scapularius

[scapularius]

first time trying blackout poetry :0 made a few mistakes but i did my best!!

[scapularius]

i read this thing once where it said that women forget their pain because they are wired to forget how much childbirth hurts so they will be inclined to have another baby. and physically it makes sense, like i forget how much a punch hurts and then i tell people at parties to hit me. maybe it’s to prove something, maybe it’s for the thrill. but each time i forget how deep the bruise goes.

i wonder if the same applies to emotional pain. for such a long time i’ve been stuck in this cycle of being devastated by the successive brutality with which i’ve lost my friends in only a year. i’ve scream-cried on the floor and into my pillow, i’ve woken up in the night in a cold sweat having dreamed about them, i’ve visited every scenario in my head to see what went wrong and i feel worse about it every time. it hurts so much, like physically, in my chest, that i didn’t even realise such a sensation existed. i cant even describe it, it’s like all the air and moisture is squeezed out of you until you’re thin and pale and dry. every time i think about it i get like that.

but sometimes i’ll miss them so bad that the ache goes away. i turn all my resentment inside and tell myself it was all my fault that this happened. i forget about the squeeze and look towards solutions. how do i win them back? the good memories overwhelm everything and id do whatever i could to get them back. i crawl back on my hands and the stumps of my legs and i ask them to forgive me, i say sorry for anything i can think of, i beg them to reconsider, and maybe they’ll lower their eyes enough to think about it. and then it begins anew. i forget how hurt i always am, how stung and small i am, just for the temporary relief of being considered. i forget the pain and i come back for more.

so i wonder if this theory of forgetting labour pain applies to pain of the heart too. maybe we are forgiving creatures wanting to encompass and recreate the best parts we remember. a loved newborn, a friend who listens. maybe that’s the reason it can be so difficult for women to tear away from abusive relationships. they forget just how bad it can get, as long as they still have someone to hold them, for however short of a time.

i hope i don’t forget this time. i hope i leave without a word, with my teeth intact, round, and gleaming. i hope i never come back.

3/1/23

[scapularius]

I have dreams of her telling me she’s sorry.

I have dreams of you telling me you want me.

I have dreams where you aren’t there.

I have dreams where I’m face down on your lap,

My hand isn’t sore anymore because you would hold the weapon.

Oh, Apollo and Hyacinth, the naked men of adoration, I’m in the fields, I cannot feel,

Oh, typed Eurydice, wrap your arms about my waist.

Oh, circumcise my love for you.

The daemon of your extremities

And your loose shadowed eyes.

He is not a man he is a boy my boy my sweet hegemonic flowered apple boy

And I am not a woman I am a girl in a secret garden I am a secret garden I am a deer in headlights

And he is the headlights and the grass and the moon and the white dapples on my brown fur.

What would you say if you knew I was immobile and dull and I had paper cuts on my feet from walking along the edge of your words? I want you to know that this is me. You are a wolf. There is a great slavering wolf inside of me and it is biting so hard I might snap in two. What if I am in a dream? Whenever I dream I speak to you but really I’m speaking to myself. What if you aren’t speaking at all? What if it’s still me? When you say it’s hard to be around you, sometimes, is that me or is it you? I am reverendt.

I’m standing next to a girl I used to know and her hair has died down.

She always hated its natural pretension.

And she looks at me and looks away,

It’s every one of them there,

Snaking around each other in the dark neon—

Bright mouth pearls.

Closed red eyes for glittered gift-wrapping.

And I’ll watch from this side of the one-way mirror,

Press my lips and fingertips against the glass and hope you’ll smudge yourself.

But you have a body to slide against now, why not me

With light hair and freckles and a sculpted throat why is it never me

And I have cold, rigid aluminium.

I’d like to be molten metal.

I’d like to sleep forever.

(sorry)

I want to yell in your face how much I care and let you yell back and twist and hit

But you look down and to the left.

But there are things I’d like to tell you,

Things you’d have to look me in the eye for;

So I will wait here,

Like a crow that saw blue once and now won’t leave.

I’m blue and you are bright shiny white willow gilded sovereign kintsugi paper.

I know what the word I mumbled half asleep means but I'm too shy to tell you.

[scapularius]

i know what you're thinking 

and my heart is beating so fast it might explode 

but i can’t stop you

it is like a secret there is no guilt in keeping

between you and i and our drunken bracelets

you are so quiet where everything is loud

such a comfortable quiet. a comfortable touch

and every time i want to see exactly how brave i could be i want you to do it, dig into my back and my hips and pull me inside you 

i think about lots of things

like what if you were chained in a dusty arena and the only thing that stood between you and a lion was me

you know id make a sword of teeth. you know id cover your body with mine

and if they made us kneel and speak with red dripping lips offering ourselves you know id seal your lips shut so they would take me

you know this

i bare you in the white and i clothe you in the black 

my lovely sweet gentle boy

with your curves and your edges

once upon a time you might have been a limestone geode

and they let some god artist at you , with tooth and nail and tongue

and there you emerged, sleek Galatea

drink your wine and fill the storm

and i will kneel at your feet with my cup

dash the spit from your lips

i will knead at your back with my teeth

i will bury my face in your neck

and nothing else will be there

┊┊❁ཻུ۪۪♡ ͎. ｡˚ 　　°

what if we got blind on a bus

we drove for hours

and we got out on the side of a dirt road

no rain or anything (there hasn’t been for years)

and we danced and our long long limbs flailed and stretched

blue and orange clay people dancing a rain dance waiting to melt

our shoes could slick in the mud

your beautiful white shoes

my too-big leathers

and we fall and roll around like dogs left in the dust trails and exhaust fumes of this empty highway

id borrow your glasses to see the stars

and we’d bury ourselves in the sand

like an opposite ostrich, panting with tongues lolling waiting for the rain

swapping what moisture we can between us, back and forth, breathe and swallow

but the rain hasn’t been here for years

and neither has the bus

what if we were primal and screaming

and we fought in the mud, we wrestled and sparred with old tapered bones and the remnants of my plastic fingernails

what would you do then if all we had was a trail and a single weathered bench with spacers to stop us sleeping

would you let me lie on you until everyone was gone?

would you let me lie on you until the bus came back?

would you climb out of the sand and shake yourself off?

would you get in the bus?

would you get in the bus

┊┊❁ཻུ۪۪♡ ͎. ｡˚ 　　°

by god you are my refrain 

my uninflammable bridge

from the forested side of this ravine

to the singing sky canopy at the other

and if i look down and see the mother of pearl and amethyst dancing with the fish

quavering their sweet blue lullaby 

i won’t be scared

because i’ve heard this song before

and the shellfish white wine sucker sea foam sticky worms can cushion my fall as well as any net

as any shibari rope that cuffs your wrists to your thighs 

leaves you open and pearlescent for me

but we would fall upwards, my love

we can fall into the sky together

winged, soft and gilded, gentle curls and silver bands

Peristera and Aphrodite, preening and purring

into the clear grey air

[scapularius]

Crimes Against the Amnion

If I run my hand through my hair my skin will come off white,

The hollow shell of my skull cracking open.

I take a piece off and peel it back;

I pull them all off, chipping apart my cranium piece by piece—

The protein, the membrane, the yoked condition.

The scales spread and I can’t smile,

Though maybe it would be worth the blood,

If only so she would have something to look back towards.

The caged fowl, packed tightly together,

Claws scrabbling in the hay, shit and saltwater in my hair.

The women above scream, those below cry.

And the bars pressing into my flanks prop me up,

Nice and pretty and hourglass shaped,

Ripe and ready to be taken,

For I have nothing to freely give.

I force it out of me, bleeding and sore,

Gaping and sweating and preening,

And they take it away, crack it.

Kill the eggs and the eggs in the eggs and the eggs in the eggs in the eggs.

And then thin my waist and skin;

I am so desirable, with my curves and my edges and my soft warm inviting body.

Nobody minds that I am a silver-boned husk,

For I am fresh, and that’s enough.

The lady next to me looks dully on as hers are stolen too,

and I rest my head on her thigh, weeping,

Until they beat me back upright.

They take my shelled head piece by piece,

Until my wet hot glistening pink insides are on display,

My quivering brain—

And, peeling down the trachea, the womb,

Porous and proud,

Exposed for you all.

The embryo with thumbs and eyelashes, I want it.

The tiny wrinkled foetus, I want it.

You can see her before I do—

Before I ever do.

Gluey and silver.

Quiet and cold.

I need to see everything, I beg

To hold her in my tree-shaped arms.

Please, please.

The leaves stretch into her ears,

Her tiny tiny eyes,

Her tiny tiny little womb,

With all its cysts and potential.

I tried so hard. I did my best.

but I am not a vineyard, nor a mother,

So I look down at my brain, my baby, my breakfast,

And I see it all.

Every terrible thought, every beautiful moment;

It’s all there, pulsating, weeping against my thigh,

Grieving for its girls.

And maybe if things got really terrible I could reach in.

Maybe one day, if I unlearned submission, I could stretch and reach in,

With my unsterilised, torn fingers,

Cross-contaminate the central echochamber with its rough myrmidons,

Its dirty nails,

And pick the worst parts out.

All my stupid questions are here, my faltering answers,

And now, a septic encephalon.

At night, in private, a lacerated cerebrum.

What I do in the dark, that’s between me and her.

I wrap what’s left in marrow and stomach lining—

The select portions, offered up in stolen fire.

Make amends for the fall of my species.

The quiet woman, too porcelain and curious,

Who opened the jar.

But my vessel is cracked and peeled already,

And the terrible violence doesn’t fly out.

Rather, I scoop it out,

A frenzied surgery,

The hippocampus, prefrontal cortex, and the amygdala.

Goodbye, my darlings!

Lost in the sweet autolobotomy

That comes with the whip and the light.

The flesh is gone, into the ground, into the air,

Burrowed beneath my fingernails.

I haven’t been clean since I left the sac,

I’ll never be clean again.

The brain, the body, the ovum, the embryo, the foetus, the curses, the women.

The white flakes spread around my wide, unseeing eyes.

And I am so happy.

[scapularius]

a large scar furls around my shoulderblade

and she didn’t ask, just drew my shirt up to cover it.

i kissed her so much, not because she was beautiful but because she was mine

but again my hands were too heavy, my gaze too desperate, and i leaned too hard and she fell and cracked like porcelain

they were the roaring bonfire, and i the wet leaf in the pit.

i knew a mirror like that, once—

its edges were soft and white; adorned, it hid

but saw everything from between the hinges

and one day i found it echoed in the quiet space between my imagination and the bedroom

and with vanity i sealed my curse

with unbridled arrogance and vanity, i sealed it like a tomb.

a thousand silver pieces,

a million microbes,

and one wretched, scabbed child,

whose eyes won’t leave the fragments.

[scapularius]

once i let myself believe that i was better

when the world was quiet and i was old

and the night rain came at just the right time

so i didn’t feel the need to sleep

and when i woke up the next morning

my eyes were smeared with purple

there was a snarl from the door

i thought, maybe i am a lazy daughter

and a song that let me hold my hand limp

on the edge of the mattress, quite

so my cat could either lick it

or take her rage out on my poor fingers

it wouldn’t change my love

and i’ve got things to do! but what is that worth

what’s knowledge and love when i can know sleep

more intimately than you ever could

five more minutes. five more fucking minutes and i’ll come

every awful act contained within five minutes;

the shot of a gun, vicious, terrible, too quick to count

when asphyxiation gnaws at the blood flow with a minute to spare

when i decided to be sick.

i was told that they had never loved me

with fine print that took far too long to read

but for five minutes i don’t have to think, i dont have to know the way the world can hurt

that’s what i want. that’s all i need

forgive me and let me have this

forgive me

[scapularius]

i let myself pretend that i’m not thrown onto my back in the furs, not chained by my hands and pierced by a rusting lightning rod. even in this violation am i denied corium and affection, am i forced to scrabble around and pretend again that there is someone moving against me in an organic dance, that i’m not simply a pulsating statue to be used and justified for the disgrace of my species. my fingers slip into the furs, quiet, the tawny threads weaving beneath my nails; maybe there’s something kinder and stupider beneath me, holding me against its back to cushion as the blows push me in. they don’t want me damaged, at least, they need me whole to pretend again that they are better men than they are, because ripe fruit is so delicate and prone to bruising that it must be cradled and arranged until it can be torn apart in a single bite.

[scapularius]

There is a tree that stands by the side of the road and her body is that of a woman.

It twists in and out of itself.

It is so angry.

It has holes and gaps in the wrong places.

I'm so cold.

I'm so hot.

I put on a jacket and sweat it out and my body goes cold from the loss.

The rain dampens my bag and my books and my shoes,

But I'm so thirsty all the time.

I’m scared of the dark

So I lie with ten lamps and listen to them as they buzz.

Lifeblood of a house trickling into my headache.

The power lines wrap around the tree, and I’m sorry,

But heat lightning and early nights don’t hurt me any less.

So maybe I should be blind like my mother is.

Her eyes peek across the globe,

Stretching their pretty, ligneous lashes around the sockets

But the holes are filled with plastic, half chewed food and shit.

We want to dig to the other side of the world but it’s too hard to breathe,

Like there are power lines wrapped around my neck.

And you’re in Chernobyl, digging for a secret, but really digging for your life—

If the radiation doesn’t poison you, the oil will.

I’m sorry, I’m scared of tunnels.

Earthen blood clots smother rabbit warrens, with drills for ears.

Just let the war be won,

Because the pawns are wooden, the queens trifold and titanium steel.

A fair fight, though.

I tell you to duck and you go down;

Feathers matted, thick with demon blood, dripping with grime.

You’re so thirsty all the time

Dipping your head in a single fluid movement,

Come up with a mouthful of petroleum—

If the oil doesn’t poison you, the air will.

Black’s not your colour anyway.

The birds are gone

Fly so far east that they set with the sun

And those who go up aren’t seen any more

This rough exodus of imagination

The birds know more than we ever will.

And if the air doesn’t poison you, the rubbish will.

The pits gooped closed, crusted on the edges,

Pores so big you can see them from the moon,

Sludged among plastic wrappers, mushed against rusty barbed wire.

Red bins turned pink, tipped and brimming.

Avoid tetanus. Avoid money. Avoid thinking too much about it.

Men are from mars, they scream, go back, go back,

Leave the earth in the dust.

The world is a contradiction and you’re caught in the molten core.

The rest of us have more to live on but less to live for.

They stand on the red, but our hands are bathed in it;

And there’s not enough freshwater to wash it off.

The tree stands alone, blood pouring from a wooden womb.

My voice catches in my throat.

She looks at me long and hard.

The tree loved me and I loved the tree;

and the birds watched us wither.

[scapularius]

there’s someone dirty in the mirror

i decipher her vision with that

grey-gold astigmatism of a viewpoint

that’s it for the night.

curled up in the sheets like

some foetus minutes from purgatory

i demand to be held and i cup my own cheek

hoping my brain separates my hand from my face

so i can feel as loved and touched as i never have before

grope yourself. rope yourself. roll around in the dark

pretend you aren’t wishing you didn’t have a body

or if you had to that it was breastless

and worthy of respect

and able to soothe your restless nature

that it could be harmed but not humiliated

rather than the opposite

i forget they’re there, sometimes

and then i remove my trousers

eight of them

that number - my folly, my friend

the texture is sweet enough that

i’d scrape it if i could

i only wish that they were on my back

and garnered me the posthumous admiration i crave so fervently

my mouth won’t stop twitching

there are enough people now that i won’t be missed

a raindrop on a wheeled windowpane

too cold to evaporate

just running away

a shiver down the spine

count the vertebrae

my moth won’t stop twitching

and yet there is no light

.

2/11/20

[scapularius]

my womb is a house filled with chambers and secrets

and within there are children

lots and lots of children, babies, sprawled and piled on top of each other

screaming their tiny lungs out

screaming for mice and fathers and bandaids

i was one of them

but my hunger was attended to more than theirs

viciously, i was not fed with love but with malice

they shoved tubes down my throat for throwing myself at the horses

poured fingernails, pasta, cough syrup

and i choked but i grew

a mould of the skin

a shell-shaped shell

i absorbed my mother’s body

and my siblings became my babies

when did i get so tall

when did my stomach shape for birth

those children scream and scream because they are trapped

and i know exactly how they feel

but what can i do?

i think about them

i think about them too much, about the children i hold but can’t have

and i’m punished for that

this malicious body makes my skin flake off

gives me scars in places there shouldn’t be

and keeps my skin clear where there should

it chokes me with guilt

like the babies i can’t embrace lash out with their anger in the only way they can

and send their rage through my fallopian tubes until it twists behind my eyes and i can’t see

i have one mind and with it comes unspeakable guilt

i cant touch the children because i don’t trust myself

they are too fragile, too little, and their cries too musical

but all i want is to cradle something

hold it like i’ve wished to be held, small and infantile, loved without condition or thought

i wish my body would let me

for i’d be a soft mother

[scapularius]

[scapularius]

is that close to what you believe, my darling? do you believe that the wind is fossilised screams, or that the oceans are watering holes for the moon? that the burrows rabbits make in hills are the dried veins of the earth, or that your skin is your own sarcophagus? i will be honest. i do not care what you believe. am i that thing you regret? your reasoning intrigues me. what have you seen, fair one? which glowing oil did you christen yourself with? would you do it again, knowing what you do now? do you respect the earth, o voyeur of the dark and cold? or are you its unwilling parasite?

[scapularius]

today, my english teacher told me to burn a book

and i was furious, because i could never, would never

once i start something i have to finish it

no matter how much it hurts

and by god, it hurts

i think i was too young

too internalised

too terrified and

too empathetic to read it

but i did.

and now the saint of lost things will stay with me forever

in everything i do, i think of him

will i be him?

have i been him?

will it get better?

it’s so difficult to have hope

especially with the way he’s written

beautiful and mysterious in his crushed emptiness

i’m halfway there, i think

the gentle general descriptions

i think, i could do that

a eulogy, a will of remembrance

‘here lies grace,

she could open every jar she ever tried to

every time she came near her cats, they stuck the crown of their heads towards her, waiting for a kiss

every morning she wakes up and cracks her bones

once she tried to open a bedroom window so she could go down the street in the door, and get hit by a car

nobody wanted to sit with her

she learned to cry again in may

and the mirror was a little more transparent’

.

26/5/21 - if u guess which book i’m talking about u get a kiss

[scapularius]

a love poem to someone who had other things to do

im sitting in the garden

it’s really dark

my face is on the swing

a mosquito is on my face

and im thinking so much

so much it hurts

i don’t like thinking

which is ironic because

i have ambitions of philosophy

there aren’t many cars here

there aren’t many anythings actually

so when one does zoom past

its blinding lights cutting through the dark

like scissors through skin

i know it must be important

where is it going

who is inside it

why?

and i see myself standing up

picking my way through the trees and sloped grass by moonlight

and walking down the driveway

and stepping out onto the road

just before the car reaches me

like a bright, pale deer caught in headlights

no distinction between me and them

except that excessive thinking

and then my body is there

and the car drives away

and i lie there as the rain pours down onto my shell

and there’s mud

and eventually my skin sags into the ground

and im a skeleton

and there’s mud above me and below

o earth

o great calcifier

im a fossil

indistinguishable from everything else that lies buried there

but i’m not really there

i never walked anywhere

i’m sitting here in the moonlight

and the torchlight, when people think to care

and im overcome with the urge to punish myself for being this way

for being

and my head is so full

and his head is empty

and i worry about him

and think

and pine, yes

and cry

and hurt

and cognitively distort

and he is full of a comfortable acceptance

but IM the taurus venus.

[scapularius]

a sickeningly ironic love poem to someone who is no longer there:(

i bought a double mattress with you in mind

i fell asleep at night imagining that i would be beaten to death; tortured slowly and deliberately for a long time; because i deserved it for everything i have done and could have done and will do

but the night after i met you

i fell asleep, and i imagined being held. by someone who shared my heartbeat, who pressed against my skin, who crooned into my hair that everything would be okay

and i was so lost

i climbed out my window and cried on the water tank to the moon

and then i walked up the shore in my stockings and uniform until i reached the main street

the streetlights were so much brighter than i remembered; and i didn’t like it, didn’t want to be seen

and a car screamed at me, and it was midnight, and i scribbled goodbye

and two days later i whispered a greeting; and there you were

i vehemently rejected monogamy because i didn’t believe that someone could be only half of a whole

i didn’t want to be defined by one person

but for you i would rip the dictionary to shreds

until your name was the only word left to describe me

[scapularius]

eat your heart out, Darius the Mede!

sanpaku snarl, see the top teeth only

a nose curls into a foreign face

ddown onto the bed,

each violent limb kissing the memory foam.

my mouth leaves blood on the sheets.

you draw twin slits at the shoulderblades,

and molest the open wounds.

what did you hope to find? blood? silk scarves? the promises you never kept;

bones twist in outrage, sinews split at the crack of a whip.

i made myself vulnerable and now suffer for it.

i, who with reluctance but breathless devotion, peeled myself in two;

but i found that i couldn’t stop,

and the halving became exponential.

the slicing was so insistent that i am but an ancient sliver of uranium,

a carrot peel into compost.

she told me a secret i already knew

but i pretended to stiffen for her sake.

virgin lips who take their own initiative;

they always were strangely red.

too-white, too-cracked, too-shaky hands fumble with a belt buckle,

so i can stand naked against the glass,

and whisper-scream from the back of my traitor throat.

i could fill a novel with apologies,

and one day i just might.

the thoughts have caked my skull and i can’t afford a deep clean-

i’m so dirty and there is no going back,

i’m spoiled and affrayed.

buy a sacrificial knife for my sacrificial body with my sacrificial money

and breathe too hard.