The arches of her feet are bells atop the floor, ‘The telephone’, I say, ‘no it is my toes, I am mistaken, it was a mistake to have walked from the kitchen.’

The dishes crumble; the sad silent song of porcelain wishing for the pumpkin, the stone. ‘Darling,’ I say, but her legs have started upon the hallway.

I awake and have a cigarette, the lampshade blue is broken, hanging from the stiff hips of her waist; blue and blue best is the song this morning in the town where the horns are never as soft as the truffle.

In the shower the water runs upon me, falls into the eye of the tub where time has stuffed the leaves of its mysterious tome which tells of the girl, the boat, the storm which curled her hair and swallowed her whole- the soap the smell of bubbling foreign flowers.

A man approaches me, in his hands a ruffled shirtsleeve. ‘I gather’, he says, ‘that when it storms your arms will need a place to sleep; a button for all the children whose wishes have been similar to yours.’

Beneath the door her breathing, puffing nose- I touch her tiny fingers. ‘Silly girl,’ go an wake your mother, the night has asked that we watch her children the stars, so she may go and wake her sister the sun.

I call upon her sometimes when the sirens whistle. ‘Are you walking,’ I ask, the church bells rolling. ‘The door,’ she says, ‘is broken; from the window the world slowly burning.’

She dreams of the fire escapes on every other building but her own.

The women I can hear below where it is frozen- the immemorial moment when first I climbed the stairs and passed their door.

The girl who I imagine with watercolor eyes the size of the lake tasting of silver tinted mold. I let the smoke fall from the window hoping that it warms her.

I get closer some days watching all the women walking, the linen flowing white, the sound of a morning when not a thing is said but the quiet caress of fluttering eyelids.

I imagine I am old as I write this; my children sleeping, snoring- I am not bothered by the noise. The scent of fresh linen kissed by the midday sun; her hands are ageless, as she places them upon my palms waiting to be kissed in the morning, standing on the tips of her toes.

My love I long to comfort her as she sleeps through the weary night; her faith dissipates into the midnight anemones.

It is not the sadness of tonight, it is what follows.

Perfidious, charming, it is in the way she comes and goes, I lift my lids and she is gone. It is a dream I have had; I have imagined in the orchard of my graying thoughts.

As the night drifts into the soft humid morning, the window is at a pinch; the pulse of the summer heat has started.

The flowers which fall from above- I want to hold her but I do not wish to interrupt. I anticipate the freckles as they shimmer, the fragments of a memory flowing, for as I remember it becomes something different.

In an instant I am carried to the shadow, the shade beneath the tree. I stop some days in the places I will have seen, broken beneath the weight of our autumn toes.

I have a view as of late just before a wall, the vines now flow into the luminous street- I envy the sounds which only my ears can touch, the puddles beneath the feet, the rain, the gutter, rooftops drip dropping above Amaranthine in her pelerine.

- She lay upon the bed, a fallen rose petal, her toes coldly fallen. I touch the hem of the blanket which lay atop her; a fortnight or so it seems longer.

She flickers as the heavy tides of her breath become small. I wonder how much longer. Upon her ear my lips softly touch, talking of the days to come. Her father, his hand upon her. I read to her until she whispers that I stop-sleeping now, her heavy eyes shut.

I am sorry my pet to have forgotten you sitting in the shape of days smoking an enormous cigarette- ‘your sister, the starfish, does she still sleep atop the slumbering bay?’

The night of the fallen rebels has come; the streets which hold us dissipate and beneath is the beauty of our solid feet floating atop the graveyard of a buried city. Are pants are rolled, waiting for the flood. Where we shall live, we do not know, we will be orphaned as one within the hospice of the underground, where we mine for a century’s worth of leftovers from which we construct the towering monument, a testament of our effort rolled into an enormous pillar, the thigh of our giant daytime lady who we worship, waiting for the rain of her meliferous ovaries, to be filled with the joy of her dripping sweaty kisses, our fluttering wings are nothing beneath the sound of her moaning love…

c.

Not 23, ah, you see it was a mistake, it was not the twenty third page- I light the lamp, I glance below, I was thinking of something different, I am thinking of the way I want to say I am sorry…you see it is not very often that I encounter the moment, a moment, shared, when I felt alive and felt bad afterwards; I am sorry it had to be there, that it had to be with them- is it different? Sometimes I wonder and god did we fight! - she is a lion when she wants to be, I imagine you to be the same, though please do not tell her I compared the lion and the lioness. I thank you for what you have shown me, the incessant way you have made the moment yours, ours, both of us together have smiled under the same shared moon, but what is it which lurks in the shadows, separates me from you- dear have I forgotten the way you remember when I was younger? Time, inseparable from the moment…I am sorry, I apologize, a hundred times over- I am a man and a boy; I am being honest, I have tried, I try to empress you. I see you as the framed moment of a shared childhood, I see the way she smiles when she mentions the past you have shared- the night progresses, can I be foolish for just one night? But so many nights I have spent in tomfoolery, in the coming and going, the whistling and the drowning faces. You see a man sometimes get stuck within indecision, he becomes married to a thought, I am became married to the insufferable man I am at times- our mothers should have warned us of our fathers and how we become them at times- we do not, we only reflect the imperfection, the doubt which lives in our heart. Doubt, I am sure you have known, you see it was a moment of doubt and like a child I went with the kite rather then the hands of the father who had told me to slow down, to wait- grandfather calling from afar, did you tell him? We can hear the echo within but the translation is always lost. Your heels looked nice, it was nice to see you stand, and any man- the ivory falls, it is late, the cat sits and waits for her friend the sun- whether tall or not tall, should be thankful to stand before the endless way you are.

g.

In the wake of a beautiful September morning unburdened of humidity, all seems alive and flourishing, for last night I felt wrapped within my cold thoughts; warmth appeared to be unreachable, but for the moment that coldness has passed and I will try to avoid its bitterness as long as I can. You ask of my words and if I would hand them to a living soul inhabited by a ghost, and to that I will say this: my words of course are not words of my own, as I incessantly read I pile note card upon note card, written upon them all the words I do not know, to be defined, written out on more note cards- a thought, and much is owed to the authors which I have read, borrowed, have stolen from, but they are alive no longer and though their pages may carry on, their voices cannot, and my voice is alive and well and in good form, and weather I be for or against all their small and large thoughts, and though they may not be entirely my own, parts of them are and are fresh each morning as I change the water in a vase of forgotten roses. I too, when not help captive by my burdensome thoughts, write most eloquently, for in the absence of self something happens, and writing as T.S. says, ‘is a continual extinction of personality.’ We create for we are representatives of a point in time, and though much has and will be since the start of life remain the same, what we have done and have said, though heavily influenced, has moments of our own uniqueness, where influence shimmers in the background under the dim light of our thoughts.

I write you always from that which sits atop my head, which at the moment, specific in time only, has swollen to a proportion large enough to fill a sheet of paper, if not entirely, then just enough. Does it beg of a response, not always, quite possibly not at all, it is only a moment shared, for you- a response is your own and sometimes only serves to say thank you and that I have read your letter, never do I expect you to let clouds fall upon a piece of paper, of course, and et al, is sometimes more than enough. We love, all of us, in ways so far removed from one another I wonder sometimes if we ourselves are capable of understanding where it comes from, and then can another, simply I do not know- I am reading your letter and am without words, to say the least, it was unexpected- life is much larger then us sometimes, its complexities transcend everything which we are, time especially is nothing more than that which it already is…if I had seen your letter I would have picked it up; the doubt which you feel for me stems deep within…

I think of love sometimes and I see mountains folding, the world and all its oysters standing, open, love, all of us…

To an extant, which is to say maybe, or, we have- I am using we nonspecifically-stopped loving as children, rather loving as adults, which, if anything, is to have dipped the feather in tar… Namely that we have given to something which- taken the sky from a cloud, taken the clouds from the sky and put them in a jar, yet in a way we have to, but to find somewhere in the middle, ah, the though is that which is not only a burden lifted but glows with the hope that maybe, hopefully, and- sometimes I look at you walking and I think I have become, or am becoming my father, and your hand becomes worlds away. Life, love, these are beyond us, larger than what we imagine ourselves to be. If I have as of late, or ever, or again, fail to show you the affection which in my heart of hearts I have for you, it is not that I do not love you, or that I am not in love with you, the reasons are an infinite amount of possibilities, none of which justify the act, or even offer consolation, an explanation, but as we are, our thoughts at times so become us, overtake us, and we become captive to the intangible fleeting whims of the children upstairs who run the show…

lt.

I thought of writing you the other day and I did not, yet this morning has made of me some kind of thoughtful after reading your kind words- mush of a man, I think sometimes the way a woman says things to a man, sometimes, no- I am speaking from the heart, excuse me for the jitter jatter, I am rather a nervous man. Never have I truly wanted to, never have I had the courage to say to you that which I want to- I imagine, I am imagining us walking towards Daly center very much in the same way miller imagined FD. and Trotsky square, God! and the allusions, really though what I want to say is at that moment you gave me a part of you with which I was very unfamiliar with, a part of your heart, a little bit of honesty, and I feel as though, to some extent, you deserve the same. France! My envy could cripple a mountain. My apprehension was deep, a molded sun, at the thought of you before I knew you, yet please let me know and understand it is melic; my intentions are of the best sort, and truly, genuinely, never have I wanted to befriend, or be a friend to someone as much as I have with you. I am speaking rather honestly and excuse me, yet I hope that is in part ok with you, but the sun is shining and your words have warmed me…let us begin…I had a pen pal in New York but out of a misunderstood obligation I killed her- I would love to receive letters from you, from France! Dear God it pains me to say that, not you, no, but France! Ah my jealously is getting to me, but, if you would than I would as well, no? We are talking and walking, walking and talking- I am the cliché now- and you say, l. says, ‘the world, the city, has made, makes you cold’…I agree. Then what, what then happens? We eat, rather you eat- I want you to see this the way I am seeing it, the way you see it, please remember- and I look at you as the snow is falling and the light which once shone above changes and the flakes become more white and the city changes, you change, and beneath the falling snow you appear to me as that which I have always known you are, human; life can only take so much from life but it gives back, twofold. I saw you in the whirl and burl of life which alone is a testament to what I am trying to say- words are birds! - that you are life, we are life, and aside from all that jazz, in the midst of all that is seemingly wrong, you gave breath to something, gave life. Please know that this is a part of my heart; a part of life. I am laughing now, reading, reading and writing, looking at a quote I have written on my wall -in French nonetheless- wondering, wondering always why, yet at this moment I know……..

‘Je ne parle pas logique, je parle generusite?’

I write you out of the love which exists within me, that two individuals can meld that which was never broken from the beginning, beginnings, ah! In the beginning was my end, thus here we are; a black chapeau bobbing.

gb.

I had the most curious dream last night and now I am dreaming…I am sorry, I say that I am sorry as she listens from afar and the day fades into days and the night becomes nothing but a reminder to touch the morning but the door always opens then closes and our clothes remain untouched like our hearts with arms and our tongues with legs and our eyes with toes, I say she has the most curious nose and I can smell her sometimes, always after she is gone and it is then that I say to her most always all that I did not say before about the red bricks and all the people that walk and how they wear their clothes and how we should not have worn ours and she lays like a tome and she rises like bread when the water falls in the shower…

It is august and I grab, I place her hand within my hand. Briskly, I say, and her cheeks are florid. I see her heart within her eyes, the taste of her breath, the sweat trickles upon her neck and I long to taste the salt of her pores, rolling, the earth breaking beneath our weightless bodies. I kiss her and we run. Never in this life could I have grown tired of the soft vibrant press, pressing, blood red lips, ‘Amaranthine,’ I whisper, and she disappears into the night…

To his mind, the essence of such a husband lay in his being, so to say, ‘the eternal husband,’ or rather in being, all his life, a husband and nothing more. ‘Such a man is born and grows up only to be a husband, and, having married, is promptly transformed into a supplement of his wife, even when he happens to have unmistakable character of his own. The chief sign of such a husband is a certain decoration. He can no more escape wearing horns than the sun can help shining; he is not only unaware of the fact, but is bound by the very laws of his nature to be unaware of it.

-F. Dostoevsky

Elsa from Afar

I return to Elsa as the shadow which has never left. I rise from beneath her, I squeeze her, peel her like an orange; the membrane beneath her skin is grey as the days spent waiting, bleak from the smoldering ash of day dreams burning, I touch her and the wind carries us away; glimpses of her childhood flash, enveloping me within their dying glow.

The shore, the sand, the water, the hands- I watch as the thread of our steps is washed away. I fall upon the street as children lay upon a yawning summer- the salt of her breath upon my brow, to my lip, to my chest. My heart spinning, twirling, dancing in the orbit of the cosmic gold.

I imagine the my brother in the home of my fathers hands, ‘Brother,’ I say, ‘I am coming, keep for me a light within the window so I may know you are awake, waiting, father let me shake your calloused hand, mother let me say goodnight, tuck the sheets and close your eyes.’

I hear the song of all the women as they sing from within, their beauty makes the day blush. It is when I return, that I become aware of what I have longed for, curdled within the whirlwind of spinning black nights.

9/16/12

On our way to the lighthouse island we imagined what our children would have whispered; their breath, the autumn when in circles they would sing rosy and all the others, the dimples like pressed flour, their teeth barely formed.

‘If only,’ he says, I say, ‘but of course.’

Shimmering in the distance like a depleted angel, no hope for those who live as we do, children ourselves, our women the towering, humble mountains- still is she distant.

We imagine our lives as the unfinished portraits of our youth, memories like thick crimson water filter through our distracted ways of never fully coming to any resolution- we rest in the valley of the belly, the redwood hips of the fallen timber.

I can see how she flickers from behind the falling rain.

It is indescribable the decisions we do not make but in turn are made for us, he turns and his weathered face looks like a tainted diamond- let us pursue her. The manger rocking like a hollow violin.

We imagine our women waiting, their subtle hymn carried upon the gust of a silent echoing earth, standing together, the voiceless song shared, the beloved. Has it been so long since last our sadness was touched?

We need at moments the cloud with another’s twilight irises; her breasts in the morning move like a gentle evening tide, her eyes close on the horizon of her untouched brow.

We imagine the past and it becomes the graveyard of our deceased dreams, bursting with the smoldering ash which falls from the present moment.

The lighthouse closes her eyes, the tainted diamond falling.

Beneath the veil of an October moon, cold beneath the cold falling slowly, she touches heavy like, breathes steady. Her conflagrant thighs spread, sodden with love. She kneels, peels her plum. Whore of my heart says her liver is swollen. I look to her and we kiss like ships sinking, doused of the dripping moon. 

A bald orange, bearded, I say, ‘David,’ the owls atop the cupboards; years, drops of water, the café, a plump man sitting in need of a shave; in the morning one pepper, one egg- women waiting, wait a little longer. Nights when we pulled the moon upon its knees whistling at all the cunts and stuffing. 

China, softly, china. The sun bats her eyelashes singing manana. 

Untitled Prose

1.

Hair falls like water from a broken piano, curling, mellifluous tresses which blanket her raindrop shoulders; milk in the morning, the sound of bowls, trees falling, I am drowning, dreaming.

The mist of a thousand teardrops float like dust dying, the world spins and I become dizzy. Her voice drips from the cusp of her pinkish lips; it is not time, it is timelessness, excrescent, blooming, earths barren womb.


-A bovine man, a woman with a slow cunt, it is oil we want, lulling and liquid.

She glows beneath a beating light and I dote, humming for the froth of her thighs.

It is April, it is morning, my eyes are open.

2.

The tangerine blossoms then folds. Doused of the dripping moon, the sky’s tears falling, endlessly we drove.

Without hope we are poignant, miss nothing of what we have known.

Like lilacs bent at the knee I whisper into her ear, ‘it is the ballad of my heart which will break your never-ending waves.’

3.

Singing, plucking, her reverberating touch fills my pores with subtle joy. It is not love, it is loving. Irises kiss, sheltered by a quandary of richly scented hair.

Always am I nonplussed, the girl, the woman, you are a persimmon if anything and I am verbose when I should just be pensive; a boy in love with a girl.

Life in the morning, life is matutinal.

As eyelids fall, lids are just the beginning; as shoes are for feet, so are the sheets pulled, thrown- the end is always insignificant, to think that a word can represent a thought, to be alive in the dream, dreaming dumb dreams.

4.

Of Sunday mornings when the teapot sang of peaches. In bed, the sibilant kettle from above says ready, she saunters lazily as I pour the tea bedside next to her shapely legs.

I glance upon the window and the children glisten beneath the sun, gleaning magnificent clouds of wonder, ivories parted, the scent of spring fragrant distends, ripples, pushing blades of grass towards the orange peels kneeling.

I met her furled, floating, brine and of the ocean- a child of September.

5.

The poet dead, spilt milk and draw the curtains.

Dear, the sun, your tender cup his curve like porcelain, I pinch her pincushion bottom. Puss puss I say, why aren’t you purring?

A woman is a woman but not all women are you; it is Autumn in my heart- ‘O! Glorious day!’ sang my mother when she brought me into this world, life glistens for a moment, glitters, attuned only in love.

6.

I am by no means a comely man; I am a man rather, sadly.

The bemusing ballet of weightless smoke lying like disintegrated clouds, the sun is gone, the room is dead dark.

A perpetual moment of creation and conviction.

I have seen so many eyelids, eyes smile, our eyes; always will we argue.

It is December. He says of the children, of the snow falling, life is more honest atop the water; with grace do I glide atop that which is always changing.

But to dream boys is to know your dreaming- silly pruned Jews, Christians, the radiator still spouting steam.