I, with open arms, embrace
Their prescient madness,
Their maps of consequence
I embrace all, open armed.
They build their dream castles,
Their fairylands,
Their Never~Nevers
Knowing
From dust
To Dust
Such erections inevitably
come crashing down
come
to nothing.
They insist on building their wonders
upon my fault lines.
They tunnel paradise
through my veins
Their Utopias
are not well-thought out
They do not understand
an ideal
by definition
is almost certainly
beyond their grasp.
They lay their blame
at my feet
The core trembles
splits apart
swallows the weight of them
blindly
When I am quiescent
They take their jackhammers to me
Pry me open
When I rage
They flee.
They drown in my hot lava,
in my endless oceans,
in the deluge
of my tear filled pain
And they lay
their blame
at my feet.
This is my nature.
This is my innocence
And still
knowingly
They dig their graves in me.
7:12pm Thursday
24.January.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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Does this make me less of a woman
that words are all I birth,
that my children are merely
idea and metaphor?
All of my connections with the men I have loved
have been insubstantial,
ephemeral.
Is that what makes it so very easy
for them to walk away?
I involve myself
with flesh and blood
and life
fully
I get in amongst the heart
and mind
the heat
and mud
I am completely entangled
in the forming of eyelashes
and arteries,
skin and spine and hair,
hands and feet.
There is an umbilical cord
joining me
eternally
to heart strings
but it doesn’t count.
No placenta, you see.
I am reaching the end
of my third decade on this earth
and I am teeming with life
and love
You have all planted your seeds within me
and I have allowed them to grow
in the rich soil of my self.
I have given birth to books of words
rather than cradles of babies
and no one seems to find it difficult
to exit a library.
These are your children, too.
We created these words between us.
Look at the life,
the intermingling of bloodlines.
This one has your cheeky grin, Matt
and that one has your razor wit, Jon.
This one has your strong, greedy pulse, Rob
and this one is given to deep thought
and lyrical prose, Troy
and that one has the music you carry
in your fingers, Damien.
I am sorry, now,
that they are not enough;
that I did not scream for sixteen hours
to bring them into the world
(That is actually a lie
for I did scream
I did cry
I did beg for release,
pleading for the pain to end.)
My sheets have been bloodied,
my hands filled with afterbirth
and always
always
there comes a moment
when the cord must be cut.
I guess it is that time again.
How can all of you bear witness
to the life and love I carry within
and yet consider me barren?
I am so tired of giving birth
to fatherless children.
4:47pm Tuesday
23.April.2002
© Melinda Chambers. All posts are the creation of the author and, as such, remain the author's property with all rights reserved.
- And After Nine Months – Nothing
- Stream II: Legacy
- Matt, 1994
- Hope Fell Apart: Blood and Tears
- Answer Me Death
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Warning: This poem contains one instance of explicit language. If you’re offended by such things, please do not read further.
Shelve the whole idea.
It wasn’t original.
Anyone can have 2.3 children, a dog,
a partner and a white picket fence.
Why would you want it?
It’s not an original idea.
Why would you want this:
The nights when he doesn’t come home until 4am
and you’re not sure if what you’re sensing
is your perfume or some other’s.
The eight to thirty eight hours straight
spent screaming, “Fuck you!” at the man you love, “You did this to
me! This is YOUR fault! Get it out of me! I can’t do this!
Oh god, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts…”
and keep that up ’til the day you die
as you watch your little love creatures skin their knees,
careen into walls, stagger into razors
as you watch them put on alen skins with alien calluses in ways you
can’t comprehend
as you watch them become, in themselves, walls and razors
on the rebound from people
just like them
but so very different.
Watch as your dog dies after so many years
of licking your face, welcoming you home with a joy
your husband long ago lost the feeling for
Watch as your dog dies after so many years
of having her ears and tail pulled by the rugrats
after so many years of suffering through games of ‘dress ups’
where her nobility has been smothered under layers
of ridiculousness (and you know how she feels)
and then listen to your little bundles of joy
beg
for a replacement
not yet understanding that no such thing is possible
nor desirable.
Watch as your brightest blessings
turn from you
and become gothic sheep
miniature punk rockers
heroin addicts
potheads
only five minutes after learning
how uncool it is
to be seen kissing their mother goodbye.
Watch as your husband turns into the television set
and all he’s showing are interminable weather reports
and stories on the federal deficit.
Watch as he turns into the bed
the hardness and softness rearranged
into all the wrong positions.
Watch as your body learns the white picket fence
was only ever good as a source
of impalement.
And cry, cry, cry until the day you die
“Oh god, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts…”
It’s not an original story.
It’s a statistic.
It’s average.
So shelve your dream
of 2.3 kids, a dog, a partner
and a white picket fence
and go on telling yourself
how you never wanted to be loved
anyway.
5:14am Thursday
4.December.2006
© Melinda Chambers. All posts are the creation of the author and, as such, remain the author's property with all rights reserved.
- Things You Should Know About Your Wife
- Bedtime Stories
- Infomercial
- …and the rain is a thief…
- Final Analysis
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‘A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.’
Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
First of all, I must state that I am far from being an expert on any of the three intermingled topics to follow. I feel compelled to write on these subjects because I have hit a wall of frustration and cannot see where the truth lies (pun intended!)
Earlier this evening my mother dropped by. She’d just attended a church meeting which hosted a lecture on Dan Brown’s ‘The DaVinci Code’ – I’m sure some of you have heard of it? 
For the record, my mum is a Christian…. a true believer. Also on the record, I am not. My only qualifications in writing on these topics are a) I’ve read ‘The DaVinci Code” and b) I’ve read The Bible. The former has been foisted upon the public as fiction and no one has come knocking at my door trying to sell it to me or threatening me with eternal damnation if I don’t subscribe to the statements made within the book. As for The Bible, it was spoon fed to me as a child and delivered up on cold Sunday mornings when I was dragged out of bed and off to church for my weekly bout of brainwashing. I guess I’m making my stance a little clearer, yes? I have nothing against Christianity and do, in fact, follow its basic tenets. For instance, I’ve never murdered anyone ~ well, not yet anyway. Nor do I covet my neighbour’s wife ~ she’s too old for me and I prefer petite over portly. As I’ve never been married, I can’t be accused of adultery ~ and I can’t recall a line in the ten commandments about aiding and abetting, although possibly my memory is failing on that count and/or I’m indulging in sheer sophistry. I don’t “take the Lord’s name in vain” out of respect for my mother ~ but I’ve been known to call out to him during some of the more climatic moments of my existence ~ how could that be wrong? Doesn’t such usage imply not only a degree of belief, but also an exclamation of gratitude, praise and acknowledgment of god’s miraculous creations? (Oh, how I love the body made in his image!) On the same note, I have yet to steal ~ not for lack of trying! I have merely borrowed and always returned him after I was done with him ~ in better condition than when I found him, I might add! I think I might be straying from my point here ~ sidetracked by memory.
Lets see, what else? ‘Thou shalt have no other gods before me’. Since I don’t have any on my list at all, the order of said list is a moot point, but I guess, technically, I could be said to hold true to this one. No graven images? Please god, explain why you created artists? Even primitive man was moved to finger-paint the walls of his home with the things he found beautiful and worth remembering and I find it difficult to believe that anyone who has created such things felt compelled to do so out of hatred for god. So, old fellow, you can keep your jealousy and your curses upon the children unto the third and fourth generation, okay? My, such petty vindictiveness ~ not a thing I want to find in a god nor a trait I have any wish to emulate.
Keeping the Sabbath day holy is easy enough. Only two things; firstly, is it Saturday or Sunday, I’m forever getting confused. Secondly, if the day is to be one of rest and spiritual communion, please explain, god, why you let my mother force me out into the freezing cold, placed me on a hard wooden pew and surrounded me with people smelling of mothballs and self-righteousness? She’s one of yours, god, so I’m guessing you condone such cruelty. Oh, and your representative at the pulpit? A mind on Valium with a heart to match it! You condemn a person for working on the seventh day and yet you made me endure that droning moron and spend two hours fighting relentlessly against sleep’s siren call? How much harder can a girl work?? As for honouring my mother and father, even your dutiful daughter, my mother, believes such honour should be earned. Don’t get me wrong, it was there as stipulated in the beginning, but a person can fail to hold a person’s respect and I think allowances should be made before you go pelting me with brimstone and cremating me over a slow turning spit!
I must admit that this one is my favourite, although I’ve already touched upon it:
‘Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbour’s.’
The day I get a hankering for an ass or an ox is the day I deserve to have my mortal coil ripped from my body as agonisingly as possible ~ none of this ‘gently shuffling off’ business
After all of that rambling, my point is that I’m a relatively good person and, while I don’t follow Christian teachings, I respect the basic premise and I certainly lean more in that direction than toward Satanism! 
As for The DaVinci Code, I enjoyed it as a good read, nothing more. I didn’t rearrange my entire belief system ~ what there is of it ~ to accommodate the theories and speculations it contained. I didn’t run out to become a founder of a neo-Cathar cult. I can’t even say I was surprised or overly stimulated by it. The only reason I claim the last is because I read, a decade before, ‘The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail’ by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln. Two of those authors attempted to sue Dan Brown for plagiarism and I can’t say I blame them while, at the same time, they must realise that their speculations were also lifted from other sources and not original. To quote Wilson Mizner, ‘Copy from one, it’s plagiarism; copy from two, it’s research.’
At any rate, I read Dan Brown’s book and thoroughly enjoyed it as a work of fiction
Now finally to the point of all of this. (You knew I’d get there eventually ~ didn’t you?) When my mother called around tonight and I enquired about her meeting, she unleashed a ‘fact’ on me which I have been unable to verify. What she said was that, supposedly, a Muslim financed the majority of the making of The DaVinci Code film. To me, I care as little as if she’d stated that a person with green eyes had done so. Seriously, so what? Yes, sure, Muslim fundamentalists went on a psychotic rampage when cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed were published in the Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, back on the 30th of September, 2005 and, from there, were quickly disseminated around the globe. From what I’ve read on various Christian web sites, blogs and newsletters, they feel The DaVinci Code is a far greater attack on their religion than anything Muslims have had to contend with, and are all busy patting themselves on the back that the Pope hasn’t issued a papal bull ordering the death of Dan Brown and the leading stars of the movie which followed. So far, I can’t find a single non-Christian source to back up this claim of Muslim funding. If anyone can provide me with a reliable source, I would be very grateful. On the other hand, it’s almost irrelevant to me. What frustrates me more is that a great many of the people reporting such things have not even read the book and seem to conveniently overlook the fact that it is a work of fiction and never claimed to be otherwise. What fascinates me is the response to it from the Christian community. Aside from their lack of curiosity (I LOVE playing ‘what if?’ The more far fetched the better!) there is also such a huge outpouring of what can only be referred to as ‘the lady protests too much, methinks’ ~ said lady being the church. What I want to know is, what are they all so afraid of? Why so threatened? If their own faith is strong, why should they care what others think, say or write? Shouldn’t a true Christian feel nothing but compassion and pity for the poor schmucks who are ‘taken in’ by such ‘nonsense’? Why this overwhelming need to defend their religion? Is their conviction that they hold the truth so fragile that they worry those yet to join them will be seduced by ‘the dark side’? Surely the truth should be self-evident and not need a PR rep. and people running around taking care of damage control.
Talking to mum tonight, it seems she believes that EVERY book written after the bible is fiction. I get frustrated on a few levels. One, yes, I’m a tad envious of her indomitable belief in ‘and they lived happily ever after’ ~ even if one does have to die to be blessed with such happiness. Two, since she became a Christian (around twenty five years ago, I think), I’m not sure that she’s let a single other thought inside her mind. Her belief seems more a barricade to me than a gateway to truth. When I question such simple things like: ‘But what about the job of translating the original works into English? Aramaic is a difficult language in that it has many a line and a squiggle attached to individual letters ~ tiny little marks which could easily be overlooked or misplaced, thus changing the meaning of both the word and the sentence. When it comes to a possible confusion such as ‘Jesus walked on the water’ rather than the possible ‘Jesus walked by the water’ how can one not be curious about the possibility of error? Then we have reports of new papyrus fragments found, long lost gospels and other archaeological findings which may change ideas that many hold to be facts. But no, she will not hear of them. They’re not in the bible, therefore, they are not The Truth. I have tried discussing aspects of the bible with her because I WANT to understand and, I’m sure, there’s a part of me that wants that blind trust in something bigger and better, more kindly and organised than myself. I have tried and, while she doesn’t seem to react as though I’m attacking her ~ which I’m not ~ too many of our conversations have devolved into three words from me: ‘But what about?’ and from her: ‘Because it just is.’
That answer would never have satisfied me as a child, how could anyone expect it to satisfy me now??
It’s not an answer; it’s a belief. Without it, I can’t understand her and, without a sense of curiosity and the wonderful mind game of ‘what if?’ she can’t understand me. As I wound up saying to her after I’d spent an hour or so banging my head up against her bible, ‘There is none so blind as he who will not see. That can apply equally to both of us.’
The thing is, she only considers me blind. She knows the truth!
‘I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.’
~ Galileo Galilei
‘I do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment to be called an agnostic. I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure — that is all that agnosticism means.’
~ Clarence Darrow, Scopes trial, 1925
‘I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.’
~Sir Stephen Henry Roberts (1901-1971)
© Melinda Chambers. All posts are the creation of the author and, as such, remain the author's property with all rights reserved.
- The Thing With Holding On
- …and after you’ve killed off hope…
- Can’t or Won’t?
- Connections and Fragmentation
- How Convenient
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The rules of attraction remain more or less the same throughout a relationship. Like attracts like. His interest in her is a magnet. Her interest in him, likewise. In the beginning, had either of them sensed a lack of interest, they’d not have pursued things any further. Why does anyone think that changes over time?
Sensing a waning in his feelings, she will approach the relationship the way anyone approaches a thing suspected dead: she gives it a little nudge with her toe, jumps back, and waits for a reaction.
No response.
So, she sidles up to the creature again, nudges a little harder. Again, no response. Perhaps she gives him a tiny pinch. Maybe he’s merely sleeping; eyes shut, oblivious to what’s right in front of him? He doesn’t budge. Not even a flutter of the eyelashes. The more persistent and patient of us may continue with gentle nudges but, in the face of an unmoving and unmoved being, she’ll either push so hard that he’ll be forced into action (generally, out of the bed…. or over a cliff); she’ll sit back and do nothing – hoping against hope for a sign of life; she’ll immediately start applying CPR which may result in a fatal overdose of hot, sweaty loving…or cracked ribs…. or permanent damage to mind and heart…
OR she will finally admit that she’s beating a dead horse, curtain off the corpse and prepare to bury her dead. She’ll say her goodbyes to mournful songs. She will shove everything he ever was six feet under and do her very best to move on. Depending on her nature, she may begin, there and then, to perform an autopsy – weighing and dissecting his innermost being. At this point, if he is unfortunate enough to still be alive, he’s going to find himself rapidly WISHING he were dead!
He had but to twitch at that first nudge but his eyes remained firmly closed. Perhaps he’s feeling bruised and mauled from all of those little pokes and proddings? She’d have stopped at the first had he responded. How was she to know she was hurting him? He never gave an indication that he felt anything at all.
Now he’s feeling buried alive and blames her for his feeling of imminent suffocation.
Show me indifference and I’ll show you the coffin the relationship will be buried in.
(Who says women are illogical and impractical?)
The rules of attraction remain more or less the same throughout a relationship. Like attracts like. Those who cannot prove a pulse need not apply.
© Melinda Chambers. All posts are the creation of the author and, as such, remain the author's property with all rights reserved.
- Can’t or Won’t?
- Final Analysis
- The Thing With Holding On
- What a tangled web we weave…
- 6am and the lies we tell ourselves
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