SHROUD

Self-portrait

inside falling

 

I am splintering

inside falling

No way back

to body calling

 

Earth is shifting

axis flying

No control

is no denying

 

Fear unleashed

of  mad dimension

No recalling

from suspension

 

All belief

that light prevails

where secrets live

to tell no tales

 

Nothing left

inside this place

as full, yet empty

all of space

 

All the voices

crowding 'round

I fall apart

without a sound.

 

 

c.MarleneAzoulai2009

BODY PARTS

 

            She’s got a body that’s everywhere

Body parts to fit any landscape

 

She’s a nation, war-torn, with a man walking all over her

   on the six o’clock news

He’s an American Goliath standing on a map of the world,

   making a war accessible

“This is where it’s happening,” he says

     standing on her navel

“They’re coming down from the mountains.”

     (Even her secret hiding places

      those tiny trails through the woods

      are being ravaged)

He walks on

“We could bring American troops in here,” he says

    standing on her knee

 

 

A picture on the screen

of a child with no arms 

of a man with one leg

of twelve year-old girls

strip-searched and raped

held down, penetrated

and sown by the enemy

“You’re mine,” says the soldier

”You’re conquered.”

His seed grows

She rips it from her belly

with her own hands,

bloody and salted with tears.

“What do you want from me?!” she screams

“More land,” he answers

 

 

And when she cries,

   this woman of body parts like the earth ransacked

   the tears only flow from one of her eyes

  the one she’s been left with to cry from

   a madwoman’s eye with the world in it

   and fear looking out

Her left eye cries

   a river of tears

 

She’s a tenement in the ghetto with her windows busted out

   and torn curtains flapping like bandages in the breeze

Her cunt a crack palace, smoke-filled

   with dreams by the score

   burnt into ashes

She’s knee-deep in death with an arm full of holes

   and the Lord’s prayer in her veins

Thy will be done,Thy kingdom is come

   wet and slick

And her body, the street silver-edged like a switchblade

   cutting the night into bite-sized pieces

She’s for sale

Her body parts hollow

   empty of wishing that there’s anywhere else to go

 

Her children are shipwrecked in the waters of Lethe

   that place in hell where lives are forgotten

   and souls rent asunder

   like a face in the mirror with one fist shattered

   too many pieces to fit together again

 

She’s a lit slit of neon strip  in the Las Vegas desert

   a slot machine jackpot of possibility

   a hot swollen clit with a G-spot inside

They’re coming in droves, looking for it

The big score

Strip-mining her dry as she glitters and writhes

   side-winding her way through the Las Vegas night

 

She’s a flame-throwing sword-swallowing mirage of a woman

Her blood flowing down the boulevard like abundance itself

She’s the Red Sea parting

   complete with fishes and multiplying loaves, there for the taking.

 

She’s satisfaction guaranteed and topless tonight

   with tassels on her teats, swinging this way and that

   like planets rotating out of sync, for ten cents a pop

   while coins, like chains clanking, clinking, fall into cups.

 

She’s big and round and packed solid like a fortress

   with a wounded child inside

    wearing three year-old shoes

    a six year-old blue dress

    and eight year-old panties 

    with the days of the week sewn on

    and she doesn’t remember the days

    that she lost

    where she put them

     in the dollhouse she lived in

     too tiny for words

     curled up like a snail in a shell

     in a box in a drawer.

 

And now she’s huge, a fat circus lady

   with memories of Hiroshima and Chernobyl

   Nagasaki and Bhopal, in the folds of her flesh

If you listen close,  you hear children keening

   like women wailing the dead

 

She’s the last breath taken  by the last of its kind

Extinction,  a song never heard again

She’s the hour between night and dawn

   when the earth stands still to mourn her loss

   the decimation of whale  wolf   rhino 

   elephant    eagle

   of virgin forests highly prized

   slashed and burned

   their body parts sold to the highest bidder

 

She’s a spider-woman with eyes all around her head

   looking to the past present and future

   weaving her web of Fate

On the edge of a cliff on one foot balanced

   she’s one woman dancing her arms to the sky

One woman dancing to the beat of the drum

   at the heart of the earth

Spiraling in to gather her selves

   her body parts together

Reclaiming her landscape

 

 

©2010MarleneAzoulai