poetry | elfSPEAK

May 07 2006

frankenstein pinocchio

Category: books,love,poetry,relationships,sex — littleREDelf @ 5:27 pm

::: ::: ::: :::

“Shall I tell you something?” asked Pinocchio, who was beginning to
lose patience. “Of all the trades in the world, there is only one that
really suits me.”

“And what can that be?”

“That of eating, drinking, sleeping, playing, and wandering
around from morning till night.”

“Let me tell you, for your own good, Pinocchio,” said the
Talking Cricket in his calm voice, “that those who follow that
trade always end up in the hospital or in prison.”

~ The Adventures of Pinocchio - Carlo Collodi

::: ::: ::: :::

“How mutable are our feelings, and how strange is that
clinging love we have of life even in the excess of misery!”

~ Frankenstein - Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

::: ::: ::: :::

frankenstein pinocchio

my life is full of wooden boys,
an onslaught of Pinocchios.
liars with long noses to hang
a hundred stories on.
heads on swivels, arms and legs
bendable, poseable into human
machinations of affection,
no strings attached.
“First the Medicine
and Then the Sugar,
Oh no no, first the sugar
and then I promise…”

and me, i want a real LIVE boy.
so tired of the paranoid android
who longs to feel emotion
but expresses it in private brevity:
the mechas simulating sex
with the orgas who can sleep
delving the deep underwater
dreams of The Blue Fairy.

a motherless creation is inevitably
monstrous, so please pardon yourself
for this intrusion in advance . . .
with blinded sight i might ask, why do
i attract the transitional and not the intact?

my modern day Prometheus,
if you love like a cadaver, cool and pale,
it will take more than four elements,
more than stealing fire from the gods to
set me alight. you teach me your alchemy
then snuff me, a red taper beneath
a black bowl if the beaker should boil over.

i will not piece together flesh nor hack
a branch from a tree and call it life.
i will make firewood of you, boy,
have the cat make sawdust of your feet.

love makes a wooden boy real,
kindness makes a monster human,
i will be your Pandora, but i will not be refused.
my dowry is this box, and the last of all gifts
in it, is my hope.

~ Andrea E. Janda

Tags: Frankenstein, Pinocchio, poem

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Apr 04 2006

song bird

Category: love,nature,poetry — littleREDelf @ 11:32 pm

something moved, sparkled
and i began untying knots
nimble fingers rifling through
the jewelry box, digging
deftly sorting rings, hoops
and chains and things with teeth,
gathered them up and plucked
them out, separate as harp strings.

the stories came tumbling then,
and ghosts breathed out, back
into incarnate skin, turned to
dance but stumbled and i went
yellow then green and mango red
to the tango hidden in the licks of violin.
that quick taste masqueraded as a kiss
and burned my mouth like cinnamon.

gypsies know each other by flavor;
we send blackbirds and grackles,
recognize the dark eyes, otherness
and cats with raised hackles, wearing
question marks on their tails as
they approach and sailor, i’d answer you
if i knew who you aren’t, if i could
coax you in by your wind-torn sails.

so make way love, if that isn’t
your name; i still have room enough
to draw the moon-shaped blade
from the stocking top, from the boot
strap, from the winter warm place
i’ve saved for the never-met familiar
whose passion precision hands are
safe enough to draw the down pillow
away from the small of my back and
cup me cozy as an egg with a spoon
as i am so very ready to crack.

i will welcome you in knee-high socks
with garden dirt under my nails, guitar-
scaled, blistered fingertips, blustery-
weathered eyes, laughter on my lips,
arms/legs moved apart, ribs split, ready
for reaching heart. and our language
will whistle-chirp, a bird-like canter
begging to borrow breathing fleshtones
and breaking wanton bones against
that long-dead banter.

i will put my pretty things away, untangled,
become them instead, take tea and call crow,
unblacken the day with blackberried jam bread.
digging deftly sorting rings, hoops and chains
and things with teeth. i will gather you up and
let us be plucked, separate as harp strings
thrumming one warble, liquidly sung.
let me move against you like water . . .
and moisten your avian tongue.

~ Andrea E. Janda

Tags: banter, birds, canter, egg, hands, knee-high, lips, love, passion, rings, strings, teeth

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Oct 22 2005

tapioca

Category: health,love,myth,poetry,psychology,sex — littleREDelf @ 11:31 am

lap at pudding
and self-beauty
because sometimes,
hero-worship is healthy
and you can paint yourself
in new, glorious colours
like bruise-purple
and green
and concrete, statuesque
white.
make certain to be
an audible soul.
take great strides to be pure
and god-like,
exalt in your pleasure precision
use your fingers as eyes . . .
throw back your
silk-lined neck
with the laughter of nymphs.
. . . be sure to taste like tapioca.

~Andrea E. Janda

Tags: beauty, bruise, nymphs, pleasure, poem, precision, sould, tapioca, taste, white, worship

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Oct 11 2005

ex nihilo

Category: food,language,myth,poetry,relationships — littleREDelf @ 9:15 pm

when i couldn’t speak
she drew me a circle
there were no words to communicate
the shape i didn’t understand
but her circle did not close
and it turned outward on itself
and i was sad to see it
stop.
she called it “spiral”
and i begged for her to complete it
until it reached the ends of the paper
and continued on to the table
and pooled onto the floor,
heavy like honey.
she pointed to pasta and said it again
she held up a loaf of bread and smiled
and the word spread across the face
of a warm round slice
like butter.
then to dessert and moved her mouth
as if to kiss
and motioned towards dessert and said “swirl”
to the red and yellow
giving spiral a surname
an “S” alias whisper with an “L” for a tail
that taps the roof with her tongue
and runs down the slick back of teeth
like a secret.
i learn her language
and the shapes move out to where
i can no longer see the edge of her world.

~ Andrea E. Janda

Tags: bread, butter, circle, communicate, honey, kiss, language, mouth, pasta, poem, shapes, spriral, swirl, teeth, triple goddess, world

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Jun 08 2005

i can run on anything – or binding, releasing . . .

Category: food,friends,marriage,photography,poetry,relationships,writing — littleREDelf @ 7:00 am

:::
the head is a crown
a trap with teeth when open,
abound when clamped,
asleep and all these tendrils
of light and ferns
bring inner life
as the outer one burns . . .
:::

Sometimes, it’s impossible to escape your own mind. constant flow of worries and random tasks and preoccupation, consternation, mental masturbation trying to make yourself feel good by arranging, stretching, reordering and so, if you’re like me, you must take it and remove it from the psychic plane, untie the lines, and move it to the physical plane . . . DO something to make it quiet in there with meditative motions. binding. release.

i’ve been spending a lot of nice time with Megan – afternoon lunches, wine drinking, music listening, all of this in preparation for her wedding. we’ve been attending hot hot hot Hot Yoga classes at a nice studio. This is where they heat the room from 90-103 degrees, you wear next to nothing and bend yourself, working slowly into poses in which sweat drips into your eyes from the bridge of your nose, off your fingertips as it rolls down your arms, and you appear to be boffing the invisible. it’s pretty sexy . . . with poses and binding that undo the bindings. release.

One evening, Megan, her friend Violet and i spent a few hours tying chopsticks together with red ribbons: a dragon on one, a phoenix on the other, and the bride and groom’s names on both. These chopsticks were intended as wedding favors for a Chinese Banquet (which i will get to later . . . ) we did this until our fingertips were red-pink like they get when you eat an entire bag of red-dyed pistachio nuts during a Sunday nite movie marathon. (not that i’ve ever done this) This ribbon-affixing job took two bottles of wine to complete . . . i often gauge the difficulty of a job by the number of wine bottles it takes to complete. binding. release.

In between, i brewed a pot of blood orange tea while the three of us sat, steeped, traded stories, broke out the tortilla chips and salsa and somewhere in there, marinated a salmon filet, steamed some spinach and yellow rice all the while, still tying the red ribbons around chopsticks. binding. release.

Megan’s then fiancé, now husband and i went for a late nite walk down to the water after the chopsticks were all tied. It began to rain and he, a gentleman offering his coat asked, “Would you like a hood?”

And me, Red Riding Hood in training quipped, “No thank you, i have hair.” That nite, the three of us sat on a bench by the water and made up one of the most ridiculous parodies sung to the tune of “They can’t take that away from me.” It was a strangely sinister diddy about living in an abusive relationship. And i think now, it was funny, because we laugh at the things we are most afraid of. We cracked ourselves up, though – and really, Michael and Megan are a wonderful couple.

Which leads me to the photos and Megan’s wedding day. It began innocently enough, except for some odd reason, i couldn’t get my car to start, which sent me into a minor panic. We keep a drum of biodiesel on our property which we fill at a station further out as all of our cars are diesel engines and it’s convenient to have and cleaner burning. The morning before the wedding i was running late to work and filled up a container and dumped it into my tank. All i could think was something was wrong with the biodiesel, water in it, too cold of an engine to get it gong. My car was running REALLY sludgy. i called Brooks’ brother at work.

“Hey Jesse, my car is having a hard time starting, cranking really hard and all that. Is something wrong that it won’t tolerate the fuel mix?”

“Oh – did you use the white drum in the garage corner, because that’s cooking oil.”

Jesse then explained he was doing a conversion to an old Mercedes so that installing something to preheat the oil would allow the car to run on it as a regular fuel. i didn’t quite have that luxury and so, just so you know and for fun future reference . . . Mercedes CAN run on fucking WESSON oil.

In any event i had allowed myself plenty of time, got on the road, refilled and evened out the mix and arrived before the bride returned from her hair and nail appointments, so all was good.

The wedding was lovely – FAST, but lovely. The bridal party wore red (my favorite) and all the trees glowed with that same burning . . . The ONLY hitch/drawback was that ever present threat and problem . . . MORE photographers than agreed on. The groom’s mother had asked two friends to shoot some photos for the family and so, there i was jockeying for position and competing with flash banks. It was a bit of a nitemare, but i still think i produced some decent shots. Particularly when we went on a walk and i had more control. And hey – if i didn’t get it all, i’m certain the rest of the family can provide some additional photos.

The wedding was on a Thursday and that Sunday, the Chinese side of Megan’s new family, the inlaws hosted a Chinese Banquet which Brooks and i attended. This was 10 courses of lazy-susaned passed food, some of it very palatable, some of it exotic and texturally offensive, but all of it VERY authentic. It was a nice event.

Megan and i had gone shopping the week before and i had fallen in love with a corset that i bought at her insistence. i finally found one that fit perfectly and when i came out of the dressing room, Megan declared, “i’m not letting you leave without that.” Of course, i realize now that i went shopping with her so she could make me buy things, or so we joked . . .

i’ve been preparing and eating a lot of stir fry lately, chopping fresh vegetables, sometimes adding chicken, but mostly brown and spicy with jasmine rice. call it a kick . . . and also oops i did it again, i cut my hair.

shorter.

it has some highlights and lowlights ranging in violet, cinnamon, copper, honey and some deep cherry reds. it’s a LOT of fun and feels terrific!

so the purpose of my opening little poem that occurred to me after seeing a pencil sketch (i hope i can find it again so i can share with you the visual inspiration . . .) my thoughts about undoing the bindings and releasing is my latest mantra – the only thing i can do to stay tethered to this world. this and feel connected to my friends and invest time in the people i love. those things and also, make use of the 3-month membership unlimited to the yoga studio that my mother bought me for my upcoming birthday . . .

i will be 33 June 19th, a very nice number. Getting involved in all of these wedding proceedings and pregnancies and births has been nice, to see and feel so much love and investment between people. in some ways too, though i doubt i will ever be married (both for the headache of the preparations and the grim possibility of the need for a clean break should anything go awry) i hate to think like that, but it’s the pragmatist in me that begs to keep my head on straight. i LIKE the idea of marriage, just as i LIKE children, but i don’t think either of those things will be a part of my life.

And i leave this last part to the women who read this . . . do you feel strange or awkward or pressured or sad, or more succinctly like a failure if you don’t find yourself engaged, married and or in the midst of planning a family?

And if you’re someone like me who understands that neither marriage nor children are guarantees that will bind you forever and lovingly to a mate, then – what is the alternative? What types of occupations or commitments or arrangements in your relationship makes you feel like you are safe in this world; that you will be with someone who loves you and reciprocates your loves, needs and desires? What makes you feel like you are doing fine and have no need to keep up with the staus quo?

how do you escape the trappings in your head and make your outer (public) life match the inner (private) life so that your parents will hush and your friends won’t ascribe you to the land of failed or incomplete womanhood?

me – i cut my hair, i go for catharsis, i steep til it’s hot, i change my image, my vision, i mutate my indecision, i sweat out the ills and forego the pills and stretch myself into new positions, walk in the rain, try different fuel sources, tie things with ribbons, put on the corset, cling tight to my friends and love . . .

undo the bindings. release.

Tags: binding, biodiesel, Chinese Banquet, haircut, marriage, Megan, Mercedes, release, tea, wedding, wine, yoga

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Feb 14 2005

Be Mine, Whomever You May Be + Letter to The Neverseen (poem)

Category: poetry,writing — littleREDelf @ 11:09 am

kisses and sweet affection to all on this rainy Valentine’s Day

know that you are loved in some way
by someone, somewhere and count
yourself rich if you know love in many
ways and know it by many people

and now – a poem about love whether it exists
or whether you are still seeking it out there
amongst the parading faces of strangers . . .

Letter to The Neverseen

He says he translates me like medieval
pomegranate print nightgowns . . .
and I turn to him and mumble
hmmmm — let me taste that for a while,
let me run in that fantastic white frock
in dark and distant fields once dreamt
when i know only you are watching.
let me laugh under crystalline moonlight
let it cast the shape of my body
like a silver sword,
and let me wear the dew like earring cusps
and kelly green smoke perfume.

ok — you don’t have to touch . . .
you are the ineffable —
(but promise me you’ll watch)
as there is something i wish for you to see,
you may be
a seahorse, a starfish –
if it suits you,
if you wish.

And promise you’ll pay attention
when i turn from a saucer
to a dish,
and if i became a cup
would you rather me be a bowl?
would you find yourself drinking more?

i miss you in many ways,
i need you still more in others,
i learn you further, deeper every time
sometimes – i liken it to being . . .

lovers
looking out
over plankboard streets and cabinets,
castanets,
sunlit holes in the concrete
trying to be windows,
vines and flowers spurting from crevasses
where water runs down into rusty red-orange lines
to meet the dirt
that is the road.
Hoops and barrels of silver day-water
and the dust tarnishes everything
even the day itself
cannot touch.

Baskets and tarps,
passage and carry,
cloth covered fruit in flesh-hued skin
and me in the window ledge with
the only foreign tongue
in a land, a time, sometimes foreign to me.

And you —
you walk down the dirtroadstreetconcrete
window light field
and speak my language
soft from the path below like a surprise
like a magic-hat rabbit boy-child
in dark good fur to curl upon for sleep.
And in the sun bath,
and under your leather shoes,
the stones talk about your approach
and i steel myself,
and the words are like lovemaking
and your voice resonates firm
in my sex and circling outward into
the shafts of my hair and fingernails.

And i find in the lightest, strangest
parts of my psyche,
of this world,
that i understand words,
that i am able to sew them finely together
and make beautiful shawls
and bedsheets.

I go here whenever I hear from you:
I compose the sugar and the sass
The Litany and profanity.

This connection:
2 birds
2 bellies
2 eternal voices
meant to find solace
and unity in creation —

2 pear halves passed
from deity to deity
on blue gilded plates.

you and i are these.

Tags: boy, leather, Letter to The Neverseen, light, love, nightgowns, perfume, poem, skin, sleep, Valentine's Day

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Feb 07 2005

icyclic

Category: death,dreams,friends,poetry,weather — littleREDelf @ 8:48 pm

:::

“After all –
What were you really looking for?
and i wonder when will i learn.
Blue isn’t red everybody knows this
and i wonder when will i learn
Guess i was in Deeper than
i thought i was if i have enough love
for the both of us . . . ”

Strange by Tori Amos

:::

the snow is almost completely melted,
but the air conditioner nearly died with
frozen lungs – coils, weeping down the wall.
i woke from nitemares of her, hot tears
on my cheek this morning, icicles dripping
from the rooftops, pattering, the feet of
following cats, behind, in front curling
like those mysterious numbers – unknown
unforeseen consequence, the heat of pain
melts the chill of fear.

an accomplished mathematician and a brilliant
physicist who saw sinister messages in Shakespearian
sonnets, visions of certain hell, doomed patterns and
curves in the language put him into his car, drove him
to a dark bridge where he jumped into the icy bay.
our tormented friend lifted the veil, saw Spring too soon
and wished to be reborn, the water carried him away.

something strange is out there in the frozen grass, the
grass that stands stock still straight up like inverted
exclamation points, silver punctuation – something up
there in the icicles pointing down, witchy accusatory
white-blue fingers, snapping off, truncated memories
touching my skin where it is neither welcome nor warm.

ice is strange – how it preserves what dies for food,
what dies to give new life, meat, red, chilled down to
blue – that something there, imbedded, i cannot dig it out,
not with claws, not until the spring thaws what is still
beneath, what is still inside – then i will be grateful for
the release and as i look outside, as the wooden planks
bloat, thirsty for water, showing their dark skin again,
and i walk safely, and the snowdrops bow their heads
in the garden and the snow is almost completely melted.

~ Andrea E. Janda

Tags: blue, claws, fear, frozen, hell, icicle, life, meat, nightmares, poem, potery, Shakespeare, silver, snow, spring, strange, Winter, witchy, Zoey

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Dec 19 2004

sweet songs of winter sparrows

Category: dreams,nature,poetry,weather — littleREDelf @ 8:59 pm

:::

her breasts like birds
that shape upturned
he likes to call sparrows
and “stand there by the window”
narrow, profiled shadow
he commands and clothes like cages
open, free him under the gentle press
of birds upon his feathered chest.
kisses for the small of the back
the foreign curve of hip
on your collarbone she perches
purses her lip and before the rest
can come undone
the sparrows take their leave
in December’s twilight sun.

~ Andrea E. Janda

:::

snowfall. first of the season here. white-throated sparrows gather in bare thickets and dig at the ground by hopping backwards with both feet, scratching at the surface and uncovering food.

i haven’t felt much like eating, though i do like sleeping. something about winter sets me into hibernation. squelches my desire for anything besides warmth and quiet. a grizzly-bear stupor. a need for nuzzled affections and nesting places.

outside the snow drift spackles the window and surprises the spider webs with its glittery gather, hanging under the eaves like pulled out sweater strands. you’ve seen raindrops this way – but have you ever seen snow in a spider’s web?

silvery mists of powder catch the wind – aimless, circling, whispering cyclones. the icicles begin to weep from the edges, long witchy, translucent fingers pointing the way down, showing the snow where to land.

i am scratching at the surface. i am looking for the unknown hunger in the fallen leaf bed. i am sleeping in unlocked dreams. my blanket is snow, the web is taut, my fingers reach, begin to weep, i set my nest, warm to the affections and look for directions on the place to land

Tags: birds, poem, snow, sparrows, window

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Nov 30 2004

let. me. clear. my. throat.

Category: friends,poetry,weather,writing — littleREDelf @ 10:16 pm

you know – i am not one to meow meow meow
and my even having to preface it now, you can fully
expect a little hissing, but more, i implore you:

tragic darling dears, get out of your beds,
off your couches, your haunches, your
hands and knees and for fuck’s sake PLEASE
point the camera out the bathroom, the window,
outdoors, out of self-respect, his, hers, mine
the worried cat and dog and yours
take into consideration that we’ve no need
to bear witness to your public bleeding
i have seen every configuration of stocking
stunt-cocking, macro of labial fold
(god DAMN that shit gets OLD . . .)
and your face pulled down into mask of despair
mascara, wings, and blood everywhere
and more tits than i could ever use.

Now, mind you, i like my dark days too,
and these things can be done in 32 flavors
and then some, but it won’t make me come
find you in your self-absorbed hip-o-drome
it’s just more i have to scroll past -
to find actual, breathing, human
photographs.

i believe you – you are real and so are
the rest of the enhanced blanched
oversaturated things you possibly feel
but i’d like to see more of your real life
pooled at your feet, than a pair of your
panties, your bathtub, the Xs & Os the
utter lack of prose and pause and thought
given to the extended forearm-as-tripod
still in the shot and those webcam eyes
so tenderly wrought.

i am not asking you to find/define your depths
i am not trying to damage your emotional
intelligence – i see the dress pattern you
are after, but i’m afraid you’ve dropped a stitch.
i will allow you the feline quality of female
i will ask you, however, to remove your ears
and that silly tail. There is NO pair of
breasts or handcuffs or shoes that will fix
what your expression
and vision
and your camera
will never do
in ultra-uncandid
clicks.

Tags: blood, dark, mascara, photography, poem, wings

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Nov 17 2004