This is for the year spent
chasing rainbows,
teasing leprechauns into blurting their secrets.
This is for the year which awakened
giggles
from a four year old girl
who never suspected a smile could live
beneath all of those muffled screams.
This is for the year which saw
mischievous brats
sneak up on the wicked witch of the west
as she slept
and shave off all her hair
and paint her bald skull
with brightest sky blue
and sun yellow polka dots.
This is for the year
in which desire learned its name
and came without invitation
and was welcomed nevertheless.
This is for the year been and gone
in which love learned
it was fact
and not
a weapon,
when it learned
that its equivalent
was freedom of choice
and it would be allowed
to hide or run
or stay
at will.
This is for the year gone
where the purity of Lent
was aimed for,
the absence of complication
was asked for
and neither were attained
yet, still something holy was unearthed
and worshiped
without submission or subjugation
and the idol venerated the idolater,
the jester laughed at the audience’s antics,
Cupid took up arms
and shot himself in the foot
and I entered the temple
of your body.
This is for the year we lived through,
truly lived
and I discovered joy
as music I could see
and touch
and taste.
This is for the year in which love
took on flesh
and knew my name
and invited me out
to play.
This is the year
when I finally stopped
screaming.
5:02pm Monday
6.January.2003
© 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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I have resumed linking
smoke rings
a daisy chain of blue grey silver
one after one after another.
I have resumed tying
verbs with conjunctions with adjectives with nouns
a faerie ring with a mirror pool
trying to capture your reflection
cigarette in my left
pen in my right
I have nothing better to do with my hands
in your absence.
3:06am Thursday
7.March.2002
© Melinda Chambers. All posts are the creation of the author and, as such, remain the author's property with all rights reserved.
- Letting You Go Again And Again And Again
- Stream IV: Raw Intention
- Brink
- Henry Miller – The Ironies Of Desire
- Addict
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Stumble it!
I’m six years old and you hand me a loaded rifle.
That’s what this is, isn’t it?
Your talk of love?
Don’t you know how dangerous this is?
I might hurt myself.
I’ll almost certainly hurt you.
What wild impulse had you handing over such power
to this clumsy child?
Why not have me stand on one foot
balancing a Ming vase on my head?
Why not hand me some scissors
and send me pelting down the stairs?
Why not assign me the job
of air traffic controller at Tullamarine Airport?
Why not give me your heart?
Yes. Why not?
11:10pm Sunday
14.November.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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Such violent beauty
I am scared.
I want you the way others crave oblivion
I want to know you as intimately
as nicotine
inhale and spread your addiction to every receptor.
I am crazed with longing
a fractured vase poorly mended
Something seeps through the cracks
smoke and fire
I am all embers
an oil burner bleeding light and incense.
I am incensed.
You are cold.
Pop your feet beneath the doona
put your hands up under my top.
If I cared less about you
I’d consider myself obsessed
I wish I could be less practical
less considerate
I wish the idea of manipulation
were more attractive
I wish I loved you less for the convulsions
of your free will
and more for the compulsions
of your body.
I wish I could happily settle for a puppet
and that you’d volunteer your strings into my hands
If I loved you less
I’d never let you go.
I wish I loved you less.
5:04pm Wednesday
13.October.2004
© Melinda Chambers. All posts are the creation of the author and, as such, remain the author's property with all rights reserved.
- Mustn’t Cry Out
- A Life In The Day Of…
- Brink
- Stream IV: Raw Intention
- Henry Miller – The Ironies Of Desire
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In ecstasy or pain. I’m loving you as quietly as I can.
It is difficult.
The only days your name does not pass my lips
are those when I do not speak at all.
Well, that is inaccurate.
On those days when I have not met face
to face
with anyone,
I have met you in dream,
hands and fingers
drawing your name from me in sudden,
gasping
cries
and no one hears
not even you
so does it count?
When I am not speaking of you I am thinking
of you.
Fantasising and reminiscing.
How close to obsession am I
and will anyone tell me
if I cross over that line?
I love you as though you were here
evolving right in front of me.
I do not love you in still frame,
in carefully isolated and contained
snap shot.
Surely that makes a difference.
I make allowances and room and adjustments
for your minutest change ~
in attitude
and dress
and emotional development/regression.
Does that not suggest more of love
than idolatry?
I know women who are head over heels
in love with the myth of a man.
They love the idea they have of them
and go to great lengths to keep reality
from tampering with the photo
on the bedside table.
Surely the fact that I have not had you
cryogenically frozen, stored in my heart
for a later time
when science can revive you as a person
who will stay
who will not change beyond my recognition,
beyond my grasp;
surely that speaks more of love
than the women who still buy medium jumpers
and extra large boxers for their men
when the reality became
extra large from waist up and
more often than not
extra small from the waist down
years in the past.
I am trying to love you as quietly as I can.
Mustn’t let it get back to her.
Oh no, keep it quiet,
keep it closeted and,
for god’s sake,
don’t believe it’s real.
So, I don’t discuss you with the postman ~
he’s never delivered perfumed pink envelopes to you
with my name on the back
and I don’t talk about you at the doctors ~
although he knows it wasn’t Gabriel
who whispered biological impossibilities in my ear
and, god knows, I’m not Mary.
I don’t discuss you with anyone who might not be
on ‘my side’.
I try to love you quietly.
You’re world famous all the same.
In my quiet home
on a quiet, dead end street
there are no photos of you gracing the mantelpiece.
There were
but there was too much to explain
and I was trying to muffle my cries.
I have none of your clothing in my wardrobe,
no toothbrush of yours in the bathroom cabinet
How is it you manage to live here?
Oh, that’s right. Ghosts have no need of such possessions.
The only possession here
is me.
(Possession noun. a thing possessed – either owned or occupied by a person or passion)
I take all of my skin off
trying to find you.
You inside me might well be
the most stunning sensation in the world
you sitting behind my eyes taking notes
is another thing entirely.
It’s somewhat ironic
your ghost wandering the rooms of my home.
All I’ve been craving
all of this time
is you
embedded
deep in my flesh
and you are
(why else a ghost if not for the relentless desire
to be clothed in skin once more?)
You’re in beneath my skin
(mustn’t cry out)
and you don’t feel
a damn thing.
(Mustn’t cry out.)
7:21am Wednesday
16.July.2003
© Melinda Chambers. All posts are the creation of the author and, as such, remain the author's property with all rights reserved.
- Simple Physics, Lesson II
- You Moved Heaven And Earth
- A Life In The Day Of…
- Stream IV: Raw Intention
- “No!”
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