hypothetical conversations with the cynic part II

    The sun never went down, it just disappeared and left an opacity which didn’t care. Lately I have been thinking a lot about it. I was very young, four or five years old. I understood that it was deeply wrong and I understood that it was an event of such gravity that the prospect of revealing it overwhelmed me.  So I didn’t.

I wish I could have protected you, cynic. I wish you could have protected me. It’s too bad, it’s a shame. It’s a shame how it all went down.

Mama never seemed to be just where you would expect her. Running to the house, I wanted to show off. I had taught myself to swing. You kick your legs. You feel the wave.

Now I’m twenty-two; I drink whisky. I live in a blue house and listen to blue records. I live with the effects of every thing. Wild livin’.  The unspeakable things. The swing.  

I just want to be free of

hypothetical conversations with the cynic

"you see, when you were just a kid, they said you wouldn't remember what they did. they said, hell, you were just a kid. you wouldn't remember, but you did."




i didn't want to do it but they made me sing. you were a child, you were having the dreams. you were a child. you were unknown to me.

you were a child. you were grasping the secrets. i was a child, when i started giving it away. i gave it all away. by the time i was twenty-two i was shit-poor with eyes as heavy as pewter bullets.

it was a terrible scene, cynic. it would have suited you just. you could have sat in the rafters and watched the misuse of the steam, streaming juices let disastrously loose. caused some casualties. room for reform. recast as a virgin magnanimously torn.

you were swimming in a womb while i slept in a yellow room. you were playing in the sun when i started getting drunk. it was lots of fun back then. sweet thirteen thieving the brandy to dull the ache of the honesty.

i don't know how to explain it, cynic. it's not as if, it's not as if you care. i didn't want to sing, they made me do it. i gave it all away. if this will make them happy, this keep them at bay. this make them go, this make them stay. the good guys and the bad guys were just the same.

i wish i knew more, knew more, cynic. i wish i had a rafter seat, an unobstructed view, of the dreams and the sun and what happened to you, when

you were a child. you were grasping the secrets. i was a child. searching for scraps of love. you were eighteen, you were ready to leave. i was twenty, lulled to dreams by morphine.

and now, cynic, now look where we are. it's all some story now we can tell or we can swallow. we can turn it up or down but it never really leaves. is it in our blood?  is it what lingers when we breathe?

hypothetical pretty baby

we hello'd because you're not the sort of person to be pretty babied; we hello'd and began our walking, walking. walking, walking toward the something. the afternoon. the car. the question. the car.

ah but can't you take a load off, pretty baby? that must weigh some bale of hay, a silly thing, and it's going to drown you. 'oh my darling,' i would say, should say, 'it's going to drown you.'

brown paper tied with twine and we somehow defy the passage of time. wrap around each other, to scoff and dismiss. divulge via kiss. it just is.

so hey pretty baby let's go downtown. we can drink away the looming insect, that you're going to drown. in my dark crate of a room we can find ourselves entombed by the stones we've thrown at our reflections, how they ricocheted back, hit us right in the lungs; we're on the inside.

it's all right my cynic the damage is done. it's all right pretty baby don't you worry so much. it's all right on the inside, it's all rather dire. there's nothing we know better than being under fire.

resurrection/stone

your crippled walk
speaks to me in its wispy shuffle

the nature of time seems not
unkind today

as we all propel ourselves,
so wounded,

in whatever way we can
toward our longed for

resurrections, toward
what we have coming,

what we have coming,
our own

resurrections,
in water, and fire,

in mud,
in stone.

billie's gardenias

she sang the warm wave of tar she
lay upon

she sang the blows that she took
to the face

she sang her sweet and
violent men

she sang the blood
rolling down her head

staining its source
billie's gardenias

sweating

"see, i aint getting better; i am only getting behind. standing on the crossroad, trying to make up my mind. trying to remember how it got so late, why every night pain comes from a different place, now something's gotta change." molina

it's been real interesting finding out what i meant to them
it's been real interesting watching so much go up in flames and smoke

i'm a lady so i don't get mad i just shake my pretty head and 
don't leave the house for some days 

i'm a lady so i don't get mad i just give it all away and hold myself all night as i cradle my torn scraps tightly 

if you were here you wouldn't say it but you would think i'm still a fool 
looking for love that'll treat me like shit 

you wouldn't say it but you would think
i'm the same old hypocrit,
your girl, allison. 

i used to wonder how you could love me 
i still wonder how you can love me 

knowing what you do about me and what i've done.

but you always took it really easy on every one. 

except yourself. 


any way, i hope you're well, you old hound. 
i hope you're making plans and making sounds. 


i hope you're keeping cool and clean. 

it's so goddamn hot here. 





 

the house

last night i went to the house 
with a friend, with a bottle of lambrusco, 
it was filled with people, i did not know them 
only four did i know. 


the last time i went to the house 
we walked. 
we walked the twelve or so blocks 
asking questions and idle talk
that was not idle because my 
heart seethed for you. 


at the house we wound through the garden
overgrown and bramble threaded 
you handing me figs and apples 
i followed you 


you told me that you had a fantasy,
to die--
a fantasy to die, 
shot through the heart, 
while picking fruit 
in an orchard 


i told you that i had a fantasy,
to die--
a fantasy to die, 
hit by a car, 
a true collision, 
and you said, well, 


that makes sense,
for 
collisions are 
so sexy


i remembered our brief kisses then
and again last night
trapped again within the pulsations 
of the house

and your friend told me 
that you felt for me truly 
and i told him truly 
that i felt for you 


and then
i left the house.

the new era of poeme

enter, then
the new era of poeme.

i am a mess,
my skirts sweep the dirt,

i shudder and shake,
but i do not weep.

i jangle with hope
and wish i could stop wishing;

i contradict myself.

i wonder:
how is it,

that i am still as green as jade,
after all i've seen and said?

green as green,
after all i've seen and all i did?

it seems
not a small mercy

but a huge
infinite and encompassing one.

the search

the search along her body for the places teeth have been yields few fading results to her ravenous eyes. it is not anticipation. it is a film reel of memories, recent and brash. it is it is. confounding. it is hope attempting not to hope and mind attempting not to 'mind'. it is. failure. it is either hormonal intoxication or disenchanting omen or unlikely happiness or. a wet dress drying on the body. clung to her form or loose like a sack. blind begging.

sitting in the cafe

"not as sad as dostoyevsky. i'm not as clever as mark twain. i'll only read a book for the way it looks, and then i'll stick it on the shelf again."





didn't you know, i've grown old in the time that it took for the rain to come.
i welcomed it as my mother, bid it stay a long while.
i wish the clouds and rain were immortal, ceaseless drizzle, unending fog
it suits me.

i am not In Love any more.
didn't you know, i dug my muddy grave on those moony nights.
i was like the townfolk astounded by my own resurrection
as a woman.

i'm walking 'round the wheel.
like the wheel at the sanctuary all those years ago,
made of stones in the tall grass. i'm walking round the wheel,
toward more walking.

i welcome autumn as a glimpse of winter.
i am ready to wrap my self in my self
pick up a book and put it back on the shelf
and walk 'round the wheel again.

I. II. III.

I.

 All is a pattern of repeating greyness. In my city nothing is concrete. We lay in one another’s arms despite my heart’s weary creak in the darkness. It is what you want or you wouldn’t reach for it. It is what I find when I look right in front of my self.

II. 

Your picture is on my window. You are looking down; your smile and I say I love you I love you I love you each time I see it. So much will I always love you master of my happiness my Justin. I don’t see disaster any more. It was there without knowing what it was it was there for. Now there’s just denim, your face, gazing down, your smile. 

III.

I don’t know you at all. Can someday you come to me and say, lady all in green you are a terrible thing, haunting my dreams with your eyes and your teeth? I don’t know you at all. Can someday I come to you say, this is what I’ve waited to do remove your glasses and look into your blooming blue irises? The bend of your neck or the time that we spoke or the time that we gazed or the time that you kissed my--

just rise

the warmth in my chest met sorrow
and crept to a corner to hide

dismayed by the darkness that it could not abide

i wanted all the love i found
adherent to my side

but every crime my hands caressed, for each act were they tried

now the wind is in my face
and my face knows no disguise

i see myself and where i lie and i beseech myself to rise

just rise

more or less

the boy is taking all the clothing off the line
i suppose i'm feeling fine

i suppose i'm feeling fine
more or less.

i thought our bodies might ignite
into one flame during one night

i thought that was what i wanted
more or less.

but the heart in breast
does not settle for this

and it needs more than
what you can give

a little more, to be a little more sure
more or less.

i found love
in graves already dug

danced with the corpses
and gave them all hugs

let them touch my body
with hands already dead

let the deadness
touch my precious head

for reasons i only can guess.

and their cold fingers held guns
shot me right in the lungs

til i bled on their floor
to my pitiful death

and now revived
and even alive

i can't risk again such a mess

so i'll make my way
on my own as they say

embracing loneliness

what else can i do,
when i want to be true

to myself
and to every one else,

no less.