Jasmine Mann
Awesome Time
HAVE HAPPY WILL YOU?
AWESOME FUN YES TOO!
- Jasmine's Poetry Poetry written by and for Jasmine. (46 pages)
» Poems In The Basement
» Viva Mexico
» Little Brother
» Through Strength And Weakness
» The Body Language Of Us
» For Glory In The Highest
» Untitled
» Blue Sky
» Sin and Suicide
» Estos Huesos Viejos
» How A Mother Is Born
» for the man who stares from his window
» More»
on Jul. 18
I am not dead.
01:24 am
All right, so I've been gone a very long time. I'm not really "back", per se but I am back telling you that I am not dead.
I am busy, however. Too busy to think anymore. It's refreshing sometimes, and then sometimes it becomes a chore. I really have no idea what to fill anyone who's reading this and who cares (note: the two of you). All I can say is that I don't think I can write anymore.
I've tried. There's a well that is either dried up or is too deep to tap into. It saddens me. I love to write, but I can no longer.
Perhaps maybe one day I'll come back and you'll see something new from me. I keep holding out hope that it will happen.
So, goodbye for now.
on Mar. 7
He Frag, She Frag: A His and Hers Gaming Blog.
03:21 am
My semi-professionaly written blog, co-authored by my husband. Check it out!
on Oct. 27 2007
Sandpaper, Bone And Grace
03:17 am
all purple and white,
then brown,
whithering into sandpaper
and bone.
outside the crow
answers the raven's call:
shrill and dying
as the echoes fade,
as I shut Bukowski's ghost closed;
write, he says, write.
I was a poet once,
writing cracked words
between skin, sinew
and grace.
but now
what's
left?
somewhere between
shopping lists, doctor's appointments
and 3 a.m.,
I was a woman:
all legs and hips and breasts,
bone and grace.
I was,
once.
and now what's left
of orchids,
of Bukowski?
they
were.
who weeps for their ghosts?
who weeps for me?
on Feb. 4
This is a little late.
02:28 am
The visitation and the funeral were perfect. Aside from the family drama, everything went well. It was a beautiful day: sunny and clear. He would have wanted it that way.
My brother and I spoke at his funeral, as well as my stepmom's mother. I tried not to cry when I spoke, but I couldn't hold them back. I'm not even sure anyone could understand me. I spoke of all the times he would wake me up in the mornings as a little girl and say, "Jasmine, wake up. The sun is shining and the birds are singing." I said that the birds are still singing and the sun is still shining and to never forget that. And I wanted to let everyone know that he's not gone. He's not gone.
Part of me is pissed off that he had to leave. Part of me is happy for him because he's no longer in pain. He is being cremated, I think in part as my stepmom put it "to burn all that damn cancer away." But he fought to the end, and he died gracefully.
I'm going to miss you, daddy. I'll never forget you. I'll never forget the things you taught me or the good times we had together. And I just want you to know that I love you so much.
I love you, daddy.
In Loving Memory
Eugene James Sword
October 29, 1955 - January 5, 2008
on Jul. 23 2007
I don't have a title for this one yet.
05:22 pm
i.
scratched epitaphs,
silent in the breeze.
and taking my hand,
i'll trace your name,
carve a place underneath my skin
that will still bleed.
ii.
all that i am
and all that i have become:
a faceless name in a crowd;
you and i are the same,
immoveable.
(and even granite
no less as stoic)
iii.
years will pass
(but i will still find
your face)
with shaking hands,
i'll trace words
into the fibers of
your patchwork silk:
"i love you,
daddy".
on Feb. 2 2007
TRANSFORMERS
12:43 am
What is new?
on Oct. 13
Viva Mexico
02:21 am
The streets in Mexico are built
upon the spines of the Aztecs.
The cobblestones and concrete
fusing into one another like the
bentback vertebrae of the poor.
Buildings give leeway to alleys
lined up like soldiers
where children play with a make-shift ball
from old linen scraps as I walk by.
I'm back in a church where
morning Mass is being assembled,
and I can hear my best friend
whispering the priest's sermon to me
telling me precisely when to kneel
and when to stand:
siéntese (stand up)
levántese (sit down)
I can still hear the lilt of the words:
siéntese (stand up)
levántese (sit down)
On the streets we walk to her cousin's Quinceañera
and her father stops to buy us mangos frescos,
or fresh mangoes, as best the crude Mexican accent
of the street vendor can recite.
I still remember the man carefully choosing
a heavy, ripe mango as full of juice
as a mother's breast,
red as a nipple freshly suckled,
its nectar trickling down my chin
and sliding through my throat;
my tongue lapping my fingers for more
and I know I have never tasted a mango as sweet.
When I was sixteen I danced with my best friend
to the mariachi horns and guitars of Mexico
on the carpet in the middle of my room,
while my stepfather wondered why we
were listening to this "tacorena bullshit".
At night we rebelled and ate mango slices
with a drizzle of chile sauce on top,
just to spite his big, stupid, penile ideals.
We grew up in Houston, where the Confederate flag
flies as high as the American one,
and the pick-up trucks of rednecks blast Garth Brooks,
and pollution on the road to their white collar jobs.
The wetbacks all toil in the fields,
building the gringos bigger and better houses;
until their backs are not wet at all with
the waters of the Rio Grande, but with sweat.
I remember a brown, plump Mexican woman
in the grocery store explaining to her daughter:
"Miha, esto es el sueño Americano"
"My love, this is the American dream"
as she shrugged shrivelled green mangoes into her cart.
Back in the slums of inner-city Houston,
a Mexican girl is raped by thugs crying:
"Soy sólo un gringa sucia!
Soy sólo un gringa sucia!"
but her only answer is the stain
of her virgin's blood on the concrete;
and when it is over she hikes up her skirt,
wipes away her tears and hopes the child conceived
and birthed in blood will not have to suffer
the ripe, red sweetness of mangoes in Mexico.
on Oct. 10
Little Brother
07:56 pm
Crimson velvet fetus,
you held a name once
in tiny, tight fists
suffering a leper's curse
with hands like thorns.
It ate you, all of you
from heart to lungs
to strawberry lips,
until you emerged from
the womb in sterile,
white cloth;
not squalling,
but silent.
They said you died
without ever drawing breath,
but according to law you
were never really born.
You didn't hear me,
you cannot hear me,
but in the pale dawn of
that night, she named you
through quivering lips
instead of a pen.
Little brother,
your name was Jake.
on Sep. 29
Through Strength And Weakness
03:49 am
I imagine my mother in her kitchen:
the air pungent with whetted appetites,
as she imparted her wisdom to me over
boiling water and chopped garlic;
the scents never left her hands -
shriveled husks of youth,
each wrinkle a memory.
I wanted to be everything she was:
a cook, a mother, a wife, a woman,
but I never saw beneath her eyes
how she wore her pain as easily
as she wore her smile.
The Body Language Of Us
03:48 am
I bruise as easily
as fruit with no skin;
and you cut me
when I am most ripe.
on Sep. 22
For Glory In The Highest
01:11 am
I.
In the ancient gutters of Rome
murmurs the thronged concession
of old monks singing God's prayers.
And if you listen, you can hear
the voices of marred bones
beseeching their Lord for peace.
(Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini)
II.
I fear you abandoned us long ago;
as my blood called to you,
as the mist swallowed my tongue,
as my hallowed screams fell deaf.
Did you weep?
III.
Yea, though I walk through the valley
in the shadow of Death, I can see you.
my faith is guttered, O Lord -
but I can still see you.
(Hossana in excelsis)
IV.
Glory in the highest descends -
for if you are not my God,
why then, have you come?
V.
So in the shadows I shall wait
as my body grows cold.
(And in the shadows I shall wait
as your body grows cold.)
on Sep. 15
Untitled
01:50 am
this was where we layed -
an old room in an old town
north of the waves breaking
along the shore.
the air smelt of salt,
mold and stale sperm.
the seagulls roared in a
caucophonous symphony.
and through the curtains
the last of the light faded
as our legs entwined.
it had come to this -
inhibition seething
like maggots over bones;
but in the end your taste
died on my tongue.
wrapped in your doubts
i sighed for the
implications of us
as i listened to the
slow rhythm of your heart.
on Feb. 9
Granite and Silk
06:13 am
ingrained in flesh
and granite;
it is silent,
immoveable, and
no less as stoic
as you or I.
"But you and I
are the same",
I hear you whisper.
"I know", I say,
"But somehow
I've become lost
and I don't know
if I can find
my way home.
So for now I will
carve a place
underneath my skin
to remember you by:
trace your words
into my veins;
fibers made up of
silk and granite
and earth,
and you".
on Aug. 16
Blue Sky
04:24 am
Seethe -
I am left when
you are right;
you are not
deserving.
Seethe -
I have said my
goodbyes.
No longer will my
tongue taste your
knife.
No longer will my
blood know your
venom.
Seethe -
On my feet again
I wallow towards
the light to greet
a blue sky.
on Apr. 17
Sin and Suicide
03:49 am
when you are still so shallow.
you act as if these sheets
belonged to Jesus himself:
white, pure and holy.
even he had a whore once.
i know you; know your bones
are haunted by a memory of
other hands tracing coy shadows
along the concave of your spine.
loving you never hurt as much as
belonging underneath your skin.
in the morning you won't go back to her
but you won't stay here, either.
you'll tell me love is suicide and
the only thing we ever shared was a
cheap night and an orgasm. but as always
you were wrong.
on Feb. 28
Coffee Break: 2/28/08
05:58 pm
eggs and toast,
Bukowski
and coffee.
---------
living the life i dreamed,
i never imagined i would
have so much around my hips
and so little in my wallet.
---------
why does it
always
go back to
sex?
---------
the only fighting words
we have left, lay between
a pair of breasts and
a gun in the glovebox.
---------
the temples are crashing down
around us, but we are too deaf
to listen when it is fashionable
to be blind.
-----------
somewhere, some god is
laughing in a wholly
cosmic sense and
I don't know whether
to laugh with him
or weep.
