Neutering Exercise 2003 (a)

Neutering Exercise (Spring 2003) continued

Go, boats of the blood,
Carry your cargo of ease to the ports of the body,
Unload surcease upon the swollen toe,
The ache-contorted finger,
Deceive the frazzled nerve ends into sleep.
Shove off, cockswains, you're loaded.

Here's health to you. I wash you on your way.
Waiting for you to deliver,
I dream of horsebacked statues pale as chalk
Erected to the discoverers of aspirin
Who walk in radiance by the streams of Lethe,
Bayer-assed, in starched hospital dickies.

NEUTERED VERSION:

There is aspirin in my blood now.
It is pain reliever traveling through my body.
It will reduce swelling
It will reduce pain.
It will dull my nerves and pain receptors.
It is powerful medicine.
I appreciate the aspirin and what it will do for me as I swallow it.
Now I anticipate the relief.
I have great respect for the discoverers of aspirin and wish to honor them.
The undifferentiated pills will remove my pain.

--Jason Adkins

"My Papa’s Waltz" by Theodore Roethke

The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy

We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother’s countenance
Could not unfrown itself.

The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.

You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.

NEUTERED VERSION:

The whiskey you drank
Was very strong
But I held onto you tightly
This dancing was hard
We danced and made the pans
Fall off the kitchen shelf
My mother’s face
Was angry
Your hand held my wrist
And was bruised on one knuckle
Each time you stumbled
My ear hit your buckle
You beat the rhythm on my head
With a dirty hand
Then took me to bed
Still holding onto your shirt

--Jacquelyn Powell

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“somewhere I have never traveled, gladly beyond”
by E. E. Cummings

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look will easily unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

NEUTERED VERSION:

I have never seen eyes like yours; they make me want to be quiet. Even your small gestures are big to me, they make me emotional.

Even a slight glance makes me feel comfortable, even though I have prevented anything else from affecting my emotions. Your emotions affect me steadily and slowly, one by one.

If you wished it, I would die for you. Nothing affects me so much as your intense fragility. This fragility makes my emotions intense as death or eternity would.

(I do not understand how you affect my life; when you look at me I understand that your love for me is more meaningful than any other symbol of love) nobody has such small hands.

--Jimmy Sungur

"To Helen," by Edgar Allan Poe

Helen, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicean barks of yore,
That gently, o’er a perfumed sea,
The weary, way-worn wanderer bore
To his own native shore.
On desperate seas long wont to raom,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
To the glory that was Greece,
And the grandeur that was Rome.
Lo! In yon brilliant window-niche
How statue-like I see thee stand,
The agate lamp within thy hand!
Ah, Psyche, from the regions which
Are Holy-Land!

NEUTERED VERSION:

Helen, your beauty brings me home after all my tiresome travels. Through all my lonely, desperate traveling, the image of your beautiful face has called me back to the greatest place, my home. As I return home, you call to me (through the window). You are my love goddess, calling me to where I belong.

--Gretchen Stewart

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“But Were I Loved” by Alfred Lord Tennyson

But were I loved, as I desire to be,
What is there in the great sphere of the earth,
And range of evil between death and birth,
That I should fear, - if I were loved by thee?
All the inner, all the outer world of pain
Clear Love would pierce and cleave, if thou wert mine,
As I have heard that, somewhere in the main,
Fresh-water springs come up through bitter brine.
‘Twere joy, not fear, clasped hand-in-hand with thee,
To wait for death - mute - careless of all ills,
Apart upon a mountain, tho’ the surge
Of some new deluge from a thousand hills
Flung leagues of roaring foam into the gorge
Below us, as far on as eye could see.

NEUTERED VERSION:

If I were loved as I wish, there is nothing on earth, or in life, that I would
fear if you loved me. All the pain of life, love would take away, if you were
mine, as I have heard that in some places fresh-water springs can come through
briny water. I felt joy, not fear, when I was with you living my life, able to
ignore all problems. In our love we are alone, it does not matter if all of
the world were destroyed around us.

--Danielle Martin

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Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village,though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
And miles to go before I sleep.

NEUTERED VERSION:

Whose woods do these belong to that I am traveling in.
There is a man's house in the village;though
He will not see me stopping here to rest and
To watch the woods and the snow cover the ground.

My little horse thinks it is strange
To stop without the shelter of a farmhouse near
Between the woods and cold frozen lake
The lonliest evening of the year.

He shakes his harness bells
As if to ask if there is a mistake
The only other sound is the sweep
Of the light wind and snowy flakes.

The woods are peaceful, dark, and quiet,
But I have promises to fulfill,
And places to travel before I die.
And places to travel before I die.

--Holly Fail

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"I heard a fly buzz-when I died" by Emily Dickinson

I heard a Fly Buzz-when I died-
The Stillness in the Room
Was like the Stillness in the Air-
Between the Heaves of Storm-

The Eyes around-had wrung them dry-
And Breaths were gathering firm
For that last Onset-when the King
Be witnessed-in the Room-

I willed my Keepsakes-Signed away
What portion of me be
Assignable-and then it was
There interposed a Fly-

With Blue-uncertain stumbling Buzz
Between the light-and me-
And then the Windows failed-and then
I could not see to see-

NEUTERED VERSION

1. I heard the buzzing of a fly as I died.
2. No movement in the room
3. The air was still
4. Between the rising of a storm
5. The eyes of the people in the room were dry
6. Breaths were being drawn in
7. For the last moment when God
8. Appeared to take the person away
9. I signed away my things in my will
10. The non-materialistic part of me
11. That can be signed away and then
12. A fly came in
13. With a vision of blue color and a stuttering buzzing noise
14. Hovering in between the light and the eyes of the person
15. Then the eyes closed
16. The person cannot see; they are dead.

--Jill Willoughby

Neutering Exercises (2003) continue here.