PsychoanalysisLacan Volume 2
Poems
What it’s like to be too much
Dominique Hecq
after Patricia Smith
First of all it’s having your first smoke at three
It’s pinching cherry lollies from your mother’s cupboard
It’s answering back and biting your best friend
It’s eavesdropping and blushing and sweating and stuttering like a wood-pecker
It’s sanding your face to erase your freckles
It’s adding numbers and stringing words together for dolls on death-row
It’s scribbling on the neighbour’s wall with chalk-sticks screeching on red bricks
It’s kissing boys behind the church
It’s gobbling up words without spilling any like they are milk and honey
It’s leaving
It’s hacking off your mother tongue and tending the wound with foreign words
It’s nicking sounds and cadences to patch up sheets of language
It’s hobby-horsing at the Corporate Institute of Excellence where Outlook stares at you like a sentinel
It’s tumbling down the waterfall of your mind like your name is Niagara when you call yourself Artaud and scream and scream and scream
It’s your feet dragging and your body leaving you
It’s Bedlam Hollywood style with millions of live eyes lining the walls
It’s the hand of god popping pink pills purple pillows paper white pilgrims in your mouth
It’s running away like some joker except the joke is on you
It’s bursting into tears as wattle showers you whole with sunshine
Finally it is writing