AnnieVirginia's blog

Empty Nest

I'm buying all I can to walk away from you. I'm letting safety pins, pillows, and silverware teach me how to live away from you. I'm learning how to uncork wine so I can grow up away from you. I'm collecting pictures so I don't seem so far away from you. I'm saving up my money so yours doesn't get away from you. I'm buying bedding but I don't know how I'll sleep away from you. I'll have a key to a door you won't have to open way away from you. I'm trying for sophistication in a new world but that only matters away from you. I'll want to have so much to give because I took so much away from you. I'm buying all I can to make it seem like I know how to live away from you. I'm quiet so maybe you won't feel the loss of me being away from you. I'm buying a new life but I hate to be away from you.

20,000 Leagues Under the Skin

Having been hit by a splinter of a noise-cracked day, I became restless, and ate off the tips of my fingers. I led her through the holes into my marrow and felt her crawl and with my seizing screams of rapture, led her to the caves. There, unhealth drips down with wine and acid, and sculpts my body abysmal. I asked her to feel the walls and know the hollows and I marveled when her hands did not rot and her eyes did not drain and she spoke my name with shape like an empty river to catch the flowing sicknesses. I wanted her to see every depth and know that I taste like murder and though we could end up in the outer boroughs of hell, I needed her to follow the walls and my breathing to where space becomes chamber housing living sound and frenzies in the empty aftermath to whisper its only softness and its only peace to her, the silken shadow on the cave walls, who moves with freedom and makes the choice to touch what I cannot look deep enough to see and it was simple hands on palsied heart that made me clean and fixed my fingers.

A Traveler's Return

(a prompt from my workshop, finish the sentences "Well, what can be done but..", "What I meant to say was..", and "When I looked under my..") I hope YOU enjoy it. 

Well, what can be done but replace time with a journeyman's epic of heroic hands, made quicksilver not by an assurance of immortality but of age through the clock's resurrection.
What I meant to say was what I said, only never as elegant, and I'd hope to wrap you in lightening-cut ribbon, exotic imports from the blood rivers I never touched.
When I looked under my clothes I saw the infection I caught from my travels, but a year of burning you soothed with the milk of hours.
Well, what can be done but settle in; we are weary from movement and our hands are still.
What I meant to say will never veer from what I said; you have my words.
When I looked under my clutter of maps which only led me lost, I found you and you led me home.
We have seen the world; let's take the night and tell our stories. 

I Thought I Saw You

If I needed paper clips and coffee

and this was a Wal-Mart in South Dakota, 

that would have been you.

If I were calm, transcendent,

and this was a bath house in Tibet,

it would have been you I saw in the steam.

If I were screaming, birthing,

and this was a hospital in Kentucky,

you would be the nurse the room.

If my skin was like cocoa,

and this was a river in India,

you would be washing your linens downstream.

If I was tired to my core,

and this was a bus stop in Ohio,

it would be you on the bench beside me.

If I were in uniform

and this was Vietnam in '71,

that would be you looking at me from the side of the road.

If I had perfect timing,

and this was a different place,

that would have been you.

But I am working,

and this is a grocery store in North Carolina,

and that wasn't you.

And I know by now,

that when this is New York City,

that blur on the subway won't be you either. 

Stories

Super late.. 

For MNC (haha I am so subtle with my initials.. )

Sit down, friend
and teach me all you know
of the world you've already met,
bought a glass of wine,
and touched her hand
with savage grace and draw
tell me the stories she told you
that only you can know
not that I care to know her
but that your voice carries me home
and that your joyful curiosity makes me good
Rock back, friend,
and let this whicker laugh with us
as you teach me of your travels
and the marvels you met
if I can just watch your eyes
as you remember, with aloed nostalgia,
the feel of wave-washed wood
on a night that sounded soft
and I pray to be timber
in my next life
and I pray to grow old
right here
so all of this is gentle
and sad in the way
train whistles are sad
and the way I'm always sad
because I've never met the world
so I can't tell you stories
she told me that only I can know
and all I can do 
is promise I would tell you 
and wrote ghost-thin stories 
of my own to tell you
that only you can know
and hope you begin to 
drift to sleep
in this white whicker,
sighing with us

From titles of Joseph Waumbaugh's books..

Let's run through your lines and shadows
or if, in this fugitive night,
I've stained your skin
giving you the fix you begged for,
I'll back into the corner 
and listen to your medicated monologue
as it echoes in the darkness,
each word a further poison,
cruel and unforgiving and loved
like bourbon
and the way it shines under streetlights
in swaying, aching hands,
the golden orange of it
poetic against the black backdrop
of footsteps walking way
I hope your words,
thick with more than theatrics,
serve you as much as you serve them
and keep you locked into this freedom
to which you dedicate
the slow-burn of the heart-thick paper
of my scripture
and the steady sound
of the rolling of the black marble
that is your mystery,
so solid, inscrutable, and yours
that it has lost its addict
for lack of inspiration
and replaced her with
footsteps, walking away,
in time with the endless
sound of the rolling black marble,
discovering that it is no longer
a mystery for mystery
is laced with light

I Am Purple

Old, needs editing.

Don't ignore me
I've swollen to such great pressure
that I am bloodied deeper color
I am the needing giving valentine folds of your lungs
a quiet, honest bag that waits until the spastic climax of 
dry and empty flapping dying until
the release from drowning saturates me
as you breathe in and keep yourself alive
and lets me fill as sails with wind
and yellow rooms with light
and crystal balls with belief
I am the color you don't notice underneath your fingernails
the passive blush that makes you sewn, not sketched
I am the wine that lives alone with you
I am the sky that pitched you motionless acrobatic
I am the means of dying
I am whole to hurting
Don't ignore me
I am the depth of awe that you cannot nurse tame to words
I am just yours

Baptism

THis might already be on here, but I am too lazy to look.

My witness is the empty sky
witness to a baptism
like coming of age
the brands of the burning world
only thickening the channels
of blue rivers running through my arms
only stocking strength in my hands
which used to be small, not mine,
but momma's to hold
and I'm scared of losing
my gentility, grace that stays
only with the desire to grow up
scared of growing big so I hurt,
big like I can't hold no elegance
and I'm set up to work in
coal and oil, corrosive,
set up to laugh like a machine
that grinds men's bones and years
but I don't want to live like that
I want to be barefoot and run,
no heavy boots on me,
I want to swim in God's blue rivers,
lay to rest in His big hands,
big with no want of elegance,
I want to live like I 
can't ever hurt anything,
just me and all the world,
with the empty sky my witness
and my friend, fields that can 
touch my hands like my momma,
and waters that can wash me clean,
baptism like running away

Egg

Late, again

The conglomeration of every bridge 
and every sheet
knit together by Woman's ancient art
of inner-organ basket weaving,
a place to keep the precious,
nothing taught or written,
only given,
with no ruddy pieces
picked up along the way,
no passed-down bruises of history,
no choices or changes,
only perfect mathematics 
and the color of a woman's 
blood and secrets
shape this home circular
so no edges catch this new skin
made of feathers that will never
fly, but with hope always
flutter, fingers welded together
into one more soft-light bridge, 
and the nonsense bravery of family
that will wait with eyes 
and age to see how 
young their love can be
and until the oldest ocean's 
waters touch the highest sands
let everybody pace and panic
but keep this cradle still

Alphabet

Late getting on here

Allow me the faith of streetlights in the

broad set of this pasted night and

call me voiceless since I won't speak to hear your

dying childhood speaking your voice

elderly, like I could

feed you elixir and again watch you

grow, like a mother, I'll want to see your

hands stretch into mine and your

identity lay itself comfortably between your teeth

just to know exactly who you are

kaleidoscope piecework from the drawers of

last-hour artists shuffling through junk or gold to 

make you, I'll want to know exactly what it is that made you