This is a story it is a story i tell myself on lonely winter eves or autumn mornings still with dusty pianos This is a story of you
I read of a man who waited twenty three years for a girl even after she was married Did you know that Twenty three years I asked you once the first time pick a number any number Any number Twenty three you said and i smiled
It was right like when you ate my canned raviollis because i ate your chocolate macadamias My memory keeps me company on nights that border centuries And what if it is true What if i cannot bear to think that someday it will no longer hurt me like this now What of it Well what of it It was like when you said I don’t believe that you will not leave me And what could i say You were right You were right You were right It was right like when you ate
Do you cry Do you cry Tell me do you cry Not on the outside no But on the inside Do you cry because you are missing a major chord on the inside I do Sometimes Only sometimes What’s your problem you asked
You
The answering machine sings a tune with me. We’ll all sit through a chorus together, and in the bonfire I’ll watch the car crash, the hospital bed, the dying children, the mountains of Australia. The memorial above the water; the sea-birds scoping the skies like slicing-blades of solid glow. Three-hundred and thirty birds, grazing the aged skin of canvas. On their wings they carry these letters:
Sorry.
They, the birds, are all just trying to get home –
or the way people fall apart, or the way you lose someone. When you cry, you weep. When you smile, you laugh. When you fall, you die. When you breathe, you are immortal.
How do you forget somebody who has changed your life?
There is a bridal shop, on the end of 97th Street. I visited in June. The owner is a man whose name I will not mention, but what I will mention is his moustache. Thick and dark and sweeping, it was like Opera in the form of facial hair. Actually, he looked much like an opera-singer, always well-dressed and finely postured. He loved to talk philosophy and spout words of knowledge that never quite bought me to my knees. He was intelligent, I am sure, but he could not make me feel.
A cup of coffee in one hand, far away from the dresses so he would not stain them. He said to me, You must go a little mad in order to create, you know. They thought I was mad when I took this store from my mother — for in her time, it was a dowdy failure. But I have toiled and transformed it. Yes, I agreed, Yes, you are right. Your hard work has paid off. But what is madness?
Madness, he said, taking a swing of his drink, Madness is a state of the spirit, the soul, the heart, madness is of freedom and is deadly and is admired and it makes one deep and meaningful. All right, I said amiably, But all you have used are words.
He went silent after I said this, before casting me a scornful glance. Don’t sound so sad, he said. It disconcerts me. Words are powerful, don’t you know? I know, I answered. I know. And I spoke no more, for he did not understand.
May I see your collection of gloves, I asked politely. Of course, he said. But the room was full of tension.
1. Words are only powerful when they are able to touch the spirit.
2. Only spirit can touch another spirit.
3. Therefore, words are only powerful when the artist has struck it raw and bloodyandGlowing and AFLAME with their own Spirit.
You’re a self-righteous little girl, aren’t you? I could hear his thoughts wring the air.
I could do nothing as my notebooks peeled off their scales, butterfly-birds in the sapphire dawn. Goodbye, they said. Goodbye.
It is a good ghost, in the beach-house. It is a good ghost that makes the scent of sand and breeze his home. It is a good ghost that loves the whitewashed walls and vague shadows, the coziness of flung-open windows and little shells that sing lullabies.
irrationality on a lemon coloured day, thats All it is, Really. never thought It’d get to you like this Before before the dark blue avalanche the Hate you I hate you I hate you. Look, look how he laughs at you. it’s a smile that leaves you Lonely
on powder-cream fingers of sky, the black moons swivel on clear tram-wires. Riveting, he remarks, you nod. He is different from the boy who sleeps in the warmth of your beatingHeart. tell me about the past. no. Tell me. no. ok. Wasnt it nice, the ice-cream today, yes. yes it was nice. you make small talk like a business transaction framed with coffecrumbs And Kind Carpet. he is distant from you only because You Won’t let him closer but he could come closer he could come closer he could i am sure
when his tongue smashes against the roof of your Mouth and his breathing slides up your own Breathing he is closer and you start to liquify like fiery raindrops In the rich soilSmeared onskin but when his Eyes roll back and your hands crack the music of the lonely dwarf drunk onfucked up Mondays you know he cannot Touch the boy who sleeps warmth the beating in of Heart your
and the little silver cross it hits the ground against the force of his naked foot
And what, I wonder, is the process of hating someone?
The bathroom ballooned — it billowed and sat forward, it clenched — it resisted. It made a fist of steam and shook the mirrors. FALL ON YOUR KNEES.
I looked at my reflection, murmuring in muted colours, softly now. To whip the glass lucid, to watch the droplets crinkle the dryness like leprosy, like bluebell scales, the haunted fish of the unknown Sea. You are apt to stand in that peculiar manner.
And you turn comedy into tragedy, you imagine yourself a war-hero.
I cannot see the future anymore, he whimpers, a child with an old soul, a child with an old soul.
Leave. Me. The. fuck. Alone, she whispers, a child with an old soul, a child with an old soul.
I went to sleep that night, in a flurry of breathlessness chastised by your unbending silence. But slowly, it flourished in the dim light of your skin and my skin, frail and crying, giving birth to the bodiless. You are music The kind that grips at your lungs and impales the bones through the nape of your neck, raggedy raggedy torn and raggedy. I just want to light a match and plant it by your feet, is it too much to ask? I will water it with explosions that do not roar but instead, make the sound of space.
The cadence of your confession leaves me silent with my arms to cover the impact of knowing, always knowing. We know too much.
Memory is an old woman with a radio plastered to her ear.
Perseverance is an old man with his teeth grit and his voice soft.
Infatuation is a stranger whose scent embraces the back of your head.
My white flag is here, I surrender and it is a hate so intimate that I cannot help but grip at the essence of you. I want to tear your tower down and tell you, The very moment you laugh at my faults, I have you.
I have you.
Night, You whisper, And the tone of your voice will break my heart.