Minor insomniac poetry

My stubborn insomnia

so much like me:

proud,

determined

and infinitely foolish.

I’d make a good vampire:

nocturnal and broody

disenchanted,

existential.

I surely know how to draw blood.

Afraid to see my sadness in a picture

On the fringe

These days I feel like

I’m living on the fringe,

out of control,

not very motherly of me,

but I’m off the hook

the baby died.

He/she doesn’t need me to be a good mom

or folic acid.

My other baby is growing up,

and she mothers me from time to time

(though my therapist frowns upon it.)

I don’t sleep well

no one taught me how.

My daughter is trying to teach me:

she says you only have to close your eyes

and think of something soft.

I guess I don't have enough soft things

to think about.

I’m reckless

with my body,

it may be my temple,

but I want to deface it.

No worries,

there is nothing sacred inside.

Not anymore.

I wake up early,

I do my chores,

I teach M her letters.

I mostly worry.

But I’m drunk with the vertigo of wakefulness,

I need to be knocked out.

I read well into the night.

I write from time to time.

Tomorrow I will wake up in time,

I won’t hit snooze,

it won’t be easy or pretty

but I’ll do it.

I’m not expected to be a good human being,

to eat on schedule

and go to bed at a sensible time.

No need to scold me,

the world does not feel the need to berate me.

I do a far better job

I'm a cotton ball

"I'm a cotton ball"

M said proverbially with all the abundant wisdom of her four years of age.

I humbly asked for an explanation, full aware that my ignorance of the term showed my poorly evolved and pedestrian mind.

What I was able to understand from her explanation is that dolls are stuffed with cotton and/or their hair is made of it. And that the silly crazy girls who deliver ingenious one-liners (such as herself) are cotton balls.

She called herself one after an effervescent display of zaniness.

She's like a cotton ball

weightless

and fleeting

as bubbles of champagne.

She's light

like a golden spec of dust

like a dandelion blowing in the wind.

Cotton balls do not possess the insanity of tortured poets. 

M's quirkiness is far above 

and I read it in her cotton candy smiles.

I have not reincarnated enough.

I'm not transcended enough

to reach that cloud-like state of being.

 

But I'll dream every night of being a cotton ball.

La femme violente

A couple years ago I wrote a post in Spanish about how a woman writes violence. It reflected on the word "hysteria", the concept for those unable to control their emotions, and forged specifically for women (the root of the word is Latin for uterus.)

The stigma we face as women is being perceived as beings unable to control their emotions, and therefore, our actions and beliefs lose their importance.

Even though today hysterics are not perceived as a strictly feminine ailment, women are still seen as primary emotional beings.

We all suffer like Cassandra, unbelieved and ignored because we are PMSing, or we're going through menopause.

But instead of stating that we are cold and unemotional I say that there is an inherent violence within me.

I know nothing else.

I deeply feel,

and my body,

the female body,

is primal.


It withstands violence,

the flesh rips,

it changes,

it breaks with each destructive wave.


But my mind is sharp because of the violence that fuels it.


A good friend told me a few weeks ago, that women are capable of enduring great pain and rising above because of their nature, because their essence and ability for bearing life (and the pain experienced when that promise of new life is taken away).

I don't shy away from the fact that I am a constant cataclysm inside.

I don't live and think in spite of it,

but because of it.


* "Ajax and Cassandra" painting by pre-raphaelite artist Solomon Joseph Solomon