Author: Christina's Words

“The darkness around us is deep.” ~ William Stafford

“A Few Of The Crimes You’ve Committed Against My Heart” by Dara Wier

On By Christina's WordsIn Music, Poetry

Arson. Most of all arson. Tongues of flame flare lick, lick and like
So many others of us, I like fire and I like water & a good flaring.
Larceny. A little bit of larceny.
Treason. Exquisitely executed, the ultra high kind. Peppered
With a few petty kickbacks. Like in a self-serve brain surgery
In and Out Same Day Service Bargain Up Way. Buy One, Get One
Free. You committed fog against me. You committed horses
Against me. You attacked me with hummingbirds.
You ambushed me with iridescence. You scapled me
With seeds. You blindsided me with stars. You pushed me over
The edge with bumblebees. You strangled me with my own heart.
You broke into me with gills. Me with lungs under my wings.
With books you electrocuted me. With words you tore me to pieces.
With inferotemporal neurons you swindled me.
You hung me with sattelites. With time and distance you slay me.
You pepper-sprayed me with music. You took out my eyes, so you
Said, to polish them up a bit. You stole my petticoat, my pretty chemise.
You over-salted me with blizzards. You deserted me at noon.
You committed rain against me. You committed sharks against me.
With rivers and meadows, you lied to me, with canyons and the tops of fog
Shrouded mountains. You put ravens in there to kidnap me. You
Burned me with songbirds & nightfall & morning. You scalded me with
Flocks, you stole my tongue with tides. With all of this you put me down.

– Dara Wier via Notnostrums

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“Criminal” by Fiona Apple

“Siren Song” by Margaret Atwood

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry3 Comments
This is the one song everyone
would like to learn: the song
that is irresistible:
the song that forces men
to leap overboard in squadrons
even though they see the beached skulls
the song nobody knows
because anyone who has heard it
is dead, and the others can’t remember.
Shall I tell you the secret
and if I do, will you get me
out of this bird suit?
I don’t enjoy it here
squatting on this island
looking picturesque and mythical
with these two feathery maniacs,
I don’t enjoy singing
this trio, fatal and valuable.
I will tell the secret to you,
to you, only to you.
Come closer. This song
is a cry for help: Help me!
Only you, only you can,
you are unique
at last. Alas
it is a boring song
but it works every time.

.

Margaret Atwood, “Siren Song” from Selected Poems 1965-1975. Copyright © 1974, 1976 by Margaret Atwood.

Source: Poetry (February 1974).

“Boy in a Whalebone Corset” by Saeed Jones

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry

The acre of grass is a sleeping
swarm of locusts, and in the house
beside it, tears too are mistaken.
thin streams of kerosene
when night throws itself against
the wall, when Nina Simone sings
in the next room without her body
and I’m against the wall, bruised
but out of mine: dream-headed
with my corset still on, stays
slightly less tight, bones against
bones, broken glass on the floor,
dance steps for a waltz
with no partner. Father in my room
looking for more sissy clothes
to burn. Something pink in his fist,
negligee, lace, fishnet, whore.
His son’s a whore this last night
of Sodom. And the record skips
and skips and skips. Corset still on,
nothing else, I’m at the window;
he’s in the field, gasoline jug,
hand full of matches, night made
of locusts, column of smoke
mistaken for Old Testament God.

“Boy in a Whalebone Corset” from Prelude to Bruise by Saeed Jones (Coffee House Press, 2014). Copyright © 2014 by Saeed Jones (on Twitter @theferocity)

To hear a selection of five poems from Jones’s Prelude to Bruise (and a playlist inspired by poems in the book) visit  “5 Poems From “Prelude To Bruise” Read By Saeed Jones” on Buzzfeed.

“And the days are not full enough” by Ezra Pound

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry8 Comments 
And the days are not full enough
And the nights are not full enough
And life slips by like a field mouse
                Not shaking the grass.

Ezra Pound

“I want a trouble-maker for a lover… (Rumi)

On By Christina's WordsIn Quote10 Comments

“I want a trouble-maker for a lover; blood spiller, blood drinker, a heart of flame. Who quarrels with the sky and fights with fate. Who burns like fire on the rushing sea.”

~ Rumi