in their infallibility and perfection without contradiction. Perhaps that is why I choose those who leave. No need to see the lies in their eyes the next morning. Your pain is bulimia to me. Your pain, the fingers I shoved down my throat. Your pain, the bile that rots my teeth and tears gaping ulcers in my stomach and I will carry it. I will bear your hatred and this will be the child I bear him while you carry the flesh of his love. A surrogate mother – the seed planted not my lovers, the egg not mine. The hatred yours, the betrayal his and I, foolish, foolish me, will carry this for you both. You wanted love – here it is – watch me bear it – the morning waking to nausea, the heaviness in belly and breast and the pain, the agonising rent of pain that will sunder me as it finally breaks free of fleshly confinement. I am human, nine months is as long as I could carry it, nine months on the cross, nine months to beg over and over and over again, ‘why hast thou forsaken me?’ The answer is birthed in blood and tears and your little bundle of hatred is brought to life. His the seed, yours the egg, mine the love which endures.
5:34am Monday
16.December.2002
© Melinda Chambers. All posts are the creation of the author and, as such, remain the author's property with all rights reserved.
- Barren II
- Stream I
- Hope Fell Apart: Blood and Tears
- match set to stagnant pool of petrol
- I Am Sorry For Your Passionless Nights
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Again we’re caught in silence your blue tinged gift that leads
me into circles of despair lonely albatross hovering to starboard
leading the ship into caverns of lucid nightmares which startle
me from dead apathy and wake me to pain red tears sobbing
reflections of love lost and all the world’s a stage and I
have no place here I was not chosen I am not the director or
stage hand or seamstress you won’t even let me brush your hair
or touch up the gargoylian makeup you wear and again
we’re caught in silence where you disappear into cloudy dreams
of your own making and I’m stuck ankle deep in mud and
it slithers between my toes and I can’t go anywhere
without leaving smears on the carpet and you’re fishing again
using your learned spirituality as bait showing of depths
you really only pay lip service to religion is a hobby for
you the way I dabble in witchcraft we’re both patchwork
pagans naked beneath the harvest moon and your penis is
a scythe and I’ve been mown down felled and I thought
I was a blood dead rose and you called me love
alive daffodil and daffodils are representative of breast
cancer these days cheerful yellow flowers used to raise
cash to throw at death we don’t make any sense as
passion makes a logic of our bodies and I think I know
you with my tongue in your mouth I’m inside you too and
I can taste you and I call it apprehension in its
other sense not in the sense of anxiety and you’re
inside me deprived of taste but given the full measure of
depth and do you know me really know me when you hear
me moaning your name do you know me in this silence we
have I don’t think you can hear me screaming your name
sometimes I’m so alone when you’re inside me because I
know you’re a thousand miles away in Jennifer Love Hewitt’s bed
I’m staring into your eyes but you’re not there you’re touching
me and focussed on your hands thinking of all the times you’ve
made love to your guitar when you really meant to use your
music to make love to others and they say this is why we
write poetry to get laid and I know all I do is masturbate
because you’re not here you’re silent you want to buy me a kitten
telling me you think I need the company and the comfort we
both know you just want another pussy to have a connection with
I sell you short all the time did you know that I gush about
you in an ecstasy of adjectives and I’m still surprised every
time you express a thought do I treat you like a bimbo Shhhh
how could you know what you’re talking about you mindless pretty
thing, you beautiful body of perfect proportion you walking puppet
penis I sell you short don’t tell me you’re any different fuck me
in your car in the parking lot and don’t see it as out of the
ordinary you take it for granted it’s expected this is your due
little sex god and I was made to take it yet I always wind up
giving and you’re the one you’re the one so why aren’t you here why
are you offering me kittens you always wanted a threesome as though
I could never be enough patently obvious when there are so many of us
in your closet and how can I not be enough aren’t I too much
you don’t have time for me neither of us wear a watch and
maybe we should maybe neither of us would be able to claim then
“I don’t have time” let me make you a watch I’ll give it to
you for Christmas and we’ll see if you understand the significance
again we’re caught in silence and it’s a heavy awkward thing in our hands
where it was once such liquid music I once made the silence
sing and we’re both making it scream now you’re making me scream
now isn’t that what we both wanted wake the neighbours have them call
the RSPCA have them thinking we’re torturing kittens in here and oh
you are! I’m teased and taunted into sinking my little red teeth into
your little white hands and you said a little bit of teeth isn’t
a bad thing but I still refrain from drawing blood I want
to send you back to your girlfriend with my lips still wrapped
around your penis I want the slurping sucking noises to keep her
awake at night I want to bang my fist against her thigh on
the back swing every time I tug on you I want her to see
the leash but I don’t want to be the one holding it not like
that not like that because I don’t want to own you because
I want to allow you all possible freedom I keep showing
you the exits like a stewardess and you clutch your parachute
to you as though falling is the ultimate terror and I keep
showing you my wings and smoothing the feathers of yours and
you’re oblivious to both you won’t get off the ground you’re
tracking mud across the carpet and I can see where you’ve
been you’re leaving tracks across the silence and your footprints
make me scream that’s one way of filling it I guess and
isn’t that what we always wanted?
6:42pm Monday
12.April.2004
© Melinda Chambers. All posts are the creation of the author and, as such, remain the author's property with all rights reserved.
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