beautiful monsters

How many last minutes can you cram into the eleventh hour?

I didn’t realise it was Wednesday till it was too late. Got home from work tonight and realised I had to write a couple of chapters of my novel, plus a few pages of critiques, plus a poem about St John’s Pool, which I hadn’t gotten around to visiting. Luckily I was able to persuade a friend to drive me there (stopping for fish and chips on the way) and it was kinda cool going at night. We saw glow worms.

I’ve been typing away madly for hours, and this blog entry is sort of my wind down, letting my brain shut down and my fingers slow down… down down down… sleep soon.

Lately a lot of people (and I mean a lot – like, almost everyone) have been telling me how young I am, and frankly, I’m getting sick of it. And then I was thinking about the MA course, and how, if you don’t have a degree, you have to have lots of “life experience,” or something… so I started turning my thoughts into a poem, a sort of CV of all the experiences I’ve had. It’s not finished, but this is what I’ve got so far. As usual, content may disturb blah blah view at your own discretion.

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CV: Life Experience

Have you ever
emptied a birthing pool
bucket by dark red bucket?
Have you held the hand of a baby
and heard the gasp of her tiny lungs
as the life support switched off?
Have you donned a hard hat and earmuffs
to work in the mills
then switched to
short skirts and stockings
to assist the CEO?
Have you ever worked late
spreading your legs for seven men
in one night?
Or singing lullabies
to sleepless children
wiping their bums and placing them back
in their wheelchairs?
Have you ever
wielded a machete
on the gorse covered slopes
pounded nikau seeds in a bucket
then waited nine months
for their green fingers to unfurl?
Have you watched a house burn down
or seen the wreck of a car?
Been raped by a man who said
You aren’t much of a lesbian now
are you?
Have you thought for three long months
you carried his child?
Have you ever had psychosis
or a gastroscopy
or an anaphylactic reaction?
Have you been Juliet and Constance
and the First Witch from MacBeth?
Recited your whakapapa
in a pub?
Played Pachelbel Canon
then Drowsy Maggy
and danced the Tarantella?
Have you ever organised a hui
or a vegan barbecue
or run GE Free stalls
the length of the country?
Have you been asked
by school kids
why lesbians have short hair
or how big your dildo is?
Been locked
in the psych ward
or handcuffed
by police
or kicked out
of church
for being possessed?
Have you kayaked
the Swedish archipelago
and picked wild
strawberries in Norway?
Have you lit incense
in an underground shrine
and, kneeling on tatami matting,
learned the words to Pokarekareana?
Have you slipped in the mud
by Mont San Michel
and wept at the dark wonder of Chatres?
Been robbed?
Been lost
in various languages?
Have you learned the Spanish words
for “tumour”
and “AIDS”
and how to tell a small child
she will soon go blind?
Have you ever
pressed a knife
into your own flesh?
Seen seven shooting stars
in one night?
Learned the value of your life
by trying to end it?
Have you done all these things
in twenty-two years?
Then don’t tell me
I’m not old
enough.

Posted by Fionnaigh at September 18, 2003 04:06 AM