black makes a home inside

black and white don’t mix

white must compromise

black and white swirl

baby gray girl

sinful world

lust for life and gain

marriage between strain

pure loss

white nevr return

then one day white remembers

becomes snow white again

glory of God’s love

forgiven

3.20.13    Matthew Jeanmard

We broke down in Einstein’s Bros. Bagels, because you reminded me of those two abortions you had before me; you told me I was such a happy baby, because I was denied the world twice: You said every time you were pregnant, it was me. That it was always going to be me.
Tell me, is it still me? Do I still look like your daughter? Because I smell like booze and $7 cigarettes; and that clothing you kept for me, from high school? You can throw it away. I wear nothing that isn’t black.

You cry over your “everything with lox.” You tell me I’m closed. I’m rigid. You tell me I believe in nothing. “You don’t believe in love. You don’t believe in God. You don’t believe in beauty;” but I do, Momma, I do, and that’s why I’m marrying that sweet-sunshine thing in August. “But… that’s not the kind of love you’ve closed yourself off to. You were never innocent, Sarah. No, never; you never gave up on innocence, though, because the world never give you a chance. It just took it from you. Tell me, tell me, will you ever be able to love a man?”

Do you remember, mother? walking in on bloody, six-year-old me? Do you remember that day I disabled child-lock in your Sentra? Do you remember finding me with a belt around my neck?
Because I remember, I remember clawing at you with nine-year-old nails outside of my elementary school, I remember telling Dad to “Fuck off” when I was seven because I’d read about the word “fuck” in that pocket dictionary and I wanted to give him hell.

You tell me you couldn’t protect me. You tell me it might have started with Michael but it probably started with my father. I should have shown you the scar I tattooed over; but sometimes things serve to hide other things and no one needs to know why. It’s jagged, Mom, like the edges of my ribs; they stabbed me there, dug that knife hard and drove.

Did I tell you? they wanted me to scream. But I didn’t, mom. I didn’t. I bit my lips so hard they bled, and they? they did, they did what they wanted to. They did whatever they wanted to. But I didn’t scream. I envisioned you and I remained quiet.
My first memory is full of Vaseline and Vick’s.
I was bleeding. I got myself a band-aid because you were sleeping.

You tell me I’ve given up on love.
I tell you it’s impossible to give up on what you’ve never had.
You tell me I have had it.

They say I’m not the kind of girl to be there in the morning; I slip and slide and dabble in flightiness. Nothing hurts me unless you’re close enough to know; I’m seemingly colder than ice with a wicked-girl smile. Look at my teeth. I have a deep voice I’m not afraid to use.

I’ve realized something about myself, momma. I love boys, I love them deep-shady grey and to my core. You say my history with men should provide me with reasons for hate; well, let me tell you, the boys in my life are so crystal-clear good on the molecular level. The prenatal level. And sure, sure, maybe nothing is destined, but yes, I know the evil of men, and so when I meet good-to-the-core boys, I only fall in love with them deeper.

Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps my 20-year-old “lack of innocence” makes me want to fill myself with anything and everything. You say there’s something sanctifying about flesh and I don’t, I don’t understand. And the faces of the boys blur and I feel everything for them and simultaneously nothing. I have baseless crushes; muted attractions sunk in boats of drunkenness. I don’t remember 50% of our conversations. The morning brings the truth, but momma, momma, they tell me I’m not a girl to be there in the morning. I wonder; do I lack truth? Does my flightiness make me unaware?

You used to be like me. I know you did.
Or, now I’m someone that’s like who you used to be.
Did you like her, mom? Did you like who you used to be?

You tell me it’s your fault, that you chose that burly faced man named “father,” but let’s look at the origins: your father touched you. Perhaps mine didn’t think he should do any differently. And perhaps, mom, perhaps it wouldn’t have been me with that other man. Perhaps it could have only been you and I and him.

I’m going to return to that place called Iowa Shitty soon, mom. I’m going to bury myself in alcohol and clothes burned black and books, books, books. But perhaps I’m done.
Perhaps.
Let’s take some weeks, shall we? Get my shit together. Figure out what I want.

I feel nothing to my motherfucking core. I’m sicksicksick of it. I romp with older men because I think, perhaps, they’ll guide me in some revolutionary direction: but did you know I’m older, in ways, than all of them? I value respect and consistency above love and they always, always fuck it up. I may not have slept with many boys, but I consider all of the boys I’ve been “sexual” with and I simultaneously consider puking.

You ask me what I want, mom.
Well, shit. I don’t know where to start. Perhaps I’m ready for something open yet something consistent; perhaps I want one face all the time but other faces when it’s okay, it’s okay, and I sometimes I think I’m fucked up, because want this weird, nonexistent thing: this thing of, “I’ll be monogamous but I’ll still participate in group things.” 
But I say: “I want someone who acknowledges my power. My passion, my openness, my artistic desires. But I want respect. My openness doesn’t mean that I don’t have standards, that I don’t believe in communication or that I’m worthless, composed of nothingness, able to just be disposed of like that napkin you just used to wipe your face. I’m pretty fucking great.”
You say: “Do you know how intimidating you are? You’re so smart. You’re scary smart. You have the ability to be manipulative, but you choose not to be.”
I say: “The boys. They call me sweet.”
You say: “You are, in a way. But when they say it, they’re sort of lying. Do you know why?”
I smile: “Oh, do I know why.”

“Hearts without Quarrel” by Brandon Gene Petit

Taken from Ab Antiquo, Ab Aeterno

© 2010-2013 Brandon Gene Petit

Author’s Note: This is an older prose-poem, from my previous collection of poetic works, Ab Antiquo, Ab Aeterno. This is the first truly romantic piece I did, that didn’t have to do with past incarnation experiences or anything remotely gothic in tone. There are a lot of modern elements in this one, including an underlying and aching desire to break out of mundane routine and travel the world.

We’re 5 seconds away from a tectonic shift; do you feel it? because I swear the ground is rumbly-shaky beneath my toes.

It’s been beautiful, but it’s been sad, hasn’t it? and we all try to smile over our chins but it’s been hard/rough/sandpaper-brown.

The walls of my bedroom are white now.
It fills me with a sense of absence.

Last night, we fell together on spoon-like chairs and spoke of pasts, dabbled into the “how effortless” of our friendships but admitted just how, how invested we all are; and the beauty of the staircase that led up to that attic faded into the beauty of rigid body parts and make-shift ashtrays. I heard of mothers and fathers and brothers and church camp, of things innate and undercurrents and lack of beliefs, of hospitals and ex-boyfriends and that question, that question that plagues us all: the how/why/when/where of us all, the reason behind this silver-like string that ties us together at our wrists.

It’s hard to encapsulate because we’re all so bold, strong like wire and independent in intellect; but dependency must sprout from something, right? and perhaps it’s histrionics, or experiential “yadah-yadah,” but I feel your pain 30 miles away or in the dead of night or when my phone rings haunted and I feel the need to drive. I understand the 22 different smiles that can leak onto your face, and know, “yes, yes/no, no,” and I can tell, I can tell when you’re trying to fool me or fool yourself or fool all of us.

This come-down is bad. I know only you can make it better but the blocks seem endless and I’m afraid, afraid to pick up my phone, afraid to call, because I don’t think I’ll be “all that fun.”

5-HTP.
Water.
Phone.
Water.

Try to love me distantly; send me brain-waves that remind me of our crossed-legs on porches; see if you can reach me here. I’m in my red coat and the floor I’m sitting on smells like ammonia.

Give me three days.
Then I’ll write of happiness.

While treading on these planks, I learned of those who first crossed the canyon it spans. They repelled into its depths, cut through the underbrush, swam through the murky waters, and climbed the opposite cliff, while testing every handhold with their very lives. Some fell, some starved, some drowned, many were devoured – but a few reached the top of the other cliff. Their sacrifice paved the way for building the bridge. And now I’ve heard their stories, their pain, their losses, their victory.

And I walked upon the bridge they built. I did not descend into the canyon, but, while standing on the boards once soaked with their sweat and tears, I gazed into its depths where their blood was spilled.

Looking back, I see a bridge; and now I have seen the canyon down below.

Looking forward, I see a canyon at my feet and many more beyond. Some are spanned by bridges built by other travelers; many are not. Of those with bridges, some of them are too weak to hold fast; others are sturdy. Of those canyons that do not yet have bridges, other travelers may build some of them – but I know a canyon awaits my blood and sweat and tears.

I hear the voices of other travelers, but I must walk take these steps alone.

I heed the ways of travelers before
And tread upon the bridges they have built;
I know a journey of my own’s in store,
As long as I don’t let my courage wilt.

I’m not afraid of decisiveness, but muttered phrases of “perhaps-ness” don’t intrigue me enough to tempt remembrance/dissuade me from forgetting you, or perhaps I’m too impatient a girl to wait, sweetheart, because I sift in and out of anything anywhere anytime, and I don’t like “this game” you so sorely speak of, it ain’t worth it, darling, and it sure as hell ain’t cute.

I might like men who know what they want, but I also like men unafraid to admit that they don’t, that they have no solid ounce of a clue; but Jesus, don’t stick cutesy phrases where your fist ought to be, boy, because I observe for a living and your smile isn’t sweet enough to make me any less fleeting.

You think your momentary absence will make me more intrigued? and suddenly I’ll desire you twofold because you might not, perhaps not want me? (Oh, shit, I had no idea this is how this worked. Let me cater to this so-called “ritual” and define my worth based on the validation you can so obviously give me. Oh, no, do you detect sarcasm?).
Think again, sweetie. I don’t like chess games played by youth-faced fools, and I’ll only stick around so long before I “drop it” like the last millimeter of a burning match. Perhaps you lack confidence in that you don’t think I can take a change-of-mind, an: “I’m not actually that into you,” or “I can’t do this right now,” but I’m ripple-rock feisty; I come on strong like liquor and slide down your throat with just as much fiery-burn.

I don’t even consider men or women or “whatever you such identify” that I don’t think know the intensity of my stare, and yes, baby, I know I’m 90% intimidation and 10% body but try, try, because I fade into grey and then into nothingness before your mouth can forge the syllables of my name.

I won’t cry over you, not because you don’t deserve it but because there are more pressing things that call for tears, so let’s consider “us:” perhaps girl-boy or girl-girl but definitely two; drowning in miscommunication because it’s easier than dialogue, right?; flighting in substance but we all, somewhere, perhaps somewhere deep, know what we really need; pick up the fucking phone, whomever you are. The idea of “you” doesn’t scare me, not one, single bit, and I don’t, not even for a second, invest in the unreciprocated.

I find myself listening to albums that remind me of your button-downs because only the pockets of my jeans know how much I love, love, love you, and it’s romantic and it’s platonic and it’s familial all in one, but I swear, nothing feels as tasty-satisfying as seeing your face across from me at wooden tables and next to the other boy that occupies so much space in our little bodies.

I wonder, sometimes, do you know what you mean to me? because my art takes a turn into Neverland or perhaps Everyland when you’re here, and silence holds meaning when you’re here, and problems fade into stained-teeth smiles when you’re here, and my art becomes a living thing with your face as its essence and your smile at its heart when you’re here, when you’re here.

I want to be with you always, I want you to play me the music that inspires you as I write of your intellectuality, but mostly I want not to feel that fake, fucking “phoniness” that creeps into my bones and then my teeth and then my entire body that shivers with cold when you return to that place I’ve never been and your life becomes one of car-driving and silly girls and smoking joints on highways, I want to feel real real reality and I don’t know how, don’t know how, when you’re gone. And when you’re here it’s like meaning is restored and order is restored and I understand, I understand, and clarity is only as far away as you are and you will only be so many, many feet away from me.

I have dreams that you drive down one midnight and call me from a street corner that’s depressed in fog and tell me that you need a place to stay, and I put you up in an empty room with floral sheets that match those of your flannels, and we speak through walls of art and misdemeanors and illegalities and everything dangerous, until our conversations flow into one of creation and how difficult it would be to encapsulate each other, and in the morning, you tell me you’ll be here, you’ll always be here, and then, you’re here. You’re here, and you’re not gone.

OLD LION AT A STARBUCKS WATERING HOLE

The old lion

sits in the shade

at the watering hole,

waiting and watching.

He has seen better days.

His  vision is waning.

His quickness is gone.

The fangs are yellowing,

loose and brittle.

The muscles no longer ripple

beneath taut skin.

But the memories of

his predator days

still live in his heart.

Old and pumping,

it remains

the heart of

a lion.

– Boots LeBaron –

“Fine” our sponsor said. “Here.” She handed out papers and pencils. She told us to write everything and anything that contributed to our disorder. This, I could do.

That list was my savior. That list was everything. That list goes as follows:

1. When I was six, I was molested by my fifteen-year-old upstairs neighbor. He gave me a purple, black-eyed/hollow-eyed bear. He told me, “if you tell anyone about what happened here tonight, I’ll take your bear away.” After the court case, my mom and I burned the bear in my backyard. I can still remember the smell of burning fluff.
2. I come from an abusive, incestuous family. The only person I can trust in the world is my mother. It was just her and I, for as long as I can remember. One person cannot protect another person from everything. Just some things.
3. When I was thirteen, a nameless boy told me that it was my fault he was gay, because “I didn’t have a sexy enough figure to turn him on.” This was before I was sexually active. It’s stupid, but it stuck with me. For a long time.
4. When I was fifteen, I was stopped by three men in an alleyway on my way home from karate practice. They penetrated me with a knife because they said, “that’s what happens to girls who put up a fight.”
5. When I was sixteen, I had an affair with my commander. It was a power-play. It was abusive. He broke my nose. He claimed it was an accident, and I went along with it. Looking back on it, it couldn’t have been an accident. I didn’t have enough self-respect or worth at the time to end it. He cheated on me with my best friend. I lost them both.
6. When I was seventeen, I saw a six-year-old watch her mother die, shortly before dying of blood-loss herself. I have nightmares about that girl. I see her face every day.
7. I don’t have control over my life.
8. Sometimes I think I’m insane.
9. I feel worthless because I don’t think I have the capability to love, but I want so desperately to be loved that I trap myself in this vicious cycle–I know I can’t accept other people’s love if I don’t love myself. I don’t love myself. I don’t even like myself. I can’t tell people what I need. I’m afraid of rejection.
10. I used to be religious. My community ousted me when a member of my temple saw me kiss a girl outside of Paradise Valley Mall in Scottsdale, Arizona. She was beautiful.
11. I used to be a pathological liar. It was PTSD-induced, a common reaction amongst children who have been abused. I didn’t mean to do it. I’m not sure which memories of mine are real. No one trusted me. No one trusts me now. I lied about my bulimia. I have no friends. I have no real friends. I only have my sex.
12. I thought if I threw up it might all go away.
13. It just got worse. That made my condition worse.
14. I thought if I got thinner I’d fade. People wouldn’t be able to see me. I’d become invisible and unworthy of speaking about. I’d be an unnoticeable member of the crowd. I’d dissipate and disappear.
15. Holy shit. This is pathetic. I know this isn’t part of the assignment, but I’m going to write it anyway. So… deal. My name is Sarah Isis Damsky. I am not what happened to me. What happened to me does not define me, now or then or in any time. I am a nineteen-year-old girl with a past. Perhaps what I’ve been through is relative; perhaps it is not worse or better than anyone else’s traumatic experience. It’s in how you experience it, in how it affects you, that makes it worthy. This shit does not define me. Weird. I think I understand myself now. I think I get it now. I think I’m going to stop throwing up now.

You curl your thighs in the gaps between the wooden springboards of that hellacious thing I call “bed,” because you’re rickety-treacherous, black-haired like danger and shady like a $2 bill. Your voice is 100% deep-south Texas and ricochets off of my California skin, but would you smile in spite of me if I told you I’ve adopted your inflection? because you’re scary bright, oh love, like a trapped-up Supernova that tripped on the back of the sun on it’s way to heaven or hell or both.

Stick those thin olive fingers in the holes of your fishnets, because I know the click-clack of your nervousness and I don’t mind peering at you through heavy-lidded eyes; our car-rides consist of $1 burgers and sweat-stained bras, musings of boys that could be lovers but never were and never will be; it’s okay, though, right? because we both know that the sound of the other one breathing in the dead of winter-night is more comforting than the way they squeeze that patch of skin just above our hipbones.

Tell me, do you have nightmares in which your face becomes the manifestation of the tempest? because you’re intelligence is slippery-rock deep, and the shallow floor on which your argument stands cracks open the skulls of the foolish, and I don’t think you know, I don’t think your eyes are even 3 parts aware, of the deep sultry of your complexion nor the soothing up-down rotation of your voice. Speak the word, darling; the crowd’s falling in love with you and you have only 10, only 10 more seconds until they realize they’re faced with the unrequited.

You best not stop spitting fire, girl, because you’re my match not-made-in-Heaven, and I like the feeling of eyes in crowded rooms gazing on the up-down-updown torrents of our breaths because we’re unattainable, insatiable, or perhaps two night-dwelling animals trapped in these little-girl bodies, because we burn the meat of our victims with our eyes and strip them with our fingertips and eat them with the rocking of our hips.

One night, I’ll feed you wine from cupped hands and sing you love songs, you beautiful, primal thing, because our sameness is echoed in the brightness of our bones in contrast to the glowing of our dark skin, and yes, yes, we’re both Spanish, so: necesito sentirte, baby, y cada día te quiero más que ayer y menos que mañana–let’s write prayers, together, sweet thang, because our voices are liquid nitrate and we freeze the organs of the decrepit, “Oh God, dear God, pardon our sins of flesh, our sins of desire, our mouths that slink into the depths of profanity and speak only of transgressions.”

We mirror each other now. You are 30% me and 70% yourself but we’re both, in some manner, 60% each other; so let’s slink in between stalks of grass next to playground slides and speak of herecy, because I know the way you taste and it’s nothing like innocence.

You fed me intravenously until I no longer knew the taste of the organic; I touched your chin so much in darkness that I could read the ripples of your dimples like Morse Code; I breathed your scent more than air and my grades slipped and my weight dropped and all I could do was fall, fall into the pillow-like nothingness of your chest, and while I like cologne I’ll never forget the way you’d brush my black-red bangs from my forehead when I’d tell you I preferred your natural odor: “Oh, sweet Sarah, look at you, you pretty-pretty thing.”

“I love that you call me by my first name,” was a sentence that only knew the answer of, “you’re mine, Sarah, my Sarah,” and I thought, for so, so long, that I loved you, that I loved you in the same manner that I love Eskimo kisses in winter and freshly baked bread, cutoff-shorts that hug my thighs and hips and all parts of me curvy and fade with the summer sunlight, bass-induced, bodily vibrations and waking to the sad, sad songs of Sparrows on Saturday mornings.

But you turned a bile-infused shade of green and I cried outside of your locked bedroom door because I wanted heaven, and when I showed up with bloody fists and blue-painted eye-sockets you turned the other way so you could tell me stories of children and killer whales and her. I was infected and my disease was deadlier than the faint pink of your smile, but boy, did I double over and wheeze with the pain of that planned-out walk-out you tried to assuage with too many french fries and whispers of commonplace mistakes.

I know, I know I’m not easy, but if I give myself to you I do so in totality, so tell me, do you regret it? because the tears have come now and by God, it hurts, and I don’t like the “soft rain,” pitter-patter of the emotional, but you hogtied me to the back of that pick-up truck and dragged me to the Black Angel and back, and Hell isn’t even thrice as raging as those fires we built in my backyard, fires only fed by half-assed timber and empty beer boxes.

You were the first boy I cried in front of, the first boy to hear me admit the depths of my darkness and, “I was raped,” and you ruined me, boy, you fucking ruined me, and I wanted so badly to love the one that came after you that I told him I did, when all he truly did was rid me temporarily of your scent. I may not want you anymore but I still want you to say it, I want the words to slip out of those beautifully fucked-up teeth, because I knew, sweetie, and I know, but when winter came, I had to leave you, I did, because your only response to my endless vomiting was the simple, three word road that led to my own, personal hell: “Well, that’s attractive.”

We chain-locked my bike to two poles outside of the police station, and I swear the moon looked like chopped-up bits of ice and the world smelled like iron. We took three water bottles because even at night the Arizona wind blew at 90 degrees fahrenheit; the coyotes howled because it was the hour of torn flesh and I didn’t, didn’t want to walk those fifteen miles.

Mile Marker 141 is isolated ten miles in every direction.
No hospital. No schools. No houses in the distance or gas stations around the corner or public bathrooms.
The ground here feels like crab shells underneath your feet; it cracks and groans and moans in pain, biting into the cracks of your shoes and clinging, clinging for dear life because it wants to know another, any other place. Cacti tumble in the wind, freeing spokes and spikes that wedge their way into the hems of your jeans and cry for any semblance of permanence.
I hate it here.

INVENTORY:
20 bottles of Jameson
3 bottles of Everclear
10 cases of PBR
15 water bottles
1 blow-up kiddie pool
10 condoms
1 pair of flaming batons
6 D.J.’s
roughly 500 ravers

“I like your skirt,” you whisper in my ear, but it’s not my skirt your touching, and I have this urge to slap you right across your play-boy/sticky-cheeked face, but I’m cunning, boy, so wait for me, just wait. My silence makes you weary, and I feed off of that nervous energy, slipping from underneath your arm and launching, rock-clad catapult, into the growing crowd. Girls grind their girdled legs against the backsides of beer-drenched boys, “prostitots” slip their bras off of their skimpy, little shoulders, waving their thirteen-year-old tits in the faces of those older men–they tempt, they tease, they encompass, in totality, everything corrupt–and they piss me off. A 30-or-so-year-old man slips his fingers into my friend Taylor’s panties, hooks them up so her ass slides against his groin. She’s drunk. She laughs. He smiles. I don’t.

The night blurs amongst finger lights and fumbling crowds; a couple fucks to my left. I can hear her moans over the music. I place my hand, absent-mindedly, against my breast. I wonder what it feels like to be fucked. I’m suddenly very aware of the fact that I’m fifteen.

I decide then that I won’t go back with you, that I’ll make the fifteen-mile-walk to my bike in solitary; you’re twenty-three, living on a couch in the kitchen of your best friend’s apartment; I’m fifteen, my home smells like lavender and my mother’s smile outshines the sun that pours into your windowsill.

I can’t, I can’t, I can’t do this.

nothing I say nothing

I do

all water falling on the floor

I can’t walk out the door

without hitting it

I answer the phone sliding on the tiles

slam myself prone on my naked back side

nothing I try comes gracefully anymore

like a Clint Eastwood take that won’t work

I walk wobbly not straight lined

I fly bouncing off objects

well-heeled but stuck in a rut

not new and flexible

making the same mistakes over and over

an old poor church rat

getting caught by his best friend ole cat

cold hands on warm day

3.10.13    Matthew Jeanmard

short lil wife

big heart black hair baby

doesn’t say maybe

yes only yes

she loves me without reserve

her method way beyond the curve

her thoughts center on my soul

making me live better her goal

thank you Jesus for Lizzy

without her I would be lost

3.10.13     Matthew Jeanmard

What about sex, exactly, is so taboo to you? Are you afraid of words like “cunt” and “cock” or “cum,” because they’re all one syllable and hard on the “c?” Would you be uncomfortable if I describe to you how he fucked me, the pace of his thrusts? the depth? the roughness? I don’t understand this fear of words, of nakedness, of bodies; because, girl, I have no hair and when I get naked I’m twice as naked as you’ll ever be.

Try it. Try me. Speak to me of wet things and bare backs, of scratches you might have left and bite marks you did, of hickeys on your inner thighs and things you’ve claimed are too private to speak of, with anyone anywhere anytime, because the way they raised you makes you feel shame, doesn’t it? shame for natural things and order and, overall, science. I’m not going to slingshot you with claims that you’re an animal but I will tell you that you’re built for sex, baby, and not just your body but also your mind.

They tell you to cover up those things that foster children but I see your low-cut tops and I know they’re a secret; they tell me I shouldn’t walk around the house bare-legged but I don’t mind if the world knows I’ve just been fucked in the same manner I don’t mind them seeing:

1. My dirty dishes, Isis must have eaten.
2. Closed bathroom door, Isis must be peeing.
3. Razor on the floor, Isis must have shaved.

You see what I’m doing here? it’s stressing the organic, because it’s natural and you’re natural and so is he, so stop hiding in your hole of disdain… Stop.

So now you ask me a question: “Why the lube, in your purse?”
Well: “You never know what alley you might stop in to fuck. Oh, man, you look concerned. Trust me, darling, the world doesn’t care. It doesn’t give two shits.”

So, I’ll start. I’ll tell you of tongues and the way I must always undress myself because I only know the cloth of onesies, of cigarettes smoked in clothes not my own and knowledge, knowledge that can only come from knowing someone in that way.

Breathe, darling, breathe, because I don’t care. I don’t give two shits.

Man. There he stands, roaring his prowess:
His strength; his mind; his voice; his power.
There he stands, Man, so blithely alone,
Independent, and standing oh so strong.
There he goes, the Alpha Male,
Swaggering and strutting and gloating.
There he preens, the Alpha male,
Thinking he is man-made alone.
Male pride, male audacity to think
He made it solely on his own
Male roaring and his competitive urge
To show that only he, above all, is Number One.
Ah! But we know don’t we?
And any Man worth his salt knows-
The secret, as he beams quietly and proudly-
His strength comes not from himself alone:
For who was it who born him into his life?
Who was it who raised him with his strength and his wits?
Who was it who gave him the wisest advice?
Who was it who taught him his failings and errors?
Who is it who picks him up when he falls?
Who is it who lets him cry, without mockery?
Who is it who keeps every secret he utters?
Who is it who gives him the strength when he thinks his strength has failed?
Who will it be who gives joy to his heart?
Who will it be who teaches him what kind of man he is?
Who will it be who sees nothing but adoration when looking at him?
Who will it be who teaches him to better himself?
Behind every man, Great and not so great,
Behind every man, Alpha Male through to Geek,
Behind every man from baby-hood to great-grandfather,
Stands – not one Woman; but many:
In silent strength, in giving compassion,
Without complaint – (okay sometimes with)-
Stands each Man’s own personal army:
Grandmother, Mother, Sister, Lover, Daughter.
Yes any Man worth his salt knows-
He is not Man-made, but made of
Woman.

The Flock

The boys flock screeching to the locker room, their faces red and wild from the cold. One runs, arms outstretched, as though attempting to take-off. Another rushes, flapping, to his locker. A third hops onto the benches at the centre of the room and, his head thrown back, croons loudly. His throat swells, victorious; his was the winning football team.

One boy follows afterwards, calmly and more quietly than the rest. He does not screech or flap his arms, and if his face is red or wild from the cold, it is because it is his face, and helpless to be otherwise. He cannot change his face, although he has wished for this many times before.

The room fills with the flutter of sleeve arms as the boys begin to get changed. Socks grow long where they are pulled from the toes; longer, longer still, until they tear from ankles and snap like synthetic sinew through the air. It is early afternoon and the autumn wind is playing with the tree outside the window. Red leaves press like outstretched hands against the opaque glass.

The same boy pauses, his sweatshirt around his shoulders, and studies the scarlet palm-prints. Their redness reminds him of other things: burst berries, flushed cheeks, the colour of split lips and the stains down the arms of his school shirt. He wonders how a colour can be so many things, how it can mean so many things, and still be beautiful. It is just a colour, after all, the same wherever it is seen.

He stares intently for several seconds, the world around him fading beneath the bright red of the leaves. Then he loses himself once more in his sweatshirt. The name label, which tickles his neck and then his face, reads Bran Thomas. The room smells damp and feels cold against his goose-pimpled skin.

Around him, the others prance and preen. Sometimes their faces are expressive, wide-eyed and open-mouthed. Other times, it seems, they barely have faces at all. One is studying himself in the mirror above the sink, moving left, then right, his reflection doing likewise in the glass. From where Bran stands there is no nose, no mouth, no face that can be seen, but he imagines a sharp beak and two unblinking eyes in their place. He knows that beak. He has felt it before, or one like it, and the ceaseless peck of its words.

Shouts ricochet from the locker room walls. When they reach the communal showers they distort, in that way all sounds do when they bounce from bathroom tiles. Bran hears jubilation in those sounds, and taunts, and mimicry; so much mimicry. It is cacophonous in his head. He wishes that worms turned in the ground beneath them, or that the pink throats of their parents hovered above, come to regurgitate food into their mouths, silencing those hungry beaks for one solitary minute!

The shrieks escalate, grow shrill. He steps back to his locker, which is already open, and shields himself behind the metal door as the boys fly into a flurry of movement. His little heart rattles, like a cage of frightened lovebirds in his chest. He fears for his sanity in the midst of such madness. He fears he is the mad one, the outsider of the flock.

He thinks of lovebirds, and wonders why they are called such. Do they love? Are they more than birds because of it, or indifferent except in name? What of scaredbirds too, and deadbirds, and whatdoesitallmeanbirds?

One of the boys falls into his locker, so that the door swings into Bran’s face. It is a senseless gesture, accident or otherwise, and Bran feels reaffirmed. He feels pain too, where the door has struck his nose. He sinks to the floor. The rich metal-taste of red fills his mouth.

The tiles are cold beneath his feet. Blackness encroaches on his vision, then whiteness, growing from the strip bulbs above. The bird-boys circle overhead, beaks clacking, and he hears malice. He hears stupidity and joy and inconsideration. If there is an apology, he cannot hear that. He does not think there is.

Bran’s toes scrunch slowly, over and over, feeling the mud that has been trawled in from the playing fields. With conscious effort he takes a long breath. The fluttering in his chest begins to slow. The grit between his toes is grounding. It is a moment, the moment, in which he realises he is not like the other bird-boys. They hop and screech and peck for giblets, their beaks black, like the crows in the ditch behind the football field. They are a faceless flock, drawn to shiny things, or thrashing insects in the ground. Their bones are light. Their forms slight.

Bran’s chest is heavy with petrified lovebirds. They sit like stones behind his ribs and he knows he will never fly. He will never be as the other bird-boys: the crows, the magpies, the voracious playground vultures.

They swarm from the locker room, these other boys, the corridor ringing with their shrieks and the beating of their feathered arms. Bran is left alone, with the grit between his toes, the slap of scarlet at the window and the taste of the colour in his mouth.

~ Thomas James Brown

© Copyright 2012 Thomas Brown. All Rights Reserved.

Please visit PenoftheDamned.com to read more of Thomas’ work.

I think of the term “making love” and I’m dumbfounded, because slow, soft sex is still just sex to me, and while you believe in romance I only believe in cuteness. I think of jealousy and how I don’t feel it; how the idea of a man I’m involved with fucking someone else gets me off.
I want to watch.

I want to be the woman men think about when they masturbate; you want to be the woman men think about when they ponder marriage.

When I think about sex and my sexual experiences, I don’t see the faces of men but rather just bodies–I see flesh and positions and remember the feeling of my ass on carpeted floors–the faces of some men flash behind the blackness of my lids but they combine, they mix, they fall apart to fall together and create a general nothingness. I think about women that claim powerlessness, and how deeply it confuses me because I feel most powerful when knees are involved: knees on floors, knees on beds, knees by shoulders.

I am not afraid to ask for what I want, and I feel that you and I differ in that capacity: I know, honey, I know, “I am strange when it comes to sex,” but I’m not sure if my thoughts are really that unconventional or if I’m the only one willing to speak them aloud.

You pity me because I’ve never been in love, because the closest I’ve gotten to love has been need, but I feel about my inexperience with love the same way I feel about my so-called twin that died in the womb: a pang, a longing for knowing, a desire for experience but a general lack of sadness or yearning or incompleteness, because you can’t miss and you can’t manifest and you can’t fathom what you’ve never had.

I fuck for pleasure, for the taking and giving of pleasure; I fuck to wake up to a face that isn’t my own; I fuck for fun and friendship and excitement; I fuck for intimacy and fast-paced involvements and a taste of aliveness; I fuck because people are fascinating and their bodies are fascinating and I love it, I love penetration and succumbing and submitting and the occasional slap to the face, the strength of my own body and my feminine power and to flick on the light of my wantonness, I love the power of men but I also love to watch them shake.

We’re all adults here.
I wonder, do you think me a whore? because let’s compare numbers.
Honestly, I haven’t slept with many people, but the difference between you and me is your consistency and the fact that I sleep with most men only twice.

I’m sorry.
I get bored.

I think I want something different from this two-night-tango but I don’t know what and sometimes it’s best not to know and just let it come to you, because that’s when most things go right, but I’m not a patient girl and sometimes I don’t feel sweet and my desire to breathe fire overcomes my desire for normalcy.

You say “make love” as if sex has nothing to do with physicality and is only relevant to emotionalism; sex becomes your tool of “proof,” the means for validation of your so-called “partnership,” a sacred act of, “one day, we’ll be making babies,” and, “we’re now one;” and perhaps I don’t understand because I’ve never felt for one what you two feel for each other, but I’ve seen you use sex while fighting, threaten your relationship with mentions of sex, consider sex as a tool for: only if you apologize/tell me that you love me/well, I’ll just go fuck someone else. You take the thing that apparently defines your love and turn it on its backside; so tell me, tell me, why/how that is better than being clear-cut and blunt about the fact that I just fuck to fuck.

Of course, of course those boys and those girls and that one, genderless person mean something to me. I care for them, deeply; I’ll run if they need me and I’ll listen when they want me and I’ll hold them any time any day any year; sex isn’t meaningless and I can’t not care for someone I’ve fucked but why, why does “love” always have to play a role? And okay, okay, I’m not disclosed to falling in love, I’m sure one day I will, but, “don’t interrupt me, just wait a fucking second,” why does it have to be now?

Huh. So, after all this, you still don’t understand, do you? because love is still as important as the marriage-filled/child-ridden life you so greatly desire–but honey, you’re eighteen, 1-8–and part of being eighteen is being open; you think you’ve found love but you’re so pitiful-young, younger than me, even. Age is only 50% of actual age, and darling, I’m old enough in mentality to be your mother. We speak in condescension because you think “I’m hurting myself” but what is so, so awful about learning? about experience? about intimacy and openness and the desire to love, in my own way, many? When you, you’re not even happy.

Answer this, answer this with a legitimate, sensical, thought-out, undeniably true answer, and then I will go looking for love.

come with me
it calls.

Hairs across the plains of her skin lift and let loose flakes of freckles and dandruff like dandy lions in the wind.

the voice shivers
come with me.

Bones curl and stretch at her sore and aged feet, lifting her across the ground gliding out towards the cold night.

The crisp air greets her porcelain cheeks and cracks mistakes and regrets under her eyelids already damp from the stars soft shine.

hollow chest beating
with them.

We spent our nights cheetah-clad, with burning candles intentionally placed too close to wooden walls, and even though the kitchen smelled of kerosene and the garage like burning flesh, it was the sexiest of surrenders to pretend it smelled like normalcy.

Ramen above washing machines above 8-pound bags of rice, above your little rainbow-in-icy-February smile and that cat that shouldn’t have gotten that big, and I know, sweety, that you wanted him to love you, but take four seconds to remember black-and-blue peppered faces and those birds he kept in cages that he claimed were always your mother; stick chopsticks in the flame under that simmering teapot and take them to torchtown, where you poke the potato-bugs with furrowed frowns and raised brows; stick stones where your bones ought to be and smile out your teeth; foster the child you know you are and raise it, cultivate it, distance is in the eye of the beholder.

We forged our bodies from paper-cuts and dimly lit library rooms where we read each other Harry Potter, and I knew you were a dyslexic when fourth grade rolled around because you traded books for audio tapes and pretended the porous dust your journal bore was from the cracking snow-board walls of your desolate room, but really, your mother’s blind, at least in one way, isn’t she? and so I took you to the doctor and told them we were sisters.

You are my sister. Blood-rope-tied, sickly perverted by-product infection, suck on the lollipop, darling, it’s coated in coke, and shit, shit, where’s Hayley? and my father will always be yours, and he’ll never cook you hotdogs, but maybe one day, one day, you’ll tell your mother and you’ll never again have to see his face.

Think Pink…I think in Pink.  I am a Blue who thinks he may understand Pink…that makes me Purple…a divine being….a mortal immortal.  perhaps only deluded and denuded.  perhaps naked wearing the Emperor’s New Clothes.  But nevertheless trying to understand Women, Girls, anything with a uterus.  anything suffering from penis envy.  I really don’t understand why any woman would need penis envy or even adopt it for a moment.  Women wield power.  End of Story.

3.3.13    Matthew Jeanmard devoted to Mary Mother of God and his mother Mary Gibson Jeanmard, whom he misses very much.

the same old songs sound new

the world feels a better place

war and famine no longer linger

the pink thinks you are worth knowing

the swell in your heart grows

smile on face shows

a place is special for you

to be and do and pull through

no mountain is too tall

no valley too low

as long as she walks beside

and you and she along God to pull the tide

All this sounds like one big cliché

but it’s not

a loving robot cannot equal the love of a good woman

all the money in the world and chaos cannot replace

the content look she gives you in the morning

you wake up and she’s there warm soft yours

and when you find one like her and others who love you like sisters

and some closer than sisters

the world is your oyster

it sits at your feet

Because they are your support

they are your friends

Nothing on Earth can stop Love never ends

3.3.13    Matthew Jeanmard