the drums, the strings are incurably playing
The Kiss
My mouth blooms like a cut.
I've been wronged all year, tedious
nights, nothing but rough elbows in them
and delicate boxes of Kleenex calling crybaby
crybaby, you fool!
Before today my body was useless.
Now it's tearing at its square corners.
It's tearing old Mary's garments off, knot by knot
and see -- Now it's shot full of these electric bolts.
Zing! A resurrection!
Once it was a boat, quite wooden
and with no business, no salt water under it
and in need of some paint. It was no more
than a group of boards. But you hoisted her, rigged her.
She's been elected.
My nerves are turned on. I hear them like
musical instruments. Where there was silence
the drums, the strings are incurably playing. You did this.
Pure genius at work. Darling, the composer has stepped
into fire.
~Anne Sexton
***
This poem was the inspiration for "Bloom and Grow."
I've found that when I'm writing under the gun - which is the only way I do ficathons anymore; I can't seem to work up the stomach to actually sign up, but I'm always a willing pinch hitter - finding a poem that strikes a chord can be a good kickstart. This struck me as very River (a lot of poetry does, which is probably more about me than about River), but I'm fascinated by the idea that her sensual pleasure in her body had been muted or even erased by the experiments and then the drugs, the inability to filter out what was hers from what was everyone else's leaving her with nothing but excruciating pain or absolute silence, with everything else sort of muffled and confused, and then the idea that she's relearning to do that, after Miranda, that the treatment Simon's giving her is becoming more fine-tuned and allowing her a range of feeling rather than the all or nothing she seems to be experiencing through most of the series.
One of my very favorite scenes, one reason I love Ariel so much, is that last scene with River and Simon. "Time to go to sleep again," she says, resigned to the dozy, compliant, swaddled-in-cotton world the drugs leave her in. And Simon replies, "No, meimei, it's time to wake up."
*hearts*
***
My mouth blooms like a cut.
I've been wronged all year, tedious
nights, nothing but rough elbows in them
and delicate boxes of Kleenex calling crybaby
crybaby, you fool!
Before today my body was useless.
Now it's tearing at its square corners.
It's tearing old Mary's garments off, knot by knot
and see -- Now it's shot full of these electric bolts.
Zing! A resurrection!
Once it was a boat, quite wooden
and with no business, no salt water under it
and in need of some paint. It was no more
than a group of boards. But you hoisted her, rigged her.
She's been elected.
My nerves are turned on. I hear them like
musical instruments. Where there was silence
the drums, the strings are incurably playing. You did this.
Pure genius at work. Darling, the composer has stepped
into fire.
~Anne Sexton
***
This poem was the inspiration for "Bloom and Grow."
I've found that when I'm writing under the gun - which is the only way I do ficathons anymore; I can't seem to work up the stomach to actually sign up, but I'm always a willing pinch hitter - finding a poem that strikes a chord can be a good kickstart. This struck me as very River (a lot of poetry does, which is probably more about me than about River), but I'm fascinated by the idea that her sensual pleasure in her body had been muted or even erased by the experiments and then the drugs, the inability to filter out what was hers from what was everyone else's leaving her with nothing but excruciating pain or absolute silence, with everything else sort of muffled and confused, and then the idea that she's relearning to do that, after Miranda, that the treatment Simon's giving her is becoming more fine-tuned and allowing her a range of feeling rather than the all or nothing she seems to be experiencing through most of the series.
One of my very favorite scenes, one reason I love Ariel so much, is that last scene with River and Simon. "Time to go to sleep again," she says, resigned to the dozy, compliant, swaddled-in-cotton world the drugs leave her in. And Simon replies, "No, meimei, it's time to wake up."
*hearts*
***