Jack Young - Ink, Stain
Wherever you are in the world, I say
Wherever I am in the world, you say
We will always have each other, I say
We will always have each other, you say
Wherever you are in the world, I say
Wherever I am in the world, you say
We will always have each other, I say
We will always have each other, you say
Wherever you are, I say
Wherever I am, you say
Wherever you I
Wherever I you
Wherever
Wherever
we will
We circle silently
about the wreck
we dive into the hold.
I am she: I am he
- Adrienne Rich
transfixed your shoulders my hands gentle unfurling your eyes your world beyond my shoulders. here we are me your baby i cut from you at birth your boy i have forgotten intimacy mum i have forgotten its feel i think you have too i have lost you and myself somehow
i remember when Adrienne Rich asks does the infant memorize the body of the mother and create her in absence and i think of all the ways i have tried to memorize you
the living room of the house I grew up in you holding pen pressed onto paper ink spilling over and over thicker and richer and thicker the stain spreading over the page the sinews of the once-tree straining at the force of the stain the page could not contain you spreading you are murmuring glimmers memories alone at the top of the stairs memories murmurs half-recalled his hand on my hand so tight looking at the clock your grandfather gave you unsure of the time or the person you are murmuring
i am trying to write my way back to you back from the stain mum i am trying to reach you trying to find my way back to you from always from without trying to find you before i was
ure ure ure your suffix of action result and instrument as you frac rap and rup from the sentences that have bound you to silence a movement through breaking you break abduct and break again a refusal of the full stops cessation you explode gestation-long of traumas-past the sentence commaless and thrumming with rupture refusing to cease your psychosis a refusal of the punctuation that always cut the conversations short fracturing you are from incarcerating earth-crust language your body-hoard erupting into sound into rapture nothing can hold it back once the voice has left the body it is a living thing living outside ure ure ure your voice exploding the sentence thrumming with rupture you break abduct and break again and still the trauma refuses to cease its gestation-long now exploding outside erupting from the body-hoard
we are building our world from rupture within without building our world from crisis we have to make meaning somehow
rich stain trauma staining through palimpsest a remembering who you were are will be have been diary mapping your memories sight of your own name first-middle-last repeated over and over in the corner your date of birth a collocation of words you wrote your present partner's name and at the middle connect him with your best friend the great love of your life not the men romance trauma but the bonds between women platonic
in bold letters in the middle you write:
R E M E M B E R
what are you trying to remember?
in the living room my sister your daughter is here:
you glance towards one another with all the forms of lives crossed inextricably you share a closeness i cannot comprehend a language partial-concealed engendered between you through labyrinths of trauma
engendered in
gender in difference fissuring i from you fissuring i from sister fissuring i
from myself i am withinwithout of this language
i am withinwithout of this language. i am witness of these looks bodies subtle shifts and moods. i am witness of your transverbal world. you have allowed me to witness to participate you have partial-taught me your language. i am trembling at the borders of our difference the only man that endures in your lives. i am withinwithout i cannot know such closenesssororitysorrow trembling at the water's edge knowing i cannot fully cross but perhaps i can better understand
i repeat your name one of your names the name i always used for you even though it only ever related to me & sister that name i could never comprehend a child not using the important one the one that stuck around the one who had the love most real too rich too thick sometimes
are you trying to fix yourself in time to inscribe yourself make yourself more real somehow?
i think of that lyric i feel as if i might be vanishing
your eyes recognition glimmer stare away back towards the clock that clock that always ticks but never moves always ticks always transfixed in time a little how your name and date of birth written over and over was your attempt at that tick without movement that tick without more
tick without movement
tick without
tick
with
tick
without
i am wandering searching in the shadows drowning-deep-twilight-zone-tick-without-movement-tick-without-more we do not have the names for things we might find but still we must try ink stain luminous laughter untranslatable preverbal syllables-forming screams stuttering into throat the body-hoard fossorial erupting formicidae beetles gopher carabidae skunk conies root hair epidermis cortex epiblem endodermis pericyle tissue vascular centre of the root the untranslatable core of you cataclastic and boundless
ink stain the men complication in the stain in that i am your boy and you love me and i remain i endure we endure yet it is a rich and dark and complicated love as i am still a man and part of this stain too somehow and this stain and me are both a part of you