Tuesday, March 29, 2005

Love in Retrospect

For some time I stood on that old bridge, hands on quietly rusting guardrails, remembering old times here. It was here that less than a year ago I lost a friend to the tides below. It was here also that my will became giant enough to begin living completely without her.

In this uninterrupted silence I can almost make out her withered face in the waters ripple; can almost relive the velveteen splash that consumed her forever.

“I remember too” came the childlike voice from behind me.

I didn’t need to turn; I knew she had followed me here tonight to this place that had origins for each of us.

Before I could speak, she began again while resting delicate fingers on my arm. “Do you think I am as beautiful as her?”

A tear came to my cheek, not daring to turn and show my fear. She sensed my reproach and the fingers grew heavier with anticipation.

“There is pain in remembering.” I assert; and for the first time in months am caught contrasting my old life with the present.

“Not today” she says softly.

With this I turn and catch her deep onyx pupils in mine.

In a year she had grown considerably, like a shy young metaphor molting her baby feathers. Still, she varied from love in so many ways. Her spine held her straight, and her flesh was not at all that pouty dappled skin that came from Love’s hard living. She was a tall and thin child of a misbegotten analogy.

The wind rustled the long trees that stood watch on the waters edge, their shimmers echoing beneath our brave metal arch, and two little figures contemplating the drop. It was a breeze made cooler by the contemplation of difficult questions and of analyzing ones self on the nature of his motives.

“I think” I begin; choking on old clusters of foolish recollections. “That you are more beautiful than she could ever be.”

The fingers moved to a grasp as she drew tighter and placed her small chin above my elbow. She continued to stare out above the water that was half lit by the receding moon; but her eyes glowed with acknowledgement.

I recalled all those old nights spent with Love, each a debauchery in the making. Watching her drink and drink until she could handle the accusational glances and harsh hand gestures that awaited her outside of her little apartment. Watching her dress in her tiny rumpled clothes; filling out the seams with her shapeless appendages. She could get anyone to talk, fight or cry; it didn’t matter what she wore. We would be an item on the town, dancing until the night dissolved; and even when the old street monsters burned up at the sight of daylight and had to be swept back into their boxes to recover for tomorrows performance.

Now that I think of it; I only stuck around because I had the belief I could change her. I was jealous and needy; I didn’t want her raucous lifestyle.

I would find her at midnight sleeping in a phone booth, a handful of dimes and saliva. Sometimes it was noon in a rustle of cans and newspapers, strewn somewhere between park benches. I would find her half asleep, fingers splayed and etching out her own misery in the dewy sky. Each of these times could have been the first or the last for all I knew, it was a habit to pick her up and dust her off. It was also casual to make excuses for her and her myriad of habits. She was languid and unreliable, motile yet very unproductive. For metaphors that have been recently demoted from virtues, she was a serious piece of work. It was not uncommon for her name to be shouted from the rooftops, yet at the blink of an eye she was responsible for thrown dishes and broken families. She was the love child of Aphrodite and the tree of fickleness.

All this negotiating around delicate verbal territory and one can forget why they are here tonight.

I feel those dark eyes across my face; those comforting irises that have followed me through every day since Love decided the world was better without her farce. Those same lidded gems that took my hand when all that I knew about the world was inhaling dark corrosive water. Those same hands that led me here tonight to stare at the pitch beyond.

“It’s easiest to learn from loss.” I say, reflecting on her light touch. It was a tender hand designed to comfort.

“You still haven’t given me a name…”

I stood awestruck, realizing that in all these months there was nothing I would call her. A dozen months spent with each other, and no name seemed to fit her. She was a budding young presence, each day making her charisma more evident; and yet of these traits I could not embody a single adjective to assume her.

Her eyes were still content, focused on a distant boat light yet somehow assuring me from her periphery.

“Compassion…” I say steadily, checking up at the mottled Luna.

Her face turns to me as I finish my pause, and before her lips could unfold I put a warm hand on her little shoulder.

“I think compassion would be the metaphor that one day follows you home from a long empty night of living and from that moment on grows by your side until it is large enough to blot out the blackness…”

Monday, March 28, 2005

Good Things that Happen to Shitty People - A List

One; you wake up in Belize, you knees in the air, they prop the light linen of your bed spread; it’s noon and the gulls sprawl like lazy compasses in mid flight, shooting you back glittering reflections of a sun at azimuth.

Two; you wake in the hospital; having the last biopsy of your life; your seven years clean of your rare breed of tunneling burrowing cell mutating ailment; you die quick of lung fluids in your eighties; too long to wait.

Three; you wake in the Marriot on the highway sprawl of eastern Tennessee; your not alone; you’re traveling with a lover or a friend or a lover; your going to get married and he will never know any of the real things that I know.

Four; you wake with the sun in your face; it beats through the tinted windshield of your minivan; everyone in there tolerates you successfully; you need to pick stuff out for the wedding.

Five; you wake after painless birth; but it’s not fair that it doesn’t hurt; life should reflect birth; life hurts; you have very few scars; your husband never suspects its not his.

Six; you wake in time from your nap to attend your child’s dance performance; this bears particular importance to you; you couldn’t drop dead until this happened; you still don’t drop dead; he/she dances exquisitely; you used to be a dancer.

Seven; you wake from a nap on the sofa with a frail memory at hand; you have a startlingly clear recollection of the past; you have the feeling of love that exceeds that of your last twenty years alive; you return to sleep with a smile; you ignore reality a second time around.

Eight; you wake and make it to the restroom by yourself; a long piss that is actually not too acidic today; you can wear the same underpants back to bed; what a wonderful night.

Nine; you wake and sit upright with a startle; you remember all the faces looking back; oh, yes, pictures of people long gone and chased from you life; you miss your husband but its nice not having to take care of anyone; you take a moment to appreciate your independence.

Ten; you wake in the nicest wing of the retirement facility; goddamn lucky that your favorite illegitimate child became a true success and in their efforts to rush you out peacefully, enrolled you into a happy home of the inevitably declining. You can read books and stare out windows, this is what we always wanted; you’re thankful that your sex drive has withered like a raisin; happiness is a moment without desires…

Tuesday, March 22, 2005

Alive

In every dress, you were a spectacle,
Upheld in every dim shop light, as lace curtains split,
And your body moves coyly beneath,
To be flattered by the lack of speech outside.

Yet your thin white frame beneath,
That you held in such esteem,
Is slowly subsiding to a ballet of principles,
As little insects carry away your healthy cells,
Haul them like leafcutter ants,
Severing your life, like careless vegetable limbs.

Did not that tremble add to the performance?
The weakness, perfect the dance,
And the ache you know in your lips,
How they pursed so even in sleep,
Drawing tight around unspeakable fears,
Your teeth filtering the escaping sighs.

How we both became victims,
Like hurtful poems in each others blood,
Like jealous playthings, put away,
When children grow,
When they forever quit from play,
And instead work their magic stuff,
For every pale eye behind the dim shop windows.

Perhaps it WAS best to write our survival story first,
Before we started to live again,
Before the uncomfortable treatments began,
Before we started to try that long road,
Maybe to love again,
Or learn not to love all the time.

Maybe to love when the time was right,
And shut it up when the chapter is done…

Friday, March 04, 2005

Life on Credit

I might just prefer that debt collectors would go back to their roots and march two by two into your office building with loaded berretas and mauve hats; suggesting that you pay the Don back the monies that you owe him. It's a simpler method, it's an honest trade, a realistic setup of consequences and of course gives you the option to pull your own piece of armament and sabotage the whole fucking enterprise.

In today's world you can't take a sawed off implement to the teeth of Capital One, Chase Manhattan or any other nameless faceless facade of ruthless moneylending. That would destroy the enterprise of the capitalist stride; thus my weapons are not only useless, but even if armed correctly could not pick off the autonomous hives of lend oriented fucks called banks and litigators.

I try to imagine the subtle plesantries of the modern system, how one can infinitely extend their payment amounts by piecemeal logic and an inflationary percentage point. I attempt to believe that its all there to help out the little man, buying with only a contractual agreement as you payment. I try to think its just the nature of our system to take their calls every day or so and have a go at being different characters.

One day im the debt owing outlaw escaping to Mexico, the next im fighting for your country in the army, asking you if you even appreciate the freedom I have given you. What a system indeed.

I think I would prefer the system where I set some trap for my debtors, those who had unfairly snagged my owings to themselves in a loco gambling scheme. I would ambush them as the broad shoulders turned the hallway, all the while mumbling something about broken knee caps. In reality, tying up this band of thugs would be self defense, kind of like the brass balled twerps that ring try and ring me all to often. That's a world with options.

Today all I can do is put on a facade, but in a fair world I could tear with conviction at those dweebs and focus on the important parts of the day just glad I made it thug free...