white - nicole blackman
WHITE
I'm your oxygen girl
too pale by the moonlight
Too light to hide in dark rooms
too pale to leave turning in the sun.
Little lighthouse with winter beams
calling to pale painted ships
come in come in
The eskimos have seventeen names for snow
and you still have no name for me.
I'm the smooth paper that looms large and cold
in front of you in your machine
waiting to be tattooed with your tiny words.
Mine is an icicle tongue that stutters and wanders over you
like a dagger too smooth to feel.
mine are moonbeam eyes that weave between night trees
to make wild things stir.
Baby powder cocaine sugar girl
brushed with dust and glory
of drift sky clouds and loose waterfall pearls.
Bone dancer with cool moon flesh lit from within.
Gamine girl silvered from soap.
Pale paper cotton sheet thing cut from witherung slip.
too slight to hold too fragile to clutch in your rough hands.
cool girl of ivory alabaster carved with your mother of pearl knives.
masking tapeon a mouth missed obscene unseen
without color.
newspaper rub off my hands.
Like a deaf girl drunk on the feel
of her heartbeat
I am glass and water and silver
luminescent
a precious pearl not yours
never yours
on loan
never owned
not yours
never yours
no kind of wedding dress
birthday cake
fresh milk teeth color
but the watermark
the vanishing
the see-through pale flesh girl that grows and glows
Enamal tap-tap
chine tap-tap
crack.
Too light to hide in dark rooms
Too pale to leave turning in the sun.
WHITE
I'm your oxygen girl
too pale by the moonlight
Too light to hide in dark rooms
too pale to leave turning in the sun.
Little lighthouse with winter beams
calling to pale painted ships
come in come in
The eskimos have seventeen names for snow
and you still have no name for me.
I'm the smooth paper that looms large and cold
in front of you in your machine
waiting to be tattooed with your tiny words.
Mine is an icicle tongue that stutters and wanders over you
like a dagger too smooth to feel.
mine are moonbeam eyes that weave between night trees
to make wild things stir.
Baby powder cocaine sugar girl
brushed with dust and glory
of drift sky clouds and loose waterfall pearls.
Bone dancer with cool moon flesh lit from within.
Gamine girl silvered from soap.
Pale paper cotton sheet thing cut from witherung slip.
too slight to hold too fragile to clutch in your rough hands.
cool girl of ivory alabaster carved with your mother of pearl knives.
masking tapeon a mouth missed obscene unseen
without color.
newspaper rub off my hands.
Like a deaf girl drunk on the feel
of her heartbeat
I am glass and water and silver
luminescent
a precious pearl not yours
never yours
on loan
never owned
not yours
never yours
no kind of wedding dress
birthday cake
fresh milk teeth color
but the watermark
the vanishing
the see-through pale flesh girl that grows and glows
Enamal tap-tap
chine tap-tap
crack.
Too light to hide in dark rooms
Too pale to leave turning in the sun.