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> <channel><title>Fogged Clarity &#187; i want to make you safe</title> <atom:link href="http://foggedclarity.com/tag/i-want-to-make-you-safe/feed/" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" /><link>http://foggedclarity.com</link> <description>An Arts Review</description> <lastBuildDate>Thu, 09 Feb 2012 00:42:13 +0000</lastBuildDate> <language>en</language> <sy:updatePeriod>hourly</sy:updatePeriod> <sy:updateFrequency>1</sy:updateFrequency> <generator>http://wordpress.org/?v=</generator><itunes:summary>Arts Review Fogged Clarity&#039;s interviews with authors, musicians and poets, exclusive acoustic music sessions and poetry readings from some of the world&#039;s most gifted and interesting contemporary creators.  TC Boyle, Benjamin Percy, Samantha Farrell, Strand of Oaks, Will Oldham, Bonnie &#039;Prince&#039; Billy, Bruce Smith, Joe Meno and many more. Hosted by Benjamin Evans, Executive Editor of Fogged Clarity.</itunes:summary> <itunes:author>Fogged Clarity</itunes:author> <itunes:explicit>no</itunes:explicit> <itunes:image href="http://foggedclarity.com/wp-content/uploads/powerpress/FC_logo_podcast.jpg" /> <itunes:owner> <itunes:name>Fogged Clarity</itunes:name> <itunes:email>ryandaly@foggedclarity.com</itunes:email> </itunes:owner> <managingEditor>ryandaly@foggedclarity.com (Fogged Clarity)</managingEditor> <copyright>Fogged Clarity</copyright> <itunes:subtitle>Interviews, Readings and sessions with authors, musicians and poets</itunes:subtitle> <itunes:keywords>Fogged Clarity, Art, Music, Literature, Fiction, Authors, Interviews, Visual, Poetry, Acoustic, Sessions</itunes:keywords> <image><title>Fogged Clarity &#187; i want to make you safe</title> <url>http://foggedclarity.com/images/logoSM.png</url><link>http://foggedclarity.com</link> </image> <itunes:category text="Arts" /> <itunes:category text="Music" /> <itunes:category text="Arts"> <itunes:category text="Literature" /> </itunes:category> <item><title>I Want to Make You Safe</title><link>http://foggedclarity.com/2009/02/i-want-to-make-you-safe/</link> <comments>http://foggedclarity.com/2009/02/i-want-to-make-you-safe/#comments</comments> <pubDate>Wed, 04 Feb 2009 19:45:50 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>Benjamin Evans</dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[Poetry]]></category> <category><![CDATA[amy king]]></category> <category><![CDATA[i want to make you safe]]></category> <category><![CDATA[poets]]></category> <guid
isPermaLink="false">http://foggedclarity.com/?p=144</guid> <description><![CDATA[by Amy King]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<h3 class="byLine">Amy King</h3><div
id="poemContainer"><div
id="poem"><p>Fusion is the only thumb,<br
/> an avalanche of turning<br
/> handles, cinching jars,<br
/> the wine from which we drink free will.</p><p>How can we be chained each<br
/> to separate nieces who lace the four corners of my silk<br
/> dress shirt?  Without water, I remain a ripple<br
/> in your glass, a fist against the page, dressy and warm.</p><p>A dandelion seed also looks for corners to lie,<br
/> so here am I<br
/> a seated tin can<br
/> with intrusive mice to lend a hand.</p><p>Let them grow, these future kids<br
/> my womb to fill, my womb well hid.</p><p>But the dung of art<br
/> beats a mainstream twitch-<br
/> ing bootleg drum off in the most avant<br
/> garde they think they&#8217;ve smitten,<br
/> just because a mission bell<br
/> far dispersed like everyone else soon enters.</p><p>A house in the country, no?<br
/> A rabbit for stew and petting.</p><p>The dead do not wear life without<br
/> long silence, coats long<br
/> we sling around our sloping shoulders,<br
/> hurry through a mirrored wind<br
/> and rain beneath the armored<br
/> tortoise shells — O footed beast,<br
/> you remind me of my silent partner stalking<br
/> the slant of my back rain pipes through.</p><p>What&#8217;s it like to lose a foreign coin<br
/> down a well?<br
/> An atomic arm upon the passage,<br
/> dear white rabbit, skin of my hare?<br
/> Only trees in numbers<br
/> can knock us down,<br
/> burn the lettered alphabets that make a name<br
/> from lung-sequestered commas,<br
/> oxygen matter sifting money, heart<br
/> attacks, a lack of hate to push death into…</p><p>We get up later, hush the faces,<br
/> wish the days weren&#8217;t ours to bury,<br
/> shelve and bring a new one down, walk the house<br
/> without the costume drinking<br
/> freshly-plucked, wine red oak<br
/> legs that scream on fire, sirened<br
/> police behind horizons I long and long<br
/> to climb upon.  How can I never see you again?<br
/> The days I die for you<br
/> stretch about your thighs, rope you back,<br
/> your mummy rises with aspirin<br
/> tucked between my shoulder blades<br
/> to lick the night behind.</p><p>Romans descend and no one prevents<br
/> a world of obedience.  We hang on<br
/> kite tails, balance spoon handles,<br
/> trigger fly traps with tweezers.<br
/> We yank at triggers cascading.</p><p>A letterpress gives birth to multiplicity,<br
/> I practice identity by hand-cranked tennis work.<br
/> What happens if anyone cares?<br
/> The goateed German waltzes Schopenhauer<br
/> or else becomes a cantankerous housewife full<br
/> of pleated quilts that her teeth still watch<br
/> low budget puppet shows against.  Vivian Leigh walks out<br
/> in jet black Sabrina Capri&#8217;s<br
/> to throw a blonder pale war down<br
/> on her leg or bum or whatever turns the greatest insult.</p><p>The baby spills into five thousand beads of crystal<br
/> all bouncing where the gutter fakes appearance.<br
/> We are heat through windows watching,<br
/> bumps into other places, some period of infinity<br
/> or rule.  Without a contract or contact, it&#8217;s awful<br
/> how little I see of you.</p><p>Careened and thwarted, the bully apprentice<br
/> grew a plaster prison to toil<br
/> the mimicked prophecies spelling our sense upon:</p><p>A Persian rug reminds me of an ornate religion,<br
/> perfunctory paraphernalia,<br
/> dank knouter ordained<br
/> amid the bleating whips, whoever said<br
/> one mattered received two lashes,<br
/> but scars aren&#8217;t enough to make photographs<br
/> work out.  They hinder the sight&#8217;s brain-length.</p><p>People will be what they do to their souls.<br
/> Or else the spoons of natural history<br
/> go water-witching marble fingerprints,<br
/> a kind of lying decay for museum hours<br
/> we obsess by.</p><p>When the army trucks ran over the candy one,<br
/> Iraq was all it never would be.</p><p>Into reddest rose blooms<br
/> a serious business:  she fairly screamed to practically<br
/> nothing—they took the wrong ghost home.<br
/> Because the climate goes, we stand<br
/> temporal and durable; our pants lockjaw hands,<br
/> an outer language of the palm&#8217;s earthly center,<br
/> a fly on the fence amiss.</p><p>Our insensitive species, we grow evermore<br
/> lattice-worked diseasing interests.</p><p>And so it goes—Are you right for democracy&#8217;s<br
/> chief this-and-this, a dream world window<br
/> arranging the Real with rubber bands,<br
/> this sealed solarium, a clam with no ocean in sight?</p><p>Of symptoms, an oaf in hotel<br
/> with numskull denizens—<br
/> how does this evening find you<br
/> retiring numbers?  Poultry programs with<br
/> antibiotic-baked chicken?</p><p>Dormant mouse, we alone face our time.<br
/> But I liked you too; I&#8217;m into old men,<br
/> that part of your mind still lying,<br
/> not even a cracker to nod against.</p><p>Still, eat the binocular particles,<br
/> the florid hallucinations to nibble<br
/> and welcome our public theaters of talk<br
/> virtues don&#8217;t lie upon—they<br
/> want to find a celibacy for unused<br
/> pawns to change their natures from.</p><p>Your doorbell is a fly on the fence amiss.</p><p>My accordion squeezebox plays<br
/> with wounded arm, knee on head grotesque,<br
/> an elbow in the midget&#8217;s frankincense,<br
/> sweet confusion for who to pray to<br
/> for bounty on the bruise of this bottomless<br
/> excess, old world baking, the aroma&#8217;s atomic bomb,<br
/> crumbs fallen to his groin, and she, looking on.</p><p>Imperialists are not defunct.  Proof is the poet&#8217;s burden<br
/> to tell but write beneath:  nicotine needles,<br
/> caressing a voice in the woods that wanders<br
/> through mine, revolution in honeyed motion<br
/> stops short against our animal bodies,<br
/> skins the people will change again.</p><p>Criminal digging at buried light<br
/> at risk of soul at risk of loss,<br
/> we thought barbed wire<br
/> and factories saved our grace<br
/> with little workshops.  We rent and wrench<br
/> and flag the world.  Suddenly rain<br
/> drops we went<br
/> out side, all black around us, outside surmounts.</p><p>A newborn walks into<br
/> grammar absorbed,<br
/> the mummy betrothed, ahead<br
/> violent books attack the stagnant family,<br
/> free speech in alphabets gated</p><p>Around not-waiting on paralysis shapes,<br
/> giving world what<br
/> I&#8217;ve not got—<br
/> a room can hold<br
/> me, can stillness hold us<br
/> from this fight?</p><p>A fair number<br
/> imitators.  But not the inside<br
/> lightning.  The seductive fist<br
/> of brimstone lodges deep within the throat.</p><p>Upon the heart&#8217;s shoe rising,<br
/> I&#8217;ll roast your dinner skewered on the bones<br
/> of my hand, nightly caressing your lips into ears—<br
/> that language is the new cover-up.</p><p>After hours, the factory keeps my house in shape;<br
/> they won&#8217;t talk until you toe the torture<br
/> line though;<br
/> I&#8217;m going to run like a horse&#8217;s army<br
/> through Van Gogh veins, an entry way to suicide food,</p><p>A choir of bless you&#8217;s and bona fide cleansing<br
/> like my own bowl<br
/> weevil arches and spends<br
/> blueblood mornings with me.<br
/> He has a forgotten road<br
/> rage under his hinder rash.  He ignores the chain<br
/> of each handshake linking to one moment:  but.</p><p>He finished his essay by the end of our date, off topic.<br
/> He&#8217;s another being, manure-style.  He that eat of the worm<br
/> that eats of a king can live that I may become<br
/> his entrails, one finger in a drone of cherubic phone calls.<br
/> Christmas trees come together.  Sentinels raise<br
/> their belated beaks.  The natural order turns our bread into pulses.<br
/> We eat food from others, turn edible ourselves.</p><p>But when did doorbells decease?  You sound too alphabetical<br
/> shining amidst such lessons … in the retracting foot<br
/> steps, give them back and I&#8217;ll<br
/> also make meals to oranges and apples<br
/> on tongues, chop down stalwart toad<br
/> stools to perch your fat furry ass upon.</p><p>Kill the family?  How about kindle the children<br
/> and spark a heart&#8217;s arch for us to walk beneath?<br
/> The camel through a needle passed, kicking out.</p><p>Hello Lady Bird,<br
/> Hola, Smashed Guitar Parts,<br
/> I take these strings to this neck<br
/> and cut the tumor in half—love is a surgery<br
/> in participles, pus-filled insects.<br
/> Additional commands keep the planet well-heeled:</p><p>Walk the ankle of my spine with your tendrilled antennae,<br
/> feel my way along the ocean&#8217;s floor of god&#8217;s back:<br
/> we speak the same word.  If only not for</p><p>The angry swell of mass inconvenience<br
/> against the girl who swallowed<br
/> one hundred thousand objects.<br
/> Jump into the wishing box.<br
/> Find your Ecuadorian, your pigeon<br
/> near the earth&#8217;s waist straining…find a notch<br
/> of not-me and help with the surgery.</p><p>I want to make you safe.</p><p>God is the excess<br
/> of our collective minds<br
/> of our collective wing wax<br
/> of our flights past time zones.<br
/> Sometimes we write<br
/> another time<br
/> to ache by,<br
/> the jester jumping<br
/> along our spinal<br
/> cords between<br
/> knuckle bones,<br
/> the imprint of God&#8217;s<br
/> shattered fist.</p><p>But now I feel it, the sensitive ear rotting red<br
/> as my thought&#8217;s blood blister<br
/> catches up with me—<br
/> On civics,<br
/> the stereo oxygen splits into air I hear<br
/> through green stems of tulip surgery,<br
/> brown leaves stricken with<br
/> the crutches of living.<br
/> A wind that plays<br
/> a moon&#8217;s harp shaped<br
/> by my rib cage missing<br
/> its limbs.  Please reattach the orifice if<br
/> I&#8217;m ever to hold onto your love.</p></div></div><div
id="bio"><em><strong>Amy King</strong> is the author of <strong>I&#8217;m the Man Who Loves You</strong> and <strong>Antidotes for an Alibi</strong>, both from Blazevox Books, <strong>The People Instruments</strong> (Pavement Saw Press), and most recently, <strong>Kiss Me With the Mouth of Your Country</strong> (Dusie Press). Forthcoming from Pudding House Press is <strong>Men By the Lips of Women</strong>.  She edits the Poetics List, sponsored by The Electronic Poetry Center (SUNY-Buffalo/University of Pennsylvania), moderates the Women&#8217;s Poetry Listserv (WOMPO) and the Goodreads Poetry! Group, and teaches English and Creative Writing at SUNY Nassau Community College. Her poems have been nominated for several Pushcart Prizes, and she has been the recipient of a MacArthur Scholarship for Poetry. Amy King was also the 2007 Poet Laureate of the Blogosphere. She is currently editing an anthology, The Urban Poetic, forthcoming from Factory School. For information on the reading series Amy co-curates, please visit The Stain of Poetry: A Reading Series blog, and her own site, AmyKing.org.</em></div> ]]></content:encoded> <wfw:commentRss>http://foggedclarity.com/2009/02/i-want-to-make-you-safe/feed/</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>0</slash:comments> </item> </channel> </rss>
