Rooftop Poetry Club - Gabrielle Bouliane

Gabrielle Bouliane

Bio:

Gabrielle Bouliane is a twelve year veteran of the National Poetry Slam, founding their video production program and running the website livepoets.com in service to the slam community. As a writer and performer herself, she explores the more sarcastic side of dating, sex and relationships, getting things off her chest on stage that you aren’t supposed to talk about in public. As a result she has also been the seven-time host of the National Erotica showcase, as well as locally founding the Nickel City Poetry Slam. She believes in the slam as a flawed but uniquely American art form, and she believes in poetry as a way to get people deeply connected to themselves and each other.

Poems:

This Isn’t Really About You

Your hands are a gift
unlooked for,
two sensitive birds searching
for a sky in my skin,
finding it like north
in their flight toward whatever home
we are always driven to seek.
And my heart aches
to be a broken cage,
to be pried wide apart for you to see,
there’s enough room inside
for a flock of your fingers to reside forever
around the delicate burning flower
of my unrelentless heart.

One night, I looked into the lake of your eyes,
surprised by the size of my own startled sighs.
I realized that I have no words to explain
that it’s not pain or remorse I carry,
it’s a force beyond what I can restrain.
I try to contain it with 9 to 5 and organize,
I do my dishes instead of fantasize,
I cook
and clean
and file
and sweep
just to keep this beast inside me asleep,
because this passion that resides
has already devoured innocence once.
I try to restrain it,
silence its howls,
but your hands have found the key to its cage,
I can feel it awaken, killing this woman
who has killed her rage by trying to forget

that my pulse once lived
at the base of my throat.

That a glance across the room once soaked the insides of my thighs,

forgot exactly which muscles
made the small of my back rise to meet the night.

The beast is hungry, and impatient,
this is the animal inside they see
when they say – “You are sexy.”
Not beautiful,
but sexy.

They see just the barest hint
of the smoking jungle
of the heart of my darkness,
and no intrepid explorer
has planted his mouth
at the tree of my spine,
has not scaled the mountains
of these breasts to leave behind some sign,
this country is deadly to the unready,

but this is not what I came here to say.

I came to say
thank you for showing me the way.
With your hands and the gardens of your eyes.

And for however long a moment,
lie still
and rest
in these arms
which would never seek to hold you

down.