Geographic Hearts

I want to wrap my mouth around the globe

As if it were a stripy sweet and me,

A hungry child.

I want to eat the trees. The cars. The cities.

To sip the oceans like a drowning woman, desperately,

Trying to grab a gasp

Of air.

But i’m, bad at drowning

( I love life too much!)

So I cough water, like a tubercular mother, trying

To hide the blood.

And from my choke-hold-of-a-breath comes The Things of Dreams

Racy-red-satin-dresses and Hawaiin-black-pearl-necklaces

Peace lily corsages, Diana diamond tiaras, lace lingerie.

The sort of clothes and jewels goddesses should wear

On the days they help make worlds.

My World Made New

Has kowhai’s slapping the world yellow,

Sugar cookies dusted with glitter in the shapes of tiny silver stars

And women, naked, as at the end of a strip show.

But this is not dirty entertainment.

This birth.

This is life.

In My World snakes are curled like medusa wigs around the bald skulls

Of the chemotherapy women with cut-off breasts.

Eden is the name of a perfume brand by a silver-lashed celebrity.

And apples are collected to be cut and stewed

For The Winter

When even the heart of The World

Grows cold.

–

This is a poem I wrote about what it means to me to be a woman desperately trying to find things that hold her steady and safe feeling inside herself in a Crazy World.

It uses imagery from fairy tales and folklore (The Drowning Woman, Blood as a transformative substance, words of Goddesses and the The Symbol of The Apple where it signifies love as well as danger.)  

It is what I term in my personal lexicon as a ‘Release and Wretch’ poem. One I wrote quickly with few edits and where it served as a record of a train of thought  as I tried to get a feeling of un-comfortability free from  inside myself. 

The title ‘Consummation’ refers to the completion of a ritual mind frame and the end of one way of seeing yourself in The World and the ushering in of another.