The Muse of Unwashed Hands | Teen Ink

The Muse of Unwashed Hands

May 29, 2011
By hamsa_prophet SILVER, Los Angeles, California
hamsa_prophet SILVER, Los Angeles, California
9 articles 0 photos 6 comments

Favorite Quote:
&quot;Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.&quot;<br /> - Ralph Waldo Emerson<br /> <br /> &quot;this is your warning / this <br /> your birthright / do not let<br /> this universe regret you.&quot;<br /> - Marty McConnell


Sing to me, Muse, of inspiration hidden in kitchen cupboards
Nestled between the dish soap, and the yellow latex gloves
Whose roaring grips the copper pipes below and
Rattles through your gaping silver lips above
Collecting in your concave lap, that stainless steel basin
Rubber-shrouded smooth and waiting to embrace the geyser

Long-necked, narrow head bowed in pious susurration like
African deity, nimbus’d nudity glistening in the late afternoon sun
Silver swan with the marble countertop wings
Who squawks at the idea of flight, refuses gifts of air and sky
Content only with her dutiful, cold rigidity:
That steam that rises up at the hip to worship her
The grubby fingers that caress her to life
and drift away pink and raw like clouds at dusk
The sparkling silverware hiding under craggy marinara
waiting for their Michelangelo to re-discover their perfection

Slender, sultry, you make my hands moist
My heart curls its toes,
bangs its head against my Adams apple
As you grace my wrists with icy kisses
That pirouette up my forearms
Lock my muscles, billow your fluid gown, fringed with suds
That spiral with lust until they dizzy themselves
Into that bottomless chasm where you hold secrets

You, Muse
You, Melete’s forgotten sister
Whose heart rhymes with the cool aloofness of passive-aggressive heat
And whose name, that part of the throat that breathes, is
The uterus in which poetry is conceived
You, Who pours out her soul while I bank mine off the
kitchen window and into your mouth when no one’s looking
I’d tell you I love you every single day, if I wasn’t constantly met
With your babbling, gurgling little giggle
That abstinent hiss that haunts the china as it lays with the knives
That fogs my glasses and makes me feel like devouring
That song of the rushed, that condescendingly
apathetic
Enigmatic
Shush...


The author's comments:
In my creative writing class this past semester, one of the assignments was to write an imagery poem. This being my specialty, I wrote poems describing loved ones, emotions, etc. But there was this one girl who wrote a love poem. To her clothes hanger. Needless to say, I fell in love with both the poem and its auther -- the hanger will just have to share her. After hearing her recite the piece in class, I was so inspired that I went straight home and looked around the house for a suitable, inanimate lover to whom I could dedicate a couple warbling verses to. I found her in the kitchen...

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