Honest (Second Period English)
I. Ambiguation of excerpts
from Simon & The Oaks by Marianne
Frederiksson
The sea,
flavored with salt and song,
leaped into the depths
of my impenetrably grey heart.
Blue light,
grey land,
a soul yearning
flesh and bone,
marrow of you foals,
struck the wide expanses,
the days we called enchanted,
reaching for skin longing birth
when goes a lightless horizon.
A wrath designed clear,
forgotten images of a man,
a boy in divine years,
pronounced such an arousal!
Now came the mindless sorrows of a dance
and those thick layers
of eagerly welcomed brands.
As your sweat drips over me,
I poison your boredom.
I entice monotony
with the rhythms of my hips
and the warmthness of my words.
I hug you and kiss you
‘til your walls skip beats,
love in venture needing
more of what I speak.
Honey, I’m dangerous.
With my all,
you’ll learn to lose
that tiny, tasty, squiggly heart
like a bird getting shot
in the only leg it’s got.
Just keep flying, baby.
Keep flying.
II. Imitating
“Genealogy” by Betsy Sholl
One of my parents was a rock in land,
the other a pebble in water.
One was stagnant at sea,
the other a weed at bay.
In the night I’d wake
to a hollow scream
and the faint smell
of substitute dreams.
One of my parents was
a chipped ounce of paint,
the other a
melting cube of ice.
The ideogram tattooed on my lower back
is the one for a woman packing
her stolen bags.
One of my parents was
a legless grasshopper,
the other a
senseless, deceiving foot,
both I carried into the night,
convinced this could no longer be home.
One of my parents I drank, the other I dreamed.
In the revolving door of my becoming,
one came to life
and burst into pieces.
Thus, my troubled birth,
my unfathomable nostalgia.
One was a ram,
the other a crab.
How they amused each other
in the end.
One was a woman,
the other a man.
I was so ashamed
of losing my past,
embarrassed I could no longer
picture us last.
I was someone,
so I thought,
calling across
my missing steps
to a family
I wish I could have.
