The Sight of Blood

Death As Specimen

2006-03-12T17:26:00.000-08:00

Cindy, why do you think so often of Death?

Because it circles
like a pack of wolves,
and paces me like
a famished tiger.

I must know how it thinks
if I’m to reason with it.
I will know it by its
wooden footfall.
I will recognize its
granite skin and wicked
laughter.

I will learn all of its names
and the names of its children.
I’ll become familiar with its
scent in mere traces.

One day, if I’ve studied well,
I will have that thing’s belly—
bleeding from my victorious jaws—
foe or friend, vanquished all the same.

--Cindy St. Onge
March 12, 2006

Sanctuary in the Known World

2006-03-12T17:23:00.000-08:00

If you must talk,
speak only of God here.
Save your idle, neurotic chatter
for the city and its pavement.

Here is where the heart resides;
it doesn’t need a declaration,
and has no urge to prove itself.

So, let the stream babble for once.
Let the Jays tell you something.
Let this vast quietude pound
against the stony gates of
your being.

Then, let those creatures
in—wild and present and
ever gracious with stories and
lessons, with sylvan blessings.

No need for you to shout or gesture;
they know you’re here.
They know you’re here.

--Cindy St. Onge
March 12, 2006

Poems from The Grotto

2005-12-18T16:52:00.000-08:00

(At Taize)

Maybe this time is just for me--
to sing my pain--a purging prayer.
I am transformed here,
and stripped bare.
My ego dies to my purpose here,
and I participate in poetry.

And when I think
of all the red inside me,
I understand, at last, that
I don’t bleed; I burn.

(In the Peace Garden)

Found: A lush, green and
sun-dappled world.
Her trees exude a perfume of
spice and loam; it’s in my hair
and I am among the growing
things here, rooted in basalt
and stretching to heaven--
dancing with the stream
and becoming water.

(In the Meditation Chapel)

Here is the bud
closed upon itself
believing that it is darkness.
In time, each petal leans toward
a white sun, peeling away the lie
exposing a buttery stamen at the
very moment of discovery.

"I am a wheel and a sun
and I am a universe!" says the bloom,
splayed and spinning in exquisite realization.

Until another season comes to take
both the closing and the opening,
stripping every rooted creature of both
its dream and its awakening
leaving behind just a green
stem to shiver in the dirt, still
growing out of God.

Published at Wordlust : Paperfetish, December 11, 2005

Alarm

2005-12-14T09:51:00.000-08:00

Two starlings at my window sill,
Tapping at the glass—
To announce today that Death had come.
I looked away at once.

They tapped again, louder still
As if I didn’t hear
Their awful news, delivered prompt
When they first appeared.

I heeded them
And thought I must
Promptly call on those
Dear to me, to see, alas,
Who, from me had gone.

Their message borne,
Their task complete—
The birds were free to go.
One flew away;
One stayed behind—
Oh, My God! What now?

I let him in,
He perched awhile;
I waited for a sign.
When he felt
The time was right,
He asked me for my soul.

I told him I
Was still alive,
My soul was mine to keep.
He asked again,
I told him no—
This went on and on.

I went about
My daily tasks
As if he wasn’t there.
I offered every now and then,
The door for him to leave.

He refused, then nighttime fell,
I asked if he’d be missed.
He said “By whom?”
--The other bird…
the one I saw you with.

He waited there quite patiently.
I, more restless grew.
The dreaded fate
Of which he spoke
Encroached upon me now.

My vision became cloudy,
I tired so at once.
My body became burdensome—
A thousand moments passed.

A transformation came about—
Then I stirred anew.
I felt so much lighter now,
As if I were a bird.

Be it bird or angel,
This guardian of mine:
That stubborn thing
Who waited ‘til
Deliverance had come.

And now that task
At last fulfilled,
We prepared to fly.
He went on, ahead of me
And opened up the door.

Published at Wordlust : Paperfetish December 2, 2005

Mother

2005-11-22T21:17:00.000-08:00

A sea of Grief
from prolific tears,
I cannot lay you to rest—
It has become
too dark and deep
you’re now too far
beyond my reach.
Memory strains
to keep your face
in its desperate grasp
until that sea
covers my head
and I’m drowned with you
at last.

Xenophobe

2005-11-22T21:16:00.000-08:00

I do not mean
to frighten the crow.
And am I not
as black as he?
Cloaked in grounded, woolen night
not unlike his obsidian wing,
I stand very still—
not to breathe
nor to make any sound
that would stir him into flight.

Alms

2005-11-22T21:12:00.000-08:00

How can I fear you, Death, if
you're just a thing that hungers?

Some threat indeed, you
wretched force of poverty!
How can I fault you for being desirous
when I want things too?

Poor Death; I can only pity a creature
who scavenges for discarded scraps of light,
and dread becomes compassion for one
who must anguish for every single breath.

I can never know your awful craving--
your hands of ash cupped to receive,

but for you, sweet Death,
I'd pluck out my heart--
still beating in its crimson bloom
in exchange for all your riches.

Published at Wordlust : Paperfetish November 18, 2005

Marathon

2005-09-08T20:34:00.000-07:00

Sleep eludes me
two, three nights now.
Across my bed—
I stretch diagonal.
Not a solid line
but a series of dashes—
itching, aching, but
never connecting.

Not in repose but posed,
I’m sketched by some
over-caffeinated Bohemian.
His pencil scratches—
flick, flick, flick—drawing
spokes in my irises.
Around and around,
he rings my eyes,
engraving, rasping—his
strokes are furious—darker, he says,
they must be darker!
He stops—short of shredding paper,
getting them just right.

These damned eyes—
sore, darting, afflicted beyond
seeing and anguished for their
dreams—glisten from livid
sockets like the hint of water
in a well.

I can’t remember
how tired feels, that
gift of weariness.
I can’t fabricate the drowse
and the want of eye-closing.
I can’t recall the way
wakefulness sinks
like sediment into the pillow.

Parched for the cool liquor
of mind-quenching laze, starved
for the nourishment of dreams.
I beg—two, three nights now,
for the heaviness of blessed slumber—
the sinking and drifting,
the careful folding and
putting away of the mind.

Published at Wordlust : Paperfetish, September 2, 2005

Bottom Note

2005-08-21T18:55:00.000-07:00

You’re sick
and I can taste it.
Your decay, the slow retreat,
the inevitable stopping—
it’s all pouring down my throat
in layers bitter and bile.

Eyes still flicker, lit and lambent
and your heart churns yet,
but already there is a funeral
thickening your breath.

Suffering exudes
this rare attar, a fragrant
seal—distinctly yours.
I follow the custom
of intimate horses,
inhaling your memory
as fast as I can.

Published at Wordlust : Paperfetish August 12, 2005

Stranded

2005-08-11T13:45:00.000-07:00

The morning found me
still as stone,
and cold as river clay.
I lay there long, motionless,
for near eternity.

The night had stiffened
up my bones
so thorough that it seemed
movement was not agony,
but impossibility.

I wondered long,
and tried so hard
to get up from my bed.
It’s just a simple thing, I said.
I did this yesterday!

My eyes, still shut,
could not behold
the brand new light of day.
No hope or force immutable
could pry them from their dreams.

To beg was useless:
Whom to entreat?
I agonized alone.
Rage and rancor, impotent
to let my soul back in.

Laid down my head
the night before,
when the mystery of sleep
came to take my supple life
and left this empty shell,
that dawn would find
still as stone-
to ponder mornings breached.

Published at Wordlust : Paperfetish, August 5, 2005

Multiples

2005-07-21T21:41:00.000-07:00

At any given moment,
her whereabouts are
up for grabs.
She’s grown into
a community
of citizens inside her.

All for one,
and one for all.
they’ve each a name—
and each facet, whole.

Their host, once broken,
now fixed and fastened
by many concerned Threads.
each sane enough,
with its charge
of pain’s sore wisdom.

Town meetings seldom
see them,
but exists each one,
inside some
tentative eternity.

Published at Wordlust : Paperfetish, July 15, 2005

Three Seasons

2005-07-16T21:24:00.000-07:00

I miss those three seasons—
that age of forming,
those days of slow growing
and gentle becoming—
blind and safe in the miracle
of salted darkness.

My easy days of knitting bone,
of weaving skin—that
quiet unfurling—
the dance toward awakening,
of toes-unwebbing in careful steps
to the swish and thump
of a beating heart.

I would, if I could, go back
to that place where sleeping
was the same as floating,
was the same as flying.

But beginnings must push
away from themselves
killing the line
to close the circle.

Over arc and into horizon,
our distal origins echo
in the bloodsongs
of nostalgic longing.

How I miss those
dream days of swimming
the red-black lake pooled
in the velvet grotto
of my mother.

Published at Wordlust : Paperfetish, 7-8-2005

Air Hunger

2005-07-16T20:39:00.000-07:00

It is an ironic pain
to burn from the inside out,
wholly immersed in water.

Sinuses burn, and your throat.
Even the roof of your mouth burns
in this agonal craving.

Your heart and lungs burn hottest of all.
Not from ravenous flames—swift
and merciful in their work, but searing from
orange-hot coals, lazy embers—
scorching, radiating, starving;
dispensing death a few
white ashes at a time.

Published at Wordlust : Paperfetish, 7-1-2005

Requiem

2005-06-30T17:04:00.000-07:00

The lady in that garden sings
Her dirge among the rose
and lily
It astounds that she mourns yet
In the midst of fruit and flower
Her song, it hurts,
and comes from hurt
What pain has been her muse?
The air itself, lumbers so
With the burden of her cries—
And the weight of tears
Which heaven seek, this awful song of loss.

The flowers, in their season, die
But the lady doesn’t see.
She plants herself
In the soil
and sings to their ghosts.

The Cradle

2005-06-30T17:00:00.000-07:00

Put me in a silk-lined cradle
with a heavy lid,
to keep out noise and light
and bugs that bite.
Somewhere I can rest my bones
and sleep the length
of my journey home.

Return me to
an earthen womb
when there’s nothing left
but my name in stone.

Lay my under landscaped lawns
and bending trees,
and offered flowers
I’ll never see.

Come to see me, now and then—
if you can find me
among the many
who’ve withered in their
silk lined cradles—
For we are rows and rows
under watchful crows
in this darker nursery
where the settling earth
sings to sleep
the newest of her
swaddled foundlings.

Opportunists

2005-06-30T16:56:00.000-07:00

What keeps flies from
nesting in my flesh?
Do they wait nearby, should
Mors dispatch?
How do they know
that I’m just asleep?
To them, does death
not look like this?

When that hour
overtakes me—
the smell of something
not alive will
waft by scores of
hungry vermin.
Defenseless, I
seem to sleep.

Insulted nevermore by this, nor
by the dirt thrown on my face; let
greedy maggots take their fill.
When flies are born,
the beetles come.

Trenches

2005-06-24T21:46:00.000-07:00

My bullet-proof heart
is securely in place,
so I march out the door
with today’s allotted courage.
Just like a soldier
mindful of cadence,
I step to the dol-drum
of my daily duty.
Then five o’clock comes
and all casualties—counted,
I return home once more
and wait for a medal.

Published at Wordlust : Paperfetish, 6-17-2005

Antitdote

2005-06-02T19:26:00.000-07:00

Would tears dilute
Death’s toxic drink
and restore you wholly
to life on earth?

Could Heaven be moved
by pitiful cries
to let you float
back down to me?

Which pleading words
would best convince
cruel Destiny
that I need you more?

Who knows how grieved
are my dreams at night?
Your visits are brief,
then morning intrudes.

Why was I
left behind
to forever mourn
the theft of you?

Who knows better
the dearness of
that one good man,
than a fatherless daughter?

Published at Wordlust : Paperfetish, May 27, 2005

Ashes

2005-05-27T00:13:00.000-07:00

The label on the canister says it’s you.
But it doesn’t look like you.
It doesn’t sound or feel or smell like you;
I won’t believe this is what you’ve become.

Sifting through fine particulate,
I try to feel your lined face.

I study the grains and pieces of bone--
searching hard, but recognize none.
Just days ago, an embrace
couldn't fully contain you.
Now here you are, in just
the space of my palms,
so lightly borne.

I pray
that the part of you
that needs to be whole
for you,
has been restored in heaven,
so that these obliterated parts
will stop shaking in my hands.

My tears, they flood your sandy body,
but fail to put you back together.

I try to fathom every speck:
That this urn should house
your heart and brain,
your skin and eyes,
your womb and breasts,
your hands and hair.
It contains as well, your last day:
Your pain, your fear, then letting go--
the lungs that failed you in the end;
the morphine, too, was burned with you.

Some of me, as well, is ash--
for there will be no turning back.
No recovery of those parts
that Death fragments into dust.

I search the crumbs
over again, and know
that I am made of this.

Omen

2005-05-23T12:04:00.000-07:00

It should have been
like other mornings.
Even five-year-olds are set
in their ways and know
when something isn’t right.

And something wasn’t right.

A chill like black chrome
killed comfort in the routine
of breakfast then cartoons.
A pall occluded bright blue eyes, and
here was dread, an unkind promise—
a sickening portent of proximate danger.

This was an ordinary home yesterday.
Now, it was my Gethsemane.

Published at Wordlust : Paperfetish, May 20, 2005

The Ministry of Touch

2005-05-19T15:03:00.000-07:00

Something survived the ravening.
A found bit of tenderness, overlooked

by scavengers, unmarred by
years of plunder.

I’d like you to have it.
Let me press it into

your palm, your lips, into
the well of your throat.

Take it; you’ll owe me nothing.
It is a gift, this touch. There will

be no conditions, no bartering,
no marking in a ledger. Enjoy

this treasure, let it soften
over your skin. Yield to its

warmth; there is safety here.
And here, your ecstasy is welcome

and a treasure unto itself. Behold
this small scrap of affection, a forgotten

morsel of caring: it is still supple
and certain to increase in the heart

of one who generously receives.
How extraordinary; how rare indeed

that any of us should be
so utterly cherished.

Archeology of the Self

2005-05-17T17:41:00.000-07:00

What visitors see
is the withering.
Is this me in ten years?
Dad acts out our undoing.
We’re taking notes, some of us.

One wants to fixate
on the tumor and the
wasting and the fact
that Dad sleeps with his eyes
open—that’s not a good sign.
God, he sleeps so much
these days.

Old friends funnel in and
out of the sickroom, milling
close to the door, minding
the invisible force field
around the bed.
Breathing only through their
mouths, they stare
out the window because
as far as they can tell, nothing
outside is dying.

Dad’s moaning throbs
somewhere in our own bodies,
the way a tuning fork sounds
its tonal correlates.

We’ve decided
that this is failure.
This is how we
let go of the wheel
and careen head-on
into fate.
Dad says there is still
important work being done.

Impossible.

Where is the good
in protracted suffering?
By whose standards
are purulent sores
meaningful?

This looks like decline,
says Dad from his death throne.
The process appears unduly
corrosive, I know.
But look closer girl…this…this
is an excavation through my self.

The ruins are obvious enough.
That the work of digging and sifting
is difficult and tedious, is apparent.
You see how dirty it is. How
back-breaking. You notice
debris piling upon debris.
But Daughter, this is
the only way depth
can be attained.

The only way.

Here, in this silty midden
is evidence of repeated cataclysm
and rebuilding. You see that?
Trowelling and tunneling,
I crumble into myself
overjoyed, imagining
a grotto—and finally,
there is discovery.

Days of sinking into
yet more sinking, rewarded
at last with landing
upon a seminal structure, a foundation.
Today I have unearthed something original.

Under strata of ego and duality,
beneath layers of separation and fear,
and webbed in a matrix of light
dazzles a flint of soul.
And girl, would you believe
that after all these years,
it still works.

Surveillance

2005-05-16T17:06:00.000-07:00

To look straight into the eyes
is to see the thing itself that lives—

the ghost who occupies the form
and who watches you in turn.

To stare into those glassy pools
of jasper, lapis and peridot, one sees

the blackened spinning spokes
of thought, of life, of shimmering pulse.

Careful to avert our gaze from orbs
that like the sun, burn bright, we

duck our heads and with furtive
glance, avoid falling into cold,

hot depths, or the chance that
in the lens we’ll glimpse

the reflection of God’s
own terrible face.

The Dream of Horses

2005-05-16T17:04:00.000-07:00

Three horses trudge
the heavy water,
and unless they drown
they’ll reach the other side—
black nostrils flared,
foaming transformation;
spitting, coughing
the residual spume
of who they were.

They keep sick water
in their lungs and
hear it sloshing
in mid gallop.
All prick their ears
in rapt alert
listening, hoping
the sound should come
from something else.

And on they go
snorting, wheezing,
carrying the river
like a stowaway.
Horses—no more,
but not yet whales,
they stall at the next bank,
ready to drink
but reluctant to swim.

If only they could be
taller than that river.

Sea Worthy

2005-05-14T21:33:00.000-07:00

Diligent, we are treading
an indifferent world.

Cold and heavy and
up to our necks,
it means to consume us.
So we tread
beyond pain
and past weariness,
keeping it outside.

Biding storms
and jagged rocks,
we’re lost in the roil
spitting and gasping,
counting to ourselves
as the tempest takes
us then in threes.

La Mer’s abundance
swells to feed us.
But land is heaven;
we want no more fish.

Let me sink and drift.
Let me sleep, and dream I’m an anchor.
Let me quit this vessel
to become a city of barnacles,
happy to number among
the ocean’s anonymous bounty.

Today--just for today,
bloating, blind,
incautious of lures and nets,
I am the burden of waves.

Published at Wordlust : Paperfetish, May 6, 2005