the original…

by doreen peri

Posted to Utterances on 2002-12-07 14:05:00

Parent message is 335746
… was a collaboration we wrote together here on utterances…. what litnrod posted on action and on the other site where he is now no longer welcome.. geesh… was a cut up from parts of the original piece

here’s the original collaboration, just in case you’re interested in reading

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So the cat stuck his nose out the door and said, “forget it.” And I’ll never be able to do a writing exercise tonight, not tonight when my brain is a pith pudding and all my ideas are like ducks with their heads under the water. Fishing for minnows and christmas carols my pall mall drops ash on my fingers on the keyboard and still the minnows flee in wet desperation like an exercise an exercise to limber up on literature’s soft head. Onion soup is good for a night like this cheese on top and very hot. You pick your way through Brahms and I remember what your fingers can do. It’s a night for exercises. The fingers of the aloe reach upward. Inside of you—slippery as a gel. Your clit is like a minnow swimming upstream into the net of my ideas. It is firm and wiggles and lives in wettness– a tadpole in arousal. This is an exercise round and round.

ten minutes here, ten minutes there, one keyboard and then the next – you serenade me with your new york state of mind and mine is full of chelsea memories, the chattering complaining wrinkled woman who was cold, the old desk clerk who told us bob dylan was there and janis and when we entered the sweating room, pale yellow plaster walls echoing film from a photo op, perhaps, your arms surrounding me like saturn’s rings, i knew – this wasn’t any simple journey to new york, this was a certain type of praising resembling a prayer…. remember the very tall buildings there?

arm in arm we let the streets carry us, from deli to bed, while overhead the moon became our guide, your chapeaux hung on the headboard, my truths poured into a glass, an ice trick waiting to be performed.

tonight i see your form in sillouhette, light precariously indirect and sweet the repeating of rhythmic base, i see your face surrounded by swirls of smoke making your halo bright as i fight off the desire to interrupt your accompaniment to my words and mine to yours which i cling to hard and fast.
ten minutes. ten minutes. ten minutes. add them up, stacked back to back, one and then the next. eternal moments can’t be tracked.

you serenade me and you make me believe.
are their tricks up your sleeve? i often wonder

Ten minutes. A world can be born in ten minutes—a child conceived. In ten minutes buildings can tumble down or the Titanic can go to the bottom. In ten minutes universes can turn and theories can be born. In ten minutes houses can burn and in ten minutes things that took years to build can go to rubble. In ten minutes history can take a new color and in ten minutes we can find courage or crumble in fear. In ten minutes love can be discovered or dropped like a plate. Ten minutes for consummation or holocaust. I’ll wait ten minutes for you.

i have waited ten minutes times ten minutes time ten minutes ten times ten and ten years more for you, at least. I cannot count the number of beats my heart missed, wondering if or when and i defend my right to believe! I defend it as if i am on death row, having witnessed the murdering of Time with blame and doubt by those who have designed and desired my blinding, making me lame, trying to tame me. But I am a lioness wild, a child of the earth, my birth continues. I could not allow accusatory remarks or stark theories of judgementalness to bury me. The umbilical chord is still attached. I am connected to earth and sky and i am continually questioning why but sometimes there are no hard and sure answers to anything at all. All i know is, when you called on me to help you analyze the timing of miracles, i wasn’t able to verbalize my reasoning. Mercury is a fluid liquid. It rolls on my palm, hot and round like your seed and as i feed you my thoughts, i bleed seconds of lost, evasive ticks on the clock.

ten minutes can mark destiny with a second hand
and erase or create understanding.
so can one.
so can one.

The lioness. Which brings us back to the cat pressing his nose to the glass. It’s too cold outside. Even for ten minutes. It’s the chill factor and the risk factor. Your reefers are too twisted. Let me roll. The sky poises itself in grey for snow, and if I tease you about your joints or your experience or your non-experience you will take it personally either way and think I am mocking you for letting it come out the ends. Then the sky or the snow will fall. My seed is hot as Mercury. It skates on the rim of the Sun. When Mercury is in perihedron, non-dancing feet get blisters. My joint is blunt and wet. Pull on my orbit, like a dark planet hidden in my eclipse. Blunt and wet as my member in your dark recesses. My seed skates on your face like Mercury skating on the helioshphere. Hot and molten as new life and rememberance. One orbit; one seed; ten minutes

don’t talk to me about cold.
my fingers become yellowed, white,
numb, frozen on thin ice, skates
sliced in until the blades make way
into my torn spirit;
there are horns being blown
from mountaintops.
there are horns being blown.
do you hear it?
do you hear it?

mercury’s a lost planet.
jupiter is dead.
the only rings i see
are circular, around
your head and i am not
twisted; i am straight
and sure as your passion.

please do not ration
me the universe.
i give my ten minutes
in an hourglass.
turn me upside down
and upside down again.
count the grains
of sand.

don’t talk to me about cold.
just let me hold
you; understand.

So if you number your loves by the planets
I am a comet quite outside your system
Jupiter is made of gas. Gravity has no wings.
Leaden as Neptune. The comet’s ice is slung
We only imagine it’s period if predictable.
If you touch me with fingers cold as death
I will warm them and give them blood for memory.
I am not a planet. Perhaps a particle yet undiscovered
Smaller than a quark and elusive. Mathematical as Bach
Whimsical as Mozart. Bombastic as Beethoven or Wagner.
Ten minutes is an eternity of madness and joy
Ten minutes a sonata or a souffle

i do not count or number encounters
with stars; orion’s belt is just a row of them,
his sword sharp by the side of lightyears
slain by maps of the sky incorrectly drawn,
the scale and legend wrong.

you are not a planet, no.
and yet you are saturn, so subtle, so bold.
maybe pegasus was just horsing around.
who am i to know?

meet me in ten
in eternity
and madness
with candlelight aglow

then
let me know
your classical phrasing.

that would be amazing.
i will be filled with wonder,
thunder quelled by the swell
of lightning rod, grounding me
again, but who’s counting the times?

i do not count or number encounters
with stars; there are many constellations.

today, the sun comes up after last night’s
curtain pulled the shade on yesterday and
i don’t care if my ten minutes are up because
i have something to say and i thank you for listening.

it’s amazing to me how much
you resemble
the design of the sky.
your eyes have starfire
and i am in awe
of how you rise
from beneath
clay surfaces,
seeds fertalized,
stems emerging,
connected, the blossom
merging with the sky.

who am i
to say?
who am i?
i’m just a music lover
listening to my own sighs.

madness and joy.
madness and joy.
a sonata or a souffle.

outside the inside orbit
of what can be and what can not,
who knows?
who can say.


12.4.2002
doreen & ltnrod