So I am deep in thought. I am lost. My brain has been tossed like a net across the ocean. I want to catch everything that the ocean has to offer, but I know that this is impossible. As tight as my net might be, there will be things that slip through. Each one of you is a whisper. Sing to me. Sing, goddess, of the wayward journey across my soul. I have spent too many years lost between the rocks of one land and the rocks of another. This vast ocean is profitless for me. It is a tomb. The only thing that exits or enters it is the dead bodies of my imagination. And I cling to the mast alone and feel the wood of my ship ache and creek, and I cry out in the night time when I should be dreaming. The footprint of Apollo is often too much for me. I know that the paint that I spread with the tip of my brush comes from his blood and his flesh. And as I trace colors across a canvas that's freshly stretched, I know I am pulling him across a cloudless sky. But the weight. The weight of him sometimes makes it hard to breathe. There's not enough oxygen in my body when he stands on me like this. And important parts of me stop working. I can't see. I can't close my fingers around my Blackwing pencil. I don't know how to think about the things I want to say with the colors that he's given me. And when I lay back on the deck of my broken ship, I don't quite have enough in me to say her name. If I mouth it will she still come? Calliope, you're not my muse. I have no right to ask a thing of you. But I know you are the one who helped Homer tell the story of the great war and of the long journey of Odysseus. And here I am, crumbled on the floor of my studio, staring up at the sail or the canvas, I am asking you to help me tell the story of my trip around my world. Because I am here abandoned without a crew or thoughts or even a way to stand and paint. The music from my playlist has stopped. That's 6 hours, and still I have nothing. I ask you for inspiration and pity. I ask you to be real again. Shift in your seat and lean forward to look through the hole in the sky between us. I am not achaean. I am a terrible mutt. I have no faith in anything except for the cocktail that is the only thing I know how to make. If my feet could be roots and I could be planted, maybe I would grow to be a stalk so high that I might touch the top of your mountain. And then you would see how strong and how green I am. And you might then bless me and push me and shake me so that I could feel alive. But it's been too many years like this. And even though the air in here only belongs to me, I still wear this mask and breathe the heavy breath of fear. I wish I could rip those feelings from my chest. I want to be my own muse. I would see my reflection in the shiny gloss of the only swath of glossy paint that I have managed to smear. I could be inspired by my own beauty. I can worship myself like they did in ancient days, standing at the Oracle of Delphi. But I am a modern. I am godless. I am alone. I have no sight to see myself unless I am looking at my own two feet. The ship below me is finally still. Nothing good comes from the calm. I am a storm waiting to be unleashed.
I have seen them all for sale. I have seen them cascading down in front of me like video rain. I can feel them rumbling and shaking and whispering to me. Each one tries to make the last one seem tame. I do not know how many times we can break the taboo. When will we stop being shocked? When will the colors stop being different? When will the faces turn inside out? I have seen them broken and degraded and cracked like potted plants that are too big. And I have seen them look disinterested, a look that challenges me to leave them alone. They are flowers but not flowers. They are rocks carved to look like flowers. Only they don't look like real flowers. They look like flowers carved from soap. But they won't clean you. They won't melt if you hold them hard in your hand. They are taken from the deepest parts of the earth. They are the same rocks we can throw at the guilty. The same rocks we can use to pulverize the sinners. And it's funny because they are the sinners. And yet I don't know if the sins start within them. Maybe it starts in the air between us. Maybe it's something that I breathe in and out. I guess the sin is mine. I guess the sin is me. And they are just the pretty colors that cascade down in front of me. It's hard to say when you're looking at someone who's being burnt alive by lust that it’s only make believe.
They are wandering this giant field where we hide with a scythe and a canvas sack, And they are collecting all the spirit that we are carefully crafting and sending out into the world like hydrogen balloons. We send them up into the air with messages tied to the strings. And the messages come from our arms and our legs and our crooked collar bones. The messages are the love that we have broken and the desire that we can't unlock. So when those balloons go up into the air, we are chained at the ankles and attached to them and we float up inverted into this gray binary sky. That's when the watchers attack us. When they cut us we fall. We crash to the earth and break our fingers so that we can't pick up our brushes or our hammers. Our eyes are blurry, and we can't see the screen. We forget the alphabet. Our heads are cracked. Our homes are lost. And now the field is a prison. We are bound to the earth, and the crops are so high that we can't even see over them. I don't know who else is here. My voice is broken too. And so is yours. All of you are mute. It has been this way for such a long time now. When did the dark ages really end? And as I wander, I know I'm naked. I know you're naked too. And when I happen to see you, I think that it's amazing how you have shaped and reshaped yourself from birth until now. And while your naked body inspires me with passion scraped with lust, I also see the beauty of you. That's when it changes. That's when you change. You stop moving. Suddenly you’re tense and flat and the colors of your skin have changed. You’re not born. You are created. Even though we are hidden in the tall grass of this field, I can see that you are divine. And something shifts inside of me. And instead of thinking about my binary desires, I am suddenly thinking about the universe. Artifice. Yes. But it takes this type of artificial life to lift me out of the misery of breathing and carry me into the sky. Because even if the watchers try to cut me down again, they can undo what I've seen. They can't undo what I feel. Because while I may have wanted to be inside of your naked body, the naked body you make in art is now inside of me.
I have a bucket of kisses for you. I dip the wooden ladle into the kisses, and I hand it to you to drink. And you do. And now your lips are wet and so are mine. And they meet each other. And I can taste my kisses inside of you. And you can taste your kisses all over me. And if I were to speak now, my words would be wet. My sentences would be my tongue. We would speak together without our voices. Our ears don’t need to hear the things that we are saying because this language isn't one that gets spoken. I hear your voice on the tips of my fingers. I speak my voice into the corners of your neck. You are on top of me. Your arms are thrown around me like two long sentences. I could not kiss you any deeper without melting into you. Our mouths would become one mouth. Because you're still human you actually need to take a breath, and that's my chance to go inside of you. You fill your lungs with me. My kisses become the oxygen of your blood. And now I am racing around inside of you. As for you, I can feel your skin spread across mine. Being this close, we are like layers of icing. We drip over our bones. We are sweet, and your hands devour me. I can feel them everywhere. They find the places that were once damaged and they stop and touch the scars. I know it's not possible, but it's as if you can clean me. You can wipe my history of pain away. And so this is what your hands do for me. But at some point I can't tell the edge of your hand from the surface of my body. In fact I don't think there is a you or me. I know that the bucket of kisses is bottomless. And quite ironically so are you.
What I know I need is someone to make harmony with my hurt. I've got to find a partner who doesn't want to take care of me. I haven't learned to take care of myself all these years, why would somebody else waste their time with that now? Maybe I am the way that I am because I want to be this way. Or maybe this is just how I am. Could you imagine getting involved with someone who has cancer and then saying "I'm going to give chemo if we're going to fuck." As if you can't accept the fact that they have cancer. As if you don't think they have a voice or a choice about it. Well my little heart is crammed with bad memories. I think there might be as many scars on my body as freckles. I've got a lot of freckles. I've been broken into more than once. And frankly I'm not looking for Lancelot. I don't need a Prince Charming. I don't even need a Guinevere. I'm looking for a coal miner. I'm looking for someone who can dig. I want someone with a shovel to get inside of me, who isn't afraid of breaking the flesh. You see, I don't know much life without pain. It's been with me such a long time. Why would I want to meet somebody who thinks he needs to wipe away my pain? Why would I want her to be tender? To stroke my forehead. To sing Hannah Montana before I sleep? No. I need you to go underground. I need you to swing your pickaxe and move away all that dirt. Get in to where the money is. Find the pain. Look at it. Make something of it. Take it out if you have to, but don't clean it. It burns bright. It'll fuel you like it fuels me. And if you can't find a way to do that, then you'll have to turn in your torch. Because I've built this cage around me. It's very tight. It's close to the skin. And if you try to touch the outside of me, you will find that I am deadly. You have to work from the inside out. You have to find the center of me. That's where all the corruption is. That's where everything that's ugly is. And I don't think you know what ugly means until you've seen the middle of me. Until you've seen my heart. That's what I want. Because if you can use words to burrow into me and let me have the things that no one else wants me to have, then you can own me. I'll be your woman. I don't care what you have between your legs. I'll be your woman. Because you see there are desires that only pain can create. A thousand psychotherapists would tell me that I need to find a way to heal. But I don't want to heal. I want those nasty passions. I want to have them out in the world. And if you can help me free those feelings, I will dance with you. Don't look at me like I'm dying. Look at me like you want to swallow me whole. Look at me like you think the dirty center of me is the jelly filling. Look at me like my trauma turns you on. And then we can find our footing. We can let the music move us across the floor. And I will dance with you and let you lead, and you can dip me and twirl me like I'm your whore.
The naming of parts is a difficult matter. Let me take that again, my poet of felines. I stole that from you, of course. But it is tough to name the parts. I mean of course a textbook can help. A chart. A skeleton. One of those models that you glue together that show all the body parts through clear plastic skin. Yes. Any of these things will help, but it's still difficult to name them. Flats or drums. Oxtail. Sweetbreads. It's always easier to differentiate the body parts when they have names. It's convenient. For example when you'd like to turn a body into a part, call it an arm. Call it a leg. And when you'd like to turn a woman into a part, call it a tit. Call it an ass. I've never ripped the wing from a living chicken. I've never looked at a chicken like a flat or a drum. It's only after they've been butchered for me that I can name the parts. Once the sauce is smeared and the fryer is cool. And so that's why it's nice to label the parts of a woman. Because now it doesn't matter that I'm not in tune with her heart. I can see that she's a collection of parts. Add another part. And then a few more. And forget the parts that don’t interest me. I don't even notice them. You can give them names, if you like. Like the brain. Or the heart. Or the womb. These aren't things I want to see. And they certainly aren't going to wind up on my plate. So one by one let's label them all. I mean the ones we want to eat. What a treat. It's a difficult matter. It's not just one of your holiday games. At first you may think I'm as mad as a hatter. When I tell you a woman has only a tiny number of names.
(Some parts of this poem contain paraphrases from TS Eliot's "The Naming of Cats.")