So Cammie Wells got up and it was daylight,
She planned a book or a show or something.
She took my hand and passed me a pen: Bic. blue.
and a notebook: marble black and white of course.
When I got here I thought I would just read and then scram
Hit it back over the Bayonne or the Goethals or some shit like that...
the way it may be if one of us,
or all of us,
got our shit together at the same time.
Yeah I know I know,
I don't live here anymore I'm in limbo--but i
want.
to.
commune.
I know a girl with a camera,
girl with a guitar,
boy with a spraycan,
woman with a paintbrush,
we
all
creating wherever we are.
sudden sound
amps
speakers
we get on the edges
of the carpet and
converge.
I know it's been so long since I felt comforted
or comfortable
but comfort here it lives.
We all think we forget but don't.
We know
You know
I know
We just know how to live out loud.
I mean back in the day these things would go all night:
crack a bottle,
spark a spliff and
way
too many
cigarettes.
I need
I need
that old feeling coming back to me and all it seems to take is this room:
you sing
we sit
i write
he paints
she photos
we all sit and
just be.
all the people who don't have agendas-that's why
that's why this works.
She spawns a verse and it all comes together.
Life like it used to be
how it should be lived
On the beach,
in the cove,
writing and yelling at the waves,
daring lightning to take us away.
and now a
RESURGENCE
There is something about creativity that spreads...
electric neon ions
floating freely through my head,
Something about creating just does us so much good.
Little beauty says she should be in a concert--just about the sweetest thing I can ever hear,
honey so heartfelt at just eight years old.
Friendships new and lasting
none grown cold,
we not old
hand to hold: we need the songs to stretch and be
loud loud louder than makes sense.
Lyrics oh lyrics say I'm not losing my head,
being one just a room but one
many
in
a
few.
So much in a few: an artist, two or five
written words bleed forth
spoken
sung
slung on a page,
and film spools forth,
recorded bliss and
damn
This beauty on a stool can sing a poet's thoughts.
your home is where your art is
your home is where your art is
I am my home but homeless still.
We live the longest in ink and paint and songs and
inspiration hitting like a fucking bolt of
cracking flash sizzle snap.
Pages and pages of my black and whites,
Leaves of your sheets,
Chords of your voice and notes long forgotten and remembered again.
Now here we are and here we sit and here we sing and write and snap and shoot and paint,
and here we are like friends for years just met but yet here we sit and kick it like little kids on a stoop sharing stories of simpler times but better still,
she spawns
i scrawl
it was there just a song or a scrawl or a verse no more pain
nothing hurts no complaints and i see the world through paint and red wine
as we create...
and just see what goes on you see,
I need this to be me,
to write to think to scream:
Music so sweet on a canvas so stark like walls on streets,
Ink that just flows like blood on sheets
in veins like
teeth all a-twitch
like sun in a murky sky.
When we all meet it's like being home and I miss being home-
just fucking about way too long without roots or even converses on concrete like visions and your green eyes floating up to me,
This is good and bright and alive and this is home,
even when there is nowhere to live home is this...
CONVERGENCE
Yes god can be a mother mother sun we hear and when i scream I know we all have these messed up ideas of what that god that mother that sun that son and daughter go,
and inspiration gets to flow.
Where does it go where should we go-when so uprooted?
but strong
rootless but strong
rootless ruthless rules that crush and stomp and bleed so we can
be us be free and upend everything:
creeping and fleeting
showing and flowing music spawns thoughts-throwing and growing.
You have always been we will always be all I need is this feeling to think
to flow to blast
and feel like we could just stop thinking and savor the sweet,
Keep drinking and follow a beat which doesn't even cover it i know.
When I was
alone
skip a line
someone muted my poem...
till I saw it again
put my head down sunburnt crown,
a missed call on my phone you found.
Notes flow and blossom--grow
We all get insanely inspired and will it to be...it cracks like fire.
Lets keep going I don't want an end,
keeping time with new friends of mine
snapping
fingers
tapping
feet,
no walking away from inspiration this sweet.
CONVERGE
RE-SURGE
just don't send me back to that place with no words.
30 April 2010
Overdose Part 2
Awaking once again--this time hot and sweat soaked rather than the icy emptiness grown accustomed to, she tries to sit up.
She rolls to the right just in time to see them all eyeing her naked bruised bleeding countenance.
Realizing that the sweat was blood...the heat fever and burns...the inability to sit up resulting from the restraints on her wrists and ankles.
Eyelids grown too weak to open, she relies on sound.
The snicker of the visitors as they leave the broken room...
the switch of a blade cutting through the ropes...
a soft sob from the only one who knew her name,
or wanted to give her
anything
at all.
Mickey's green dead eyes--once so filled and caring,
shed three anguished tears as he whispered
to her
paralyzed
ruined
body,
"Cam, today was her birthday-you promised you would see her, it was your day to go outside. I thought coming back in would be a temptation but...you never even left--why didn't you leave? Today was the chance."
As Cammie Wells opened her eyes for the last time,
she knew her daughter's tenth birthday was the day she would always associate with her mother's death.
All because of Friedrich's blue bag of paralysis and the numbing red cloudy one to start.
If she'd only seen it coming...
if she kept on walking to the light in the boards of the window on the door...
She knew she would never see the outside.
She was so sorry her daughter would hear about this at ten years young,
and she was unthinkably overwrought with pain and guilt
pain
and
guilt
pain and fucking guilt.
She just...died...thinking that she would hear it
from her brother
Mickey.
She rolls to the right just in time to see them all eyeing her naked bruised bleeding countenance.
Realizing that the sweat was blood...the heat fever and burns...the inability to sit up resulting from the restraints on her wrists and ankles.
Eyelids grown too weak to open, she relies on sound.
The snicker of the visitors as they leave the broken room...
the switch of a blade cutting through the ropes...
a soft sob from the only one who knew her name,
or wanted to give her
anything
at all.
Mickey's green dead eyes--once so filled and caring,
shed three anguished tears as he whispered
to her
paralyzed
ruined
body,
"Cam, today was her birthday-you promised you would see her, it was your day to go outside. I thought coming back in would be a temptation but...you never even left--why didn't you leave? Today was the chance."
As Cammie Wells opened her eyes for the last time,
she knew her daughter's tenth birthday was the day she would always associate with her mother's death.
All because of Friedrich's blue bag of paralysis and the numbing red cloudy one to start.
If she'd only seen it coming...
if she kept on walking to the light in the boards of the window on the door...
She knew she would never see the outside.
She was so sorry her daughter would hear about this at ten years young,
and she was unthinkably overwrought with pain and guilt
pain
and
guilt
pain and fucking guilt.
She just...died...thinking that she would hear it
from her brother
Mickey.
27 April 2010
Overdose Part 1
She opens her bloodshot eyes and stares at the cracks in the stucco walls.
The window is open.
A breeze squeezes through the tattered drapes.
Still she can't draw a breath,
cant take in the morning air.
She feels the weight of bruised limbs
under the moth-eaten quilt.
Pressing down on the mattress
she feels broken springs that exaggerate
every scrape on her spine
every scratch on her legs.
Turning slowly towards the door,
she sees it is open and wonders who was the last to leave.
Indifference swims behind her eyes when she considers
which man it may have been.
Her temples throb with dread of feeling the
cold linoleum
on the soles of her feet.
For a second she finds clarity.
you can't shut me out. cant push me back from the past into the future. my mind is too strong. eyes see too much. skin feels too many touches. i know you are looking, feel you casually glance over.
From her reclined position
she can only see partially through the smoky cracked window.
That is enough for her,
the harsh rays
to sting her eyes
and make her wish it was night once more.
She pushes back the covers
with the gnarled fingers of her needle
scarred hands.
Without enough strength to fully straighten
her spine,
or enough awareness to tie on a robe,
she slides off the mattress,
and drags her broken body towards the dresser.
Picking up a handheld mirror,
she looks at her chapped pale skin with
a degree of disgust that has arisen in her
breast each morning since she moved to this supposed
city of what?
angels?
no.
Every time she awakens in this room,
she goes through the same routine.
Shuffling towards the open door,
she slips into a sweater hanging on its
tarnished brass knob.
the hall is icy and smells of dead souls.
She peers down to the left,
then to the right.
She sees him sleeping on a doormat and covered with newspapers.
What a shame she had thought the first time she gazed upon Mickey's fourteen year old face pressed against the concrete.
His was a countenance of purity and empty wishes.
Now at sixteen, Mickey lived in the building, ate the same scraps from the garbage bins dinner was plucked from;
he used the same drugs,
fucked the same squatter whores and the purity was gone.
Purity was dead.
The empty wishes, they live on.
Somewhere deep in his subconscious,
blurred by the open fields of poppies and dark clouds that rained syringes upon his bare skin.
Now, as he peered out from his paper hut,
he gazed with glazed eyes at the girl down the hall,
who wore
a rust
colored sweater and nothing else.
He wanted to give her shoes,
or at least a pair of pants.
then he realized where they were and how much nothing he had to give.
She continued down the hallway past Mickey,
down to the stairs.
Almost tripping over a foot sticking out of the shattered plaster, she caught her balance.
Peering around the corner of the stairwell's landing she sees Amber and Sunny.
They slept wrapped in a torn, stained quilt,
in an embrace reminiscent of childhood.
The two girls couldn't be more than fifteen,
but their eyes were wizened by the harshness of this life.
Their brows were furrowed even in
sleep.
The love they have is the only thing they live for and neither the frigid solidarity stairwell they call home nor the barren table they beg for food from could tear them from each other enough to make them hate this life.
She continues down the stairs and across the space they call The Chapel.
On either side of the room are red and gold mismatched votive candles on mantles and nookes in the walls.
Some people light the candles and wish to be taken from this solitude.
Others cook up their smack on spoons raised over the flame,
looking for the entrance to the desolate place where you don't have to think.
She struts over the mantle of what used to be a five foot mahogany fireplace in some family's lounge or study-a rich man's resting place of relics gone cold.
Now the wood was cracked and broken and housed more rodents than fires.
She glances across the space littered with mattresses and fallen hopes of warmth due to walls and a roof, and
body
heat.
Cold souls and colder skin were housed in corners of this distorted chapel.
No religions or beliefs or even comfort in the churchlike aspect of a candle filled prayerless temple.
More similar to a tomb than any place of service or celebration.
She feels dirt and death and hopeless hands all brushing her ankles as she sways to a strip of light bleeding blurrily in from a boarded up hole,
once a window.
These little strips of sunlight were like lines on a highway...
between the lines,
trying to go straight...
on the path,
but not knowing where it leads or how far she will go.
When light hurts broken eyes and headlights stream directly for her...
Deciding that light was just opposite from what she needed,
she turns shakily away from glaring rays.
Down again to the next floor,
was it the first?
the basement?
It was so long since her pallid countenance had seen sunshine that the stars all bled into one big flight and each day it mattered less and less which one had a door at the end.
Why go outside when all she had was in here.
Was that as empty and soulless as she thought it had been when it so briefly almost became a question asked aloud?
Maybe today she would just try to go outside.
Just to see the sun...wasn't there something she had to do...
Brief baffled thoughts of a distant past were shortly overcome by a need rumbling,
from legs to lips.
Itching skin,
crawling scalp,
Teeth all a-twitch.
Suddenly it was not so vital to know what it was she was supposed to do as it was
to
find him.
And wouldn't you know,
Just as she crouched to the putrescent rotted newspaper pile with a cramp and a need to stop this spinning and churning--there he
appeared.
Silver-topped cane in hand,
pointy shoes protruding rudely like rat's noses and silver plated beaks of birdlike fetuses crammed in triangle ice cube trays.
Friedrich swaggers and glides all at once to the place where she crumbled to the ground.
Tossing a red-striped bag with clean syringe,
asking haughtily if she needs a light,
he pivots and thinks of
five
off the top of his greasy, pocked, head,
five who will be sent up to her room tonight for a long game of beat this whore.
He turns,
on second thought,
with a glimmer of what may have been pity but most likely just amusement...
and drops a second bag- this one with a different color stripe- to the sad broken girl on the filthy
broken floor of this damned house.
She sees this and musters the strength to crawl over and retrieve both bags,
and crams them in her sweater before blackness seeps in.
The window is open.
A breeze squeezes through the tattered drapes.
Still she can't draw a breath,
cant take in the morning air.
She feels the weight of bruised limbs
under the moth-eaten quilt.
Pressing down on the mattress
she feels broken springs that exaggerate
every scrape on her spine
every scratch on her legs.
Turning slowly towards the door,
she sees it is open and wonders who was the last to leave.
Indifference swims behind her eyes when she considers
which man it may have been.
Her temples throb with dread of feeling the
cold linoleum
on the soles of her feet.
For a second she finds clarity.
you can't shut me out. cant push me back from the past into the future. my mind is too strong. eyes see too much. skin feels too many touches. i know you are looking, feel you casually glance over.
From her reclined position
she can only see partially through the smoky cracked window.
That is enough for her,
the harsh rays
to sting her eyes
and make her wish it was night once more.
She pushes back the covers
with the gnarled fingers of her needle
scarred hands.
Without enough strength to fully straighten
her spine,
or enough awareness to tie on a robe,
she slides off the mattress,
and drags her broken body towards the dresser.
Picking up a handheld mirror,
she looks at her chapped pale skin with
a degree of disgust that has arisen in her
breast each morning since she moved to this supposed
city of what?
angels?
no.
Every time she awakens in this room,
she goes through the same routine.
Shuffling towards the open door,
she slips into a sweater hanging on its
tarnished brass knob.
the hall is icy and smells of dead souls.
She peers down to the left,
then to the right.
She sees him sleeping on a doormat and covered with newspapers.
What a shame she had thought the first time she gazed upon Mickey's fourteen year old face pressed against the concrete.
His was a countenance of purity and empty wishes.
Now at sixteen, Mickey lived in the building, ate the same scraps from the garbage bins dinner was plucked from;
he used the same drugs,
fucked the same squatter whores and the purity was gone.
Purity was dead.
The empty wishes, they live on.
Somewhere deep in his subconscious,
blurred by the open fields of poppies and dark clouds that rained syringes upon his bare skin.
Now, as he peered out from his paper hut,
he gazed with glazed eyes at the girl down the hall,
who wore
a rust
colored sweater and nothing else.
He wanted to give her shoes,
or at least a pair of pants.
then he realized where they were and how much nothing he had to give.
She continued down the hallway past Mickey,
down to the stairs.
Almost tripping over a foot sticking out of the shattered plaster, she caught her balance.
Peering around the corner of the stairwell's landing she sees Amber and Sunny.
They slept wrapped in a torn, stained quilt,
in an embrace reminiscent of childhood.
The two girls couldn't be more than fifteen,
but their eyes were wizened by the harshness of this life.
Their brows were furrowed even in
sleep.
The love they have is the only thing they live for and neither the frigid solidarity stairwell they call home nor the barren table they beg for food from could tear them from each other enough to make them hate this life.
She continues down the stairs and across the space they call The Chapel.
On either side of the room are red and gold mismatched votive candles on mantles and nookes in the walls.
Some people light the candles and wish to be taken from this solitude.
Others cook up their smack on spoons raised over the flame,
looking for the entrance to the desolate place where you don't have to think.
She struts over the mantle of what used to be a five foot mahogany fireplace in some family's lounge or study-a rich man's resting place of relics gone cold.
Now the wood was cracked and broken and housed more rodents than fires.
She glances across the space littered with mattresses and fallen hopes of warmth due to walls and a roof, and
body
heat.
Cold souls and colder skin were housed in corners of this distorted chapel.
No religions or beliefs or even comfort in the churchlike aspect of a candle filled prayerless temple.
More similar to a tomb than any place of service or celebration.
She feels dirt and death and hopeless hands all brushing her ankles as she sways to a strip of light bleeding blurrily in from a boarded up hole,
once a window.
These little strips of sunlight were like lines on a highway...
between the lines,
trying to go straight...
on the path,
but not knowing where it leads or how far she will go.
When light hurts broken eyes and headlights stream directly for her...
Deciding that light was just opposite from what she needed,
she turns shakily away from glaring rays.
Down again to the next floor,
was it the first?
the basement?
It was so long since her pallid countenance had seen sunshine that the stars all bled into one big flight and each day it mattered less and less which one had a door at the end.
Why go outside when all she had was in here.
Was that as empty and soulless as she thought it had been when it so briefly almost became a question asked aloud?
Maybe today she would just try to go outside.
Just to see the sun...wasn't there something she had to do...
Brief baffled thoughts of a distant past were shortly overcome by a need rumbling,
from legs to lips.
Itching skin,
crawling scalp,
Teeth all a-twitch.
Suddenly it was not so vital to know what it was she was supposed to do as it was
to
find him.
And wouldn't you know,
Just as she crouched to the putrescent rotted newspaper pile with a cramp and a need to stop this spinning and churning--there he
appeared.
Silver-topped cane in hand,
pointy shoes protruding rudely like rat's noses and silver plated beaks of birdlike fetuses crammed in triangle ice cube trays.
Friedrich swaggers and glides all at once to the place where she crumbled to the ground.
Tossing a red-striped bag with clean syringe,
asking haughtily if she needs a light,
he pivots and thinks of
five
off the top of his greasy, pocked, head,
five who will be sent up to her room tonight for a long game of beat this whore.
He turns,
on second thought,
with a glimmer of what may have been pity but most likely just amusement...
and drops a second bag- this one with a different color stripe- to the sad broken girl on the filthy
broken floor of this damned house.
She sees this and musters the strength to crawl over and retrieve both bags,
and crams them in her sweater before blackness seeps in.
The Storm
Frazzled tangled trees, broken sky, frantic icy wind,
Gales of Chaos searing scraping.
Angry deafening blasts of thunder,
Blinding rain stinging the bricks,
Haze so thick you can't begin to cut through it,
Hail so vehement and rough it freezes all it touches.
Lightning that does not arrive bolts but in blasts,
In flashes like photos where the only image captured is a frightened face looking upon the storm.
It's a hurricane of SAURUS proportions.
Damage and debris,
wreckage...
trees down...lights out and finally some type of inspiration flows in me.
Thrashing branches,
screaming wind,
booming thunder,
flashing lightning then...
stillness.
No more than ten minutes and stillness sets in,
the calm,
The Eye.
Sirens wail.
People peer out their doors,
neighbors wonder in hushed voices;
Who will pay for the damages?
Stillness...for now.
*This poem is part of a series I've been working and reworking for a very long time. Look for Cammie's story to continue since she has now been read out out loud and finally has a voice.
Gales of Chaos searing scraping.
Angry deafening blasts of thunder,
Blinding rain stinging the bricks,
Haze so thick you can't begin to cut through it,
Hail so vehement and rough it freezes all it touches.
Lightning that does not arrive bolts but in blasts,
In flashes like photos where the only image captured is a frightened face looking upon the storm.
It's a hurricane of SAURUS proportions.
Damage and debris,
wreckage...
trees down...lights out and finally some type of inspiration flows in me.
Thrashing branches,
screaming wind,
booming thunder,
flashing lightning then...
stillness.
No more than ten minutes and stillness sets in,
the calm,
The Eye.
Sirens wail.
People peer out their doors,
neighbors wonder in hushed voices;
Who will pay for the damages?
Stillness...for now.
*This poem is part of a series I've been working and reworking for a very long time. Look for Cammie's story to continue since she has now been read out out loud and finally has a voice.
15 April 2010
Another Upcoming Reading
Hi All,
I am reading again this Saturday, April 17th at ETG Book Cafe. If you missed Art at Bay, come say hi! Also the new issue of The Hub will have a few poems of mine in it, along with lots of other talent you will enjoy--pick it up.
event: http://www.etgstores.com/bookcafe/events.html
SICH: http://statenislandcreativehub.com/
See you soon!
Keri
I am reading again this Saturday, April 17th at ETG Book Cafe. If you missed Art at Bay, come say hi! Also the new issue of The Hub will have a few poems of mine in it, along with lots of other talent you will enjoy--pick it up.
event: http://www.etgstores.com/bookcafe/events.html
SICH: http://statenislandcreativehub.com/
See you soon!
Keri
08 April 2010
Upcoming Reading
I'm excited to share that I'll be reading some poetry on Sunday afternoon (3pm) at the ART at Bay Gallery, 70 Bay Street, Staten Island. For those of you who come and hear me read--thanks! For those of you who don't...thanks for stopping by my blog & hope to see you soon!
If you do have time to come by the gallery, there is some great artwork being displayed and it's happening all week. Saturday night there is an event with live painting as well. Fun Fun Fun!
Much Love,
Keri
If you do have time to come by the gallery, there is some great artwork being displayed and it's happening all week. Saturday night there is an event with live painting as well. Fun Fun Fun!
Much Love,
Keri
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)