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 |  a journal in short bursts that might occasionally even rhyme |
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I am not much for journal keeping. So consider this less a recitation of daily life and more of an attempt to capture a mood, or moment, as it strikes my fancy. For the easily offended, I should add the disclaimer that there is a fair amount of profanity, sex and/or politics. The words are stuck, lodged uncomfortably between hands that don't touch and the rush of cold air ghosting between lips that won't kiss A stuttering cough to dislodge them, wet and shiny with the mucous secretion of heartache, and they tumble forth, end over end, before you |
The sea inveigled, yellow-black and frantic, its horns honking her name; would that machinery fit her insides, with the engines emanating such angry animation? Perched beside her, sweeping in its chicanery, the wind trumpeted heroic songs of tragic heroes and stoppered prophets in the corridors of steel monstrosities. There was fire, all charming surface and deadly purpose. Polluted smoke gutted her senses, narrowed her vision to a pinprick: the gap between Charybdis and Scylla. A handkerchief of Thorazine meant to block her eyes and stop her ears, a rope of Haldol meant to bind her hands, and bring her through to safety, she had left those accoutrements behind, could only now lament their lack. Winged maidens lured her towards the rocks below, their sirens blaring with adulation and deception. Nothing ominous here, they promised, where cars drifted, purposeful and aimless, where towers bent and shifted at the sky’s whim, where streets crawled with bodies two-legged and four. Crowds came out to greet her with upstretched hands and worried faces. Arduous for being god-touched, her odyssey neared its end; the shores of home beckoned. A long fall but a quick landing, the earth cajoled. Finally, something concrete; was that not what life had previously denied her? Shouts of joy followed her down. |
i. she sings of home that he may share her despair at bygone sea-mink luxuries iv. enormities of jealousies contained in brown hues unburnt umber, her eyes, widened with wanton expectation dark sienna, her hair, wild mane decorated in kelp chamois, her skin, flecked with copper and rust xv. carefully sought, carelessly discarded the hidden sea-slick pelt keeps her present senses engaged, a voluptuary of surf and earth, she stays, strays, possibly content xvii she eschews truths, avoids honesty sweetens with splendorous anticipation (burnished caramel, her bright eager lips parted) the blossoms of a bitter almond xxiii. citrine nails, talon-honed, betray her intentions having already traded the known world for curiosity it is not a hand that would hesitate to reach for the knife and trade blood for freedom |
To survive living another day like this one, and the one that came before, a seamless sameness of past and yet to come in the endless cycle of old news – wars, fires, floods, rapes, murders, cute children doing cute things – flickering on flat screens, requires more fortitude than he possessed. |
She was ordinary in the way of her generation the vigor of refugees with aspirations mingled with a quasi-hatred of the adopted land on the wrong side of the cusp internalizing from women’s liberation an uneasy mix of desire and despair a few years later she would have burned bras linked arms against the war taken back the night turned her nose up at the patriarchy instead she channeled into hearth and home the dearth of options prescribed by vaginal circumstances, cultural expectations. She was ordinary in all respects the right amount of mourning an aspect I failed to consider kind compassionate generous the world was a richer place for her in it a loss to us all irreplaceable the eulogy pitched to the exact middle the priest had known her face (perhaps) but not her name or essence the fleshy physicality of her presence continually at odds with her ascetic remoteness contradictory in consummate Catholic fashion. She was ordinary even in death old age exhaustion and cancer co-conspirators but which stole her breath, her will to live it was blatant cowardice I was loathe to forgive her kindness keen, honed to exactitude an attitude of selflessness designed to indebt generosity overflowing conspicuously bountiful I grew ever more cynical and knowing beneath the shadow of her niceness the second prong of the benevolence offensive compassion for humanity in all its frailty: but for men, not man. She was ordinary even (except) to me I cycled through love hatred the in-between there were no wails left for the funeral a surfeit of unpleasant memories battling a thimbleful of good ones I wrung myself dry long ago whispers followed in procession with the hearse and the mourners gossip made the rounds couched in concern it might not have been an accident how sad for the family given… she’s been shriven (a final fiction) at least she’s no longer in pain as if cessation of sensation were the main objective and death the corrective. |
Stooped, the weight of the world come to rest atop his shoulders, the seed of fat long ago having bloomed, her father, an unremarkable man. His absence loomed, a ghoulish shade trying them in absentia through the empty bottles “my good friends: Mark, Jim and Jack” clanging underfoot, spilling from places obvious and not closets of clothes left to molder dishwasher of tumbler glasses one lone, recriminating spoon above the guestroom door inside the kitchen nook behind the childhood treasure chest cradled by Goodnight Moon and Mr. Squashy. Small compensatory boisterous man, barrel-torsoed chicken-limbed, gregarious of deed if not of soul, poor with expensive tastes, her father, the quintessential barfly. Sorry for your loss. He was a good man (before the drink, the corollary). He would have loved this. It was so sudden. What a horrible accident! How are you? Nod and smile her mother said; his second ex-wife and the only one of five to show. What does it matter that vultures came picking at the living rather than mourning? It makes him no less dead, your father. And he wouldn’t have cared. The funeral was a sham, ended, appropriately enough, in shambles. Same slope same vat figure same voice same eyes but clear from sober-living not a haunt but the same lurch at once confident and deferential packed with insolence servility the same at double-speed. Her uncle his brother, the elder by six crucial minutes rambled interminably a bitter rant of frustrated love a one-sided argument he could never win or lose again; the mourners gorged on the buffet, looked on indifferently, his words battening against the spittle and mouth breathing and making no impression. |
| I. Mornings She too could be recycled, made useful past her first incarnation. What were her veins but tape, keeping her insides from spilling? Fingering the box-cutter, mind clear for the first time in weeks, she grimaced. II. Afternoons Fatigue-adjacent. Blurred thoughts sluggishly struggling for supremacy eyeballs encrusted engorged the entire trajectory of the day spent atop an edifice of dreams denied the three-legged desk creaking wheeled chair underscoring her failed ambitions. The open-air windowless cubicle encompassed the whole of the real world dawning to twilight actual open air a pathogen spreading ideas of leisure an enemy of the efficient of the productive of the good. III. Evenings Viscous, that was the word, the thick, pumping glue accompanied by a touch of light-headedness. Back and forth, the droplets pooled, tickling her elbows. This would take longer than anticipated despite the aspirin. |
“I but speak small truths bright eyes,” and what she always surmised: being cherished was not being beloved, adoration perished at the hint of rough times ahead, full steam seduction cancelled for a new production. “Calumny, slander and lies,” asking his wife to deny what she knew of life and the evidence of her own eyes. “Think of the children before you end this.” He mounted a passionate play: the repentant husband enticed into playing a risky hand, a man in the throes of a harlot's sway. That was where she came in: a temptress dressed in educational innocence a siren in the guise of a student a necessary pit-stop on the road to a rake’s progress. |
Rejection does not equate with failure yet intellect cannot negate the disappointments: persistent, pernicious hope allowed to exist betwixt, between, the otherwise knowing better |
Planted firmly immune to time and the slow burn the acre of sycamores remained unyielding in exactly the way of her fists small hands ground into the fleshy part of ample hips embodiments of unmoving anger unmoved a lover unbound unwound the fabric of demonstrably false remonstrations one last tug bare branches signaling a false footpath to freedom deeply rooted the foundation unraveling gravel pavement devolved into the primal state fear of the hunter taste of the hunted saw leaping in hand excitement out of hand buzz through wood aged into saline barriers white pickets of muddy blue eyes higher than he had previously dared climb falling deaths best left to leaves no guarantees those helpful hurtful hands stay clenched always at the ready a small push up over cracked him in spirit also the tree tumbled in a flurry of anguish reverberating crack of silence logged by no one but himself an acre of sycamores minus one; her tree fell. |
hairy thatch a redundancy he doubted enough people knew to care about and there was the rhyming factor thatch over snatch something taken quickly stolen even without consideration for the wellbeing of its owner he would probably advise his sisters to stay away from any man that called it that she threatened to shave in retaliation when having fallen prey to the machinations of Abercrombie & Fitch he contemplated aloud waxing his chest hair the thought of the denuded lips hairless like a plucked chicken or a pre-pubescent girl shocked him into impotence for an entire week the shame of which he had not quite lived down she angled the mirror slightly tossed her other glorious mane over a shoulder naked except for a loosened bra strap in a calculated coquettish move asked him what do you suggest we call it then quim to match his manly vim and vigor conjuring quivering maidens and Victorian bondage the creaminess of the words slid like honey from her cunny a softer sibilant version without the hard “t” that brought to mind fucking but not making love circle jerks over pilfered grainy VHS pixels of rounded pelted women she shifted her hips she glistened a cat having licked herself clean what else could it be but a pretty pussy he said as he swapped positions with the mirror. |
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