My Arrogant Lips

The Rockrose Moon (A Serial Fiction) Part 32

“Let him not desire my eyes,
Prophetic and fixed,
He will get a whole lifetime of poems,
The prayer of my arrogant lips."

Oh, It Was a Cold Day
Anna Akhmatova

I think about the Cassandra thing all the time, apparently there is also the concept of a klikusha (screamer) that though considered mad, is treated with respect since she is believed to be endowed by God with the gift of insight and prophecy.

That must be why so many women on the local poetry landscape think it is okay to scream at the audience, such as it is. They think they might be mistaken for klikusha and respected. It ain’t going to happen.

I don’t know about you but I can think of about 50 things I would rather do than sit in a small uncomfortable room in a smoky bar or coffeehouse and be screamed at by someone desperate for attention but fundamentally sane.

Usually a drunk someone.

I wrote a poem about Cassandra once. I can’t find it. I remember her in her simple shift, how she in the end, gouged her eyes out, as one wants so desperately to yank out a tooth that is aching, to make the seeing stop to fit in, to be “normal”. To live a modest unremarkable life.

The problem with me is the problem A.A. states so clearly; is that if someone settles in with me, he is going to have to put up with a lifetime of poems.

Nobody really wants that. Like my father used to say, “Learn all about the arts, my girlie girl; until you marry, it will make you a better catch and your life will be more comfortable. Then you will be too busy with my grandchildren to care…”

But even if I filled these arrogant lips with silicone to make them pout like the poor Balanchine dancers used to do or broke my hands so I could not type I would still go on writing, if it was just with a stick in the sand using my toes.

But not for them, the so called audiences, but for me, because like the unbidden visions that plagued Cassandra I do not think I can help myself.