Tuesday, August 21, 2007

What a midday nap can do

I don't know how many people I've told this, but I do know this is the first time I have said it here: I love--I am in love with words. Words stay with me like emotions. Without them I don't know how I would function. I don't talk a lot (most of the time, no really, I don't like to hear myself talk) but I think a lot. Sometimes too much. Sometimes too much about the wrong things.

It baffles me when people say they don't like to read. It's like saying you don't like music. Good writing is music. Good writing is the elevator into a genius' imagination. It inspires and encourages ideas like nothing else, including life itself, can. Right now I am reading Toni Morrison's Sula, and while her work is sometimes challenging, to be frank, there is beauty in her writing I just indulge in like dark chocolate (so yummy!). Reading this book gave me two ideas, one I'll get to in a minute, and one I hope to develop more with this blog of mine. Actually the second idea is one I've had for a while, but this book is calling me to get busy.



But without further ado, I have a new work in progress, which is as yet untitled...Look now, the ink is still fresh. I fell asleep after reading and woke up with this etched in my brain:

Untitled
I yearned for you to the marrow of my bones
learned the lines of your skin
and imagined your hair in my fingertips.
I craved the taste of your teeth in my mouth
swam in the black of your irises
and understood the curve in your lips was
not a smirk but pure pain.

Your voice was a raspy lullaby
no other man could ever sing

In pen, I traced you beside
the paper doll that was me
hoping forever would outlast the hell of
being without you.
It was not my song I wrote on your skin--
it was yours--
Don't
stop
singing
to
me.


I have sung all the songs there are
even with different notes
There aren't any new songs
but yours.

No one ever sung lyrics
so plain
so dark
so chilling
so sweet
no song ever pierced my marrow
like yours.

Though we don't speak anymore
your song still haunts me
the chill in my bones
tells me when you are near
because I am your song--
no one else sings it better.

And no matter that you tore me up
shredded my woman doll
I always return to the beginning
where there aren't any new songs--
just you, because
I have sung all the songs
all the songs
I have sung all the songs there are.

JGH 2007

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