Junkyard Quotes 2-4, Week 5

"Mommy made me mash my M&Ms."

"Your quicksand demeanor..."

"Get yourself informed."

Sign-Inventory 1, Week 5

Power

Audre Lorde

The difference between poetry and rhetoric

is being ready to kill

yourself

instead of your children.

I am trapped on a desert of raw gunshot wounds

and a dead child dragging his shattered black

face off the edge of my sleep

blood from his punctured cheeks and shoulders

is the only liquid for miles

and my stomach

churns at the imagined taste while

my mouth splits into dry lips

without loyalty or reason

thirsting for the wetness of his blood

as it sinks into the whiteness

of the desert where I am lost

without imagery or magic

trying to make power out of hatred and destruction

trying to heal my dying son with kisses

only the sun will bleach his bones quicker.

A policeman who shot down a ten year old in Queens

stood over the boy with his cop shoes in childish blood

and a voice said “Die you little motherfucker” and

there are tapes to prove it. At his trial

this policeman said in his own defense

“I didn't notice the size nor nothing else

only the color”. And

there are tapes to prove that, too.

Today that 37 year old white man

with 13 years of police forcing

was set free

by eleven white men who said they were satisfied

justice had been done

and one Black Woman who said

“They convinced me” meaning

they had dragged her 4'10'' black Woman's frame

over the hot coals

of four centuries of white male approval

until she let go

the first real power she ever had

and lined her own womb with cement

to make a graveyard for our children.

I have not been able to touch the destruction

within me.

But unless I learn to use

the difference between poetry and rhetoric

my power too will run corrupt as poisonous mold

or lie limp and useless as an unconnected wire

and one day I will take my teenaged plug

and connect it to the nearest socket

raping an 85 year old white woman

who is somebody's mother

and as I beat her senseless and set a torch to her bed

a greek chorus will be singing in 3/4 time

“Poor thing. She never hurt a soul. What beasts they are.

--The second stanza only has one form of punctuation--the period at the end of it.

--In the second stanza Lorde repeats "without" twice, but follows it with a coupling of two intangible words.

--In the third stanza, Black Woman is capitalized.

--By the fourth stanza Lorde begins to use a repetition of numbers.

--The last stanza combines both the number repetition from the fourth stanza and the lack of punctuation from the second stanza. 

--The last stanza uses alliteration like "lie limp" and "useless as an unconnected."

Freewrite 1, Week 5

So I have to provide background because I'm still not sure how sentimental this is? But I got dumped Monday and I wrote this fantastically shitty draft (after a couple days) so I wouldn't feel so horrible anymore. And as I'm pretty sure I heard Tim admit, it sucked. But all things are salvageable...right? Now whether I'll call this salvaged is questionable but I will say it sucks a little less. So thanks Tim. And without further embarrassment:

Imprinting

I lie naked waiting for you to strip
the last of me, when you remember
my hair was never blonde.
And I learn that the imprint
I left denting in your plaid couch
has been remodeled recently.

There's no me left in you.
There is no lingering of the hot, hot
trail I left dripping in your right ear,
learned it in my left ear,
that while I'll be wretching
when the sun goes down
you'll be eyeing her down.

Tell me, if God speaks to you
what does He say about stealing
stupid hearts, you Aztec.
Pick up your stuff, leave me
naked so that I can wear bits of you
like drapery that bunches
at the waist, at the crotch, at the ankles
because I can't move without tripping on you.

I was your precious Bosheth, your golden Baal
but you've built things right recently
so you can wander less idlely.
Well, melt me down

so I might pave a golden path
so you can better trample me
and you can take me straight
to your plaid cloth couch.

That couch
with the flat pillows we squished each other's smiles with

That couch
we scooted on concrete slabs to roll on floors

That too small couch
I pretended to sleep in despite the neck pain

That couch
that stole every chapstick
every hair bow, every trace
of me between its cushions,
tied up in its blue-green stripes.

That plaid cloth couch.
Its cushions sagged under the weight
of movies watched and nighttimes cuddled
but now there's someone else--
there's someone blonde inside my seat.