Ice

There is a thick layer of ice everywhere,
and I, like Whitman,
am pouring out through the soles of my feet and freezing in puddles on the pavement.

The grass is still so soft and silent and
green, green, green
as it is preserved in a fragile tomb of ice
like stabbing knives of thick cold pain--
the ones that I thrust into myself

I must feel something!
I cannot feel, and I am frightened.

I am trapped inside my body, I am no longer alive
The smallest of my fingers no longer respond to my will
They are like corpses' fingers, cold and rubbery

I see the delicate beauty of the sparkling ice and I think,
"I should love this."
Last time there was ice, I could see as others could not
I could hear the movements of the tiniest molecules as they danced
I could feel light, I could taste sounds, I could smell temperature

Now I can sense nothing,
except as though through a fog of hazy, poisonous smoke.

Written Furiously During a Concert

I don’t want to do anything. I want to stop.
I want to sleep, to go away from here
To some safe place inside my head and outside my heart,
Where injuries will pepper my body and I will never have rest, only adventure,
Busy adventure to occupy my thoughts.
There, though my body lie wounded, my soul will be safe.
I will have no soul; I will be paper
Just paper, just a heroine, a doll.
There where there is no question, no sin—I must go,
But I can’t because I don’t know how to manufacture such a world.
How can there be pleasure without agony? Love without suffering? Heroics without morality?
And so my own imagination defeats me.

¤

I need the boy who makes the plants grow.
He’s imaginary. You don’t know him.
If he were here, he could take care of everything.
I need him to stand between me and responsibility, to stave off hunger and deadlines and the creditors.
I need him to love me, adore me, assure me that I am not nothing, that my existence is justified,

Because I know that I am useless; I can do nothing for myself, and I get in the way of everyone else.
I need him to take me somewhere where there is no one else for me to bother—only he will be there, and I can never hurt him. He is protected by his endless patience, his adoring indulgence.
I can only create. But he believes I am beautiful, and that my creations are beautiful. Therefore, I may live.
I am not completely worthless if I can make beauty.

¤

But to make beauty, I first must spend interminable time here.
Here, inside my stomach, in darkness. The pain here is unending.
It is this fear and shame that binds my hands, not allowing me to work, to find food and eat, to sleep without dreams, to think about anything except my self-hatred. I want someone to understand, to pity me. But no one except the one who loves patiently.
I could leave, I think. I think I may have found a way to shut this off, to function. I have only to seize my destiny with both hands, to ignore steadfastly the bitter bile that poisons my thoughts.
I do not pray, because I know what I ought. I have only to accept myself as the author of my own future. I have merely to force myself to work.
Thank you, esteemed philosopher, but I will not take your offer. I have been to that place, that place of sanity, responsibility, empowerment. It is a place with no fear and very little disappointment.
I refuse to go. There is only work there and no rest. There is never a realization of dreams there, only one goal after another. There is no beauty there—there is no communion, no ecstasy, no glorious pride of the elite!
Here at least I know that I am special, beautiful, better.
I don’t want your power, your success, your security, because it excludes creation!

¤

This must be a mixed state—depression and mania together. I’m so unmotivated, yet I can still feel the shivers of overactive perception on my tongue.
I do this now: analyze.
Well, of course I analyzed before, but now I know the proper words to use.
Every morning I wake up and think, “mania” or “depression”.
Can this be self-induced?

¤

They are playing Gabrieli’s Sonata pian’e forte, and I scold myself for writing during a concert.
What’s one more bad thing when I am already impossible to live with?
I force people to hate me. I attack them and poison them and then we all—everyone—die.
I hate and fear Him. He did this to me.
Or maybe I would have been like this without His help.

¤

I absolutely must write something serious today. I must.
I can’t, though.
I’ve put it off for ages, and now it must be done.
I can’t do it.
I hate it. I want it to go away.
If I try to write, I’ll cry. I’ll go to sleep. Tomorrow will be shame, because it won’t be done, but I don’t care.
I can’t imagine caring ever again.

¤

I don’t want to get better.
But that means I’ll have to find someone to care for me and my affairs.
Where can I find someone who will marry me for nothing in return? (Nothing but poisoned words and strange screaming.)
I need someone just as crazy as I am, someone dependent, loyal, compliant, someone who serves unquestioningly, someone who feels deep jealousy but truly believes it is not his place to possess me exclusively, someone who supports and enables my strange relationship with fickle Art, someone who stays no matter how many ways I find to hurt him.
There is no love like this among the healthy, and so I search for him in the ranks of the ill.
I will know him by the desperation in his hands, by the fervent oaths on his lips.
He will faint when I touch him.

¤

I hate music. It hurts.
I hate how I listen, how I hear.
I don’t want that liquid meaning in my womb
I’m not wonderful or beautiful; I’m just strange.
How many others here are tormented by the sounds that tease the body and taunt the mind?
Today I am tired and boring; another day I am angry and bold.
I will twist your soul with my hands and teeth, like a growling animal.
Perhaps I will live with animals. I am like them.
Outside,
I can find my true mate—the only thing that satisfies—Art, Music, the Moon.
He has so many others, but he calls for me, too.
I obey and follow; I live now for the taste of his ambrosia, and I suffer also at his whim.
Oh, stars, I thank you for aligning to create my misery!
The sanguine melancholy that pursues me, the blood and the bile, oh!
You, Reader, may think this is mere poetry, but it is Truth!

¤

How can the world be so ever-new and so ever-old at once?
Ceaseless re-creation and endless monotony—
There is nothing new, and nothing that is old.
Here is Brahms—he knows—
Schumann—he knows, too—
Why are we trapped here?
A timid voice asks, Would it be possible to love without anguish, to see and hear as we do without knowing the fear of darkness, to understand the inner workings of the universe without also comprehending the depths of sin?
Oh, little voice—that must be Heaven.
I know, I believe I will see that place,
But I can’t now imagine it, and I can’t make myself want to go.
Here is a Canadian folk song.
To me, it is better than Ewazen or Rachmaninoff.
Only I can’t find how to applaud with sincerity.

¤

I feel the need to write, but I think I have nothing to say.
Shall I then write about nothing?
People here are happy.
I don’t hate them.
I just want them to leave.
Or I could leave. Either way.
I feel like a character in a televised sitcom.

¤

Red. It breaks through the black and white.
We are supposed to feel joy.
There is glory coming, the program says.
The synthesized organ tunes the brass.
Glory to God in the highest, have mercy on us.
These chords are overdramatic for me today.
Have mercy on us; receive our prayer.
For you alone are holy.
That’s for sure.
Gratias.

¤

I expect you think it arrogant to me to believe that you don’t understand what I understand.
I don’t believe it’s arrogant, because such a thing is true.
It has been given to me to know many things.
They are as varied and as many-faceted as thousands of carved emeralds in an endless sea of obsidian water.
These gems come from a land of light and warmth that your senses cannot perceive,
Just as we cannot see the ultraviolet colors that seduce the bee or hear the high and tiny pitches that guide the bat.
I want to bring you there with me, and I want to keep it all to myself.
Oh to meet another there! What things we could say and do then!
I have never met another living soul on those beaches, though I know that others have been there.
I have read their guidebooks and their maps. I have seen their footprints. The seeds they planted here have grown into thick vines with heart-shaped leaves. The dew that was on their hands is left sparkling on the black rocks in lingering fingerprints.
I, too, hope to leave something lasting here.
But my hands are bound by despair, by fear, and by knowledge.
You will not feel sorry for me, but will instead live through a cataract of fog.
You are happier than I; this is clear.