Destroy She Said

I have not been purging much on this blog, I am pulling back for a bit, just a bit, as all my texts are a mess in front of me, like opened up for heart surgery on a white table and I ignore them. And so I have to do some work and that means less writing here for a bit (maybe 3 days? a week? I don't know). I would like to essay a bit more, to be muddled and Montaigne, but it will have to wait.

But I thought I would post something as an antidote to the commodification of love that is Valentine's Day (where all the aisles of the big-boxes have puked violent & pink & scarlet I will puke something different, words and it will be wordsalad or some thing else edible/nonedible/perhaps oedipal).

My favorite love poem is "Cascando" by Samuel Beckett. It has been circulating in my mind lately. In college I was "dating" a drama major with a trust fund (did we date? or did we just eat brunch and fuck? perhaps that's the definition of dating?), and he had to memorize this poem for this drama class, and I memorized it too, and he tried to teach me to perform words, how to wrestle with and digest words, and that is all I take from our mundane affair. This poem. And how he'd call me Dorothy Parker. And it often circulates inside my head, I chant it to myself, it is so much to me, about ghosts of past loves, and how we are haunted by the past and that decision to fall in love again when we are hurt we have been hurt we are always hurt and numbed and is it better to be like Lol Stein and level off the madness

is it not better abort than be barren

which makes me think of Lol Stein again, how she looks at her new lover and revisits her old love, her past scene of trauma (and what are old loves but past traumas and wounds?) And then I think of Hiroshima mon Amour, and that scene where Emmanuelle Riva watches her new lover in bed, and there is the flashback to her German lover's dead hand.

the hours after you are gone are so leaden

they will always start dragging too soon

the grapples clawing blindly the bed of want

bringing up the bones the old loves

sockets filled once with eyes like yours

all always is it better too soon than never

the black want splashing their faces

saying again nine days never floated the loved

nor nine months

nor nine lives

And I think of all my past lovers who have destroyed me, when I used to be destroyed by love, although I am still destroyed by my lover, words and want, but when I used to seek that in love, Destroy She Said, these three words have been circulating too, inside my head, when the birds have begun their last appeal, when we would claw at each other at daybreak, and try to suck the life from each other, love, mad love, maladie a deux, folie, folle, foul

saying again

if you do not teach me I shall not learn

saying again there is a last

even of last times

last times of begging

last times of loving

of knowing not knowing pretending

That last line is meant to be drawn out the boy who was the actor would tell me it is meant to be a flourish "of knowing not knowing" (pause) "pretending"

a last even of last times of saying

if you do not love me I shall not be loved

if I do not love you I shall not love

and he would write poetry about me and it was bad but I was not a writer yet I could not say and something about green-flecks in my yellow eyes when I would rage and get cat's eyes or were they yellow flecks in my green eyes? but I was not in love with him the actor boy who usually dated dancers he would say this to me to make me feel lucky I usually date women with dancer's bodies and we are on his floor and he is playing Ella Fitzgerald who he calls Ella like he knows her and he says "Why are you so cold?" with us it is organisms not orgasms and I am thinking of my past lover the entire time the one I write about in the book that's coming out the psychopathic one the blonde Lucifer devil with a taste for Nietzsche and Maker's Mark and sadism I loved him and then I will love others and they will not be him, and then I will love again, and then everyone else afterwards will not be another him, the hymn of him, this is all I recited in my twenties, I lived love poems but did not write, I lived and loved and lusted but did not write

the churn of stale words in the heart again

love love love thud of the old plunger

pestling the unalterable

whey of words

And I loved saying that even though I didn't know what it meant "pestling the unalterable whey of words" I loved the feeling of it in my mouth I loved him I loved him in my mouth why is it always the most unworthy who destroy us she histories he hystericizes is it not better abort (end loves) than be barren (not love)

terrified again

of not loving

of loving and not you

of being loved and not by you

of knowing not knowing pretending

pretending

I and all the others that will love you

if they love you

unless they love you

And it is meant to be a flow, that's what he would say to me, as I practiced these words, in his living room, why did I memorize this poem, what did it mean to me, it is meant to flow, this is what they tell me now it is meant to flow and you need to do this pose to open to open your heart but sometimes it is terrible having one's heart opened on a table having one's manuscripts open on a table

this is my valentine's day vomit. to you my loves.