Cold as love

[Doreen Peri]

It's etched into the fricking stone now,
we can't get it out, damn dye is cast, each
blast of connection the same, each line untamed,
drained like a fluid stint in a liver, loved
in an arched line

reeny's getting married apparently but the guy
beats the shit out of her weekly, she so in want of
a companion lies by his side, wakes to tat an emblem
on a bride's dress, blessed be, blessed are the
futilities and her clock's running out, her eggs
may be dried

i remember the night that terry died.
i wasn't there but neither was judy or shirl,
the gurl was a goddamn mess,
the rest of the congregation
puts various gems into
the collection plate and i wait
like a good servant to swear
on an aisle march

here's to you, i said, and threw
the bouquet across the room,
hit the groom in the head,
flogged like a big bitch

abraxas cold as a love stitched
in between various aorta dreams
and me watching the personality
of a savior get scoffed, lost like
a debutante, unable to pour a neat
dry drink, and there are connections,
sweet like honeysuckle, tucked into
back-pocket dreams, each with an urgent
dimension of yes, paralyzing me, but
jimmy never got his trip fixed, too many
huffs on a hot spent pipe, ripe the phantasm,
gripes unordered.

luck be a lady if a lady is a lady
luck be a lady tonight .... and ohmy
fuckinggod i see a woman turning an
eight ball upside down, no way babe,
it ain't happenin' now, abraxas cold as
a love glove and above my head i witness
the existence of burlesque, each gesture
affirms that none have arrived yet, each
flit of a boa, each boat carrying noah's goddamn
prey the way a fervent prayer comes, in
duplicate, two by two

and i donno about you but i've got
radio receivers out and i doubt the guy's
got an illegitimate plan but hey what the
fuck do i know anyway? as i said i donno

thing is, as it goes, there's a mass scheduled
for saturday and look out on your way to the
roadblock since reeny's getting married
and the asshole beats her weekly, i hear,
and i just wanna make it clear that no
matter how much i don't want to participate,
i ain't gonna pull a selfish on ya
rest in peace
it won't be me

abraxas,
cold as fucking love.
carve me a stoned cold
magical point.

let's do the jive act.
split this joint!
i'll dance with ya baby
til dawn.... got the candles on.




dp.7.25.08

[judih]

poetry is gut-blasting
the poet blasted guts after birthing
then poet-street-cleaning crew
scraped up poet guts,
recycled poet guts
and fed the starving writers

that's all i can say, doreen
(it's a compliment)

[Doreen Peri]

soul impaled on a fence,
who's gonna clean it up?
where's the gurney?
thank you judih

[saw]

as I said on another site, Love this one......mega-creativity points....

[Doreen Peri]

i think it's too long and it's all over the place... needs editing

then again, it's just a stream of consciousness piece so who knows

thanks, steve, very much

it's good to be writing *something* again

i used to write several a day. now i'm lucky to get one to come out once a week

and when they finally do emerge, i'm so drained and thankful

[mnaz]

This is a powerful and frustrating portrait, doreen.
The guts of this thing, throughout the stream, grab you and shake you and ask "why won't you see!?" I wouldn't let this one go.

[Doreen Peri]

thank you, Mark

[the mingo]

"carve me a stoned cold
magical point"
...lines such as these are the real reason the ice in the arctic is melting...

[Doreen Peri]

I know. It's all my fault.

[Arcadia]

I like the title! & the way the stories are served with abraxas!

[SmileGRL]

doreen...this reminded me of the time i was a social worker back in SA. i had a client whose boyfriend dealed drugs out of her apartment where her little girls was supposed to be safe and he beat her and stole her money on a regular base leaving her with no money to pay the bills or feed her kids. but she wouldn't leave him because she didn't want to end up alone and she thought she deserved it. the minds of battered woman are laced with self doubt and low self esteem which snowballs until even their childrens needs are less important than the asshole who causes all the damage in the first place and they know they're making the wrong choice but they don't know how to get out and most of them usually end up going back to the asshole. and some of them stays out of fear of what will happen if they try to get away from the monster who makes them believe that either they or their kids will be harmed if they so much as think about it.

there are only a few strong woman out there who makes the break and move on. i applaud them. i think it's harder than it looks.

[Doreen Peri]

thanks, arcadia!

smileGRL - Yes. It's very sad isn't it? I have the utmost respect for social workers. That's tough work. I didn't know you've done that for a living. Good for you! Thanks for reading and for your astute comments!

[SmileGRL]

tough work indeed...i had over a hundred families in my caseload most of the time and i'm not only talking poverty. i'm talking physical & sexual abuse (working with the victim & the abuser), neglect, alcoholism, drug abuse, adoption, foster care, children's court & dealing with the parent's attorneys, the judge, the schools & various facilities you're placing children with, placing children back with families, marriage counseling, family violence, mentally ill, criminal behavior in teenagers, etc. and trust me it's never as simple as just one of the above. when you have so many people to attend to, in the end it's all about crisis management and extremely good planning.

they called me "the lamb catcher" at one stage, because i had a very bad neighborhood to service and i had to remove a lot of children from their homes. it breaks your heart to do that and you try your best not to let that happen. because it doesn't matter how bad it gets, how do you take away a child from everything he/she knows. but what else can you do when for example you got a 6 year old girl whose mother is a schizophrenic refusing to take her medication, her father is an alcoholic drunk most of the time and they've got an untrained extremely violent rottweiler running free in the house. how terrifying is that! in the end it's all about the safety and wellbeing of that child and sometimes you need to disturb the equilibrium to restore the balance.

i can write a thousand books about what i've witnessed...