friends, forever.
There is no title for our book cover-up,
so I will keep reading like a brood kept laboring.
Take a long walk off my short feet,
my stomach pleads hunger no matter
how much I eat
and its open mouth aches.
Where there should be butterflies there are moths
eating through my loins like loincloth.
If there’s a map to things spoken, friend,
we’ll see we are way off.
Buddies.
You’re the worst kind because
you won’t even reject me physically,
we can’t even celebrate celibacy.
I am your dirty washboard
and yet have never had you inside me.
There’s no declaration in our country.
Pals.
You tug the one red string
that seems to run through everything.
I seek your flying patterns from behind,
the blue leading the blind.
Friends. No beneficiary.
So we stay.
WHEN
When my mother dies
I’ll smoke my first cigarette of at least a thousand
that will inevitably end my life.
I will not make the bed, but turn down the sheets;
white wind hands will
paint her face away, I will not
wear white.
Ashes will descend upon time
and time turn to dust.
Dust will appear forgivable and blue.
I never will notice until “warning” turns her light on
(Leave the light on, please),
I will do this nightmare a dirty favor
for my own peace and demise.
I will not recall Christmas décor.
Pink plastic lights
strung by papa’s hands will not show
the twinkle in my short circuit.
I will not remember how
the blue ones gave away her grace,
with a foreshadowing too early for my liking,
as she stood in the kitchen
and made me eyes from scratch
to see through.
I will walk in circles around that wine stain
on the carpet floor.
I will not look for 7 a.m. sunlight squares
through the kitty door,
over-easy eggs and bacon
(kitty is long gone now).
I won’t remember holding sermon on her chest,
sternums lain to rest,
mommy lying there without me
as I will be without my self.
I will string beads like spiderwebs
from this melting neck,
turquoises and pearls of hers,
and I will let them stay
a part of my body, as I
could not be.
I will not hear those songs I promised I would learn
but let die, those pipes in memory,
selfishly.
Guitars will invoke that nothingness
where a girl once sang along to a woman’s chorus
in natural cause
that harmony remain sacred.
I will not remember, my ear to her stomach,
sounds of that blood moving.
When moo is gone,
I’ll just let hair be hair. And hang there.
PIPE DREAMS
Truth is a tactic
a means to distortion,
see, on the shores of my beach
your abetting technique is a tidal wave
drowning out figures,
girls in disfigurement,
the liquidated body
a shape fit for a penis,
this the business of commercial muscle,
a community anxiety,
a syndrome of panic,
a “network” enforced disease
complete with glam and glit,
a death wish—hold the cheese!
Pipe dreams for women
the last remaining it seems
the last eating
breathing
the last full circle shred,
dump-truck worthy.
Ladies, they want to see bones,
softness is intimidating,
curves exceed the “standard” of unique,
too much of us
comes off too healthy,
vulnerability is “in,”
a child of exquisite molestation,
smallness opens awkward indications of neediness,
small holes needing protrusion,
exposing a dark metaphor,
Moss taught us.
You want more bones?
Check a graveyard, I’m still living.
Have just recently taken a woman’s form,
damn proud,
yes, this ass is mine.
I didn’t eat my way here.
This is how we look, you must’ve forgotten.
Note to all you fashion queens:
backstabbing comments are a modern corset
set to break ribs, the last remaining,
the last cage guarding
ages of hips available for viewing
at your local theatre or high school.
Pipe dreams for women
the last remaining
last eating
believing,
dump-truck worthy.
So remember this:
a woman’s body is not trademarked,
the standard is a corporate decision,
girls buy the image,
die to be it.
I’ll die
before I live it.
I’m my mother’s daughter,
take it or leave it,
no sucking in for squirting out
jerks, I am your greatest tear-jerker,
hexing your desires.
I’m my mother’s daughter,
I carry every weight
of every Blanchard,
gaunt makes me giggle
but never pause.
NEIL TOUR 2003—GREENDALE ENDS
A dismal sanctuary
no, really
sometimes I hate LA
like a teenage rebel
I want to sneak out
in the night,
do stupid things with nature
in the dark,
regret them
in the light,
remember the good times,
then dread coming home with
hickey imprints,
a life dreamt in dreading
chains.
I am skin,
let’s begin.
DEAR DIVINITY
Sucking on you
EZ
years of my mouth
dry
displeased
empty decades
bottomless shameful flower blossoming
life is coming
in full fear
Your legs, my dear,
effortless
you make me wanna write back-words
time
same
the at
pencils
two
wit
TRAIN
(Libra continued)
Nightmares,
yours, or are they mine?
I see them through your eyes.
What I did
repeats.
Hide out in me,
then we’ll both disappear
because it’s ours.
A younger you
approaching the railroad between us.
I smile coyly: Come here,
you’re becoming a horse,
you’re blood-cut stars dripping into
legs of a man
I cannot stand
to adore.
Riding your raw back,
imagination shiftin
g in rapid eye-movement,
your stall-fed mouth poking hard into
dark space.
You’re becoming it—
that beast I kissed.
This image
repeats:
younger blood bay, you,
skull elongated thick and tough,
a jaw bone in need of flesh
(perhaps you want mine),
a twisted man/animal rabid for my apology
being dragged under the steel of a freight train,
dragging your hooves open over the steel
like paper shells
the image repeats.
Your tangled pinks and veins rise up,
black-blood pupils reach for my face (oh, so distrusted!),
a muzzle like shattered jelly,
your choke caw slithers,
your squawk plea pounds,
to find my eyes
closed.
You beg for an explanation half alive as
your body unfolds in lush decay
all over my guilt.
My words ripple:
Stand there,
wait for the train.
TRUTH ABOUT DARK
Dark has rationed out his last patience.
Power’s out.
Apocalyptic coming starches a manic
blood-hungry rainstorm on my driveway
like
a harpy’s tongue inviting
all that is outside
in
Darkness still.
Wind is searching
for a decided feeding,
hairy, unseen.
It’s coming for me.
Shadows come for me—
the mediocre poet.
I wrote your heart to be dead
and they know it.
No, night is not beautiful.
It’s not for lovers or romances,
not for sexual advances
or carriage rides in the park.
No, dark still
is not for screaming stars
imprisoned in obliqueness
begging for forgiveness.
Night is not the trusted ear
nor the comforting friend.
Inside flesh is not pink:
black and lonely without artificial light,
tunnels of barren soiled skin like seaweed.
A forest without streetlight
is not naturally physically healing.
Lost in the bulrushes,
it is the thicket of a murderer’s hair
through which the wind weaves its fingers
before slaughter,
tall and constant,
never moving,
torturous,
awaiting stains of my grief
on his mustache and comb,
a revenge of its own
at its core
for no eyesore
bores deeper
than darkness.
Layers of dead lizards will
spook the harpy!
Hell’s hole is in my moccasin.
CELEBRATE
Today I celebrate your death,
like a comedy of err.
They say the Lord takes you when he wants to,
but the sound of your heart stopping was his laughing.
What would he want with your heart
that I did not pump?
What could he take from your body
that I did not touch?
I still question a motive of universal character.
Your disappearing act left heavy lips for
displacing my teens and swinging me sexually.
Was it sexual?
Do eyes like these grow on trees?
It’s funny now, I can hide a secret:
I will never lift the curse it took to keep it.
Today I project exaggerations,
intimacy and vulnerability,
catty remarks of two sixteen-year-olds who couldn’t
spell
adjusting to snow on the west coast while
the pleasure of disaster still hailed the fall.
Somewhere between
tucking your hair behind your ears
and your fingertips rubbing behind mine—
they might have called it a kiss,
I might have called it a talk.
A damning conversation.
Today I celebrate your blood
which spilled into tubes that
fed life into my mouth like rocks,
draining cascades from your father’s vanity,
who beat you senselessly but owned you domestically.
Purchasing a loss of innocence
without posting a reward.
There through the halls of your home
I crept in nightly on inexperienced heels
to meet an experiment in discretion.
That cry when I held you from his sledge rage,
that sound
later I would mistake for a moan.
It was
shortness of breath from a split lip
to new sounds in diary pages
that you never meant to show me.
But you did.
And it revealed it lasted longer than the drug that
wore off.
Today I celebrate you leaving me, physically.
Before it got too serious.
Before I could explore the mystery.
Before something drastic changed in me.
Before we made plans to change the world by
having babies.
Before I could climb under your covers easily.
Before we could admit to an anniversary.
Before we grew old and wise
and realized
we had the same color hair
and birthmarked thighs.
Before we used the same name to apply for things.
Before we made wedding rings out of string beans.
Before our souls might’ve made bondages.
Before we said things with our hands
and our words made pinky promises.
Today I laugh in your honor.
These tears are
glass trophies for
every year you spent
learning how to spell my name.
Write to me,
“Things don’t last forrever, Strawberry.”
Forever, with two r’s,
like the word denied itself,
like the Lord prepared himself
to sit and face you in
a damning conversation
and finalize, a wish come blue.
I am now
so old next to
your high-school shadow.
On the lockers, in the corners, all their smiles.
Happy
6th Anniversary.
THE LONELIEST
Thelonious Monk
You play, the ism is theism
The loneliest Monk
Beneath the coffin
here lies the fetus of Monk
the layer has shed
De Soto exit
The crow caws at the red light
in sync with your keys
Getty Museum
A cat glorifies his style
copy cat, that is
B sharp the slick note
Give credit where credit’s due
That b is for Blue
Big Bear streams live play
rhythm beats holes through spaces
Such heart in your pawse
Try to remember
the last time you played that song
to will out a ghost
Budakhan Mindphone
Squarepusher and the Monk must
share the same rib cage
In a dream last night
Ferncliff spit you up to play
for Garland and X
On Venice boardwalk
he paints your face red unknown
the color intrigu
es
My question disgusts
trite uncultured white girl thing
Who’s Monk? he repeats
Liza, your stanza
She’s distracting, isn’t she?
Gets me every time
Red haze freeway curves
a nuclear orange sky
industrial sherbet
Dawn crawls on crutches
your verbal wedding ring, lost
in the rosewood strings
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Amber Tamblyn is the star of the critically acclaimed CBS television drama Joan of Arcadia. She is also known for playing Emily Bowen-Quartermaine on the soap opera General Hospital, on which she appeared from 1995 to 2001. Amber’s film work includes starring in Warner Bros.’. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants as well as the cult hit The Ring.
Amber has been politically active for many years, working with such organizations as moveon.org, the ACLU, and Declare Yourself, and serving as a board member on Rock the Vote.
Amber’s father is actor/artist Russ Tamblyn. Her mother, Bonnie Tamblyn, is a teacher and a seminal influence in establishing a human development program called Counsel in schools across America. Amber lives in Los Angeles. Visit her at www.amtam.com.