memoirs

In a fleeting moments
as I looked up at the azure sky
All is gone in thin air
In the twilight of the horizon
Helplessly wondering why things went awry
Dreaming of a love that has not been
Perplexities unfold, devoid of happiness
Disillusioned by promises that hold no truth
A nightmare
That couldn't be gargled away in the morning
Memories keep haunting me
Reminiscing times we were together.
Abyss of loneliness creeping up
Oblivious to falling debris
I walk slowly
Leaving yesterday behind me
Seeking the light
And in time
A world, in its overwhelming chromatics
Will give life to my weary soul

thoughts

I can hear the rain like a rush of divine energy beating at the earth. Or maybe that's the fan. Either way it is a welcome hum to settle my mind into a soft clarity. It keeps me alert, but content by washing away the thoughts that fight to flood my mind like an overwhelming wave of fear.

I've wished that whatever I felt was just safely locked up in my mind -- no one could probe into its depths and wrench its secrets. I've made attempts to reverse it, but I almost lost my sanity or whatever remains of it. My passion is overpowering -- it's like grabbing hold of a tornado. The thought of you is an obsession.

Every morning I have to face the night thinking of you. Every night I have to face the day just the same. I have begun to prefer neither and wish myself dead. But it is only a wish -- not a desire. Not something I would ever try to accomplish myself. It's the will for life that anyone is born with, the instinct that prompts defense and attack to keep one's life safe that prevents me. Or maybe the fact that I would undoubtedly miss you if I am dead.

All my life I struggled not to be a slave of anybody or anything, but as I now pause to scrutinize the image I see in the mirror, staring back at me, all I see is a slave in its peculiar but truest form. I have become a slave of you whose smile or mere touch overwhelms my passion for anything. Would there be a single thing I would not do for you?

During the night I find sleep difficult to obtain, but once my wavering consciousness is prepared to fall into the depths of slumber, wonderful thoughts come to take hold of me. In some subtle haunting way, a vision of you creeps into my mind -- a vision idyllic and jeweled. My attention would immediately be riveted to you, like an oarsman in the dead of the night fixing his eyes on a lighthouse miles and miles away. You would grant me the privilege of your company, and like a kitten I would purr contentedly on my master's lap. I would keep my eyes on you until the last contour of your face is out of sight, trying to preserve every detail of your appearance in my memory until the time I will see you again. And who could recount, without convincing me of madness, the trembling, the waiting, the anguish every time I long for you… the terror that each time you left my sight you would die?

I loved your eyes most of all. They must have been the same eyes Noah had upon seeing the rainbow after the Great Flood. Swirling masses of dark clouds and slowly, one by one, little fingers of light coalesce to reveal a brilliant arc of colored light in the sky. You would look at me even in just a passing moment and you might have touched a dormant nerve in me, unlocking an arcane sanctum in my mind. Everything would stop just like that. It was as if the world has ceased to exist; your glistening eyes and the vertiginous dance of my heart. When they said money can't buy happiness, they must have meant the happiness that comes from your kiss.

Would it be right to tell you exactly how I felt that night I slept with you in my dream? After I'm certain you're asleep, I examine at my leisure your eyelashes, the skin of your eyelids, your collarbone with its fluted wings, the purple knot of the nipple, those firm and powerful legs. Nothing escapes me. For a moment, I don't want to think of anything. You are there, for that moment you are mine.

I wanted my life to begin there, as I looked at you while you sleep. How in the half-light of the room you cast your own light as if you are all made of amber?

After that night I haven't left you. Not ever. Do you know why? Because I recreate you in my memory. The scent of your skin, the broom of your mustache, how you fit in my palms. I rub warmth in your fingertips. I wanted to run my tongue from the hollow in your throat, between the smooth stones of your chest, across the trail down below the navel. I remember how I loved you with a pleasure close to sobbing, how you still the trembling in my chest.

I don't need to ask; I've seen it for myself. It's in your eyes. It's always been there. Since before I knew you. And beneath that fierceness, something ancient and tender as rain. I wished I could rub the grief in there as if it were a smudge on the cheek.

What are you to me now? With that disarming charms and wicked wit, you're not just a man; you're a legend, a myth, a god. But you are as well my husband. Albeit only sometimes.

You may say I've grown crazy from living with so many thoughts. Then, so be it. And I took to eating black thoughts -- the darkest, blackest thoughts to make me hard and strong.

But for now, I let myself wander in haze as the rain has ceased its soft cadence. Funny that I should hide when the sky is clear, but journey through my mind when the rain falls.

11.09.02

unrequited

I put my lips to your forehead. And we fall asleep like that, with your one arm around me. To look at you as you sleep, the color of your skin. I know every cave and crevice, every back road and ravine, but I don't know where I could hide you from myself. You're tired. You're sick and lonely with all of this, and I don't want any of those things to ever touch you again. It's enough for now you are here. For now. Under my roof again.

Just sleep. It's only me circling above you, wide-eyed all night. Staring at this face in my hands. I miss you. I miss you even now as you lie next to me…

Could I have been mistaken? In this case, it seemed to me that you would be the very man to suit me, and I thought, who knows that there may not be a chance for me yet? But by the time my night had crumbled into dimness, it struck me that my little castle had also wreathed away and vanished.
What I said was, as you know, very simple and to the purpose. I knew quite well that your fancy was elsewhere; mine was with you, perhaps as hopelessly placed. Yet you were entirely free to use me as you pleased: make love with me, make a friend of me -- I was in your hands. There I was, ready to spend my life at your service. That is to say that I did love you, madly and truly, without romanticizing the thing.

You've been well-disposed towards every soul you come across. You love to be loved and try with a sweet artless art to win and charm over each woman that you meet. I saw that you liked me, that you felt at your ease with, that you held me not quite your equal and might perhaps laugh at, as well as with me. But I did not care. My aim in life, heaven knows, has not been to domineer, to lay down the law and triumph over others, least of all, over those I love.

Love? We don't say that word. I couldn't go anywhere without that grief inside me. As if the days to come did not exist. And when it seemed that the grief would not let me go, I would try to remember that night I came to live with you. That night when we balance your body on mine as if you are a boat and I river. I remember how your skin smelled sweet as the rind of watermelon, like the fields after it has rained. Mornings and nights I think your scent is still in me, wake remembering you are tangled somewhere between the sleeping and the waking. How I wanted to lose myself in the deep, plum color of your sex, the skin of your eyelids were as soft as the skin of the penis. To feel its warmth from my left cheek to the right.

A silence between us is like a language. When I held you, you kissed me in the hand. I remember that, and it helps the days pass without bitterness. Does it surprise you I don't let go of little things like that? There are so many things I don't forget even if I must do well to. There was enough to distract me in the day, but at night you can't imagine -- I dreamt of you. When I awoke I was sure your spirit had just fluttered from the room. I have yanked you from my sleep before into the dream I was dreaming. Twisted you like a spiral of hair around a finger. And when you would not do my bidding and come when I commanded, I would turn into a soul and keep vigil in the branches outside your door to make certain no one would do harm to you while you sleep.

The days I would turn from raging fire to coldest ashes, I don't think you understood my reasons. I assume I made no difference to you as youve always prided yourself in being independent. You don't belong to me or to any other woman. Or so I thought.

One night, my heart circled and trembled against my chest and something beneath my eyelids palpitated so furiously, it wouldn't let me sleep. When I felt my body whirling against the beams of the room, I opened my eyes. I could see perfectly in darkness. Beneath me -- I saw you asleep next to a woman, that woman you love sleeping beside you. And her skin shone blue in the moonlight and you were blue as well.

She wasn't at all like Id imagined. I came up close and studied her. Nothing but an ordinary woman with her ordinary woman smell. She opened her mouth and gave a moan. And you pulled her close to you. Then I felt a terrible grief inside me. The two of you asleep like that, your leg warm against her, your foot inside the hollow of her foot.

What did you tell her about me? That I was just a chapter of your life which had already finished? But I am a story that never ends. Pull one string and the whole cloth unravels.

From your silences, I understood I was not to question our relationship. It was what it was. Nothing more. If I complain about these woman concerns of mine, I know you will tell me -- "these aren't times for that" -- wait until later. But I am tired of being told to wait.

You rarely talk. Your way of talking is sudden, quick like water leaping. And yet I know what that voice of yours is capable of.

"You need not to know everything", you told me. It made me feel a little crazy when you hurled that at me. Those words with all its force, how a pain entered my heart like a current of cold water, and in that current were the days to come. You grunt those words like hail that splits open my skin, and I cry against the infinity of the sky when the stake pierces me. And in your mouth, the words were flint-edged and heavy, makes a drum of the body, something to maim and bruise and sometimes kill. But I said nothing.

What is it I am to you? When you hesitate? What am I? Sometime lover? Companion? Whore? Which? To be one is not as terrible as being all.

I've needed to hear it from you. All I've wanted was words, that magic to soothe me a little, what you could not give me. But even if you have the words, you could never tell me. You don't know your own heart – even when you are speaking with it in your hands.

We have never been much for talking, have we? Poor thing, I don't know how to talk. Instead of talking with my lips, I put one leg around you when we sleep, to let you know it's all right. The days to come, I thought, erasing the bitter sting of your goodbye.

Isn't it the way with all of us? We begin by liking universally; as we go on we pick and choose and weary of the things which had only the charm of novelty to recommend them; only as our life narrows we cling more and more to the good things which remain, and feel their value ten times more keenly? And now that I have almost come to the end of my story, that is, of those few days of my life of which you were the story. But if it is for the last time I do want to tell you what a precious and exciting thing it has been to know that you have sometimes wanted to be with me -- the greatest thing in my life.

03.25.03

lice

let me tell you about the lice.

one of the hazards. you get the lice, you went to the pharmacy, you bought a lice lotion, you get rid of them.

not us.

maybe our lives were a little limited. but to be invaded by such predators was a fascinating thing. these were primeval creatures that licked our blood, as we did. creatures that pierced the skin and sucked back blood and existed for one purpose only.

as we did.

dud

at any rate, when you're pretty crazy yourself, you really don't want to know it. you cannot afford to know it, and don't want to show it to anyone else. least of all the one you love. the whole thing was a lost cause. but it takes the slowing down even show the madness in the first place.

memories

memory is a fucker, the way it blur things. somewhere the past has changed, i don't want it. i don't want the present. there is no conceivable future. there is only the relentless of coping, punctuated by naked singularities of bliss.

this was a time of life being out of whack. sometimes i felt on top of the world. i've heard since that this is called "denial". it makes sense. the brain shuts down at times of true crisis, and nothing but the locus of hilarity is active.

the radio plays low. memories. i hear "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" and i am enchanted by its dreamy sadness.

awakening

sometimes, because of the logic of the poetry, the name of the game is hauntingly accurate. love. for instance, it was called that because if you were taken out and shown, you wouldn't know it was there. lots of people don't.

it sounded obsure and exotic and i wanted to see it. i had never seen a big one and wanted to.

i am young enough to be sharp as hell, for my regular doses of slammed doors, crabbily chainsmoking and the traditional family psychodramas. i am convinced that one day my heart is simply going to explode. i mean, go completely kablooey inside my chest. i don't even care. my lifestory: "the woman who desperately wanted to be hit by lightning".

until girl interrupted meets catcher in the rye.

talk about someone speaking to you from beyond. it just woke me up and never in my life have i lunged so instinctively for someone as though he was intrinsically a part of me -- like a leg or an arm i'd casually misplaced for twenty two years.

he was left staring at my poor, battle-scarred soul, under the enigmatic smile. he tried to think of something, anything, he could do for me. he emptied the contents of his soul into mine. you could imagine his strength -- his soul -- was a white laser beam shooting from his heart into mine, like those light pulses in glass wires that can pump a million books to the moon in one second. this beam was cutting through my heart like a beam cutting through a sheet of steel. he could take or leave this strength that i so obviously lacked -- but he just wanted it to be there for me as a reserve.

he'd never given one nanosecond's worth of time to anyone -- all mine, just for me to hold on.

i could give my life to this man. no regrets.

ashtray

it really makes me sick. it's like being in an empty room: empty hologram people walking around peeking at themselves in mirrors and surreptitiously misting their tonsils with mouth spray, just in case they have to kiss another ghost like themselves.

i began to see this world as one where citizens stare, say, at the armless Venus de Milo and fantazise about amputee sex or self-righteously apply a fig leaf on the statue of David, but not before breaking off his dick as a souvenir. all events became omens; i lost the ability to take anything literally.

and then i had an uncontrollable reaction. my heart went bang; i broke into sweat and the words of Rilke, the poet, entered my brain -- his notion that we are all born with a letter inside us, and that if we are true to ourselves, may be allowed to read it before we die.

so the point of all this was that i needed a clean slate with no one to read it. i needed to drop out even further. my life had become a series of scary incidents that simply weren't stringing together to make for an interesting book and time was running out.

whether i feel more that i want to punish some aging crock for frittering away my world, or whether i'm just upset that the world has gotten too big -- way beyond my capacity to tell stories about it, so all i'm stuck with are these cigarettes and coffee.

i feel insulted either way.