i promised you a discourse on Truth and Beauty today. but then i stayed up late last night because i saw amiri baraka read, with a jazz band to back him up, and there was just no way i could sleep after that. so i went to the diner, and met a girl whose mom used to date dee snyder, and talked about kerouac and whatnot with two guys who have made the pilgrimage to jd salinger's house. felt good to be in literate company for a while.
all of this leading up to: you'll have to wait for the big philosophical entry. would you be satisfied with two new poems? i'm not putting them straight onto the poem section, because they're not done. i appreciate all comments and suggestions.
Monday, it was the loan officer,
who paid our electric bill.
Tuesday, a travelling salesman,
and our water bill.
The men shamble up, sheepishly grinning
to see me on the porch,
or wear their swaggers like an expensive suit.
I scrutinize each for a resemblance to my face.
They are all my father;
none of them are my father.
They give me money so that I will go away,
which I spend at the theater.
I see every movie that comes through town;
if I don't have enough money I sneak in a side door,
sink low in my musty plush chair
to watch the tide boil over Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr.
The lights dim, always, as the lovers kiss themselves to bed.
Sitting in the dark I imagine my mother,
pulling closed the shades. She drapes
her arms lazily across his shoulders,
dances slow, a strap already hanging down one arm.
In my mind she is Liz Taylor; the men fall in love with her, they can't help it.
She gives them what they need,
what they can't find anywhere else.
Charging them for the priviledge of her.
so there's that one. and this new one, which is just out of its first revision. which means it needs about seventeen more, but i really want comments. so here.
nothing fits. my clothes side
from me, so much baggage.
i imagine my bones, so close to the surface.
they are pale and gleaming blue-white knobs
free from the encumbrance of flesh.
i will become bones.
i want to walk across snow, cold and naked,
leaving no footprints to mark my passing.
i want to be air.
pure, like air.
i will burn out to light, and then fade.
slowly, i strip myself of myself.
it will kill me.
i will die for it.
time for another festival day. more later, -beatpoetgrrl
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