Lemonade Film (All Poems)

1 - Intuition

[BEYONCÉ]:

What are you doing, my love?

---

I tried to make a home out of you

But doors lead to trap doors

A stairway leads to nothing

Unknown women wander the hallways at night

Where do you go when you go quiet?

You remind me of my father, a magician

Able to exist in two places at once

In the tradition of men in my blood you come home at 3AM and lie to me

What are you hiding?

The past and the future merge to meet us here

What luck

What a fucking curse

─

2 - Denial

[BEYONCÉ]:

I tried to change, closed my mouth more

Tried to bе soft, prettier, less awakе

Fasted for sixty days, wore white

Abstained from mirrors

Abstained from sex

Slowly did not speak another word

In that time my hair I grew past my ankles

I slept on a mat on a floor

I swallowed a sword

I levitated

Into the basement, confessed my sins and was baptised in a river

Got on my knees and said amen

And said Ameen

I whipped my own back and asked for dominion at your feet

I threw myself into a volcano

I drank the blood and drank the wine

I sat alone and begged and bent at the waist for God

I crossed myself and thought I saw the devil

I grew thickened skin on my feet

I bathed in bleach and plugged my menses with pages from the Holy Book

But still inside me coiled deep was the need to know

Are you cheating on me? (cheating)

Are you cheating on me?

─

3 - Anger

[BEYONCÉ]:

If it's what you truly want

I can wear her skin over mine

Her hair, over mine

Her hands as gloves

Her teeth as confetti

Her scalp, a cap

Her sternum, my bedazzled cane

We can pose for a photograph

All three of us

Immortalised

You and your perfect girl

I don’t know when love became elusive

What I know is no one I know has it

My father’s arms around my mother’s neck

Fruit too ripe to eat

I think of lovers as trees

Growing to and from one another

Searching for the same light

Why can’t you see me?

Why can’t you see me?

(Why can’t you) Why can’t you see me?

Everyone else can

─

4 - Apathy

[BEYONCÉ]:

So what are you gonna say at my funeral now that you’ve killed me?

Here lies the body of the love of my life, whose heart I broke without a gun to my head

Here lies the mother of my children both living and dead

Rest in peace my true love

Who I took for granted

Most bomb pussy

Who because of me, sleep evaded

Her shroud is loneliness

Her God is listening

Her heaven would be a love without betrayal

Ashes to ashes, dust to side chicks

─

5 - Emptiness

[BEYONCÉ]:

She sleeps all day

Dreams of you in both worlds

Tills the blood in and out of uterus

Wakes up smelling of zinc

Grief, sedated by orgasm

Orgasm heightened by grief

God was in the room when the man said to the woman

I love you so much, wrap your legs around me and pull me in, pull me in, pull me in

Sometimes when he’d have her nipple in his mouth

She’d whisper “Oh my God”

That too is a form of worship

Her hips grind

Pestle and mortar, cinnamon and cloves

Whenever he pulls out

Loss

Dear moon, we blame you for floods

For the flush of blood

For men who are also wolves

We blame you for the night

For the dark

For the ghosts

---

Every fear

Every nightmare

Anyone has ever had

─

6 - Accountability

[BEYONCÉ]:

You find the black tube inside her beauty case

Where she keeps your father’s old prison letters

You desperately want to look like her

You look nothing like your mother

You look everything like your mother

Film star beauty

How to wear your mother’s lipstick

You go to the bathroom to apply the lipstick

Somewhere no one can find you

You must wear it like she wears disappointment on her face

Your mother is a woman

And women like her cannot be contained

---

Mother dearest let me inherit the Earth

Teach me how to make him beg

Let me make up for the years he made you wait

Did he bend your reflection?

Did he make you forget your own name?

Did he convince you he was a God?

Did you get on your knees daily?

Do his eyes close like doors?

Are you a slave to the back of his head?

Am I talking about your husband or your father?

─

7 - Reformation

[BEYONCÉ]:

He bathes me until I forget their names and faces

I ask him to look me in the eye when I come... home

Why do you deny yourself heaven?

Why do you consider yourself undeserving?

Why are you afraid of love?

You think it’s not possible for someone like you

But you are the love of my life

(Love of my life)

(The love of my life)

(The love of my life)

─

8 - Forgiveness

[BEYONCÉ]:

Baptise me

Now that reconciliation is possible

If we’re gonna heal, let it be glorious

One thousand girls raise their arms

Do you remember being born?

Are you thankful for the hips that cracked?

The deep velvet of your mother

And her mother, and her mother?

There is a curse that will be broken

─

9 - Resurrection

[FEMALE VOICE]:

Something is missing, I've never seen this in my life

So many young women, they tell you, “I want me a hu”

Say “all them make me feel better than you”

What?

So how we supposed to lead our children to the future?

What do we do? How do we lead them?

Love

L-O-V-E, love, Mm-mmm-mmm, hallelujah, thank you, Jesus

I just love the Lord, I’m sorry, brother

I love the Lord, that’s all I got

When your back gets against the wall and your wall against your back, who you call?

Hey! Who you call? Who you call? You gotta call Him

You gotta call Jesus, you gotta call Him

You gotta call Him ’cause you ain’t got another hope.

[BEYONCÉ]:

You are terrifying

And strange

And beautiful

Magic

─

10 - Hope

[BEYONCÉ]:

The nail technician pushes my cuticles back

Turns my hand over

Stretches the skin on my palm and says

“I see your daughters, and their daughters”

That night in a dream the first girl emerges from a slit in my stomach

The scar heals into a smile

The man I love pulls the stitches out with his fingernails

We leave black sutures curling on the side of the bath

I wake as the second girl crawls up headfirst up my throat

A flower blossoming out of the hole in my face

─

11 - Redemption

[BEYONCÉ]:

Take one pint of water, add a half pound of sugar

The juice of eight lemons, the zest of half lemon

Pour the water from one jug, then into the other, several times

Strain through a clean napkin

Grandmother, the alchemist

You spun gold out of this hard life

Conjured beauty from the things left behind

Found healing where it did not live

Discovered the antidote in your own kitchen

Broke the curse with your own two hands

You passed these instructions down to your daughter

Who then passed it down to her daughter

[GRANDMOTHER (HATTIE)]: I’ve had my ups and downs

But I always find the inner strength to pull myself up

I was served lemons, but I made lemonade

[BEYONCÉ]:

My grandma said, nothing real can be threatened

True love brought salvation back into me

With every tear came redemption

And my torturer became my remedy

So we’re gonna heal, we’re gonna start again

You’ve brought the orchestra

Synchronised swimmers, you are the magician

Pull me back together again the way you cut me in half

Make the women in doubt disappear

Pull the sorrow from between my legs like silk

Knot after knot after knot

The audience applauds

But we can’t hear them

---

How I missed you, my love