What are These Hands?

So, I went a little nuts today. I was at work and something possessed me and forced me to write. I know it sounds like I'm making that up.

"Genevieve, what were you doing between 9:30 and 10:30 this morning?" my supervisor might ask.

"Um...working?"

"Wrong! You were frothing and typing furiously on something that was not work-related! Why did you do this?"

"It's not my fault! I was possessed!

"By who?"

"Um...Jack Kerouac?"

So this is what I wrote. I don't exactly think that this is poetry. I don't know what this is or why I'm sharing it, but I do know that I wrote this and more, and after it all came pouring out I sat in a daze until I realized that I'd been staring at an empty Coke can for ten minutes. I was also listening to this song repeatedly and Elliott Smith tends to set my mind on fire, my sweet, sad, sad boy.


"Doctor, I'm leaking."

"What part of you?"

"My fingers, my mind. It's bleeding through my mind, dripping down my fingers and I'm writing and I'm writing and I have other things to do."  

"What's your problem again?"

"I'm writing poetry."

"NURSE! Get a tourniquet!"

Danny wrote a poem about a Coke can once, and there are two empty Coke cans on my desk, flimsy aluminum, God I miss him, Miss Misery. I feel too much I feel so much I can't even think of words, I'm trying too hard when I just need to let it go and drip from my mind to my fingers, not as thick as honey but thicker than water, with a will of its own, with an I want to be heard I want you to know. What do you want me to know? That the pain was never yours. Her pain was never yours it dripped from her mind into her hands, that hands that hurt you, and you carry the trickle of pain that became a flood and your flood is all of these words that you can't think of, words like tourniquet, and words like job security. Isn't it funny that you couldn't think of that term when you wrote that email just now "It's good job...job what? Oh job security." And you couldn't think of the word tourniquet when you were writing just now. What is that thing, the thing that cuts off, the thing that blocks, no more blocks my love, no more, just write all of the words that don't make sense, let all of the animals loose, let all of it drip all over the keyboard, brain fluid, electric pulses, winds sweeping fire, destroying houses, eating them alive, more alive, rising and suffocating everything but the sky where it dissipates, where it heals, where it goes away and leaves the ground to build again, white out pouring from my mind onto the paper, hiding everything I've written, I can still be built again, I can smother it, I can put it off, I can mow my lawn and not sing but the song will come back as powerful as an animal breaking out of a cage, naked feet, burning the ground, I don't care if this is not written well, I don't care how it sounds, I'm missing notes and I don't care, You're at work, what and where is that, there's a madwoman in Cubicle 84 and she can't stop writing like Dr. Seuss writing making up words "galifican stew happy fish bait bite." What does that mean? It's the stopper, you've pulled out the stopper. No you haven't something else has, and it can't stop I won't stop someone give me a scroll like Jack Kerouac and I'll write "On the Road" but I'll write it sober and it will be oh so so bad, Will it? Kerouac isn't meant to be read stonecold sober, I don't feel sober, and I'm not even on medication, this is something that's happening to me without substances, what's happening to me, what are these hands that won't stop typing, what are these hands that have pulled the stopper, I might drown, I might die, but it feels so good to be in this, it feels like so much built up and my muscles are relaxing, I want to show you my hands and show you how this feels. Imagine an orgasm that goes on for too long, but it doesn't hurt it climaxes and rushes out and doesn't stop and its' exhilaration that doesn't kill you, don't let me go hands that pulled the stopper, don't ever let me go.