Carole Maso - Beauty is Convulsive - The Passion of Frida Kahlo

Nevertheless I have the will to do many things

and I have never felt “disappointed by life”

as in Russian novels.

“the stitches do not heal over and the wound does not look as if it is closing.”

Cut your hair and watch it fall. Into a circle, desolation. The hair, retaliation rage, wear a man’s suit your tears are nails, and a lock of hair is falling, falling, between your legs the scissors resting there, the hair which he adored.

Let the scissors enter the body. Let the two Fridas, hair everywhere, hair everywhere liar, liar, why hair in the rungs of the— yellow for madness or sickness or fear—

the yellow chair … Outside severed rest there.

And she paints in rage and sorrow fury. And she paints some say the greatest of her paintings Diego Diego

House for birds

Nests for love

All for nothing

I sell it all for nothing

Cropped Hair

Now that you don’t love me—

divorce — the legs dancing away from the rest of the body.

She watched other people dance.

There’s no escaping the monkey’s paw thorny barbaric yawl

her heart is a fountain its severed valves pump misericorda

the lacerated Mexican saint,

all the martyred ones.

What the water gave you finally

What the pain

You so far over there now paint. The table is wounded. Its legs flayed maimed paint. See how Judas’s chest and right foot are bleeding: and the skeleton has a broken right foot. Over, broken utterly alone, and she paints her death in lavender and the plants that will sprout on her grave. And that skeleton there grinning on the canopy of her bed.

votive: oblivion

Diego, Diego

Ven.

Come to me

Bride tonight

She paints herself, friends, companions, nieces, pets. Desperate no children Diego no, not that anything but she paints: on that desolate soulscape—

The blood red ribbon uniting her and the paint and the pain

and the world in which

She is walking down a dirt road alone

Diego

the heart

the lock

cut look if I loved you it was for your hair

ring

crow feather swallow

the fetus floating in a bottle

The lock of hair, the ring, the song, the hope (, mother) put it

in a box,

the love we had the dreams the child.

one side and the other

the ether rising, the smell of formaldehyde

the locket Diego

now that your hair is cropped short I do not love you anymore

the heart — extract it

the pain, isolate it

when it gets too much

Cristina

when it gets too much

the ribbons from her hair

the dreaming head

fevered

put the dream in the box put the fever, put the— other people dance —sorrow put the talons— Bonito—

in another place.

the image.

And the one you adored

put the crimson in the white box

sparrows in a jar

put the tears put the river Papa

put the hurt on one side and the corset (Cristina why?)

the gradual falling apart.

put the empty clothing

because I wanted

you here your dress over there.

Diego don’t go

Black in the gaps between leaves shows that the time is night which to Frida meant the end of life

Diego

And you break into two Fridas — one the Frida whom Diego loves and the other the Frida Diego no longer loves.

Rupture Forceps Incision

the motive, Diego, was always you, and if the pain might be relieved, a little. And to keep you. And the knife, and the sweet suture, oh it will feel like being alive or—

the autoeroticism of her wounds

the thing that impels patients to want surgery, love me, love me my frog-prince,

and the footless, and the headless, the cracked open and bleeding — not passive, not dying

don’t go out that door

— open me

And I want desperately …

open me up

What do you want desperately?

Don’t go out that door.

The hours were broken

libidinous she gives herself freely now she takes

Silky and yellow yellow for illness and madness the way that hair might have felt, her hair in your hands, like a real gringa

the succulent root

Diego

Don’t go.

Hair on fire candle table shirt ablaze—

Diego gone again Maria Felix on fire— stay

In the sound of the clock as he moves away

frieze:

A line of Diego heads — A row of Diegos — frieze—

don’t go.

the Judas of your touch

we are held together by tears

Numbers, the economy

the farce of words

nerves are blue.

I don’t know why — also red,

but full of color.

Diego, Diego

We are held together by arrows now.

martyrdom of glass. the great nonsense

votive: Diego are the vows you take

9 arrows

votive: oblivion to kill the pain

In the sound of the clock, in the pulse of the light,

Diego, Diego.

In the violence, in the calm Diego, Diego,

my child, my light.

A childish thing.

Child of the people

Child of the revolution

Child of brilliance (standing on a scaffold)

But always a child.

Frog kingdom prince.

Mirror of night.

Child of the great occultist

Child of cruelty

Her bridled, brotheled humor

love Diego

and love Diego

demented

covered in gold a metal rod through her pelvis

and love Diego is just another

maiming thing

another kind of injury

transforming thing.

Accident:

the landscape is day and night.

And she remembers when her mouth …

She lures men up double staircases to her lair—

as he breaks her heart again Diego just to keep up.

Her library of lovers, her Noguchi, her Trotsky, Diego, Diego .

Her viva Sandino, her viva Zapata, Diego, Diego

for you

All the assassinated ones. And that cinema of poverty.

Singing drunken patriotic songs all night

the theater of their lives.

Diego who never entirely leaves her body

a maiming thing

mountainous thing

passion retablo

Accident:

imagine a red plea in the bright light

asking God, one and one last — furious— answer me —one and only one last time— answer me.

papier — mache Judas Diego no.

And he breaks her heart again—

answer me and again.

And he wants her only to paint

don’t break, don’t go, stay

9 thorns in a cup

arms and glitter flung

imagine she dares — imagine — what lies under these

clothes, broken.

that pleasuring toward paradise

Diego

She applies paint to the skin of the canvas:

I penetrate the sex of the whole earth, its heat embraces me and in my body everything feels like the freshness of tender leaves…. At times your presence floats continuously as if wrapping all my being in the anxious wait for morning. And I notice that I am with you. In this moment still full of sensations, my hands are plunged in oranges, and my body feels surrounded by you.