27 theses
Glory Hodgett
moon in my teeth
the vox series
(gargoyle)
I'm working on what I'm hoping will be a set of 27 poems, most of them short, each encapsulating an "I think..." statement without actually stating it outright in the poem.
I have no idea how well it's going to work, but that's why it's an experiment.
the first thesis
Because all the world around me
wants me to be in love--
between all the songs that talk of love
whether it's "I am in love"
or "I lost my love"
or "I lost my dog and incidentally I'm in love"
whether it's "I hate love"
or "love makes you perfect"
all the songs are about love
somewhere within them.
Is love the only reason people write songs these days?
between all the songs that talk of love
and all the people who have been soothed
or hurt or both by love,
the new love affairs, the smug marrieds,
the clandestine affairs where one has to remember
who knows what and ask for all the negatives
because all the world wants me to be in love,
I cannot go through with it one more day.
It is such a pleasure to sing all the songs
as if you'd written them, as if the words
had been sliced into your soul.
As if the words mattered to you.
It is such a pleasure to long after love,
like picking a scab to feel the air on your skinned knee,
to look around and say, "why don't I have that?"
and "what's wrong with me?"
And especially, after finding someone, to settle
in with a sigh, saying, "yes, I am desired,
there is nothing wrong with me."
But I wonder, again, why?
Is the safety of thinking I'm wanted worth
the wrapping clutches of the world and its desires?
But I am stubborn.
If the world wants me to be in love,
to see me settled,
then I will resist.
Because the whole world wants me to be in love,
hates to see me dining out alone,
offers me pairs of tickets to the opera
and two seats on the roller coaster
I will celebrate my anniversaries of solitude,
revel in staying out late and coming home to comforting silence,
kiss girls on the lips but leave before
I have the chance to break their hearts--
I will drive cross-country with nothing but me
and my music and my voice and my thoughts to entertain me,
and the asphalt rolling out in front of me
blasting onwards towards home--
I will paint the kitchen purple and everything else green
because nobody will complain that the colors are too dark
and look, I've dripped paint on the counter--
Because until I find the person I want to love,
being in love is useless, and looking for it only
hides it like a black cat in a dark room.
While others pick apples and rush them to their sweethearts,
I will grin, take a bite, and walk away,
hoarding all the world for my own pleasure.
--11/7/01
the second thesis
a difficult world
some words give up their meanings easily,
combined in sentences lucid
as glass, frozen in the long slow fall
towards the center of everything.
some stanzas spread their legs
and dare you to do your worst.
others hide their ankles
under a fantasy of meaningless syllables
and nonsense line breaks.
They want to be flirted with,
have their meanings teased out of them,
rewarding the virtuous with a chaste kiss
and a flash of nipple;
many of these stanzas die virgins.
then there are those stanzas
cold and clear as a midwinter night,
when stars are revelations and
the trees are a silent congregation
listening raptly to the sermon of the jet stream.
Where your fragile flesh feels like an intrusion
shattering the air, your breath
clouds passing between you and the sky.
Clearer than water or the ringing of bells,
clear as space, as vaccum, as the solitary atoms
that vibrate so slowly in that forever winter
the long slow distances between stars.
these are the poems that you pack onto a spaceship
and send to the moon. Hoping beyond hope
that the travelers will return, falling
into a world changed by distance and time
into something strange and delightful,
laying a cold dry hand on their shoulders,
reminding them of a time that was not so warm
and a world that was never so beautiful, so loved.
11/18/01
