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Friday, November 20, 2009

apnea




Relentless northeast winds breach drywall and dreams, forcing me awake at point of consummation where much was gained and much was lost. Your hollowed eyes from lack of sleep bear irrepressible mirth nonetheless. I twist the bed sheets, a lone occupant, and turn my face away from dawn. Sink the anchor down past beta, willing to approach the delta once more. Which way will the wind blow next. Will I sink into rich sediment formed at the mouth.

Rising now a second time, midmorning, clutching the pillow dampened with sweat and regret and hope - narrowly escaping further dire consequence. I am forsworn. Only my somnambulant stubbornness allows me to turn back the tide. Must we forever be divided against ourselves. When does unrequitedness ever give strength to purpose. Why do I insist on living a dream.

Unexpected nerve and plasma surge. As for the tides, I have no wish or strength to turn them aside. That's a lie in partiality. Nonetheless. Weighing anchor, willing another port, I fix my compass to trade routes and fertile, febrile fields. A brave new front.

Monday, November 16, 2009

importunate


And does it please you to caparison me in wishes, in stuttering confessions, clever and feckless, then I will lean into it. Full weight renders the symbiotic crush fruitful and I will gladly bide for vintage conclusions. Do you speak in conversational tones, then I will remind your tongue how delicate the palate, how swiftly the bouquet spoils upon conceit.

Tell me more. Tell me more. 
I should be so lucky and thrice times over.


**********



And so. I have no quill, no ruffled sleeves, no plunging bodice. My hair unwashed and wind-torn, a silver keyboard, half-finished drawings of teeth bared and eyes heavy-lidded. Cheap beer and jasmine rice, bladder straining, somewhere a muttering. Spine compacted, sitting overlong gazing at bitmapped palimpsests. Last year's shoes planted flat to the floor, the ones I left outside of temple thresholds in Thiruvannaamalai.

I want to enunciate each portion of my life, as stammered avowals. I want to trill them all together, as an Indian would, replete with sideways headbobble and twinkle in the eye. Absurdly poised I recount Whitman, of contradictions and multitudes.
Do you?

Sunday, November 15, 2009

noctural remissions




Abandoning sheets and a three-decades-old quilt, waking with grease in folds of flesh, smearing memories of dreams into a Petri dish. Not one virgin kleenex within reach, back of hand is an understudy. Erstwhile Libran lover with my hands fades after blossoming, a midnight migraine. Why was your face framed in grey-shot black, a diminutive satyr? You've always stood taller than I with wheat-gold waterfalls. You didn't even laugh. Your mouth closed against mine. My mouth closed against yours.

Try living with feigned apathy. Histrionics and half-gasps make lustier bedfellows.

Bones pop and joints refuse to loosen. For that, you shoot the rapids in a one-man vessel. Steady stroke and rigid tendons, shallow breath determination, aiming for the cataract a million miles hence. Arms windmill, legs clamped against one another. Far away at home before disturbed bedclothes, before crawling from the empty womb, fingers bury into cleft. Urgent scrabbling and arched back. Stuffing fist into face, facing the ceiling, fistfuls of chasteless implacable need.

Dramatis personae, indeed.

Saturday, November 14, 2009

some do some don't



Aft of midday, no sign of Sandman. Pumping pedals and autumn's tangy air bid him retreat; a handful of hours and dint of will carries him finally across the threshold. (Unruly stomach, cottoned head and boneless limbs protested the ushering) Fizzy kombucha fends off the ague and soon constitution flung away last night from the bottom of a bottle begins to boomerang back.

It's easy to think you'll never do something that stupid again when you're in the midst of paying the price for it. Just wait. The true test quickens on the lee side of the scourge.

Sitting in the five-dollar chair that refuses to adjust you wish you had the courage to just fuck and be happy.


Friday, November 13, 2009

word to the why's

Spire's pear cider tastes like cat piss
Scrumpy Jack's organic cider unless you want a sugar high to accompany your barbituate haze
Fox Barrel hard cider unless you like licking fox-arse
America's Original Pumpkin Ale unless it's on sale and during a drought, although it is a previous fave

The winners remain:

Spire's Cider, straight up, in a 22 oz bottle, no pour, deep throat it

PBR or Pabst Blue Ribbon for the uninitiate. At .89 a tall can and co-operatively owned (I hearsay) you can slam it sound and slap it on the ass with no backtalk.




And I would be remiss if I did not give a nod to my dead brother's favorite, Fat Tire. I only like it when I drink it on his anniversary, or as a PBR chaser.

Long live working-class trash!! Hand over that Bud Light with Lime!

traceuses



Alors, je suis parkour.

Lingering upon the pillow 'til half-past eight, levering into paint-stained jeans and waterproof wear, scissoring through the neighborhood for an hour's span. Forty year old lungs and legs exchange easy greetings with hills. Churning through rain on an empty stomach gives length to stride. There is a brightness in the low-slung sky today. No trainspotting as yet.

The blue-handled snub-nosed shears resurfaced in the pocket of an ill-used coat last night. I fingered them as I walked with head down and soft curses past a house on fire.

The coffee's cold. The blink of cursor and seconds sounded on the wall clock synchronize. My heart keeps a half-beat pace behind. Rain sputters to a stop and lawn engines roar to life. The squirrel who regularly traverses the stapled fence pauses to rub muzzle against plank. The holly bush houses maple leaves and I must return to Tiberium.



"No object is so beautiful that, under certain conditions, it will not look ugly" - Oscar Wilde

Thursday, November 12, 2009

which way is prepositional



Up at 10 after a late night movie date with the hole-in-the-wall television and post-viewing literary session in Tiberium. Dragging the grey matter around on a leash, urging it to synaptic willfulness with cheap Earl Grey. How to properly kern the shuffling thoughts that dangle carrots and fishnet stockings before myopic vision. And where are the blue-handled scissors? There are only two proper rooms in this flat and precious little storage. I live with no-one. Kneading frustration into dough. It rises stubbornly. Has the wheat gone sour? Where is the rain that was promised? I forego the vitamins and prop my knee out the window. Track back and forth between the washbasin and the kleenex box, plucking dust motes from the air, reverting to a childhood habit when they were Sights.

I wish I was as handy as a Prufrock poem.

The bead doll climbs the neck of a vase which housed volunteer sunflowers growing from a rubbish heap. The sun lathes across the autumn sky. An engine roars overhead. The neighborhood dogs are subdued. It'll be dark soon; thirteen hundred is four hours away from gloaming and raccoons who march across the yard. One has a milk-white eye.


"This is the sort of cleverness up with which I will not put"
paraphrasing Winston Churchill's quote