Friday, May 30, 2008

I Plucked a Cell of Me and Filled it With Yolk

well,
I plucked a cell of me and filled it with yolk.
and folded in memories of my mother and father.

and i chose me a man to strip myself bare with.
and i chose him to become a suckling child with.
i chose me a man to become sweaty with
a man to incite my egg to grow.
and i became slimy inside, and he put himself in me
and we set to scratching our itches to swells of excitement
to set the passage ways squirting and yearning
and he thundershowered millions of raindrops into me
swimming little critters of himself into me,
mixed memories of his fathers and mothers into me
and I rippled with pleasure calling them deeper
to join with myself, my eggself if they could.
and they raced with each other and they with fought each other
and they swam for a day
till they landed on the yolky shore of my eggself
and she chose only one and she ate him
and they joined themselves to be you.

and all his other selves died, and i expelled them.

and you, the lucky one,
started out like a mushroom,
then you swelled to a jelly fish
then you folded into a worm and you almost died,
as your brother did when he folded the wrong way, and i expelled him.

but you rippled into a fish finally
swimming in my watery womb
behind my belly button memory of my mother.

but you weren't really a fish,
your gills didn't work to breath in my waters
couldn't breath the oxygen dissolved in my waters,
there was no krill in my wombsea to eat
so i wove myself to you again
and i bled into you and you bled into me. and you almost killed me.

then you became a newt.
then you became a mouse.
then you became a scratching kicking puppy and it was time to let you out.

so i pushed and you held on
and i pushed harder and you screamed silently kicking
and i pushed and i dumped out my wombwaters leaving you soggy,
and i screamed
and it was hell,
an all night wrestling match,
and i might have hated you for a moment or two
till i finally tore you from me bleeding placenta
and pushed you into the world all bloody and slimy, and i almost died again.

and our shared arteries were severed
and your muscles thought fast
and closed like fists around them forever
separating our bloodtides lest you bled to death
and your eyes blinked in the light for the first time
and you felt the cold dry air for the first time
and you had to cough the warm womb water from your lungs
to breath in the fiery oxygen for the first time
and you yelled your lungs into breath.
and i fainted.
and you woke up to your own long frightening journey.

and i grew great sweat pimples from my chest into breasts
and filled them with milk from my fat
and you swam, a fish again, on my belly
and you sucked my milky waters and i warmed you.


we tried to stay together, you,
my fish swimming in my breasty sea,
but dammit you kept growing.

first you were a fish,
then you were a larva with giant oggling laughing head,
then your eyes focussed,
then your hands grasped,
then you learned to eat
and my seeping springs of milk ran dry.

then your fingers became intelligent.
then you got on your feet and walked from me to explore the world.
and you imagined yourself into a separate being and feared the night.

and that's where you came from

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Love this poem, what was the inspiration? Imiss my own little crashbag fish now that he is on his feet walking away from me to explore on his own. It has been interesting to see the bits of his father and bits of his mother's mothers and fathers and the whole of his own new self.