Friday, October 27, 2006

Some St. Germain

This is a poet my wife introduced me too when we still lived in Texas. I love the way she writes- so revealing, honest, unflinching- just so damned good! Here is her website: http://www.sherylstgermain.com/

Here is one of her poems that I really like.

Addiction
The truth is I loved it,
the whole ritual of it,the way he would fist up his arm, then
hold it out so trusting and bare,
the vein pushed up all blue and throbbing
and wanting to be pierced,
his opposite hand gripped tight as death
around the upper arm,

the way I would try to enter the vein,
almost parallel to the arm,
push lightly but firmly, not
too deep,
you don't want to go through
the vein, just in,
then pull back until you see
blood, then

hold the needle very still, slowly
shoot him with it.
Like that I would enter him,
slowly, slowly, very still,
don't move,
then he would let the fist out,
loosen his grip on the upper arm--


and oh, the movement of his lips
when he asked that I open my arms.How careful,
how good he was, sliding the needle silver and slender
so easily into me, as though
my skin and veins were made for it,
and when he had finished, pulled
it out, I would be coming
in my fingers, hands, my ear lobes
were coming, heart, thighs,
tongue, eyes and brain were coming,
thick and brilliant as the last thin match
against a homeless bitter cold.

I even loved the pin-sized bruises,
I would finger them alone in my room
like marks of passion;
by the time they turned yellow,
my dreams were full of needles.

We both took lovers who loved
this entering and being entered,
but when he brought over the
pale-faced girl so full of needle hole
she had to lay her on her back
like a corpse and stick the needle
over and over in her ankle veins
to find one that wasn't weary
of all that joy, I became sick
with it, but

you know, it still stalks my dreams,
and deaths make no difference:
there is only the body's huge wanting.

When I think of my brother
all spilled out on the floorI say nothing to anyone.I know what it's like to want joy
at any cost.

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

The recent spate of school shootings has got me pissed off. The last two weren't even students killing students but adults killing students. Unfortunately school shootings aren't new and we haven't heard the last of them. However, what's most disturbing is that the perps of the last two school shootings were men with sex issues.

This doesn't speak well for our society. We have televison programs setting up sting operations to capture men who want to have sex with children, every couple of months we hear of female teachers having sex with a students, hell, just recently there was a politician (Foley) who was busted for sending inappropriate emails to teenage pages.

We need to "out" sex. We can't keep it locked up in the bedroom any longer. We can't keep it a taboo subject. It's all over tv, radio, and books; it seems like everyone is laughing about, joking about it, writing about it, singing about, everything except TALKING about it.

Sex is fun and it's great. It isn't some dirty thing to be ashamed off. Sure this great country was founded on WASP values, but those values just don't apply anymore. We can't keep suppressing, ignoring, evading our feelings about sex. Does this mean that men should rape little girls and boys, that women should be allowed to prey on kids? NO NO NO! What I am saying is that we have members of our society that have problems with sex and they feel too ashamed to get help and to talk about their problems. Our society doesn't want to hear it. Our society thinks that by not talking about sex, it isn't happening.

Well, the consequences of that line of thinking is quite evident.