Hunger

I know what it means to be HUNGRY.
It seeps up from your stomach and gets into your brain
And then you can’t think.
Your eyes go sideways and the lights buzz buzz buzz into them.
Soon you don’t know what it is that you are missing.
You just feel heavier, heavier, heavier as you stop moving.
You go on,
Because you’re stronger than this,
And because you want to know what the next stage will feel like.
When you finally eat,
Food doesn’t taste, it just goes in so so so fast.
But imagine if,
No matter how much you ate,
You still kept on being hungry,
Being hungrier and hungrier,
Eyes getting fuzzier and fuzzier,
Breath getting shorter and less efficient—
Imagine this, and you will know
How I feel
Every moment of my life.

Hypersensitivity

I tremble at my own cold fingers as they scrape my scalp.
My hair is soft and coarse and lifted;
The curls have chopped-off ends.
Rape! and Chaos!
These things loom over me like the water that masses above the skies.
Why shouldn’t it be true?
Stranger things are believed by all.
When the icy fingers trace my breasts I shudder.
In fear?
But I am sure there is evil in every place.

Mine

He is not mine and I am ashamed.
I have made him me and it is beautiful.
When the meaningless babble of rhythmic text bounces out,
I cling to him fiercely and he does not drown.

I lap up possessively the blood on his neck.
I snap angrily at the men with their teeth.
How could you hurt him? He is no honorable foe.
He is not mine, but I have made him so.

Hypergraphia

I write because I must.
I will bleed all over the shattered window and I will laugh.
Sordid is a wonderful word.

Endless Longing

I have eaten all the ideas and we are one,
Though I sometimes disagree.
They are in my stomach and soon they will overcome me,
And I will burst through the window.
With broken glass in my heart,
I will fly forward and,
I hope, die
Endless longing, he says—
That is the Truth.
I cannot for much longer stand;
Existence is more or less pain.
And hearing these Truths wells up in me tears
Lacrymosa!
For to me, they are immediately meaningful,
Obviously True.
This insight requires no words.
How will I ever put it into a language and convince the nonbelievers?
If they can’t sense it instinctively,
Can they sense it at all?
Oh, I know I access the Sublime!
At times I have wondered if I were really
Not the same,
But now I know I am not the same!
Because today, someone did not understand the difference
Between beauty and SUBLIME
Between sensibility and METAPHYSICS
Between joy and JOY—
But these things to me are indisputable.
They resound in me with honest Disinterest for Art
ART is my RELIGION.
Ach, I can see and laugh at bias even when it is my own.
Endless longing, he says—
How does he know me?

Ultraviolet

The world weighs heavy down upon me,
And like a pendant hangs above my breasts
To pull my head beneath the desert,
To take the shimmered sky-view from my eyes.

And what I fear to say aloud is
That there is no poetic license here.
No gloomy metaphor is whispered,
But Truth unvarnished I give quickly.

And all the Truth that I distinguish
Shall come through my own senses to my mind,
And all the Truth that IS immortal—
To it I am as blind as I am deaf.

Reality’s reality is
That I see with a different kind of eye,
A little like the bee that searches
The colors ultraviolet for fare.

And though there once were others like me,
I cannot find them in my present place,
And like the vestiges of their thoughts,
Which have revealed to me myself at times,

My only hope now is to help one
To understand as I have learned to do,
To meet that one and say in wonder,
With questions spent: I know we are the same.

Our foreheads touch as we draw nearer.
No bashful love have we, nor fond ideals,
But knowledge, wrapped in shrouding sin-stains—
And this is from the words that I must choose.

My words must be so pure and vibrant
So as to show to him himself revealed.
We back to back will feel each other
As we approach the world from different sides.

Hunger Incarnate

It is the second sunny day
and I want to go OUT—
but I have nowhere to go.

My rooms make up a cage
that has held me all winter,
and for the first time in ages,
I’ve been allowed to open the windows.

The wisps of breeze that come through
have woken my numb heart.
Whereas before I was content to remain,
now I am discontent.

Whispers of Yeats whip in with the windows.
The order of words matters more than mere meaning.
And I—
I am hunger incarnate.

The world is so beautiful,
and I pretend to hope to be worthy of it.

I lie on the floor.
The carpet smells of cat food and borscht.
It’s strange that I’ve never noticed that before.

Distended thoughts mix indiscriminately
as I feel jealousy for the voices outside.
I wish I had business there,
a reason to escape this tepid aviary.

And as yet, the desire in my abdomen is so strong
that I fear it will consume me.
Must I live forever in this world,
where everything stirs up in me
the longing for greatness, for excitement?
Must I live with this hunger,
this void that strains to devour everything
and is never satisfied?

How long must I wait?
Come to me, Adventure! Or
Come to me, Death!