How does it feel to be a fiction?

This is an invitation to participate in a performance—of which you are now the audience.  This performance is textual and takes place via email dissemination.  To participate in the work, click https://www.recessart.org/alizashvarts/.

The email address you received this from was generated as a result of this performance.  It repeats the name of the person who last participated and thus marks the path of this work's viral circulation.  If you reply to this email, your message will be routed to the author of the performance.

Be a Warrior Poet / Reprise

Bleed  salty tears

heart

fragile / beating / open

expose truth

be unafraid

use your pen to paint pictures

ugly and beautiful

your naked soul as your palate

You poet.

Show me an original alchemy

where you turn your fear into courage

make medicine out of that poison

that is slowly killing you

dig yourself out of that early grave

they dug for you

and cry me

a polluted river

toxic salty

words

so the parasites

don’t have to live inside of you

anymore

and when you’re done

stand in a standing room only
dimly lit room full of poets

or a city street

or facing the ocean

and read it

out loud

to the world

I promise

Someone will listen.

By Mariposa 

Wanna be a warrior poet?

Bleed  me some salty tears

on pages and pages

of your heart

fragile / beating / open and exposed

be unafraid to cry ugly

use your pen to paint pictures

your bare soul as your palate

You poet.

Show me an original alchemy

Where you turn your

fear into courage

make some medicine out of that poison

that’s slowly killing you

dig yourself outta that early grave

and cry me

a polluted river

some salty

words

and when you’re done

stand in a room

with some poets

warrior poets

and cowards alike

and read it

out loud. 

#conundrum

In the future
I wonder if
we'll still love in this way
A broken ship to endure the lengthy journey
I was told forever was the destination
Must our love be
A fight at every turn?
Lessons learned from scornful words
With hindsight leading us further from the safety of the shore?
Why does black love feel more like
A head under water where we think we're breathing just fine
Unable to take a breath accepting the blues with our black because this is just how he loves us?
Will these broken down cycles of apathy and counter intuitive thinking always be what it's like to love a black man?
Will I always be too much and not enough at the same time?
Hypocrisy seems to turn him on
Wild goose chases for unicorns
Driven women who balance home cooked gourmet dishes
and creating their champagne wishes
All by ourselves
We're out here
A lady in the streets, freak in the sheets, & nurturer in between
a rock and a hard place
I'm right here
But I can't stroke your ego while I hold your hand
Black man,
please hold my hand.

Another question
Why is it that kinky hair and full hips translates to complicated?
As if you fear my complexity
I'm just being the queen
I was meant to be
The one you said
you'd wish I'd be
because that's
what you said
a king really needs
So what is it about me that's so intimidating?
Will I always be expected to keep
offering up apologies for the anticipated tragedy of loving me?
Can lost black girls find redemption in a heart and not in the heat of passion
Instead of actin for these peter pans clocked in black man skin?

I'm asking
cause I'm tired of the past
I'm tired if not being enough
when I've poured it all out
The thousand times I've runneth over
I'm tired of being bitter by proxy of my race
I'm tired of holding my anger a steady pace in place of a steady heart beat
And beating myself up for being my mothers daughter
I'm tired of rebirthing his existence yet still be discounted in favor of women of simplicity
I don't want to someone he wishes he never met
The one he's actually unable to forget
And one day may regret his decision to leave.
Because we both know he'll never find another me
Yet even knowing this
Is not comforting
Cause I've still got kids to raise
on my own
I've still got to be the anchor
and cornerstone of the home created
and we broke
and yet
I don't get the luxury
of giving up on trying to solve this puzzle with your piece still missing.

-JSC2014
www.artlovesher.com

Sent from my iPhone

Maybe Yet Resolve

Lapsed into apathy
Stultified longing
Aping an ache for the truth
I'm a ruse of recluse
An imposter hermit
Hiding pretending it's me
Belied by the hammers that constant caress
Lonely dulcet one-sixteenths
Tiny lonely lonely lonely
It's the song I know
And here I am again
Lapsed into apathy
Stultified longing
Aping an ache for the truth
Maybe tomorrow finds
Finally dyeing
My heart red
Instead of my cheeks
And maybe the music
Will yet resolve
Into peculiar,
quiet harmonies

And I Am An Impoverished Lover

And i am an impoverished lover
Because I have loved so many, thinly
Offering my sex like the discarded petals of a dying bouquet
Stingy with the burn that runs through the heart of me
And so like starved I come to you
Sweet smelling but who cares anymore

one day late
cause I went on a late night date
slept all day
and ate
early to bed
eyes itchy
eyes twitchy
stomach feels all topsy turvy
wanted to end on a better note
but my energy has been over exerted
maybe we can do this thing better
next time around together

Where's the Museum

where we can hang the lute purchased unwisely on a driving trip to Italy, where we can shelve the bins of old movies, the heavy boxes like velveeta bricks chunked with slides of this campsite, that Easter, the roses again, new hybrids, new to our mother's gentle OhWalters, where some docent will placidly open the jewel box and unwrap the Purple Heart and the chamois with the rust bloodied bullet and show to the children see this small and it blew open a shoulder see it was saved it was morbid it was necessary it was this small just right for our museum

Call Your Mom, Ishmael

Fancy the caulking ribboned thick
The sails freshly stretched
The wheel plumbed anew
The captain experienced the limes wrapped neatly the weather predictable the mothers
not consoled

CROW GOLD

Out on a limb 
I might try 
to illustrate the world a little –
other countries
blah blah blah - 
this is how it is or was:
once I was a cat sitter,
the floorboards were
warped and dangerous,
I though I’d write dispatches
from the fire escape
but never had
the nerve or will.
On Saturday nights
my friends look heaven-ready
on the dance floor
I’m standing by the pole,
chewing on a lime rind:
waitressing dreams,
breastfeeding dreams,
breast dreams.
Would it be nice
to be as vulnerable as trash
knocked free by wind?
Crow-gold,
exposed and up
for grabs.

DRIVING DOWN MLK WAY

My station wagon shudders 
the dips and ridges 
of MLK Way,
oh terror-free life of mine,
vessel-bound, with headlights blown
and his last speech
tremolo despite the haze. 
We bastards of the West,
still scanning city tide pools
(magenta oils that mingle 
with the rain)
for some more pure 
reflection.

the pool table was slanted
but we played anyway
our first time as a team
playing against strangers
i made the first ball in
when you weren't looking

#inspired

Inspired to write of the delight I get from being around you
No one else has the effect that you do
Bag it up and sell it
Mami you are a drug
You got me lifted
Gifted
Feigning for you love
Wondering what it smells, tastes, feels like
I be like
Those addicts on 25th
Only breathing because it feels right
And I want you
Every last drop of your body
Probably
The liquor talking for me
Saying all the things
I'm too shy to say
You've been the bright

Lecture

Celestial sciences sour me, make me less
Pope-like which isn't a problem as I
am a woman and was hoping
to be a mystic.

However I would be a great Pope,
a corrupt magician type, the cool kind.
Am I immodest? The worst
thing about magic is

it's all treasure-hunting,
which is for boys.
What, I get recipes?
All these gold word-blocks
and the demons don't
solve math or teach computers;
which, pardon me, I'd
love to find feminine.

I don't care about treasure
but I would love to see
a cavern of gold automata
like I heard a French guy
who became Pope Sylvester the
(I can't remember numbers,
that's what demons are for)
did.

peanut butter

sour stomach
thoughts of
peanut butter and
banana toast,
the smell is sickening.
thick honey in-between my fingers, teeth
life is nauseating.

THE KATELYN FEELING

I’ll call it the Katelyn feeling

dark, saltine

approaching tidal

somebody I love is

opening up

away from me

I can hear the soft sound

see the soft shadow

of a bright, fresh happiness

choosing him

KI AND PI

Ki and Pi.

Combined you represent

my greatest loitering times.

Double Libra to balance out

my double braided mess.

With you all I am a wrapped up column

expired lust morphed into

something better – a sister of sorts,

a good right hand man.

Ki and Pi.

The boys in black

with small slant script.

Pioneers of loathing, certainty

and I’m the loudmouth driver here.

Ki navigates with daisy gestures

and Pi just says “this way is right”.

Combined we don’t 

stay lost for long. 

COUNTRY SONG

Wanna know the feeling

of waiting for a girl

to come along

and make me better  -

the paper flower plant

is curling like onions

the rain is back

and making songs

as comforting as rice - 

wanna know the feeling

of never being ready

until you are

Crowd of Crows

Why say murder when crowd contains the bird?
Honeys do, yes, and honeydews don't
Rusty hearts need rest apart
This here cat is purring across the scars flapped on my chest
Even after years padded by,  a cat's weight is an iron clamp
A reminder you are gripped, some choices gypped, and a greasy
love will scour the pot.
Crows settle in the live oak.
  They aren't looking for us, we are no bunch.



(Thanks, Shakespeare)

Fare thee well

Drizzling rain, a song and being together.
Called for a birthday wish, and here I thought
it was condolences. Twenty years of chemicals,
and all the better for it, feeling powerful, oh January.

Such things I ate tonight, the thought of it astounds.
The sauce and regretfulness, not doing enough
relaxing into and because of dread. A glass of wine,
optimism of destruction and television, smiling scientists.

Sung with my small voice, infinite exponents
of nameless women washing which I do not.
Who to call back, so many and without time
or the right kind of it, quite, oh January.