Elizabeth Caudy

If a Picture Tells A Thousand Words...
Box of Ashes
my mind is a box
inside the box is a garden
inside the garden is winter
your ghost is a great gnarled tree
sprawling bare black limbs
against the sky
the sky is the color of ashes
I held your ashes in my hand
I hear your ashes rustling
like the echoes of leaves
that have long since fallen
I hear your ashes rustling
like whispers in my mind
my mind is a box
(This poem was published in Issue 3 of Clementine Cannibal's riot grrrl compilation zine "I Knew a Motherfucker Like You and She Said...")
Seagulls
my body is beautifully imperfect
my flaws become stars on the sky of my skin as he runs his hands over it, brushing against me with his fingertips like summer rain and with his palms kneading away the wounds of time
all I really ever wanted was someone to talk to
about geese and seagulls and crisp autumn mornings and the way my thighs settle into sleep
next to him
I found one day that what I called my face was only a mask of death
I found that out because he took the mask off
and my real face with it's real skin stretched into a real smile
with twinkling eyes to back it up
these eyes that have seen too much death
there's more to life than death
there is love
Growing
you looked, with eyes
so old for your
soft face
carved into the world
that we carved out
for you
you would know more than us
for awhile, but when
you could speak of
the death that just happened
you'd forgotten
and grown into your flesh like the rest of us
The following poem was inspired by Norman Maclean's book Young Men and Fire
Fire
Up
in a distance
are mountains
crying with flame
You
stride up into that distance
without realizing you have
conquered the world between
a piece of ground and the looming apparition
above it,
and the moment these two
change places.
And so, now you stand in the flames
and the mystery seems to be as simple as
when another was in your place
but not of his choosing
and he had no ground, only the apparition of it
thousands of miles below
and quivering with flame and smoke
and finally it swelled up to meet him
and now you stand where he
once died
and you have to believe that it is his voice
crying in the shape of flames
and the sound weilds its shape into
everything around you
and that you think of
Last Light (Unrealized)
The half and so almost golden sunlight and almost candles. Had they been there, glowing not far and not casting shadows, only around themselves. And paper plates and napkins, and people almost faraway. Sunday evening, like a child. And going to bed when it's light out. But not now. With the people and voices and almost-dusk light outside faraway at your window, and seeping in weakly and not reaching the corners and not even real as the fading disintegrating furniture and deepening corners and swallowed by the corners. Later would be even halfer light of twilight or dusk, and streaming carlights and colors. But not now. A conversation. What we said was more real than what was around us. Always on his mind, she was, and his face was shaded. And their voices faraway. Even when she or others of them came close to us, grainy and when you get closer, the grains come apart and are all that are there. But not now, not even possible. A window and light from the other room. And a walk outside, with faraway children and dogs. Since the light drapes on you, everything else seems to, draping over and falling off. And falling away, but not now. With the voices and people in its folds.
Landmark
Perhaps the light
will never fall there again.
Or we will not be here to
see it.
A patch in my hair for you
and a patch on
the floor for me.
In this moment:
record the lighting.
At what point does it fall
on my eye, or a tooth in
my open
mouth? Record
the movement.
So we move on.
I now turn my hand
and light falls on my hair
and silence sustains
the thoughts in our
heads.
You must always
remember this.
Slow Blink
Lying in my bed that is a dark forest full
of serpentine straggling bedsheets twining betwixt my legs there are no secrets here,
every thought is real….
Dark windows in the London night as I ride by in a double decker bus,
that was seven years ago and even then, it’s still here
Here, in my bed
I work things out this way
I invite what’s bothering me to go for a romp in my bed and let’s see
If we can work it out
You must realize, I’m alone the whole time
My pills help me see the realness of my thoughts
Even as I cannot express them
You’d think it’s sad, you’d think, “she’s wasting her life in bed.”
What you don’t know
Is that I am on a vision quest
What you don’t know
Is that I have a mind that time moves through in circles, not lines
What you don’t know
Is that when I wake up in the summertime with the birds chirping outside my window
What I feel is dread
In a fist in the pit of my otherwise empty stomach
Sometimes get up and smoke a poem or a cigarette or two
The day opens and closes outside against my window shade like a very slow blink
Hissing of Summer Lawns
well, here I am again
chain smoking at dawn
missing the festering green carpet
of outside's summer lawns
wishing I could lay down on them
and just be five again
now they just hiss at me, like in Joni Mitchell's song,
that this is now and that was then
--this poem was published at http://www.wordsbyamy.com/
His Music
as we watched the day wax and wane
check that: as I watched it
through the dusty windows beyond your
potted plants
I grew to hate you
a little bit more and then a little bit less
and I grew to wonder
if I really needed you
or if I just wanted to pretend I did
Silence
tap me when you wake up
I'm going underground
down where the bones lay
down where the earth is molten
tap me when you wake up
I'm going where the stars burn like suns
I'm going through the earth's core
I can't stand your silence
any longer
A Poem Out of Focus
the strip malls of Skokie
gleam
red neon in the twilight
slushy curbsides
trashy lingerie and cheap Chinese food
the sky hardens to purple
signs are cold bright and buzzing
someone changes the wig on a slutty mannequin
waitresses lean on counters
bus boys in paper hats
someday I'll drive past this whirring hateful mess
into the desert
sky black, stars bright yellow and red
like the signs saying goodbye
we'll make love in a teepee
before we start all over in a city in the desert
with its own neon signs
to eventually grate on my skin like a dry and hot gust
of sand
Diagnosis
her uterus
like the top half of an hourglass
when the hour
is up
ready, it's time
to scour out her demons
all the evils you don't see
ferment in this dome
and sooner or later they trickle up to her eyes
and her brain is limp with containing them
Too Deranged For Her Kisses
Her arms stretch out between earth and heaven
(her legs go from here to heaven)
A lit cigarette dangling between her fingers
My vision is nicotine-stained
I see things others choose wisely to ignore.
Is THIS good enough for you?
Is THIS good enough for you?
I’m so fucked up I take pills that fuck me up even more and I sleep all day
Spring is all around me, mocking me:
“You’re too deranged for my kisses.”
I think my brain is made of splintered wood
collapsing in on itself like a sky
With the weight of deformed wishes made upon stars
(This poem was published in Issue 4 of Clementine Cannibal's riot grrrl compilation zine "I Knew a Motherfucker Like You and She Said...")
Never Break
long-limbed
big red mouth
you're no ballerina in a jewelry box
no, not you
tiara askew
smeared eyeliner
fake lashes falling off
you live to mock the candy-coated strait-jacket of womanhood
that you will gloriously never break your bones trying to fit into
I can hear your soul
in my car stereo
"I always wanted to die, but you kept me here alive..."
Why are we still here, Courtney?
Maybe we never really wanted to die after all
Maybe what we really want is for all the electricity
all over the world to shut off
all the haters on the internet
all the loud and pompous TV personalities
all the top 40 hits
if they could just shut the hell off and shut the hell up
you and I could have some peace
peace doesn't come easy for people like us
you know what it's like
to be made of fire
you know what it's like
to burn and scream
you know what it's like
to be a girl
coming of age sexually at a time when sex could kill you
you know what it's like
to feel ugly and betrayed
you know what it's like
when all the great legendary men of rock'n'roll don't
I find peace
when I hear your voice
because you are made of fire
because you know what it's like
because you remind me I am brave and strong
and that no one
can break me
Ugly as Sin
twisted and grotesque
ugly as sin
miserable as the day is long
and, believe me, Sister, it is long
but sometimes She fills me through with Her light
Her light that is like wings made of panes of glass and late afternoon sun
never mind the long shadows
I have known such ecstasy
I should never forget that
but I do
I do forget it, I mean
I am the color of leaves on the trees illuminated by street lamps in summer
I am the color of an ocean that thinks it is the sky
I am the color of sapphires and diamonds
and of the scratched steel of dented dog tags
dented like so many mess hall or mental institution soup spoons
but I still wear them
because I'm not done fighting yet
I am the color of the light in November
yellow and brief and swirling with tinsel
and as the snow falls through the thin yet palpable sunlight, I realize
I am not ugly as sin
the world is not ugly as sin
She wants so desperately to tell me, to show me...
and then, I feel nothing
and then, I am buried
She wants so desperately to tell me, to show me...
that I needn't let my past mistakes bury me
that I'm not dead
She wants so desperately to tell me, to show me...
that She is me
that She is inside me
that She lives within me
that She is me
She is everything beautiful, alive, and light
as am I
even at my ugliest
because sometimes that's where the fight takes me
and the fight is probably the most beautiful thing of all
I'm Still Here
the darkness is everything we want but shouldn't
have, or shouldn't do
magical darkness
shape-shifts trees and bushes in the bluish-silver moonlight,
it's like you're on drugs
but you're not
darkness is my voice of silence
I have spent the past several years silencing myself
for no good reason
other than the fact that I live in a glass house
check that:
a glass coffin
because this isn't living
I'm not really sure what's holding me back
I'm not really sure if when I look back on times I didn't feel held back, I was too wild
too weird
alienating others
being a woman can hold you back, if you let it
we say things are better now, we say we live in a "post-feminist" era...
but I'm still afraid to ride the train at night for fear I'll get raped
and then get blamed for it because I was riding the train late at night
I'm still afraid I'll alienate people every time I open my mouth
there are more insidious things
like people asking my husband and I when we're going to have a baby and then become hostile when we say we don't want children
I'm sure that someone, somewhere, once told me it’s all in my head, that if I just take it like a man and pick myself up by my boot straps I won’t feel held back
that I’m so lazy I can’t even admit I’m lazy and that I'm holding myself back because I’m lazy and chicken-shit
even though I don't remember who said it, they're in my head, their faces running like masks of wet gray sand, telling me my feelings aren’t real
but they are
and I know I'm not lazy
I know because
I fight
I fight every day
and I'm still here
most of the fight, these days,
is still being here
and I am
What Hairy Armpits Mean to Me
Standing up for what I believe in. Standing up for what's right. Doing what I have to do. Putting myself first. Not thinking in "binary code" (ie, if I shave my armpits but still pluck my eyebrows and shave my legs, I can be free to be contradictory in other things.) Standing up for myself. Taking care of myself. Eating right. Exercising. Not worrying about what other people think of me. Not worrying about whether something I want to do or how I accomplish something "makes sense." Rejecting that because I am a married woman in my thirties, that means I have to act or be a certain way. Not defining "sex" as vaginal intercourse. Rejecting the idea that if I teach myself to do something a certain way and it's different than how other people do it, I'm "doing it wrong." Embracing the dark cunt. Embracing the dark faerie fissure in the woods. Embracing the dark swarthy sweaty hairy armpit. Embracing that life is messy. Embracing that people die for no reason and there's nothing you can do to stop it and pictures fall down from off the shelf for no reason and the glass shatters everywhere and this can happen twice in one week but through all that not getting lost in the tangled woods and keeping track of the light, even if it is from a waning moon…
--this piece was published in Issue 2 of Cherry Bomb Zine
Also, please see this site's blog for my blog entries for the esteemed mental health site http://www.healthyplace.com
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