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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 |
Were just excised from the English language then I would be rendered mute. Having no shorthand qualifier, how could “I” portray the smallness of being a “just”? Fake it ‘till you make it, yes, but will self-esteem spontaneously manifest if my "I" speaks in declarations demands instead of questions? I just cannot believe the rhetoric of those who would never notice the absence of such a word or the “I” defined by it. |
Exhaustion drapes itself across her features, pinching her nose and pursing her thin lips into non-existence. “I’m not perfect,” she says. Who asked for perfection? What she means is ‘I’m not faithful,’ equating fidelity with perfection. She does it in such a way that I lose for speaking. It is, I have decided, the last time we will have this fight. I should say next, “I forgive you.” Maybe the old standby, “I understand how hard this is for you.” That has always been my role. My hesitant offering of "When you do (insert the blank – or the name) it hurts me," is nearly always trumped by the abused puppy expression she dons. I retreat from my wounds, chastised. Her mechanisms for deflecting responsibility are highly evolved. It is I who transgress in mentioning her transgressions; I who offend by pointing out her offenses. Thus I constantly misplace the thread of my grievances. Often our arguments end with me prostrate before her, the lowliest penitent before a beneficent sovereign. She forgives me and I pretend to forget. Not today. Stubbornly mute, I convey with my body – arms wrapped around myself defensively, the penetrating glare – the long walk off the short pier I want her to take. Her exhaustion is replaced by confusion the moment my resolution sinks in. “I’m not asking it of you,” I say. “I’m telling you to stop. And to leave.” Her brows furrow with worry. I resist the impulse to apologize for causing her consternation – and wrinkles. Since the surgeon is one of her many admirers I’m fairly certain she got a discount. Who knows, looking her age might inspire a new-found maturity. Or not. Either way, that's no longer my concern. “Don’t you mean ‘or leave’?” “I didn’t realize I still stuttered.” For once, I am calm. She is the one in the tears. The transfer of power is monstrously joyful: I finally understand the appeal of the emotional knots she’s twisted me into. I'm human enough to enjoy finally coming out on top. Yet as a permanent state of being – as a method of treating a lover – who could live this way? By the anger creeping up the folds of neck flesh even surgery couldn’t tighten, I know one answer is her. But I find it leaves a lot to be desired. My god, it has been years. Years of feeling not only rejected but also unworthy. Years of letting her demolish my sense of self with a parade of younger – dumber – boys and girls. 'Basta ya,' as my mother would say. What matters is crossing the finish line, however slowly. Her eyes widen impossibly further, the skin where her crow's feet used to be stretched so tightly I fear her face will break. She sees the suitcase I have packed for her resting against the sofa. This is no empty bluff. And so now the tears flow in earnest. In her way, she might have loved me. Like a monster, I take violent pleasure in her dethroning. Tomorrow I will summon my better angels, figure out how to explain to our children, our friends and family, why and what I have done. Not today. Today the sound of the slamming front door is beautiful. Today the shoe is on the other foot, and it fits mighty fine. |
To close these eyes to painful pleasures unconventional entries, exotic objects To feign deafness at the joyful cries muffled with ropes soaked in saliva and tears To disavow all knowledge of the sacred commandments: kneel, stand, stop, start, come Wait How could I Unless it were a prelude to the good vibrations submission brings beneath the onslaught of your body and your toys? |
A little education is a dangerous thing, she wrote. Instead of saying the dismal necessity of self-preservation pushes me to run as fast as my legs will allow I can say the lugubrious exigency of this unreciprocated passion compelled me onwards hopeful that by the time you dig out a thesaurus to parse together my meaning I will be far enough that his domineering and your acquiescence can no longer fill me to the brim with unspoken, unspeakable pain. The wet spots on the letter were tears or so I imagined reading her letter over and over as though the mere act of reading could conjure her into life could banish the shadows that tightened the noose around the fragile summer-scented skin I buried my face in one enchanted evening of tequila shots and gleaming white lines where she said, “I love you,” and I said, “I know,” accepting as my due her full-fledged adoration. Ironic that she is the only person who would appreciate the gallows humor. “Such an unusual method for a woman,” the responding officer said. But she would never have dabbled with pills or razors when neater methods exist. He sounded almost admiring at how well the scene was set before turning briskly professional snatching your words from my hands without a by-your-leave. I did protest then stringing together incoherent words that meant “no, you can’t take that from me, it’s mine” which were properly ignored. “This is evidence, miss,” a kindly young tech said attempting to make up for the brusqueness of his senior officer. “We need to get it to the lab.” I was hustled out of the room like an unwelcome guest to be interviewed at leisure when the detective work was done. Evidence of a disturbed mind most would say but I knew for what it was: a grandiose declaration of love. |
The Bauhaus exhibit was as expected: a bright overly crowded spectacle for intellectual hipsters who loved objects and ideas more than the people they were meant to serve; who prized an unsustainable notion of simplicity over voluptuous beauty, over art that delights the senses. In the lounge full of unusable furniture you gawked and admired with the rest of your goateed, pressed-jeans, plaid-shirt wearing brethren. You pointed out a particularly egregious example of the languishing art of a dying social order – and good riddance – by Gropius, exclaiming “This is art, that is beauty,” earning an righteous rigorous nod from two nearby patrons. It was not the first hint that the disconnect between our worldviews would prove insurmountable. A vigorous intellectual debate with you preaching and me nodding in frustrated incomprehension had me gravitating even in that sterile suffocating space to the flashes of color and beauty some enterprising modernist student brought to a breakfast service, beauty which you sneered at for not being pure or idealist enough. I freely admitted to being too baroque for modern art the color studies and abstractions and ruthless suppressions or exaggerations raising very real hives on the sensitive skin at the nape of my neck, yet you brought me here, grumbling about the price of a ticket I offered to pay for, to harangue me about my lack of taste, of understanding. “What about Le Corbusier?” was your constant refrain at my expressed disdain for modernism, as if a love of urban architecture or the sleek enterprising lines of skyscrapers made me a disciple of that Modernist monster whose ideas created the blighted public housing projects of my youth. “I want – ” a city where I can walk not be shuttled to and fro herded into “machines for living”, human cattle driven to low-income slaughter. That is what I would say if you would ever let me finish. True, I exude steel, iron, glass, cement, pillars of stone, the city with every breath but a desire for clean lines, open spaces is mixed with, softened by, a love of whimsy, an appreciation of playful touches and fantastical columns composed of circles and crosses, curvaceous, sensuous straight lines – rationality married to extravagant exuberance. Complexity pervades my aesthetic; the things you scoff at make me weak with weeping. But that day, in the paean to every ugly impulse of annihilation known as the MoMA, was the moment of realization: Anyone stupid enough to bring me here, to this exhibit, with the expectation of my unquestioning approval had no concept of who I was. I left you there amidst your hermetic chairs your inflexible geometric orthodoxy to walk uptown between the beautifully hideous monuments of modernity, the biting wind soothing to both the rumblings of romantic dissatisfaction and the unbearable itching of my neck. |
Any port in a storm, isn’t that what they say Who are they, anyway, to have so much say I always picture a court full of old men wigged out in somber robes all twigged out on change searching for stable meaning in a spinning brass globe shouting Eureka like a mad Greek proto-scientist When amidst the trembling storm of time they find a quiet cove untouched by men an unexpected twist in this age of the instant communication globalization specialization attention-span deficient nation they fight unsuccessfully to protect further horrors presaged by the multiplying drawers of modernity built to contain maintain a status quo to explain away the electronic revolution that like Joe Turner has come and gone They find there on their globe a relic of the old world, like un-pierced earlobes and going to your grave with your skin as unblemished as when you came in, covered with angelic script across the continents a requiem in calligraphy all that remains of the empire of western civilization They spin their globe with a believer’s delirium and land upon the island of times past where the grass was greener the women were sweeter the drinks were neater The original port in the storm |
| a moment, please. let us spare some speech for unspeakable things: the affinity between our wrists the delectable thump blood rushing in unison across the planet the exquisite embrace the rare occasions we meet face to face with my hands like this yours like that the tension transmitted through lines of cable towers and receivers binds us closer emphasizes the distance the silence of jungles tropical and urban in the background of the letters we write the lonely bed your head could never rest comfortably here except in secret conscientious always far and few the occasions where fevered glances betray the unpalatable private truth; thus I claim you brother mine if only in the naming. |
Is it foolish wanting not only sugar but the spice thinking that sweet alone will not suffice? |
I am sorry I was wrong Please Forgive me The language of apology. I see how naturally it comes to you, tumbling off the tongue with ease when I am the injured one; that is a graciousness of spirit I am lacking. How can I tarnish my righteousness by speaking when I know you are wrong? It is easier to apologize than to argue, you have told me, when you have delivered an insult. Feelings do not care how unintentional the hurt was. You may be right. Nevertheless, I cannot. But I have learned my own tricks. The tightness you hide inside yourself, keeping your temper in check through tactical retreat. Before me you disappear, a more thorough leaving than if you had walked out of the room. My cue. I sally forth with soothing insubstantial noises to stroke the ego, soft adventurous ones that rouse the spirit. You forget – or pretend – about your anger for as long as it takes my clever hands to finish the apology. |
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