Thursday, December 29, 2011

This Old Banger

I had always thought typewriters were glamorous, not heavy and difficult things that smudge onto your fingers. I had thought them to tip tap like a soft and distant chatter while you compose your immortal verse, not chime and clank like a drawer of silverware. Between the wooden box that this thing is hinged into and the bulk of its steel frame... The ink thwaps halfheartedly onto my cheap paper, springing back to its position when my fingers still - the smell is like an old burnt coffee with a hint of stale winter air. God, why drag this all the way up the stairs of the water tower - was I going to watch the people push through the streets, or dodge careless drivers and write a poem about the rain? It was a silly notion, something I'm sure I saw in a movie about the solitary writer bringing his surroundings an examined new life while pouring his heart out.

I wrote a line about an older lady walking her great dane; it wasn't happening it now but I remember the sight in the park. I drove by, it was the last rainstorm and the dog was pulling her towards a puddle to get itself a drink.

Next I tried a little bit of rhyming, a couple of the letters got too close though and stuck together in mid air. I laughed a bit, pushing the old thing off my lap and looking into horizon like a bored fool, the sun still spitting a bit, a little glimmer of light at me from the purpled sky.

Then I heard the explosion.

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

We Agree to Nevermind

I've become adept at the cold reading, and yes, I can nearly pinpoint the breath you will use to say it; "I've never opened up my heart so much". I know that you are awake while I am typing this, while I am hunting and pecking in the glow of a screen, you wonder a half wonder what I am up to, but truly you aren't bothered by it. You don't know me; never took the time. I'm not really the boy that makes small talk and is quick to smile and dab your lip corner with a fresh napkin, in fact maybe we have both lost track. We imprint these tiny ideas from all of the bodies we have come into contact with, it becomes overwhelming - it is akin to playing the few bars Moonlit Sonata every time I warm up to the piano - these inner convulsions that propel us like serpents through another relationship. Muscle memory and learned patters that we dredge from our superstitious connection to true nudity. I admitted that it could be just an addiction, I hope that is only the first of a gradually simpler set of steps. The sex, the musk of it all, it was never worth a night out with butterflies and lost fading interest. I want to love you harder - but what if you have fat calves or you scream in bed like a epileptic - or if your old lover was successful and still plays an anchor in your life. What of you collect friends like cancelled stamps from nearby districts, a heave of self made individualists with that one beaten horse skill or mantra. What if your feet are thick like a babies hoof, and you always need to prop your bare toes on our furniture. What if you have a bland catch phrase like "in all reality" or "good times". What if your breasts hang like old dented cans in the moonlight beaming through your loft window. How can I make poetry with your body when I have to explain why people break my heart to you. When I have to explain the meaning of "multifaceted", or tell one more cold dead ear that I don't follow football, sorry. I sometimes convince myself that I simply need to meet extraordinary people. Then I glower at your wall of acclaims and degrees and plot my exit from your still careless arms. Love is a dying breath or a jump from an airplane, a last ditch effort to inject meaning into an explosive finality. I love, and then it goes slowly dark.