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    © 2018 by Carisse Elaine Ramos.

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    I – ON THE ISLAND

     

    Each day you grow further;
    Each day
    You stir the still air across the ocean
    A sweet sigh in a pounding collision

    A soul drifts
    Bashing against rocks and colliding back into my memory

    An interruption
    Soft kissing
    Broken
    Still beautiful

    II – ON THE ISLAND

     

    As you fell you grew dimmer and dimmer
    A light in my head,
    Stolen by the ocean’s empty swallow
    What you knew
    What we knew
    Faded in that sliver counting.
    I was tied to you.

    I can forget
    Every word we spoke
    Every glance we made
    Every touch that grazed between us,
    But you find me here,
    Unbridgeable,
    Wading in the untouchable state.

    Could I reach you?
    If I dove off mountains and stretched my palms
    could I touch you.

    You
    Clasp you frozen
    Flawless for a second in my mind
    Seeing what you saw in the seconds before.
    Grasping at nothing.

    Soft wind and stammered exchanges,
    Chance slams us between her spokes.
    I am haunted by something I never understood,
    A moment’s feeling stretched to days of unease.

    We were ours
    In the air
    We were ours

    Burning with it
    Our lives
    We were they
    Passing in untouched seconds,
    Beautiful in the center of a lagging heart.

    III- ON THE ISLAND

     

    They will not find me
    Here with you they cannot find me.
    My heart is open and they may feel love,
    But they will not understand.
    I am not theirs.

    Smiling
    I can fool
    Laughing with the broken
    Tender smiles to fragile faces.
    But I am the snake,
    Slipping through empty arms,
    Misunderstood and scaling rivers to escape;
    To find you.

    I run it through my mind again
    Kissing the sun
    Exploding through clouds to touch sky
    Playing with the wind as it turned the mountains below us

    Everything fell away in that moment.
    Everything we were,
    It was enough.
    And the beloved,
    They will never take me.

    IV – ON THE ISLAND

     

    Why does my heart drag
    Picking up the asphalt and grits from the road
    Rolling in pieces you left me

    I never knew you.
    I knew you, never knowing you.
    But there I am, pulled along by the strings that tied you over.

    In my mind filled gaps and stories
    Never knowing you I knew you
    Your face, hands
    Lingering feeling
    Touching
    Whispers

    I can barely remember
    Barely feel your breath on my cheek
    Whispering things
    Happy, Blissful happy
    It meant
    Did it mean
    Did what

    I never knew you
    But knowing you I knew you.

    V – ON THE ISLAND

     

    Do you remember
    Salty ocean air
    I on your shoulders and a whole sky below us.
    I remembered you and tripped
    Caught by the strings in your hands.

    VI – ON THE ISLAND

     

    The sky was unforgiving.
    No longer alone,
    The island had fallen for you,
    The ocean had touched your skin.
    Daedalus had warned of the youthful fire
    Melding the wax as you punctured the sky;
    But she had loved you;
    Feral and manic;
    In jealousy she struck you down.
    The island,
    With passions too fierce
    Wrapped you in her arms,
    Pressing you to her body as your wings crumpled around you;

    The ocean heaved in remorse.
    Roaring.
    The island took in your breath as it rattled from your lips.
    A body broken in tangles of stone and salt,
    You were encased in the rocks that you loved.
    The sky howled.
    The faces recalled.
    You loved her.
    Only her.
    Remembered. You love her.

    VII – ON THE ISLAND

     

    In another life
    Phosphorus and copper
    Green as day and mossy
    Unassuming
    Unending
    The strings suspended
    Ropes and threads of gold
    Tied
    Inextricable
    Insect wires through glass threads binding
    Cold
    Untouched
    Glass case unfolding
    Rocking you
    Only warmth
    A slap with you smiling
    Blue eyes like water
    Clear and
    Limpid
    Laughter
    My eyes in your hands
    Holding us in air roped around you
    My friend, you were everything.

    VIII – ON THE ISLAND

     

    If I closed my eyes. The salt. I would feel it biting my hair, turning my cheeks sticky with the residue of sun and the pacific. I would be there, soaring with my hands bound to cords. Your hands guiding me to guide us. Spinning. You took me spinning in sky. I was flying, free from everything. You love it. I saw. Passing, you made your way through.

    IX – ON THE ISLAND

     

    Like a child I cling to your shirt
    Smell the scent of sun on skin,
    I hold you as a doll holds its mother.
    Evan
    Did you hear me?
    My voice was eaten by waves;
    I forgot you.
    When you passed I had forgotten you.
    Preoccupied
    In love
    I forgot you and you left
    She took you.
    Hungry.
    The island with her stormy voice.
    I kissed a child while you broke in half
    I touched snow while the heat bit your skin
    I smiled as her jaws ripped through you
    And the island exhales laughter.
    The longing clapped,
    I lost you, and without knowing, you were gone.

    X – ON THE ISLAND

     

    No words can bring you back,
    No wishing or soft whispers.
    In honest, simple truth,
    You are gone.

    XI – ON THE ISLAND

     

    What did she know when she saw you
    What did she sew with the back of her thumb
    Writing on the skin of your shoulders
    Writing to find you

    I tell you that I love you
    Boiled in ink and heat like aching metal
    I love you,
    A memory, not a man,
    Nameless, formless,
    You haunt
    Stinging the imagination of longing the living
    Memory
    That’s all that’s left.
    You held me once, stroked my arms and pulled me to you.
    Obsession. Ambiguous.
    There is nothing here.
    And still, everything depends
    Caught in your hair
    Eyes like spilling water
    There is nothing left:
    A makeshift man of memory.

    XII – ON THE ISLAND

     

    I saw home in you.
    Safe, heart beat fast
    Quick and soft
    Warm sounds in the hall,
    Craning my neck to see
    The quiet creaking.
    Half smiles and light windows.
    I saw home in you,
    Never knowing and finding you here.

    XIII – ON THE ISLAND

     

    Here, snow couldn’t fill the gap you left
    Deftly floating sharp through a passage of
    Rough colored mountain brick.
    Sticking to the inside of the thin white membrane
    A brain filled with fatty tissue
    Skewed from fictitious accounts of normal aspirations

    I left you as I left you
    Folded with arms like paper sheets,
    Sleet formed as water makes skin transparent.
    Legs apparent and damp with salt, We left
    Halting like a car on a road filled with
    Still glass on wibbling carpets of
    Dove colored asphalt; I left you there.

    Chicago seems so far away as I cling to the blue sand between my elbows.

    AN ANCHOR

     

    It strikes you
    holds your chest like aging iron
    Sagging with the weight of water pressing down on its hips.

    To be alone
    There is a hole
    Careful and thick like humid air
    Attacking the lungs and pulling the body down,

    It breaks you.

    Where there was you
    There was ice
    Comfort cooling the fire that ate through us
    Melted to a puddle at the base of the chest.
    Anchors pulled tightly at the lump between these ribs,
    They dragged you from the neck through the lungs.

    I feel it tearing
    The tissue gasps as the fibers break.
    Loving too deeply the water ruptures through it.
    I am dry like desert to open sand.

    FOR FRANCESCA

     

    It is nothing.
    I hold you and my lungs,
    Clasped between your fingers,
    Claw and crack;
    I am cold and the coarseness of my breath breaks against yours,

    But I hold you.

    The silence sways me,
    The skin in his stare
    And the embrace in the space between us,
    But I hold you and it is nothing.

    Do you hear the caving in my chest?
    The break of ribs that sing in the exhale–

    I breathe,
    And the air,
    Shaking with the weight
    of water and bare legs between us,
    Holds me to you.

    Somewhere there is warmth
    And the wax that slides from my shoulders
    Forms blankets;
    A shield,
    And the shame that pins my eyes
    To your open face.

    I have done nothing.
    I have done nothing and the lack sears my empty grin.

    I loved
    And the empty untouched space
    Held me.

    HURRICANE

     

    There were cold birds.
    Talking herds together on wires.
    Words forming riots of ink on
    Sturdy chain linked fences.

    The disconnect.

    Tight white knights riding
    White faces on
    Satin
    Stain satin silk sashes
    Sashes for my lady
    Guenevere

    Turn the page,
    Satin soiled silk
    Stained sex.
    Singing sullied guilt
    Blood.
    Blood.
    Stings.
    It stings and I sing to sink
    Deeper
    Hold me
    Deep
    Stretched out on shards of slate
    Slash slash slash
    Goes the–
    Wind in wood
    It whistles
    The cracks–there’s the

    Ticket out
    Ticket out
    Out of hell
    Elle
    L

    Lost
    Lovers
    Have you seen my lover?
    Shaggy, dirty, everywhere

    I lost him

    Dot
    I lost
    Dot
    I lost

    Forgot

    .

    I – A FIRE BURNS

     

    Water burns,
    It rains,
    The smoke gathers and weaves in tangles,
    Spiders of black on red brick.
    I saw him once, vague shadow
    Holding my heart to keep from breaking,
    Splintering bitter
    The day is gone.
    Nothing could hold you
    Charred glass and bitter brick
    Nothing could hold you
    In palms of red salt.

    II – A FIRE BURNS

     

    It drowned me
    Fire licking my tongue
    Water breaking the bones and beams.
    Somewhere flesh rots,
    Fur and sunken sockets;
    I hear wailing and the walls are black,
    But who could hear us?
    Caught in anxious waiting.
    Shaking limbs staggered through the ash,
    Black like tar these lives went down.
    Who knew?
    Who knew?
    Somewhere life rots
    Our hair hides burning cages

    III – A FIRE BURNS

     

    I can’t
    Can’t breathe
    Can’t br
    Can’t see
    There’s a hole ahead,
    Blackness covers it,
    Curled drywall makes a grin,
    Black
    Everything is black
    Air
    I smell it
    Choking
    Black tar
    There’s
    Black
    I can’t
    Can’t hear
    Fire
    The fire
    So
    Can’t
    So dark
    Dark
    Black

     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     

    BA VCS THESIS


    Fun with Dick and Little Susie: The Naming of Erogenous Zones

    -An interdisciplinary exploration and analysis of identity, gender, and representations of the body as reflected by the common social practice of naming and anthropomorphizing erogenous body parts.

    *Archived Copy in the Flaxman Library
    *(April 30,2011) Excerpt presented at the SAIC BAVCS Thesis Symposium:
    In///Tensions
    Art Institute of Chicago, Modern Wing
    Chicago, IL

     

    WORDS

    HAVE

    POWER

    For me, writing is cathartic. It's a healing process, regardless of whether or not the words themselves are kind, angry, sad or joyful. The power is in the process, though in the end, I hope the results of that process can resonate with and heal others, too.

    POETRY AND PROSE

    ​

    ON THE ISLAND

    I   II   III   IV   V   VI   VII   VIII   IX   X   XI   XII   XIII

     

    AN ANCHOR

    ​

    FOR FRANCESCA

    ​

    HURRICANE

    ​

    A FIRE BURNS

    I   II   III

    ​

    ​

    BA VCS THESIS

    ​

    Fun with Dick and Little Susie: The Naming of Erogenous Zones

     
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