Do you read me?

[hester_prynne]

I don't know
where my fingers
are going.
They peck like
hen's beaks
on this dirty
keyboard,
shy forearms,
rippling with
messages to you,
anger,
love,
confusion.
A heartbeat
transmitted
in spontaneous
code.
Do you read me?

Last night
I awoke for no
reason.
I lay there,
eyes like
dry ice,
wide open,
vaporous,
filling my little room
with steam,
hissing,
over my frigid bulk
under covers.

I stared at the ceiling
unable to blink,
which of course
caused the paint
to start moving,
distorting,
assembling,
over my own
disassemble.
That's when
the dancers appeared.

They looked like
harlequins,
black, red,
agile, light,
delightful.
One was
playing a kaliope,
softly.
And one,
was paralyzed,
looking straight
at me.

[joel]

So they're willing to look at you, but not to read you, eh? Isn't that just like a tiny dancer...like all the tiny dancers who want to put on their shows for their one-sided audiences?

I think that's where I'd go in performace art: there would not be an audience allowed. It would take place in a warehouse with two stages facing each other. No one would buy tickets and everyone would enter through the catwalks--everyone's names would be on the playbill (because I think peformance art should have playbills). And whatever boiled on one stage would have no choice but to bubble over onto the other...and the people involved would be forced into this mad thought of relationship where they'd actually have to interact with each other. No polite applause. No entertainer-entertainee. I imagine after a while they'd all end up in two semicircles...like halfmoons on each stage...that would cross the pit orchestras (because I think performance art should have pit orchestras) and join their musicians into a giant circle where everybody listened. No one would be the special talker...but everyone would be the special listener. I bet they'd all be heard well. And then they could drop the performace bit and just call it art or life or something.

They'd all read you. And you'd be just as much kaliope as cripple--just like the rest of us, I mean, them.

[Totenkopf]

You we read, Hes. And see. Others, louder, more prolific, confessional as like day-time Tee-Vee, we don't.

[MrGuilty]

There is no entropy in that poem.
If I wanted to I could let my eyes water
I have grown so good at holding back the tears
it is almost a reflex now.

Touched me
thank you

[Arcadia]

beautiful poem, hester!!! I love specially the images and also the narrative-thing in it!!!
yesterday morning with a kid I´m helping in something like "Literatery studies I" we were reading Todorov´s "How to read?". He talked about desmontar the text system, find nudos, focalize, also compare... then, I guess a bit exhausted, he ended the article with the travel metaphore..
(I also read you and see you, why not?)

[Totenkopf]

beautiful poem, hester!!!

Agreed.