I am afraid of getting older … I am afraid of getting married. Spare me from cooking three meals a day—spare me from the relentless cage of routine and rote. I want to be free…. I want, I want to think, to be omniscient…. I think I would like to call myself ‘The girl who wanted to be God.’
“Can’t you picture it—gangs of girls—teenage girls in gangs all across america, breaking through boundaries of race and class and sexual identity, girls so strong together that they don’t listen to people who tell them they are stupid or that they don’t mean anything because they don’t really exist—girls so strong together that no one dares to fuck with them when they are walking down the street—girls so strong together that they learn to help out their moms and help them to get away from their dads when necessary….GIRL SOLDIERS….we need jackets. And just think of the books that will be written, the cultures that will arise, the bands, the movies that will be made etc.”
— Tobi Vail, 1991
They say you die twice. One time when you stop breathing and a second time, a bit later on, when somebody says your name for the last time.
I pretend I don’t love it
when you hold my hand in public,
when you catch a wild hair in the net of your fingers,
when you kiss me right in front of the gas station cashier.I remember we live in a big city.
I secretly imagine the scandal we could cause
if we lived in a small town, where everyone knew your name
and your bed: how our love would spill like paint cans
across old wooden porches. It would seep
between the cracks of the floorboards,
the way I live beneath your fingernails
when you go home to her.
I poured everything I had into you and you were still empty.
We are sticking the undertow of teeth into the night as morning undresses us slowly
we kings of cosmopolitan love and
princes of nihilistic suffering
we are tragedies we wish we never spoke of
we will not be the cashed-bowl
breaking-synapse story of unreciprocated love
they are beyond us
there are many broken bedfellows to see when we lay down and love for each other.
You are the sun
in reverse, all energy
flows into you and is
abolished; you refuse
houses, you smell of
catastrophe, I see you
blind and one-handed, flashing
in the dark, trees breaking
under your feet, you demand,
you demandI lie mutilated beside
you; beneath us there are
sirens, fires, the people run
squealing, the city
is crushed and gutted,
the ends of your fingers bleed
from 1000 murdersPutting on my clothes
again, retreating, closing doors
I am amazed / I can continue
to think, eat, anythingHow can I stop you
Why did I create you
She hated the namelessness of women in stories, as if they lived and died so that men could have metaphysical insights.
I’ve lived to bury my desires,
And see my dreams corrode with rust;
Now all that’s left are fruitless fires
That burn my empty heart to dust.
darknesstohislight 