Vacuum-Sealing via Peanut-Butter

Peanut butter and milk, or hemp milk as I prefer,

should always be consumed in the same sentence,

so as to prevent the throat sticking together.

Just because I referenced a 'sentence' does not make this 'writing', nor poetry,

nor worthy of reading-- it's because I am a woman,

that fact makes this worth reading. No, really. Because I am a woman,

and now you know what women think about, at least what this woman thinks about

at 2:13 in the morning… My mind floats to writing, to peanut butter-eating,

to preventing myself vacuum-sealing via peanut butter.

And you are reading this because I am a woman. This interests you because,

you are another woman, or you are not- and you wish to know how we function.

I think of vacuums, writing, peanut butter, poetry, sisterhood and street harassment.

Of expanding the themes on which we write and are read, as women who think.

"A Peanut-Butter Woman, are we now, Madame?"

All the nuts in the world could not shut me up, nor vacuum-seal my opinions.

And it is our responsibility to take interest in how each-other functions.

I believe that you are becoming equal to what I am living, my opinions.

My integrity holds you by the millions, rapt attentions to my good intentions.

Hear, I stand, a woman worth reading, because now you know how

I am thinking.

(c) Maria Enns 2012, All rights reserved.

Frankenstrong

It's a strange sort of overcast
Foreboding feels like my last
Sit and sort the furnishings
Fort made of my ligatures
Subtle signs and signatures
Didg-ing more to sleep better
Your denial lingers here.

What could plans have made of us?
Past, tense, jawing, gratiatus
No ambushes, hear me thus;
I want you I'm made of dust-
Call direct, don't make a fuss.

My love, the depth of which is certain
Unknown, and made to draw a curtain;
still holds a passion and a flicker
though you continue to grow sicker.

Giving up. I'm moving now
Holding up, somehow.

Tornado, get along.


http://soundcloud.com/brightsparklymess/frankenstrong

(c) Maria Enns 2012

Bloom

Blooming, bleeding, needing
Heart is shopping, head bent
Nose is dropping, 'motions rent
Broken and torn,
Brand new, but worn
Expensively pensively peering
in windows and inserting self
into trains and stations
revelations of
life lessons when
evenings stretch
ins and outs of
being a wretch
while aiming to release, really
singly, not easily
used-up all the 'never'
black speck in my white paint
white drop in my inkpot
a little or a lot
so he rescues me
because that's the way
they say it ought to be
and I run, unwillingly
deepening my trust
foregoing no lust
justifying choice
magnifying voice
this is who I am
just for now, I can.

Scream

My head is a dream

touch

My face is a map

blush

My coat is unhung, unstrung

Forever young

hush

He doesn't love

thus

I pull away

bust

could never stay

still

momentarily

for good or ill

but


copyright M.E. 2012, all rights reserved

The Gulf

The Gulf which swallowed my Heart
Vastly, deftly, unexemptingly
Death at sea, for a start
Viciously leaving no wake of bubbles,
Lacking oxygen to a weeping heart.
Death sentences surely.
With no remorse.

copyright M.E. 2012, all rights reserved

Visuals of Autumn

This weather in the first weeks of fall and last of summer is the memory of visiting local farms with Mommy; Lone Cedar and that other one in Oxon Hill. Of tromping through piles of mulch to meet cows for the first time, and try to milk them. Of tasting honey and cider and holding a pumpkin, large as my body, hugging it to me as if it were the entire world. Of Daddy carving the pumpkin and asking if it's good, when it's the newest and best thing I've ever seen. Everything Daddy does is good. I can't stop looking out the window at those pumpkins on the wooden steps, until they're past rotting and we carry them to the compost heap.

This weather is going to college for the first time, cold, wet and leafy, possibilities being endless and the doors of the world swinging wide open. Terror, apprehension, shame dragging me backward with their cruel heartless hooks. Boys and girls dragging me onward with what I conceive of as longing looks.

Every chilled-off day is driving for turns, swinging the steering wheel around the car like a lasso for speed and excitement. Worry is clutching my knees to my chest in the seat, huddling under my sweater, praying for warmth and hiding in the booming music. Relaxation is perfect melodies influencing my curling wrists and fingers to create isolated dances, laying one foot on the dash and the other out the window, as I always aimed for while a child and never was allowed to do. Safety was not of concern. For the prevention of blindness yielded a song called 'The longest way round is the sweetest way home'. The chill air on my chest at night, forcing another cough out of me, the sacrifice for worth, the talking until I wake, realizing the conversation never stopped. The longing, apprehension for facts, desperation for a cat; who then appeared and loved me as no one else could. She slept in my armpit, on my chest, on my face if my sleeping form allowed. I changed my schedule to walk home every two hours to ease her loneliness and give her food and peace. The love I feel for that cat is undying. She knows it. We are tied by our heartstrings and what hurts me, she feels, what hurts her makes me nauseous and willing to cross the world to heal this dependent baby-being. One broken heart carves a space, so love of an entirely different magnitude can take its place.

This weather reminds me of the last time I saw someone and the premonition which accompanied it, sitting on a porch in another rain, just like every other time we watched the storm and listened to metal. The feeling of 'there is nothing I can do about this' and 'I will remember this forever' have haunted me from that day to this. The haunted house I worked at seemed an appropriate release, a sanctuary. How to deposit my pain? More pain. How to change my life? Love someone new. Finally you. As he begins to eek his way deep into my heart like taking root there, to change my life forever, change my behavior and my heart without ever asking for a thing. He is himself, and I will myself to change for him. I've never been colder, never loved anybody more, never known a non-family-member this deeply, and yet, it continues to end. And to begin again.

copyright M.E. 2012, all rights reserved

Tao

..is the way
.. thoughts move
..studying who we are
..working less functions well
.. and mirroring
..the glass of a pond
..I am floating
..ever on the surface

copyright M.E. 2012, all rights reserved

Home Again

The Echoing tone
of polished stone
floors of a palace
I call my home
fix-ed walls
surrounding tomes
swiveling shelves
secrets dwell
where the adventurers
fear to delve
lit expressively
at the desk
A Child's request
fearful as 
the reply,
in light of decades
gone awry...
unwilling to disrupt
even dust
"certain things
must not
be mussed,"
In accents affected
we simply haven't
the funds for that, my dear.
Sweeping gaze around here
gone the days
of bliss, now fear.

copyright M.E. 2012, all rights reserved

(I'm)

I'm going on a trip


I'll pack everything
                            beautiful that I own.


Ignorance shall never me name.


Wicked chills of spite, begone!


Freedom is beyond.


To Buddhist hills I go,
Peacock feathers before me.


~


copyright M.E. 2012, all rights reserved

"<" Three

Not all of those are observing
Not all whom observe are discerning
As long as I consider them 'earning'
[unworthy]
My love shall remain
[unkindled]
and cold, feverish turning
a yearning for brass into gold
kisses ever favoring,
{flavoring}
Minutes of joy could be savoring
{slavering}
Never was one for the havering-
"fawning all over" the roads.
Deer lit by lights ahead
in your head
zombie-dead
ju-ju-ing fingers glaze my
cheeks with oil -I recoil.
Your love was never
my flavor
yes I did have a taste for
the passionate
waist-grabbing
scenes of a film-dream.
"someone to believe in" I
would have said it would do
These days I eschew
The idea of belief in a
power only equal-to
Me.
You'd have to be
Rose-hips
God-lips
and trapeze-flips
Wrapped up into One.
But, we were One.
One.
We were at least less than
A power greater than
Me.

copyright M.E. 2012, all rights reserved.