Once again, someone falls in their first falling–fall of two bodies, of two eyes, of four green eyes or eight green eyes if we count those born in the mirror (at midnight, in the purest fear, in the loss), you haven’t been able to recognize the voice of your dull silence, to see the earthly messages scrawled in the middle of one mad state, when the body is a glass and from ourselves and from the other we drink some kind of impossible water.
Desire needlessly spills on me a cursed liqueur. For my thirsty thirst, what can the promise of eyes do? I speak of something not in this world. I speak of someone whose purpose is elsewhere.
And I was naked in memory of the white night. Drunk and I made love all night, just like a sick dog.
Sometimes we suffer too much reality in the space of a single night. We get undressed, we’re horrified. We’re aware the mirror sounds like a watch, the mirror from which your cry will pour out, your laceration.
Night opens itself only once. It’s enough. You see. You’ve seen. Fear of being two in the mirror, and suddenly we’re four. We cry, we moan, my fear, my joy more horrible than my fear, my visceral words, my words are keys that lock me into a mirror, with you, but ever alone. And I am well aware what night is made of. We’ve fallen so completely into jaws that didn’t expect this sacrifice, this condemnation of my eyes which have seen. I speak of a discovery: felt the I in sex, sex in the I. I speak of burying everyday fear to secure the fear of an instant. The purest loss. But who’ll say: you don’t cry anymore at night? Because madness is also a lie. Like night. Like death.
Desire needlessly spills on me a cursed liqueur. For my thirsty thirst, what can the promise of eyes do? I speak of something not in this world. I speak of someone whose purpose is elsewhere.
And I was naked in memory of the white night. Drunk and I made love all night, just like a sick dog.
Sometimes we suffer too much reality in the space of a single night. We get undressed, we’re horrified. We’re aware the mirror sounds like a watch, the mirror from which your cry will pour out, your laceration.
Night opens itself only once. It’s enough. You see. You’ve seen. Fear of being two in the mirror, and suddenly we’re four. We cry, we moan, my fear, my joy more horrible than my fear, my visceral words, my words are keys that lock me into a mirror, with you, but ever alone. And I am well aware what night is made of. We’ve fallen so completely into jaws that didn’t expect this sacrifice, this condemnation of my eyes which have seen. I speak of a discovery: felt the I in sex, sex in the I. I speak of burying everyday fear to secure the fear of an instant. The purest loss. But who’ll say: you don’t cry anymore at night? Because madness is also a lie. Like night. Like death.
My first look I said to myself this isn't a poem, but it very much is (plus I must remember the first rule of poetry: there are no rules in poetry). The images are strong, the use of repetition is well done, and the drawing back to the mirrors is great. Mirrors are always fun symbols, but here the mirror is dark and painful. The use of pronouns works. Usually switching pronouns and perspectives is confusing, but the narrator connects us as readers to her perfectly. You, I and we. "We cry, we moan, my fear, my joy more horrible than my fear, my visceral words, my words are keys that lock me into a mirror, with you, but ever alone." what powerful writing.
ReplyDeleteDid the narrator lose her virginity, get raped, or both? Pop culture paints losing your virginity as a boy this embarrassing poor performance, and for girls it's not enjoyable but will be later. In this poem it is a dark, scary, and forever haunting.
Overall sadness, feeling of loss, of separation of times- the used to be and the now..
ReplyDelete"when the body is a glass and from ourselves and from the other we drink some kind of impossible water..."- I love this line and its implication of the need to FILL ourselves up...with sex, with another...with the impossible water. The author uses many liquid references throughout the poem, drink, spill, liqueur, thirst, drunk- even sex as a symbol of the fluidity of emotion, of being poured one way and then the other. And the mirror- seeing all...
Do you ever look in a mirror as say- "that is me. this person looking back IS ME?" Every once in a while this happens when I put on makeup...when many of the other days you think about the face in the mirror as a palette, as the face you are putting makeup onto, but not as your face. Strange- maybe women spend more time in mirrors than men- thus the inevitable inquiry.
Confliction of the mind...of desire and then loss- it feels like the loss of virginity to me...wanting something so bad and then getting exactly what you asked for- feeling like two different people in the mirror- the head and the heart. "Because madness is also a lie. Like night. Like death." Another favorite for me- Madness/Night/Death...groupings of darkness, of things made within the mind.