WAGblog

New Poem

Under the influence of very little sleep and a tendency to get manic, I wrote this poem. A few words of explanation are underneath, but I wanted you to see it without them first, hoping it hangs together even if one doesn't know the details of all the details.

LOVE MAY MEAN MURDER MORE OFTEN
THAN WE KNOW

What to do with a dream

Of one of your doctors with her calligraphy pens

And fondness for what you would never yourself call

Even in polite company the F word

But say it out, all four letters plain as the May sunshine,

Of someone you trusted with the frailty

Of your life, the brain that has served

You adequately though not as well as it could

If a true friend, a dream that she not plays

But is Medea, mythical murderess,

Hands sticky with her boys� no longer blue

But aerated, lifeless red blood--

A dream, but only that or does it say something

More than the brain�s fanciful confusion

Of its female characters? You can�t will yourself to

Forget such a collision of identities

Any more than the expert silver burglar can

Forget the success of his life of crime

And go chalk-line straight because you suspect

She might commit the same crime

Your brain has in mind and take your life

Not just in her hands but with them,

The priceless sterling of inherited breath taken

From you in one last lost heartbeat.

Explanations: this doc was the one who administered ECT, which I feared was life-threatening, and I did dream of her as Medea, which of course says a lot...She does calligraphy and tried to teach me some, and loves the so-called F word (which I use totally unconcernedly myself)...The silver burglar, though there is I hope a recognizable connection made to the Medea/doctor, refers to a story about a burglar who specializes in stealing sterling that appeared in this week's New Yorker, which I found fascinating (though the ones about Iraq were too, just not enough in one of them in defense of women, though it starts out as if it were going to deal with the subject and ends up forgetting about it).

Here endeth my latest blog entry (apologies to all who have seen this before...)

Posted by pamwagg at May 17, 2004 09:35 PM | TrackBack