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Gethsemane Garden
Nov. 29th, 2011 04:30 pmGethsemane Garden
is a cheap-smelling hotel room
above a disappointing city by the ink sea.
In the anorexic bathroom
the shower drips. Cars push rivers on the tar.
Headlights cast the shadows of flags
momentarily on the gas station next door.
I wait for my life
in Gethsemane, two beds and a toilet stall.
Will it always be this way, too poor,
too dreamy to afford space to breathe?
Magnify my scars and mistakes in the cubicle light;
lie on the harsh orange of the bed or couch;
smoke in Sweden, crash trucks in the USA.
In this urban wilderness
I love this under-belly of straight roads,
too-new concrete, old vehicles, street signs,
far more than middle class well-to-do how-are-you.
Let me dive, let me destroy myself here
in Hella's metropolis; let my veins split,
my breath reek of booze, so I have
something to scrape up.
In my fantasies
I stand on street corners to hate my abusers.
Set out along the freeway on foot in stilettos:
I want dirt, cracked nails, Subway sandwich
for Christmas, backstage with hands on my tits,
free from any man's money; just
my body and I; I make Mum and Dad cry.
Wait for me,
Death, with your chess board and hood,
between the evil pools of neon from the lamp posts.
Let's get in that wreck and drive;
let's scream and fuck the world away
till kingdom come, or maybe it won't.
I dream of ruining everything
and clawing my way back. Don't wake,
shut up and sleep, let me run.
Hattie Samuel
The Shark Poem - from my writing class
Nov. 19th, 2011 03:06 pmThe Shark Poem
How to grow your own shark at home:
Take the minds of the oppressed youth
of a police state; give them space.
Let them begin to search and make a noise.
Plant, when angry and idealised,
in liberal soil. Keep cool.
Feed with Coca-Cola. Allow time.
You should expect, firstly, to see the teeth
snarling and snapping at the strangely open air.
The fruit will come at different times depending on your plant.
You will find it soft and black and cooling on the grass.
Eat 'til you feel all full up with thunder clouds.
Leave shark to grow.
Allow to move if needed.
Wait for flowers.
Hattie Samuel
German Farm House
Nov. 8th, 2011 08:43 pmI loved that boy.
He filled my insides delightedly every school holiday,
scampering up and down the steps of my spine,
bouncing a ball among the flowers in my lap, reading,
making me laugh with his youth, letting me
rock him to sleep in my bosom each night.
The love we had, he and I, was strong.
Grown older, he came back to me,
nested safe and quiet in the walls of my body.
In me he nursed his mother until her death.
In me he killed a man, cut his flesh apart
and ate him;
and when after some months they came for him,
they had to force him out of my gates like a newborn
and carry him away from me down the same drive
where I used to see him as a child
running trailing his clouds towards me
away from the oncoming dark.
Hattie Samuel
Note: I was going to explain what this one is about, but I wonder if it actually stands better on its own. It's based on a true story, though.
Spellbound
Nov. 4th, 2011 11:40 pmOn this balcony songbirds are all dead.
Could you somehow speak to me on the wind
or perhaps in a telephone call?
I lie and smoke and think of your
hip joints.
With every moan you moved me closer;
with every hand upon leg came my death.
Fumes are lust on my body and
long-legged horses sailed by at half twelve.
If I walked like them, I'd go to your eyelashes
and pluck them. Warm as a tomb I lie
and follow the lines of my mind on Orion.
The nylon earth breathes and I,
I chased Narcissus down the side of a watch.
You stand on a white-blue plain as far away as your eyes.
I could dream suspended by wire.
Hattie Samuel
A-List Eyes
Nov. 4th, 2011 12:15 amFace like a Hollywood autograph
He is gold like sand and green like glass
He moves like the wind through American grass
Everybody stand up to let him pass
A-list eyes and Walk of Fame smile
When he sings you could listen for quite a while
Rolling voice with the Texas style
Just another model on the ageing pile
He’s a diehard son of the church and the steeple
He looks pretty good but so do lots of other people
What’s this on my face, am I starting to weep or
Does he really make me get this feeble?
James Dean boy with the Elvis hair
He acts like he don’t but he knows that we stare
Magazine dream with baseball flair
Edges that melt the surrounding air
Stand up and be an iconoclast
Smash him on the floor cos you know he won’t last
Shards of a smile like a blast from the past
Look up at the altar where the cameras flash
He understands his effect on people
He comes from the country of the church and the steeple
What’s this on my face, am I starting to weep or
Does he really make me get this feeble?
U.S. icon waiting for a raise
Look at him close and you’ll see how he’s made
Mouth like a carousel and eyes like jade
Body like the siren before an air raid
Photograph in a spinning wheel
Swing it round and see how you feel
Kinetic energy with a sweet force field
Negative image of everything real
Here is the church and here is the steeple
Here are the land of the free’s special people
What’s this on my face, am I starting to weep or
Does he really make me get this feeble?
Does he really make me get this feeble?
Does he really make me get this feeble?
Hattie Samuel
Ten-Year-Old Girls
Nov. 2nd, 2011 06:14 pmWe were murdered in the bathroom,
where the backing track of running water
would rinse out his memory;
wash the blood with towels and kitchen paper
off the tiles and those blinds
he didn't like that his girlfriend chose.
We liked her. And dressing up,
coating our mouths with Mummys' lipsticks.
Now we are a fairy story, Aesop's fable.
We were found near a stream,
washing us out; the moss, grass, stones
creeping up, comforting our baby bones.
Hattie Samuel
Note: this poem was, of course, inspired by the Soham murders that happened in the UK in about 2001. I think I was around 12 or 13, and I still vividly remember following day by day in the papers.
Frozen mountains, empty seas
Look at me, look at me
I’m a drifting lump of rock
I’m an extra bit that broke off
Well, it was fine, and it was good
I float through the night singing out my tune
That I am cold, will you be cold too?
Let me be your moon
Frozen mountains, empty seas
Look at me, look at me
But something happened, something changed
Brought fire to my plains
Around the earth I saw his face
A golden man with golden rays
He lit me up, lit me up bright red
Then he went and left me for dead
Now it’s not right, no it’s no good
I just can’t remember the words to my tune
Cos I am cold, he needs to be cold too
But he’s the sun and I’m the moon
I watch him flare, I watch him blaze
Watch him send out ions into space
Watch him light up the earth at both her poles
Watch him burn, watch him roll
It’s not right, no it’s no good
Still can’t remember the words to my tune
Cos I am cold, he needs to be cold too
But he’s the sun and I’m the moon
Frozen mountains, empty seas
Look at me, look at me
Lonely flag without a breeze
Look at me, baby look at me
Cos I am cold, he needs to be cold too
But he’s the sun and I’m the moon
He is gold, I am blue
He’s the sun and I’m the moon
He’s hot like the south, I’m cold as doom
He’s the sun and I’m the moon
He’s the daybreak, I’m his fool
He’s the sun
He’s the sun and I’m the moon
Hattie Samuel
--
New Florence + The Machine album today :)
Coming To Harm
Oct. 30th, 2011 05:13 pmPlease
If I could
Have a few moments alone with you
Then I could pretend
That I love you again
I could pretend
I could pretend
Cos I don't want you to go the same way as all of the others have gone
But I can already see, can already see it happening
I don't want you to go, I'm just kidding myself when I say I'm strong
So if tell you I love you, you should be afraid, it's not flattering
And if I could I would burn
I'd go off like fireworks
They'd shoot out of my arms and legs
And incinerate the whole world
And if I could get close to you
I would dive right into your arms
But I'm already facing the truth
And I feel like you're coming to harm
So please
If I could
Have just a second alone with you
Then
Maybe you'd be
All of those things that you seemed
To me, maybe
Cos I don't want to believe any more and I don't want to care for you
But it's too late, I've already caught the infection
I ache with images of you, I crumple from feeling you
So if I tell you I love you, please run in the other direction
And if I could I would burn
I'd go off like fireworks
Flames shoot out of my arms and legs
And incinerate the whole world
And if I could get close to you
I would dive right into your arms
But I'm already facing the truth
And I feel like you're coming to harm
I need some
Pyrotechnic training
So I can put out the roof before it falls down on our heads
And we need some
Lotion for the burning
I don't think it's too long before the fire will be
Dead
If I could I would burn
I'd go off like fireworks
Flames shoot out of my arms and legs
And incinerate the whole world
If I could get close to you
I would dive right into your arms
But I'm already facing the truth
And I feel like you're coming to harm
And if I could learn how to burn
I'd go off like fireworks
Flames, shoot out of my arms and legs
Incinerate everyone in the world
So I can get closer to you
I will dive right into your arms
But I'm already facing the truth
And I feel like you're coming to harm
I'm already facing the truth
And I feel like you're coming to harm
Hattie Samuel
Good Friday
Oct. 29th, 2011 09:55 pmof me standing before you with bare thighs,
my head tilted left so my hair slips,
rushes in, rushes out, on the rise of my breast;
my arms spread apart, elbows disappearing
as I try to embrace the cloudy neon universe
in your mouth, melting on the white tip of your tongue;
palms turned up and away from my body,
like you are crucifying me; like you are humanising me;
with every touch of skin you fill my shaky outline
up with colours, dyeing me a particular desire,
detailing me with the stars sticking on your fingers
and adding brushstrokes as a shot of sweat
runs down my leg like blood over my hands;
as I try to get rid of this picture of us together,
my youth gushes out of my side.
Hattie Samuel
East Berlin Boys
Oct. 29th, 2011 02:01 am(Based on true events)
You used to make jewellery out of nuts and bolts,
sell it off planks of wood in the sand, you
East Berlin boys;
you used to collect in the basements of abandoned buildings
and shake the foundations of the streets with all the noise you could,
making those broken brown bricks ring with the beat of
fleeing out of the city and collapsing in those empty places
legs over your head, in eye-closed bliss,
skin going dry and freckley in the summer air;
the sounds of hanging up banners over the pale beaches;
of huge bonfires with the sparks jumping up at the lazy stars;
of the kind of freedom that comes from thinking what you want.
You find yourself remembering at odd moments: driving,
seeing litter in the snow, when the sun hits your arm a certain way,
those bright plain wide open days when you were joyful and afraid.
These days your kids are drinking Coca-Cola
and they know those Disney animations better than your bedtime stories.
Sometimes, you find it difficult to breathe with so much
freedom in the air.
Hattie Samuel
Note: I'm a little bit unsure of this one, because the tone ended up being quite different to what I originally intended. The poem was inspired by reading stories about punk bands in East Berlin before the Berlin Wall came down in 1989. I had no idea that anything like that existed over there, and I was really fascinated. The poem was originally supposed to be telling a mash-up of some of those stories, but it has ended up sounding quite political. I'm not sure how I feel about this. On the other hand, simply as a piece of writing, I quite like it.
Second Coming
Oct. 28th, 2011 06:02 pmHis parents checked him in
back when he was eighteen and had visions
of God and archangels
saying, “You are the Messiah!
You are come again to judge the living
and the dead.”
All he judges now
are the newspapers –
and the other patients,
weeping and groaning at night.
One vomited all over the white-stained walls and shrieked,
“Jesus! He is coming to judge you people,
sick in the head!”
Early autumn,
he sits in the hospital gardens,
watching planes part the sky
and drinking the breeze like water.
And a young woman,
tired of believing,
drops her crucifix chain in a drain
and says, “He is not coming,
he is long dead.”
Hattie Samuel
