Ann Regentin
BloodWork
My muse, my animus; my light, my darkness,
Breath and exhalation, you haunt my days, you come
To me at night in dreams, I come for you,
Asleep and waking; every single time
You ask, I break and beg. Then I sit down to write, and blood
Flows through the keyboard, overloading
All the circuitry, and racing down the wires.
My fire and my ice, my demigod,
My demon lover, I am chaste for you.
I stretch out on mossy rock and with a piece
Of cast-off antler, push myself until there's nothing
Left to do but fall. Then I sit down to write, and blood
Drenches my hard drive, making hieroglyphs appear
In line by glowing, dancing line across my monitor.
You are my silence and my song, my slave, my master,
You have done the things I wanted most with all my heart
To do, and when you come to me, I live it out
My wasted voice, my crippled body brought to life again.
I sing and dance, collapse in blissful agony
That I will wear for days, the secret soreness of a woman
Loved beyond endurance. I sit down to write and blood
Flows through the wires spilling out
Into the world to sing your praises to the deaf
Whose eyes are ears to hear the things I've never
Said to you and never will. You are my clarity, my madness,
My deepest secret I reveal with every word I type, our children
Born of blood and foam and moonlight reeling
Drunk on hubris and delusion into other people's beds.
This isn't really you, I know it -- I'm not young
Or stupid -- but some shade or shadow of you
Waking fire in my veins. It's not love here, in this place
Where something of me touches something that might
Almost be like you. But when it happens, and my breasts
Fill up with longing, my lips swell red and soft
As ripe and opened plums, when the insides of my thighs
Are crying out to feel your weight,
I set aside all semblance of sanity
And I sit down to write.
©2003 by Ann Regentin
Ann Regentin has written everything from reading comprehension tests
and reference material to poetry and music. Her work has appeared in
such diverse places as The International Journal of Erotica, The Albion
Review, and Hip Mama, and she is a Contributing Editor for Clean Sheets.
She lives with her family in the Midwest.
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