Poem for DVerse Poetics: The Emancipation Song of Eva Braun

The Emancipation Song

Of Eva Braun

Many old sayonaras

Glittering in the trees

Dusty little lamps

No one likes

Asleep in their bags

Stille Nacht, Gute Nacht.

Holidays bearing down

Like trucks in a queue

Trucks that can’t turn

Over the bridge

Over the river.

A traffic jam

Metaphor for the world

Metaphor for the self

Stopped.  Held back.  Not on

schedule.

****

When I see certain names it comes and comes

You’re not enough will never be enough

Says the voice the denigrating voice

The screech owl dead mother voice

And I say to the voice I suffice

I matter, I reign within myself.

You have no business…

You have no right

I suffice

I was made I live  I exist

I am      not yours.

I am.  I am Love, on its boundary

It never knew the border 

not of wire

Never knew how not how not

To give itself so freely

That it landed in the wet, the wet

The heart a wet and oozing thing

Kicked to the curb.  I’m not I’m not

The dog you can kick to the curb

I hear the voice on the clinic steps

The hand on my arm you must accept

accept accept

              

Nein.  Non.  Nyet.  You do not define me I reserve

The right. I define me

And I will not will not let you do it

With your big black boots, meine liebling

Your antichrist santa uniform

And bag of hurts:

Your master’s of social work

Your med school ethos

Your betraying hands.

I will decide what fits

I will decide what to wear

And what to say

And to whom

And you may chatter at me

Like birds on a crumbling wall

Like black and howling birds

And scapegoat me and grind me to dust

And fill the big blue charts

With your ill-tempered notes

Cataloging all my faults

You may thieve my right

To make mistakes

But I will take it back

I’ll tear out the notes

The carefully cursive

Laborious lab notes on your case

I am not your case

Or your problem.

You are.  Your own

Problem.  Not for naught

Have I laid claim

To myself.  To celebrate

And sing of this Self

In this bow-legged and lost

And cut-short life

I claim myself

To sing.  I sing

To myself.

 

Ii

……  Silence rains in the Tyrol

And everyone gets wet.  Head for the hills

Heads up:

I will not will not will not let you

Break me

Or manhandle me

Or put your crass hands upon me

    Ever again and I will not

Let  you     in

To       trample upon and devastate

Me nor the child that was

And is, still

That was not   never

Should not have ever

Been ashamed to be herself

Her lovely glowing self

Like an ember on a hill

Like a moon in a pond

Uniquely glowing

Heap your insults

Upon me.  Scapegoat me

Crucify me

I know you, perpetrators

And self-anointed priests.  I know

What you are and you are not

You are not and never

Not for naught I say

what I need

You have to earn my trust

You have to respect this line

I draw with a plain little stick

A lipstick line on your

Old coupe’s isinglass

A line of light over the night’s dark earth

Iii

Bulletin.   Pronouncement.  Decree.

…. Today we said

We were leaving their country.

He said from his golden face

In glowing tones

The war is over.

But is it? Over?

Here?  Within?

Do not throw my sins

Into my face

Do not use my confidences

Against me

Or tell them to others.  Do not

Do it.  Enough is enough

Too much is not enough

For many of you

And you love to war and hate

And be right and terrify

Children in the night.  You are not

For godsake, not god, let it not

Be for naught

All of this:

Nor will I let you across the threshold

Into this house, this woman

Now handing you back your pretty

Ribbon-tied, cutting-tongued gifts

Iv

Now I take back the spoiled milk

Of my childhood

The rancid milk of maternal betrayal:

The shrieking in the night

The demonic mother bearing down

On me in my small bed

She who succored me

With her betrayals

Her mania

Her tremulous voice

Her shaking legs

When she heard the voices

She made up

So we would all

Rescue her, throw her

A life preserver out into the deep blue

Where she pretended to drown

I take myself back from her

And say you were no mother.

You were a liar.

You were as my child, meine Kinder.

I take back my body

From the old man’s hands

In the dark

And his tongue down my throat.

I take it back; I appropriate myself

I reel myself in like a weary silver marlin;

Still yourself: you belong to me

And I will love you

And I am all you need.

V

And it became so

Because the Word came first

The small chirping words

Of the pale little girl

From her high chair

From the antique potty chair

She learned her verse

She yielded in the night

They wrapped her in a cast

And carried her

And laid her on her back

Under the one-eyed moon

Under the sky

Like garbage

Like carrion

She heard the foxes on the  hill

She found a way to go

On bowed legs in plaster

From a chair to a bed

She found a way

To sing to herself

In the rank cast.

vi

Now not no but yes

It comes now this yes

This need for yes

This end to no

And lack and need

And loss and being impaled

On the thorns of loneliness

In the dusty room

Where the lonely dogs shiver

At the end of their chains

And the stars weep

This is not the land of Nod

It is not the land of no

We have come now into the land

Of approbation, the liberated

And restrung volition

The violin of volition

The golden harp of yes

Yes  I am she I am One

Who sings

I am one who falters

Who errs

Who sins

Who self-forgives

Worthy is She

Daughter of the night.

I must see to it that the nos

Were not for naught

And that the word yes

Is like an uprising

A human inland tide

Written in blood all over

The desert

Written in a sapphire alphabet

All over the sky

The great writ of gratitude

The great barbaric inner

Yes, I am enough.

I matter, I  I I I am

That word,  Yes.

*Eva Braun was Hitler’s Mistress, becoming his wife several hours before they committed suicide together at Kehlstein Eyre in the Tyrol; she took cyanide and he pulled the trigger. 

“writ of gratitude” swiped from the poet Floyce Alexander.  

cc

copyright Jenne' R. Andrews 2011