Farewell

I found a loose slab of stone outside the department store.

I tossed it aside and began to dig; the earth was

soft and caved in easy, soon I was in to my

waist. Size 34;

A crowd gathered but stepped back

before my screaming lungs and

canon ball like shots of mud.

and by the time the cops came, I was in below

my head,

Frightening crawlers, eels, and finding bits of golden

inlaid skull,

and they asked me, are you looking for oil, treasure,

gold, the end of China? Are you looking for love, God

a lost key chain? And shoppers dropped keys and peered

into my darkness, and a psychiatrist came

and a

high school teacher and a size zero movie star in a bikini and

a Russian spy and a Jihadi bomber and a Chinese soldier,

and a drama critic and my accountant, a leather jacket clad old boyfriend,

and they all asked  me,

what are you looking for?

and soon it began to rain…submarines changed course,

Bukowski rolled in his sleep, and my hole filled

with water; I came out black as the night, shooting stars

and epitaphs, my pockets full of beautiful worms,

and they took me in, gently nudging me toward a shower

and a nice cell, rent-free, and

I hear people picketing in my cause,

I have signed contracts to sell my words

I have signed contracts to appear on stage

I have vowed to vote for a better government

I have enough money to last me several years at the best hotels.

But as soon as I get out of here,

I am going to find me another loose slab of stone and begin to dig

dig, dig and this time I am not coming back….rain, shine or leather jackets.

Yet, they keep asking, why did you do it?

I pour me another bourbon and smile. 

Constantly, slightly drunk

Sometimes I want to scream, so I try. I open my mouth; clench my eyes shut and I try to throw that scream, that blood curdling, and gut-wrenching scream. Instead, all I can make is a noise, not loud, not a whimper but a pitiful sound. A sound that mocks my effort at bashful screaming. Next, I decide perhaps if I were to break something, do what most people do when they are angry or sad or helpless. I pick up my globe like metal ashtray and point it to the mirror and I think all right, this is it. I am going to take this ashtry and swing it to the mirror and watch my reflection shatter to pieces. That should explain how I feel. I will leave a physical evidence of my mental condition, accompanied with a noise, visual to see after, if am lucky I might accidently snip a finger or bruise. Something that I can nurture and make better, in that process my mind too will perhaps heal. I see myself thinking this through too much and then the mess, who will clean up the mess? Shattered pieces of glass, do I wear a glove to pick the larger pieces before I sweep the smaller one’s out. How will I explain it to the people I live with, it can’t be an accident, I wouldn’t want them worrying about me, or say “do you need to be so dramatic?” or “Have you lost your mind?”  That must be it, I must’ve lost my mind to think a scream or general disruptive behavior is cure to how I feel. I see a trickle of water streaming down my eyes now, this can’t be, and do I let it stream down or wipe it? Do I find a way to stop this; perhaps if I stand under the shower, it would all mingle in, water to water and not much of a mess to deal with. Its sorted now, I’ll take a deep breath, empty out my ashtray and take a shower.  All of this should be normal. People take deep breaths all the time, ashtrays are cleaned and showers stream down your skin.

Confession

and some people are a grand waste of your time
and some people not worth the words
there is a reason they leave so early
a reason why you never bump into them
a reason why you should never make that attempt
a reason why they pass you by the other door
a reason why you will never notice them at an arm's distance
a reason why you will forget all of the above and chase an object of desire
a reason why the world is full of beautiful things
a reason why its only fair to be distracted.

Mediocre

Here you are
not too many hangovers
not too many fights with women
not too many flat tires
never, no never a thought of suicide

not more than two job changes
never a chipped tooth, three decades and
not more than three tooth aches
never missed a meal
never in jail, never in love

five pairs of shoes
trousers and shirts stacked together
oh to live your closeted life on the edge
car loans, insurance policies
passion reserved for weekends
your technology on auto update

so easily amused, its a miracle
our madhouses are rarely on display.

Betrayal

Today I saw a woman flirting with a man, a man who is not her husband. I say to myself: She ought not have improper relationships with this man, this is absolutely incorrect, JUST NOT RIGHT. I say this woman should not be seeing this man in an inappropriate way when her husband is picking raw from ripe tomatoes in the back aisle.  But I do tend to confuse an old reality with a new one. This woman is close to being 80 years old, her husband instead of picking tomatoes is pushing daisies. Yet, How can there be improper relations with a woman of 80? My confusion must be this: though her body is old, her capacity for betrayal is still young and fresh. 

Five Senses

My dearest one every once in awhile you ask me 

Why do we have to go to the art gallery?

why do we have to go see a play every other weekend?

why do we have to go a concert?

why go to the restaurant and try new cuisines?

   I could tell you, "I just feel like it" and leave it at that and you would resent me label me extravagant and never understand my curiosity or intent. 

    My darling child, just like I have you too will learn over the years to treat your five senses with respect and consideration. you will take your eyes to the museum, your nose to a flower show, your hands to the fabric store for the velvet and silk; you will surprise your ears with a concert , and excite your mouth with a restaurant meal. You will also meet people who make their senses work hard for them day after day: Read me this newspaper! Pay attention, nose, in case the food is burning! Ears!- get together now and listen for a knock on the door! their senses have jobs to do and they do them, mostly-the ears of the deaf won't, and eyes of the blind won't . soon you will see their senses get tired. Sometimes long before the end they will say, "I am quitting, I am getting out of this NOW"! those persons are less prepared to meet the world, they will stay at home more, waiting for that knock which they might miss, letting milk spill over, the eyes and hands sore from scrubing clean a kitchen. My love, when one day if it all quits on them, they are really alone...in the dark, in silence, numb hands, nothing in the mouth, nothing in the nostrils and you will hear them ask themselves this "Did I treat them wrong?" "Didn't I show them a good time?" and no, you don't want to be that person. Go ahead, drive three hours to watch that play, camp overnight for those concert tickets, spend a tad extra on fine wine, do whatever you can and show them a good time. 

One such person.

“Tell me, when are you the happiest?”

“Why do you ask?”

You have to tell me because it will help you find out what you can do for the rest of your life apart from eating, breathing, sleeping... you know what I mean. You need to do something with your life, maybe a vocation even!

We can get to it if you can answer some simple questions. Okay?

Sure.

So, here goes.

You can pick these options if you cannot think of anything original.

“I am happiest when”,

a)  I am with my family

b)  I am doing something meaningful (travel, pursuing hobby, helping the poor, friends etc)

c)   I am quiet

What is this? You are supposed to help me, not ask me daft questions.

You have to answer it.

Well, then my answer is “Depends”.

That is not an option.

It has to be, sometimes I am happy when I am just a witness to something that is out of the ordinary.

Like, for example?

You want me to tell you an “out of the ordinary” event which has made me happy?

Yes. Go on enlighten me.

Okay, you have to promise not to be prejudiced.

I’ll try.

Well, I’ll try and tell you the way it is.  Jacob got this offer in one of Vienna’s finest restaurants as “head chef” or “Chef de Cuisine” as the French like to call it. Jacob started his career as line cook and it took him 20 years to move from line cook to “Assistant-chef”. “Delayed promotions” was his answer to missed opportunities. Nevertheless, “Chef De Cuisine” offers don’t come in everyday, so we packed and moved to Vienna. Our home there was in this beautiful picturesque suburban neighborhood, it was quiet and barely anything happened there, this can be quite un-nerving to a person who has lived all her life in New York. My immediate neighbor was Marie, she was a muralist and her house was her canvas, the central wall had the portrait of Raphael with a door to his shoulder and the two other walls had Michelangelo and Da Vinci. Her house was like an art museum; I’d wake up and see Raphael eyes peering down, which was quite spooky. Anyway, Marie also tutored some students but most days she worked on her walls. However, one day, I saw Marie sitting on the pavement under the streetlight and she was making these sketches on paper. Now, if it were New York, I would not have noticed her at all, but Marie and her quirks were out of place in that suburbia.  By mid afternoon, she had her paints around her and she was intently on to something, I thought I must walk up to her but her intensity was intimidating. I wondered how everybody else in that lane reacted to Marie, perhaps they felt just as intimidated as I did or they conveniently ignored her, or maybe they were just too used to Marie. At around 11 Pm I peeped out of my window and saw Marie sitting very still, what could she still be doing at this unearthly hour?   A few minutes later, I heard a shrill shriek; you know that animated scream when someone presumes to have seen a ghost. I jumped out of my bed and ran out and I saw this young girl run past Marie. Under that street light Marie looked still, she didn’t move, it didn’t look like she was breathing either. I called the police and I told them what had happened and in a while an officer knocked on my door and asked me what the problem was.

“Don’t you see that women there officer, look, under that street light. Marie, she is sitting so still, you have to help her, something is not right, she isn’t moving, don’t you see her?”  I yelled pointing toward the light.

“Sure we do see a woman, and yes, she is still. We don’t expect murals to move in this country,” he said plainly as if it were common or it had all happened many times before.

“A mural” I said and walked toward the pavement and yes, it was a self-portrait.            

       Therefore, my dear Clara, I do not know what you will make of this story but, it is this “out of the ordinary” that makes me happy. I don’t have to be with my family, I don’t have to do something meaningful and neither do I have to be quiet. That moment there as witness to an unrecognized genius was when I was happiest and that is what I want to do as long as I live apart from eat, sleep, and breathe. 

 Found this short story unexpectedly fishing for an old file... this was a story a friend told me. Don't know where she is now... the things your comp throws up on you.

our lips raw with love

you gave me everything you had 
and I offered you what was left of me

i don’t sleep

i pace

i ponder 

i plot

i plan 

i worry

i wonder

i wax

i wane

i relive

i regret

i rethink 

i rehash

i contemplate  

i evaluate

i deliberate

i speculate

i ruminate

i analyze

i strategize

i dramatize

i fantasize

i brood

i delude

i stress

i obsess 

i digress

i’m a mess 

and i don’t sleep. 

Today

I gave a rupee to an old bum who looked the way I feel. 

Sometimes

I close my eyes and all the world drops dead
sometimes, I lift my eyes and the world is born again

Sometimes I dream that you bewitched me into bed
and sung me moonstruck and kissed me quite insane

Sometimes I think I made you up inside my head.
and
Sometimes I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead. 

Quotidian Blindness.

There is a hole in the back of your head, the sun shines into this hole. You are denied a glimpse of it.  It could be your face. Others “look into it” the most public, promiscuous part of your body is invisible to yourself. How obvious. The thing that kisses, sneezes, whistles and moans is a hole more private than our privates. You retreat from this dreadful hole into this strange and mundane blindness, the blindness of your face to itself. You want light a cigarette or fix yourself a drink. You want to make a phone call. To whom? You don’t know. Of course you don’t. you want to phone your face. The one you’ve never met. Who you are. 

slaying demons...

we are fading

memories of you
peeling off my subconsciousness like
paint from a fading fresco


we were beautiful once

and romance

is when two people are walking next to each other and all of a sudden they find themselves holding hands, and they don't know how that happened. 

Stories

Our bodies sprawled over the bed, my arm over yours, your legs crossed upon mine, your head resting on my shoulder as I run my fingers through your hair. Our bodies are not new to each-other, they know their way around and in this we hold our stories. 

 our scars from recklessness, our bodies show age, it shows us where we have been, what we have done, it shows in lines and scars, in fatigue and aches. 

 your body my love is covered in poetry, in heartbreak, stoicism, torn ankles, hair that is different than your younger years, a crease under your eye from staring into a blank screen for too long, muscles that have strengthened in places, lessened in others. Can I look at those poems with desire? yes, I can. I can read our story to date and I can wonder about the years before. 

   I can see furtive digging at your nail beds when you had to hold your words under your breath, I can see absentmindedly clipping your nail far too in. 

I can see the difference between my body and that of a 20 year old, well of course she is at the beginning and I am at the middle  Can I accept that when your eyes cross her body that you will experience something perhaps different than when your body reads mine? Yes, I can, and you know I will appreciate the beauty of younger men as well. Nothing wrong with having that out in the open. 

Yet I seal it all with a kiss for you and fight it with morning runs, face creams, sexy shoes, spanx and yet I know in my heart that our bodies are meant to be ruined from living life. 

A thousand desires such as these

A thousand desires such as these
A thousand moments to set this night on fire,
reach out and you can touch them,
you can touch them with your silences
you can reach them with your lust
rivers, mountains, rains,
rain against a torrid hills cape
A thousand desires such as these

I loved rain as a child, as a lost young man
empty landscapes bleached by a tired sun
and then, and then suddenly it came like a dark unknown woman
her eyes scorched my silences,
her body wrapped itself around me like a summer without an end

Pause me, hold me, reach me where no man has gone,
crossing the seven seas, with the wings of fire , i fly towards nowhere
and you,
rivers, mountains, rain
rain against a scorched landscape of pain

A thousand desires such as these,
A thousand moments to set this night on fire,
reach out and you can touch them,
you can touch them with your silences
you can reach them with your lust
rivers, mountains, rains,
rain against a torrid hills cape
A thousand ...a thousand desires such as these

Letters

I will love you like the fish that loves water. I will love you like the water that loves the shore. I will love you like the shore that loves the wave. I will love you like the wave that loves foot prints. I will love you even if the oceans turn to sawdust and the trees fall in the forest without anyone around to hear them. I will love you like the water that spills over and is drawn toward an important document. I will love you like the smudge that loves ink. I will love you like that human eye squinting to read the smudge. I will love you like the paper that holds secrets and is hidden for safekeeping. I will love you like the precious ear ring that drops to a drain and sends its wearer scavenging in horror. I will love you like the taxi that loves the muddy splash of water. I will love you like an iceberg loves a ship. I will love you like a band aid that slips into pie. I will love you with the innocence of fire that will ravage everything in its sight. I will love you like a pervert who possesses his stash of underpants. I will love you like crows love murder. I will love you like justice that stays calm when everything goes wrong. 

I might have said, “Come on over here and love me” when drunk, am stark raving sober now and I say “come on over here and love me”

I want to give you the kind of pleasure that will render you helpless, how intoxicating it is be at the receiving end of this torrential desire…your body is magnificent. A temple, they say…and am ready to pray.

Your eyes, those dark hollows they pull me in and I dive right through forgetting to come up for air. Those dark irises are perfect companion to your bronze skin, the dark tumble of your hair. I love your mouth, plum, breaking in to a contagious rapture of laughter. Your nose haughty and bold, poised to look down on somebody.

Your neck, taut, angular, muscular, smooth and oh so serious. I love how your collar bones make hallows and respond to the calling and the graze of an encircling thumb.

I love your hands. The elegant fan of your fingers,  squared claws. The veins of strength they hold you as you hold me. To have your palms sweep through the thick of my hair, grip, clench and tug. To have your fingers comb through the untamed wild of my locks.

I will paint your shoulder blades with my tongue, linger at the curve, and kiss the spread of your forehead, cup your face in my palms. let me stay right where we are. Move nothing, not a muscle. Not a moment. There is no shame in our stillness.

Letters

You, my dearest you… I love the romance of you, this psychedelic inebriation, your ambiguous nature, I love your stoic firmness, I love the fleeting tune that runs through my head when I see you.  I smile at how you are reticent when am forward. How the mention of my need to rest on your shoulder is met with quiet open arms or how you say the most staggering things with utmost careless elegance…

I love how straightforward it is – to love who you are without needing to possess you.

What I have here is not needy, it will not beg at your door for scraps of time or attention. It will not need to be fed to live, it is not desperate, pleading…its patient, its quiet, it keeps itself occupied with everything else.

My love is not sad, morose. It will not waste away in morbidness or what may come of a future…it is always a bit drunk, intoxicated.  Its simple, easy to understand, nothing complex here. I could sit with you and stare into emptiness with utmost faith that something beautiful may come of it…my love for you is bold to take your hand to my cheek and let it rest against my palm, but not so brazen to lick chocolate sauce off your fingers…

My love is gentle and knows the language of silence, it will leave you to your days of solitude…I will learn to read your lips and say nothing in response to the quiet.

My love, my dear one is shameless…when asked “who is this to you? What do you share?” I will answer “my beloved, I am a lover, I share my mind, my thoughts, my heart, my skin, my bed, my time on earth”

And anyway, it’s none of your business.

Of course

it is strange how one can adore you, almost casual...as if, 

to hold you in my arms were simply a matter of course.

too natural to mention. 

and sometimes

if you are lucky, you will find a man who will ruin your lipstick and not your mascara. 

I forget your name and simply refer to you as “mine”

Your lips are stuck in my head, what an uncanny place to be stuck in. can you move to the right a little please, your lips are blocking my words…they don’t flow the way they used to. My tongue is twisted and contorted to fit in perfectly with yours, I no longer know where my lips begin and yours end, my ribs long to fit in the concaves that separate yours, my scars and bruises long to be molded into yours, making patterns, drawing topographies, mapping your body to mine…beautiful designs don’t just happen and I wonder if our world was mapped on scars. 

and on somedays

all I want to do is
curiously count the scares on your body
kiss you long enough to memorize the shape of your tongue
quietly climb on the curve of your back
and count your vertebrae
your ribs
your fingers
your goosebumps
learn your body language
and simply want you, this quiet hunger...

you see how that first spark has grown
brighter...bolder

claws

when I think of the good men I have known
who have
dissolved
vanished
over trivialities

I pour myself another drink and bet on a poem.  

you my love

to me are the stuff dreams are made of

moonshine


stardust 


and a fist full of sky...

I don't know when, how or why this frantic ceaseless wanting began,
But this belongs to you alone. 

Delight in Dialogues.

I might not have many friends, not the breathing, benign sort at any rate. And I don’t mean that in a sad, miserable sort of way: I just cannot accumulate the kind that bore me in a minute, I don’t enjoy the crowds either. I am good with words, but not the spoken kind. The best relationships I’ve had are on paper, and that’s what I do best. I wish I could conduct love affairs like that, affairs that contained within the binds of paper and screen…glorious pages of ink and type.  Stories that unfold the same way but never lose their joy, imageries that take me by the hand and lead me into worlds of passion, terror and delight. These words are worthy and reliable companions – some write back and some I simply delight in writing to, I find pauses in locked eyes, exclamation at the taste of their lips, tongue swirling in a comma, my hands exploring pages after pages, clauses scouring their skin, parenthesis that relish the mysteries of flesh that tear and mend, a dash that stops at parted lips- yet sadly, you see, none of these allow the delight to hold a moment longer when grammar fails you with a period. 

letters

     My dearest you, do you know I have thought of this moment for the longest time. This very thought was planted way back, much before you knew what it means to kiss a girl. The need to simply hold your hand, to touch your skin, to taste you with my tongue…one can’t want something and do nothing.  It was that curious feeling when you miss someone you’ve never met. How would you explain that? How do you explain the corner of my mind that you have occupied for the past 20 odd years? That need within to rip off all logic and make passionate sense to this thought, the idea that your world and mine would ever collide, make contact even… the lure to attempt on a probability to make our worlds meet was an equivalent to sending star ships to space. To see you move, to be around you, within an arm’s reach. Do you know how much all of this means?

      I wouldn’t want to put a name to this emotion, it’s not hurricane like or rain even…its that faint drizzle on a hot day and all one wants to do is lie on the couch wrap my arms around you and sleep or perhaps just ask “may I kiss you now?”

Choke- Chuck Palahniuk

“What I want is to be needed. What I need is to be indispensable to somebody. Who I need is somebody that will eat up all my free time, my ego, my attention. Somebody addicted to me. A mutual addiction.”

What I feel...

These days I try to tell myself that what I feel is not very important. I’ve read this in several books now: what I feel is important but not the center of everything. Maybe I do see this, but I do not believe in it deeply to act on it.  I would like to believe in it more deeply.

What a relief that would be, I wouldn’t have to think about what I felt all the time, and try to control it, with all its complications and all its consequences. I wouldn’t have to try to feel better all the time. In fact, if I didn’t believe what I felt was so important, I probably wouldn’t even feel so bad, and it wouldn’t be so hard to feel better.  I wouldn’t have to say, oh, I feel so awful, this is like the end for me here, in this dark living room late at night, with the dark street outside under the streetlights, I am so very alone, everyone else in the house asleep, there is no comfort anywhere, just me alone down here, I will never calm myself enough to sleep, never sleep, never be able to go on to the next day, I can’t possibly go on, I can’t live, even through the next minute.

If I believed that what I felt was not the center of everything, then it wouldn’t be, but just one of many things, off to the side, and I would be able to see and pay attention to other things that were equally important, and in this way I would have some relief.

But it is curious how you can see that an idea is absolutely true and correct and yet not believe it deeply enough to act on it. So I still act as though my feelings were the center of everything, and they still cause me to end up alone by the living-room window late at night. What is different, now, is that I have this idea: I have the idea that soon I will no longer believe my feelings are the center of everything. This is a real comfort for me, because if you despair of going on, but at the same time tell yourself that your despair may not be very important, then either you stop despairing or you still despair but at the same time begin to see how your despair, too, might move off to the side, one of many things.

pretty

I leave the pretty women for men with no imagination, find me a man who can caress my wounds and join the dots with my scars.

to lose yourself

Its the greatest hazard of all, losing one's self. This can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. No other loss can occur so quietly. any other loss like money, an arm, leg, a husband, etc- is sure to be noticed.

“We are in this life to enlarge the soul, liberate the spirit, and light up the brain.” – Tom Robbins

"Are You Ready for New Urban Fragrances?


Yeah, I guess I’m ready, but listen:

Perfume is a disguise. Since the middle ages, we have worn masks of fruit and flowers in order to conceal from ourselves the meaty essence of our humanity. We appreciate the sexual attractant of the rose, the ripeness of the orange, more than we honor our own ripe carnality.

Now today we want to perfume our cities, as well; to replace their stinging fumes of disturbed fossils’ sleep with the scent of gardens and orchards. Yet, humans are not bees any more than they are blossoms. If we must pull an olfactory hood over our urban environment, let it be of a different nature.

I want to travel on a train that smells like snowflakes.

I want to sip in cafes that smell like comets.

Under the pressure of my step, I want the streets to emit the precise odor of a diamond necklace.

I want the newspapers I read to smell like the violins left in pawnshops by weeping hobos on Christmas Eve.

I want to carry luggage that reeks of the neurons in Einstein’s brain.

I want a city’s gases to smell like the golden belly hairs of the gods.

And when I gaze at a televised picture of the moon, I want to detect, from a distance of 239,000 miles, the aroma of fresh mozzarella.”

- Wild Ducks Flying Backward

From below, as a Neighbor

If I were not me and overheard me from below, as a neighbor, talking to him, I would say to myself how glad I was not to be her, not to be sounding the way she is sounding, with a voice like her voice and an opinion like her opinion. But I cannot hear myself from below, as a neighbor, I cannot hear how I ought not to sound, I cannot be glad I am not her, as I would be if I could hear her. Then again, since I am her, I am not sorry to be here, up above, where I cannot hear her as a neighbor, where I cannot say to myself, as I would have to from below,  how glad I am not to be her. 

when...

When I haven’t been kissed

in a long time, I create civil disturbances,


then insult the cops who show up,

till one of them grabs me 
and hurls me up against the wall

just so I can remember, 

at least for a moment,


what it’s like to be touched.

for you

 I rest in reason and move in passion. for you I would write a million love letters every day. for you I'd scar and without you everywhere I go is another place with out you. without you somedays I look out the window and wonder what doesn't feel so right.

you ask what you mean to me

you my love are the cigar after a steak meal. A toxic addiction.