A story of the singing gut

A story of the singing gut

grace gutekanst

Strolling down Savannah streets

covered in moss-blown trees 

and warm air balancing

between ancient buildings

and a southern beach that whispers to the 

grains inching there way to foam lips

I'm not supposed to be alone

He told me he'd drive me home safely

I don't need safety

I focus on signs 

while my feet chant to each other

after the other

after the other

after the other

Music starts and stops in my head

I'm singing loudly

It's 3am

But even the street can't hear me

My arms swing 

to help my elbows forget they exist

And..

"Nice voice beautiful" shouts out

There's no one on the street.

I continue to sing.

Then I look up

to find blue eyes

What's your choice?

I hear train tracks gargle metal

the smell of traveling food heated,

doused with sauce to hide what's inside

I glance at people who don't talk 

And one's dressed up,

catering to their equals, 

so they can afford to live

I feel myself uncontrollably moving 

cold air rushing to my calves

Navy blue curtains sway 

Old tea stains on paper placecloths

Squeaks emerge in-tune with the random bumps 

but hardly noticable anymore

Up ahead I read an exit sign,

a green graphic person

But who would escape?

We are moving

Fast pace 

Fast enough to die from an exit escape

So if something were to really happen

We either die inside

or risk dying on our own outside

I guess it just depends on what type of passenger you are

But most of them are asleep.

Please

Please

grace gutekanst

please tell me why my trees are bleeding?

I try to catch the blood

sticky on my fingers

and thicker than the mud

all the world's reflection 

in the crimson puddles

please embark

remark

on how it makes you feel

please reveal your pain 

so together we will heal

And save the bleeding trees 

Melancholy Marine

Melancholy Marine

I was the only one to see him.  He stood so still.  He stood so small.  He stood so precious.  I could only see his profile but I remember his eye omniscient and dark.  I glanced over with a crooked smile.  He looked nowhere.  My hand held up my head, my eyes peering transfixed on the creature.  Slowly he turned his fluffy face and I gasped.  I noticed his eye socket protruding from his face, his fur ripped, smashed.  He started twitching and I started screaming. "OH NO! OH NO!"  My eyes squinted and worried wrinkles enveloped my forehead.  He started to twitch more, and more, and more, conveying an endless struggle.  And the more he twitched, the more I watched, and the more I watched, the more my insides twisted and cringed.  I thought he was going to stop, but he didn't. He just didn't.  He just kept jerking and trembling.  "PLEASE STOP", I yelled "PLEASE STOP!"  But my words were as useless as a cry from the deep sea. I felt like I was sinking, farther, farther down.  And each gasp filled my lungs with water, and while I watched my eyes stung with chlorine.  We were suffering, suffering, suffering, both him and I.  I wished to relieve his pain.  I watched crimson; I watched rust; I watched wine drip from mangled wounds. He was distant and disjointed.  My insides kept tightening with agony. I was twisting, twisting tighter and tighter while goosebumps ran across the landscape of my forearms.  I closed my distressed eyelids and cringed, my jaw clamping tight.  Then I shouted, "PLEASE, PLEASE LORD LET HIM NOT SUFFER ANYMORE".  My screaming paired with his silence made the world seem cold.  It was a cold deep sea collapsing in my lungs.  And I didn't want him to just sit by the side of the road, half destroyed, half frozen for cars to gawk at him while he remained suffering to death.  His fluff delicately moving in the breeze, his tiny soft paws were tucked under his umber fur.  His left side seemed ordinary, but the right was repulsive.  He just twitched like he was enduring multiple seizures over and over and over, and his body was in shock and so close to the road and I wanted to kill him to stop the pain. I wanted to kill to stop the pain. We want to kill to stop the pain.  I sat in idol traffic dwelling over the critter's aches I could not relieve.  The car moved forward and I remained silent from behind the glass for six years.  

-grace gutekanst

Blanket

                                             the blanket protects

                                               keeps me warm,

                                                  them warm

I'm half asleep 

and listening

"thank you"

"thank you"

"thank you"

chanting murmurs

slowly, softly

it comes and goes

but while their sleeping

the blanket gets heavier,

thicker

warmer and warmer 

hibernating society

                                                                              scars accumulate

                                                                          inside soldier's skin 

                                                                                              invisible

                                                                                              for some

                                                                                 chucking hearts

                                                                                  out of ballparks

                                                                                      a grand slam

                                                                                    over the fence

                                                                    never to be seen again

                                                the family ruiting for the other team

                                                                                                     cries

                                                               while opposite fans cheer

                                                                         noticing their victory

                                                                more than the others loss

                                                    hearts pulverized over the fence

                                                                                  more and more

                                                                                              battered;

                                                                                             thrashed

                                          and the bodies

                                               pile high

                                             to make us

                                warmer, warmer, warmer

                                        canopy cadaver 

-graceHgutekanst

An Immersed Artist Without a Spine

An Immersed Artist

Without a Spine

grace gutekanst

Tethered to time

a rapid routine

heart pumping

through wrists

slicing my sole

to save my sole

I'm floating in pools of crystalized liquid

(while they float 

 still;

cold powder blue

inanimate)

glazing my face

a blurred atmosphere

behind prussian blue undertones

of eyelids

peaceful puddles of me

detached head to the heavens

ripples impel my severed neck 

hair pushing

pulling with subtle delight

of the distant trails of others

charging into polluted territories

blind

remote past

suppress the future

anchor phalanges  

to the bottom of the sea

hooked and sewn

to sing

without voices

in harmony with the choral

then pour my face into a jar

drown it in paint

before hesitance dances

and darkness clouds us all

this prolonged war.

24 hour nocturnal girl.

24 hour nocturnal girl.

grace gutekanst

I'm in the wrong mood to be writing a poem.

The wrong mood.

I want to rip my skin off

A puddle on the floor

Just a skeleton of bones

Curling up in a hole

Leave me alone.

Let me crack my head and ooze information 

Let my mind revert to a child's

Let my fingernails peel off like worn tape

Today I don't feel like being me

Tomorrow might be different

But for now

let me be raw and solemn

To make my mouth move

I'd need a million little strings

sewn to my upper lip

like a curtain to a play

Right now I'm dark, closed

and the show hasn't started

The amount of energy to tug at the strings

my lazy lips-

I can't even finish my thoughts.

Maybe my body is still asleep

My walking unconscious

Let me be a zombie today

Let my arms lay limp

Let my eyes glaze over

Let my face freeze in time

Let my spine have a break

from holding up my persona

Preserve my heart until tomorrow

My interior is wilting

Collapsing strength

Let my body break down

Put the factory on hold

Let pumping blood turn stale

I don't want to confine

Or define

Just release

Float me out to sea

Unraveling intestines

A drifting corpse

Cut open and cold

Come Wednesday I'll be re-sewn

To read this poem

But for now...

Postpone surgery on my soul

Red

Red

grace gutekanst

guns clutched by children

creating red walls

red rivers 

pouring through the veins of the unborn

      this is dangerous

i know

can you feel their blood trickle down your veins?

their insides

your insides

explode

blood and matter

do they matter?

in the business of killing

to feed off of the slaughtering of your equals

can you look into the eyes of your enemy

an enemy you've never met

but destroy their future

red lives stacked to the top 

sunburned skin

peeling scratching

burning

lives

left to die

while children watch and wait

beside the windowsill inside

calling

calling

can you hear me?

are you even there?

the children in the dark

asking what you do at work?

and why your eyes are so scared

return to me 

but wipe the red palms

before sending love

with brutal blood stained gloves

to wrap around the sides

cutting vulnerable insides

please, please wash the red

What is too far?

   It's hard to place myself in a battlefield of corpses.

   

   Is it hard for you? 

covered

covered

covered

decaying stories

in the battlefields

suffocated by maggots

wrapped in a blood blanket

ultimately destroying 

changing the future

   Is war okay if you're not witnessing it?

   Could you ever bomb a whole neighborhood?

   sons buried

mothers buried

daughters buried

fathers buried

families suffering for years

skin holding

vulnerable and wounded

defend meaning

discard and dispose

That's someone's caring comforting companion.

    

   Would you point a gun in the face of your lover?

    

setting free the monstrosity 

releasing tension 

on the unfamiliar friend

  Would your child shoot another parent's children?

   

  Does it hurt when an animal dies as much as a human?

  

   polluted puddles of family

humanity

internal bleeding

consumed

traumas that hurt too much to forget

a part of you

Swallowing you whole

Can you bear it?

Could you bear it?

I don't think I ever could.

  -graceHgutekanst 

Murdering Envelopes

Murdering Envelopes

A shiny, useful weapon

A profile of idealistic beauty carved 

in silver

placed in glass

adored by all who 

receive notes to murder

one object knowing your personal

information about family,

your life, where you've been

A thin sharp carved tool

rifling through your mail with your permission

rusted metal sharing stories

A black handle held by a steady 

hand ripping sealed paper

to uncover words you've not yet read

that have travelled from blue uniform to blue uniform

delicately with intimate thoughts

to end

         at an end

laying in a dark black box

claustrophobic with media

to be sliced open with love

-graceHgutekanst

Mortality

why do you care when your flesh rots

why wonder

why ponder over naked lifeless raw bodies decaying 

today

tomorrow 

or years from now

this strange animalistic world will turn to stone

without the warm life of our souls

one smile connecting opposite ears

in never overrated 

death is never death if life springs from inside

smell the earth while we are here

peel off the socks, peel off the clothes

death is only the end of an organism's existence 

-grace H gutekanst

Dad

Wake Up! Wake Up!

A trusting voice taps my shoulder.

It's my dad, my peaceful dad.

Follow me

into the sea of stars, He says

I'm stumbling after

and agreeing

to journey through the dark indigo hallway

half conscious

in raggedy pajamas

leaving behind my trace

of unweaving thread 

pulling seam by seam

for poverty is blinded

to a carefree child.

Talking to the moon

glaring through the smudged, handprinted glass

I follow out the screen door

A lavender blur

So I flick crusted stardust 

from the creases of my eyes

While my dad, my trusting dad

guides me to the top of our dented tin roof

with rock hieroglyphics scratched on the doors

But why?

My dad replies, "It's simple

To lie on our backs and stare at the sky."

Memories trail after

Of siblings floating on fields

gazing at airplanes

While my dad, my wondrous dad

Takes us on journeys filling our innocent minds

with riddles and jokes

Then car rides as the wind blows 

to John Lenon's voice.

And frolicking through grand libraries 

to breathe in the comfort

of elderly books,

feeble in binding

and whispering stories

To sponge-like children.

But when fatigue bubbles up

To heavy eyelids

I'd crawl into my bunk-bed

reeling in nostalgic stories

of my dad's troublesome past.

And then,

My dad, my spiritual dad

He'd say, "Let's pray

to your guardian angel

For I am thankful for you Grace,

because you were our gift from God."

-graceHgutekanst