Marianne Morris
DIFFERENT KINDS OF NO
Hers was a no that came out of a very long time saying yes
Mine had been squashed
Ours was a no that came out of feeling yes, outside of thinking yes
Ours was a thinking with feeling twisted up inside
Hers was a no that stood in the way
Mine was a no that invited attention
Theirs was a no with a past
Mine is a no with no past, only a fist
Mine is a no about transgressions
They screamed theirs, I screamed mine, she screamed hers
We screamed ours, it screwed itself in
Mine is a no that, under certain conditions, would be yes
Mine is a no that prepares the way for but does not necessitate yes
Her no is social
My no is defiant, has a sense of self
Theirs is a no I don’t want to hear,
their heads’ voices muted, easily neutralized,
largely shown on the surface, performed
Mine is a triumphant no, reestablished,
exhausted
by sentimental overtones of responsibility and coercion, sharp
in my hip if left unsaid
Hers is a no uncertain, halting, brave, effacing
fostered by seclusion, running from police,
thwarted by sameness, uninterested in fashion,
imprisoned but repeated, over and over
Ours is a mantra of sensitivity that through repetition
emerges with wings that had been
hidden beneath undertones and spreads
above new walkways paved in skyscrapers
walked by embodied dreamers
whose lights look inwards, who compass
passions, then blush outwards, like a spat
word, into the rolled-up collisions
of friends, of apartments, of dreams, of lovers
§
MINE
Taking out the damage of red
By scrubbing it out with gold again,
gold again
and papering over the bits
cut in haste
Dear psycho when the moon shines
§
GRANDFATHER’S LOOP
for Bett Williams
1.
from one space to another space unencumbered
the one likes his vacuum gargantuan the other
feels claustrophobic in a national park which is
a symptom of a compromised will the other
is a ticket falling from the fingers of a child
the sticky coat attracts the sand I
wake clutching the dream to wake to
tell it to the one I
dreamed of, clinging in
my sleep to the place where he was born, unbeknownst
to consciousness whose trauma
is spermatozoan, not merely hoping
for rest among others
in a graveyard of like minds, like me not to be
exploded from within
by my own lack of water—
water hath visited me
several times these 24 hours
this makes me fortunate because I am a creature of water
I was born under the sun of water
I was about to cut the deck but so much afraid
of skulls in my back
fear in the palm of my sword
which I press open in the black bathtub
press open along the lines of my jaw
pummel open from the side of my head
not screaming to let go but let go
pummel the head
seek out the pile of bones, all that said we
came together in our narratives
one said a tangle of roads takes away a narrative
another said a road weaves a narrative into
and through and in and of itself
because it started in Los Angeles with fire
which was picked up by the thread of radio
which found itself mauled by the traumas of mine
and everyone’s head who has experienced
a compromising of the will
at a young age or any age
and that crept all through the day, through the radio of the day
in between my decision to move into the offering
and not to close up my practice of making words
offerings, either, but to withdraw from the immediacy
of what hurts when one does not know about it
or knows through a computer, through a gossip
a frozen sacrum that flaps a mandible
when one really just needs the passion of work
and good training
but both are intuition,
that was the thread
that wove itself through me
taut thread of water that I followed and which grew all day
burn the journals they said
someone will only use them to harm you
and as for piles of bones, that’s messed up energy
select your dead with care
know by asking, what belongs to you
and put the rest in trees, she said
she gave much in a short time
she filled an entire poem
2.
not enough space is contained
in grandfather’s loop
the day continued to follow its thread of white water
followed the dropped names of its patriarchs
across three states, maybe four
even the rocks are imagined as men
the great ones whose legacy we suffer beneath
waddle in shorts beneath point
our cameras beneath
god’s names smeared across a land of spirits
and then I wake to more coincidence, and
think of ones we lost and take
the good with bad evidence.
This is a morning whipping my brain from without
the enclosure, wind I only imagine I feel
space I only imagine I cannot fill when I can—
heart that waits for information
to fill, or the correct memory (such
as her grief filling the concrete room
her lone promise stuck to, a song
that becomes a scream that rings
the concrete, pierces our ears)
when I close my eyes a terrain
is falling past them, a low sky is
bending to swoop across the little buttress
of a vehicle the white wind sets to uncovering,
a travel that has worn away my eye and put sight in its place
a peeping through of sun down in the valley
a diamond scratch of light through blue in gold
there is only so much
whispering to the fractures in bone
and singing to the sutures in bone
that can appease a grandfather
having just written the thing about clutching a man
it being one tiny dropped thing that drops from me
drops from my
nomenclature, thing to be
tripped over instead of
buried inside
tiny thing that
drops from
priapic extension
tiny thing that becomes a body
a collection of traumas
a person exterminated and then made to rise again—
an absence of space, and no shamans
to liberate us, we reappear
upon the earth
again and again and again
clotted bags of bellied harm
buried in the little vessels
that hide apart from bones
that hide their fires and feelings
knowing only survival as their loop
grandfather,
I say,
I do not want to be made to return
to this accidental fuckery of endless beauty
on earth
3.
it does not mean
and so I make it mean
put it next to other
things that mean and
make it mean
§
ENVY
“If woman had desires other than ‘penis-envy’, this would call into question the unity, the uniqueness, the simplicity of the mirror charged with sending man’s image back to him—albeit inverted.” (Luce Irigaray)
Someone is bartering in the shower
showering in the verbena
rearranging the pronouns
from the plastic hammock
no longer to be punished with attention
but with purposive absence, and porn
slotted in to the empty place,
porn with its
spoon from the kitchen
porn with its
fork in the mustard
with its pencil shirt
lasciviously
sexist with its
woman with a sexist face
ruling by gavel. Why
is no one reincarnated as a pigeon
leaping and sedition
done always from far away.
Considering how and when we are
going to admit our love of manufacturing
our genuine condolences re: iPhone
our joy exchanged for mourning
I could hold on to
you could not pull back
I could sully
you could Wednesday
et cetera, either/or
pour
from my garden
of singing, a punishment
hanging from the neck
of a CHATTEL
and if I say FREE
then so what
what happened
is happening
again
song—
From the alienated companions I had thought to call hipsters
I learn that the teenagers of today’s generation
read periods in texts as passive aggressive,
that if someone says I’m late
and you respond okay
it’s okay
and if you respond okay period
it’s not okay—
and from them again I learn to be meat
and need a better camera
with which to mimic the surface
beneath which I fawn with industry.
The bottom of myself drops out
awake and charged by hashtags
seeking to decipher the difference between actress who fucks and actress who does not
between fucking for pay and representing for pay
between actress who is paid and actress who is not
between actress who does not fuck and stand-in who fucks for her hierarchy
of petted morals which possess my body intimately
can I speak of violence with body intact
except you do not wish to hear it, will inspect me for wounds
every other enemy’s a standing manuscript
every other manuscript who’s enemy’s a woman standing
a woman photographed in the act of excusing her patriarch
who happens to be a woman in a suit but it doesn’t matter
it doesn’t matter
actress whose body pleases dirty-shirt man
whom envy has bound to a couch—
Purported envy which flexes our fingers in dance of refute
The refutation of which constitutes more fully a defence of the masculine
The refutation of which is necessary to the love of right
The refutation of which may be right, but not true
May be accompanied by a recuperation of the dildo
quartz, amethyst, rhodochrosite dildo
pink tourmaline dildo
shungite dildo
laughed at yr dildo over lunch dildo
dildo of fat art dildo of proof
of recognition dildo
proof that what begins specialized as medicine
flying out of left field
may end as daily practice
yuppie fetish dildo
how can I envy what I can buy with my wage
what redefines my status as sexual proletarian
how can I buy that
I used to believe that there was really such a thing as a woman with no limits
the byproduct of a broken fantasy of community, perhaps
or just the long germination of stupidity and fixity—
The strap-on was purple, and decorated with daisies,
how pretending to have a cock is girlish I don’t recall
to numb the threat of my having it all
I suppose
I thought it would extend the clitoris of my feeling
into the muscle, but I was wrong—
without a daisy chain of jism to entice an ending
the only point of a strap-on is to make someone wail
the weapon stripped of its empathic sweetness
is just a weapon, is this what it’s like
to be envied
§
HUGH HEFNER IS DEAD
Goodbye HH. You are a portal of excision
into which a new world is tumbling. Ears
fluff your scalp, anhedonia rocks the bed,
behind the bed a soft shadow puppet cosmesis
does pillow lip kisses, arranges the limbs
into sapphic shapes, portrayed accurately
enough that you can feel blessed but no
one is getting off, not even you even, just
a leakage of life force into compartment.
Vision minus energetics is a map straight
to depression, short-circuited by devolution
of human into woman into object
separated from its energy with a knife-edge
platinum- or silver-plated and demoted
accordingly to the name on the door of the room.
You wanted what you saw but what
does it mean to want a way a thing looks,
which layer of slime does that activate,
honestly you were more dry than oily, let’s
make burdock tea and drink it together.
This was not heaven nor will it end up being
so when you get there, only to tumble
down, not all the way at first, first half way
to bleat in a void of feeling until feeling
eventually fires and devours your soul,
which ironically expertly mated with our darkness,
as victims we needed to balance
our darkness, as abusers we needed to
hate on something, what you won you
cannot take anywhere you now are, sorry,
get there, empty bags, fuck, what did you do,
HH, made nothing that is lasting except
a season in hell and a bucket we upturn
the second you kick it.
That world died—
It is dying every day—
I will usher in the death, I will
cry for the old ways,
just to be safe, I know
consensual fuckery
that looks like rape
but isn’t
I lived it, one
MM to another, what
did they tell you you were
and what did you decide to believe
and what havoc did belief
crush you beneath—
she died at 36, at 36 I will be born
and I love my abusers, I love every one
I thank every one, and the victim
comes undone
§
ODE TO KEVIN GATES’ “ONE THING”
where you are at is okay. go fully into it because you will come out the other side.
How far back the rape goes we do not know, except it may have been the origin. An originary rape, with an unpronouncable name. A long-held mystery, so originary that unknowing has come to feel like knowing.
I dreamt of the song all night. All night it played in my dreams. The force of it exploding through my fever, my intermittent peace punched by its aggressions. Now I’ve caught its presence I can feel it echoing all through my days and nights, like sonic chemtrails polluting my ecosystem. These sparks that rise and go out. My interpretations wish-based, corroded by hormones, influenced by my belief in magic, starred by ritual. There are many things that could be said to have ruined it, though it is tempting to say that rape was the source of all ruin, which is why history is personal.
Still the song. It never stops. Seduction song. Direction song. Song of masculine imbalance, which is feminine imbalance, song of self, feedback looped into masculine imbalance, song of romantic tropes practiced, unmeant unfelt. Song of performed service, song to perform power, song to perform winning, song to perform defeat, repeat performance, song of infamy posting as comedy, song of battle in a soft field, song I love, song I hate, song I jerk off to, song that triggers my longing uncomplicated song that makes me feel the outline of something, outline of some specific thing I thought I had and lost but never had, song / whose friction was brief, song whose name I repeated, god and god song whose thumb mashed my lips to my teeth song, stuffing dick in you slow song trying to rip your track from your scalp song bitch song deepest in you, sorry at the place where you cum from song you cum to song you puff up your chest and be ego in song you pummel bullies in song you cross the street in, blonde song who turns your head, blonde song who drives you home, man song who confounds you man song pussy dripping through your drawers song please stop please stop please stop please stop
Yes, a great wound, a many-layered multi-fingered wound I cannot name, only number:
- Rape culture is still 100% in our face, so much so that it can be revealed only slowly and its veil may be made of gentle laughter and/or raucous indulgent repetition and/or subtle infamy.
- Shame is a lie that we tell each other over and over.
- We are divine, and our sexual energy is inseparable from our divinity. Sex is so commonly used to satisfy egoic desires or to distract from insecurities. But according to tantra, the alchemies of Horus, and the cult of Isis, the power of sex is to elevate and empower us, to charge our ethereal bodies with ecstasy, and to strengthen us against the forces that would turn us against ourselves and each other.
- Sexual union that happens in mutual respect and love brings a state of surrender that creates a healing electromagnetic field called the microcosmic orbit which surrounds and nourishes us, expanding our presence and our capacity to give and receive love.
- The empty space left by a lover is an outline of the infinite possibility of spirit.
- If a lover is to serve their highest purpose they must take the infinite form, that you may dissolve yourself into it and be Not-you.
- Men and women have ideas about each other, which they nurture in secluded spaces where they cannot be challenged, only reinforced.
- These ideas create a behavior of expectation which draw out the mirror form they anticipate, first as an idea and second as an energetic possibility.
- Love brings up all that is not like itself in order that it may be healed.
- Love’s agenda is not conquest, but ecstasy.
- “It is important to notice what turns us on and to understand why it turns us on.”
- Sex profoundly alters the world. How we use it matters.