Bleeding

 

"Stop bleeding    said the knife

I would if I    could said the cut.

Stop bleeding    you make me messy with the blood.

I'm sorry    said the cut.

Stop or    I will sink in farther said the knife.

Don't    said the cut.

The    knife did not say it couldn't help it but

it    sank in farther.

If    only you didn't bleed said the knife I wouldn't

have    to do this.

I know    said the cut I bleed too easily I hate 

 

 

that I    can't help it I wish I were a knife like   

you and    didn't have to bleed.

Well    meanwhile stop bleeding will you said the knife.

Yes you    are a mess and sinking in deeper said the cut I   

will have    to stop.

Have you    stopped by now said the knife.

I've almost    stopped I think.

Why must you    bleed in the first place said the knife.

For the same    reason maybe that you must do what you   

must do said    the cut.

I can't stand    bleeding said the knife and sank in farther.

I hate it too said    the cut I know it isn't you it's   

me you're lucky to be    a knife you ought to be glad about that.

Too many cuts around    said the knife they're

messy I don't know how    they stand themselves.

They don't said the cut.

You're bleeding again. 

 

 

 

No I've stopped said the cut    see you are coming out now the

blood is drying it will rub    off you'll be shiny again and clean.

If only cuts wouldn't bleed    so much said the knife coming

out a little.

But then knives might become    dull said the cut.

Aren't you still bleeding a    little said the knife.

I hope not said the cut.

I feel you are just a little. 

Maybe just a little but I can    stop now.

I feel a little wetness still    said the knife sinking in a   

little but then coming out a    little.

Just a little maybe just enough    said the cut.

That's enough now stop now do    you    feel better now said the knife.

I feel I have to bleed to   feel I   think said the cut.

I don't I don't have to    feel said    the knife drying now

becoming shiny."

 

 by May Swenson

 

 

 

 All photography by Francesca Woodman.

 

 

 

Above all...

just love

and be loved.

when you have forgotten Sunday: the love story

by Gwendolyn Brooks

—And when you have forgotten the bright bedclothes on a Wednesday and a Saturday,

And most especially when you have forgotten Sunday—

When you have forgotten Sunday halves in bed,

Or me sitting on the front-room radiator in the limping afternoon

Looking off down the long street

To nowhere,

Hugged by my plain old wrapper of no-expectation

And nothing-I-have-to-do and I’m-happy-why?

And if-Monday-never-had-to-come—

When you have forgotten that, I say,

And how you swore, if somebody beeped the bell,

And how my heart played hopscotch if the telephone rang;

And how we finally went in to Sunday dinner,

That is to say, went across the front room floor to the ink-spotted table in the southwest corner

To Sunday dinner, which was always chicken and noodles

Or chicken and rice

And salad and rye bread and tea

And chocolate chip cookies—

I say, when you have forgotten that,

When you have forgotten my little presentiment

That the war would be over before they got to you;

And how we finally undressed and whipped out the light and flowed into bed,

And lay loose-limbed for a moment in the week-end

Bright bedclothes,

Then gently folded into each other—

When you have, I say, forgotten all that,

Then you may tell,

Then I may believe

You have forgotten me well.

 

 

Rotting Symbols by Eileen Myles

 

"Soon I shall take more

I will get more light

and I'll know what I think

about that

Driving down Second Ave. in a car

the frieze of my hand

like a grandmother

captured in an institution

I know I'll never live here again etc.

many many long years ago

Millions of peeps in the scrawl

the regular trees

the regular dog snort &

dig. In the West Village

you could put on a hat

a silly hat & it's clear

whereas over here

20 years passed

that rotting hat

it's loyalty to someone or something

that's really so gone

the moment clenched

like religion or government.

Wait a minute. I prefer

umm a beatle's cap

when it's really really old

neighborhood devoted to that.

 

 

Poetry is a sentimental act

everything spring she said

being surrounded by so much rot.

Pages & pages

mounds of them that I'm in

not some library but in your

little home, like you.

Every season I know I'm leaving

I'm as loyal as the cross

to this smeltering eccentricity

down by the river with Daddio

toss your ball in the river

in the future over bridges

they say you have to imagine

the 20th century. All these buildings were colored

a blasted interior

scarlet curtains rattling day

cobwebs on inexplicable machinery

a theater once dwelled here

all I see is rotting ideas

the epics I imagined

the unified cast of everyone

eating turkey together

on a stage

my idea

like waters towers popping up

feeling mellow

not exactly nothing all this time

but the buildings that are absolute

gone that I never

described. You can't kill

a poet. We just get erased &

written on. It aches in

my brain, my back

this beauty I'm eating my toast

everyone I knew you would

be dead tomorrow

& you were. The composing camera

infatuated with the shovel

on the lid & the pile

of rocks. He is not aging

same Alexandrian

blond in Bini-bons

the sirens are gods

when I lifted my head

from my swarming difficulty

You were so marvelous

bringing those toys to my feet

in between the invisibility of

the constant production & consumption

the network of that

& apart from the mold.

You survived."

 

 

All Photography by Arthur Leipzig

Numbers

"I get magic
     (sometimes I get more
        than I bargain for)

but I don’t get
     numbers.

Numbers do worse
than humiliate
     or elude me

they don’t add up.

I am no algebra tart
     ravished
by the meretricious music
      of the spheres.

My eyes and nose
never streamed
  with incontinent ecstasy
    through geometry classes
as my disastrous triangles
    collapsed in a cacophony
        around me.

Perhaps it’s a failing
          to grasp
             or even want
the utterly perfect number
        burning through my retina
like the utterly perfect  morning.

Instead I peer
        with nauseating vertigo
into the deep dark pitch
        of numbers
like an exhausted mammoth
        dangerously tottering
            on the edge
               of a bottomless mystery."

Written by Dorothy Porter.