I am the heathen child
the one which conducts playtime in the closets
when you're away
scattered applause makes
lightning white noise in between my legs
my ears lies the brain
reveals all the truth I need
in direct succession,
my research takes its poison
its gun
the bullets and the hands at rest
all the religious articles wet on the rug next to me
I would slice my wrists
but I sit back in the bathtub instead
only to find that the God is not necessary
as the rest of you see him.
Him, dressed in my bathrobe...
I was raised by beasts and killed by vultures
and I am the proof that they all exist.
You think they will protect you.
You are wrong.
Sucking my thumb, nestled
in the light between my eyes
where Heaven grows and Hell subsides;
Nothing scares me, and that is that.
Bring on the thunderstorm so I can ride it into you
and into that God which I am.
Look up, bright now, and remember to not do anything
without your full heart in it. Otherwise, why bother.
This you tell like a charming serpent, firing the machine guns into the night-
Chop my throat with that ax, and makes all the bullshit fall away down the drain.
The water runs clear out the window, into the sky and street
and all the while I am dancing
the Buddha is for me to meet. The Jesus in me moans,
for the dark Mary he left sitting on the rock;
for the Allah that I walk with, all of them sent up the chute
at my disposal-
Let it run, I say. But No one will tell me it can't be my way
because mine is theirs is the kingdom and the glory
whores and grace and humility and the stoic quality
that lets me know to feel is not to smear your tragedy all over the rest of us.
To love is not to sacrifice, but to gain up the shadows that your bullet holes make
without regret
and walk forth, knowing who you are and make sure to smile too, but
only
if you want to.
M. Lucia
Saturday, April 23, 2011
GORGEOUS MISTAKE
He took the picture and then just happened to glance down at her feet, in the sand, at the base of the tree where he had her pose for the photograph.
There was something wrong there but he couldn't place it--her toes--it was like a voice whispering. That was how remote the thought and the feeling was. In the distance the sound of children laughing in the surf. The sun on the Pacific horizon dropped so dramatically it was as if the very noise of it was mixed in there with the small sugary voices, the kid giggles.
You OK? she asked him. He looked now in her eyes and then at the scar at the center of her forehead, chicken pox, the same way he had a thousand times before. In one motion he turned the camera off (the lens retracted reminding him of the turtles they had seen that afternoon lounging on logs in the pond by the hotel) and slid it (the camera) into his pocket. He placed his hand at the center of her arm and the niggling suspicion in his mind was temporarily warded away to some back bench where it would wait certainly, and for the time being wait silently.
They have been married for 24 years and he had just turned 50 and here they were on Maui to celebrate. He turned her by the elbow and stepped in behind her. The sun had warmed the skin of her back and it heated his chest even as the cold wet of her bikini bottem chilled his crotch. With one hand on her stomach, he slid the other arm across her chest and slid his left hand under her right shoulder strap, resting it broadly at the top of her chest, one or two finger tips feeling the slight stubble of her right arm pit. She rested her head, nestling into him.
Everything was in its place. This expensive trip was only a financial blip in their bank account six time zones to the east of this beach. Fifty and comfortable, almost wealthy, and recently promoted at work--a certain corporate confidence had been placed in him and trust flowed freely back and forth, from his employers and to friends and family. His parents had begun that decline he knew would, over the years to come, turmoil him but at the same time also ultimately dull the forboding he felt about not achieving the dreams of his "better self," teaching him, at close range, to keep his head down maybe, splitting the difference, and not hope for more than warm sand every now and then, a good novel, and a satisfying 18 holes.
His wife's toes were not unattractive the way some older women's were and he never fancied himself the type even to think about feet. He never noticed when some women in the office wore heels, say, or why that would matter to anyone especially his male co-workers and subordinates. The sun was dipped now maybe 20% into the ocean, the air around it shimmered red and orange. Birds flew by in groups like they were on their commute home for the day. His son Josh floated face down on his surfboard in the shallow water searching the uncoming set. Smoke from an outside pit floated by scenting the air in a way that made his stomach growl vaguely. He never noticed her toes nails before. They had seemed painted almost luridly, at first glance, in a color like the one surrounding the setting sun only brighter and more intense.
She surprised him with a yell off to the distance. He had been lost in his thoughts and when she called to their daughter Chloe he had a bit of the feeling that you had when you just missed being in an accident, where your body instinctively anticipates trauma. He felt an ache in his thighs and he could hear his heart beating--it was all about the blood, he thought. Chloe had allowed the crack of her ass to show again and her mother, his wife, had been chasing her around all afternoon complaining about that little dimple of flesh flashing out to the world.
She stepped away from him to yell into the wind and he dropped again to the blanket they had pulled off the hotel's king-sized bed to bring down to the beach. The hotel preferred you use the over-sized towels they provided at the entrance to the steps leading down to the sand but they wanted one large blanket the way they always had over the years and hundreds of trips first to Coney Island and then, after some time, all those years at the Jersey Shore. He raked his stiff and sea-sticky hair feeling the sand graining his scalp. Josh was paddling into the waves and they bobbed him and his reckless youth almost cinematically. The sun was down now maybe 40-45% and the sea had begun to boil around it. His wife was laughing and Chloe crossed her arms over her chest and stared down at her feet. She gave Chloe a smack on the ass and turned back to him smiling. Chloe sneered at her mother's back and stuck out her tongue. He shut his eyes and concentrated meditatively on the wind blowing on his face, moving the whiskers of his beard and the hair on his chest.
When he opened them he was looking right at her left foot planted in front of him as she scanned the water for Josh. He looked more closely and it was the nail of the smallest toe that really bugged him. It was tiny, a sliver really, it was hardly even a nail but more like a deposit of hardened calcium in a stony crevice of the foot's poorer neighborhood. And yet she painted it, or had it painted. It was just the thinnest stripe of orange, so narrow in fact that the color didn't seem to match the other toes, as if there wasn't enough of the color in one place to help your eye form an impression of the shade in-full, the same way a swatch at the hardware store never really gave you a sufficient enough sense of the color you finally painted on the living room wall and so after it dried you stood with the swatch holding it a different angles, unshading lamps and squinting one eye and then the other and though the swatch seemed to blend in with the finished surface the swatch by itself still looked different from the wall.
Why paint it? When had the toenail gotten so small, was it always like that? He remembered, far away now off in the distant past, a weekend in her dormroom when he had kissed her feet, allowing himself a glance up past her spread thighs as she stared down at him over her breasts, gloriously naked, and uninhibedly so and he had quickly and impulsively popped her pinkie toe into his mouth sucking it and sweeping it with his tongue imagining somehow the roles reversed and it being her mouth instead, and his penis, a suggestion maybe, hopefully, to her as they began to wade into the deeper intimate waters of their physcial relationship. He hadn't thought then to look at it or remark on anything about it, not the nail or even if it was painted. He didn't really remember anything about it. Now he stared at it almost 30 years later and looked up at her again.
She stared out at the water. Josh was turned toward the shore now looking back over his shoulder at the waves as they came at him and washed over him, unsure in his inexperience which one would be the best to ride. He had all the equipment and expensive lessons all week, but he hadn't really gotten the hang of it yet. The sun was almost fully down, just a thin semi-circle staring back at them. Meat was almost certainly now on the luau's fire pit and something like tropical Hawaiian music was playing, or at least he thought that was what it might be. He reached out and covered the foot with his hand. She looked down at him and smiled, almost suggestively, as if she could read his mind and the fact of his hand on her foot also summoned for her the same momery. She was so happy here he knew.
I'm gonna get one more swim in he said and stood and ran toward the water as he always did when he went into the ocean. Ever since he was a boy he approached the waves that same way--he made the committment to go and then ran deciding that there was no changing your mind, just the inexorable physical motion at the water. As he ran now he felt the camera bouncing against his thigh but he didn't want to stop and he didn't want to go back. He had drained himself of thought and he had stopped caring about anything other than just in this moment being under the sea.
The water was shallow for a few yards but then dropped off quickly at this part of the beach, he knew. A few strides first and then he lunged, diving at a wave, his body slicing under. The water was just cool enough to chill him but warm enough still to take him in comfortably and he pulled at the tide trying to swim out as far as he could on the breath he had taken in before going under. He came up briefly for air with his back to the beach and then resubmerged swimming out even farther before surfacing again and finally floating in water in which it was too deep to stand.
The light now from the set sun was a generalized reflection on sky and water alike, the half-light of dusk still enough as it eased the whole beach across into night. The hotel had at some point illuminated the patio torches and from across the water he could see the luau pit cast shadows of flame on a corner of the hotel garden.
His wife and daughter huddled together on the towel. Josh lay on his board on the sand in the shallows the waves tiding into him and then draining away. A pair of girls to his right seemed to be approaching him though he lay there seemingly unaware. He pulled the camera out of his pocket and out from under the water into the air. Treading water he held the camera in front of his face and pressed the power button.
For a second the picture of his wife by the tree, the last picture he had taken, flashed across the screen. It glowed slightly green, seemingly suffering from an infusion of water. Then the screen went black flashing momentarily a jagged lightning blot signfying a dead battery. The lens blurted out from the camera's front halfway and stopped dead impotently. He let his arm drop back under the water and let the camera float away with whatever tide there was, in or out.
Chloe and her mother (his wife) seemed to be sparring at this distance. He could imagine the discussion. Easily. Josh had stood and was carrying his board toward the family blanket. He turned to look at the horizon and to where the sun had been and had set. He himself sank under the water and he began to swim toward the other side of the world.
There was something wrong there but he couldn't place it--her toes--it was like a voice whispering. That was how remote the thought and the feeling was. In the distance the sound of children laughing in the surf. The sun on the Pacific horizon dropped so dramatically it was as if the very noise of it was mixed in there with the small sugary voices, the kid giggles.
You OK? she asked him. He looked now in her eyes and then at the scar at the center of her forehead, chicken pox, the same way he had a thousand times before. In one motion he turned the camera off (the lens retracted reminding him of the turtles they had seen that afternoon lounging on logs in the pond by the hotel) and slid it (the camera) into his pocket. He placed his hand at the center of her arm and the niggling suspicion in his mind was temporarily warded away to some back bench where it would wait certainly, and for the time being wait silently.
They have been married for 24 years and he had just turned 50 and here they were on Maui to celebrate. He turned her by the elbow and stepped in behind her. The sun had warmed the skin of her back and it heated his chest even as the cold wet of her bikini bottem chilled his crotch. With one hand on her stomach, he slid the other arm across her chest and slid his left hand under her right shoulder strap, resting it broadly at the top of her chest, one or two finger tips feeling the slight stubble of her right arm pit. She rested her head, nestling into him.
Everything was in its place. This expensive trip was only a financial blip in their bank account six time zones to the east of this beach. Fifty and comfortable, almost wealthy, and recently promoted at work--a certain corporate confidence had been placed in him and trust flowed freely back and forth, from his employers and to friends and family. His parents had begun that decline he knew would, over the years to come, turmoil him but at the same time also ultimately dull the forboding he felt about not achieving the dreams of his "better self," teaching him, at close range, to keep his head down maybe, splitting the difference, and not hope for more than warm sand every now and then, a good novel, and a satisfying 18 holes.
His wife's toes were not unattractive the way some older women's were and he never fancied himself the type even to think about feet. He never noticed when some women in the office wore heels, say, or why that would matter to anyone especially his male co-workers and subordinates. The sun was dipped now maybe 20% into the ocean, the air around it shimmered red and orange. Birds flew by in groups like they were on their commute home for the day. His son Josh floated face down on his surfboard in the shallow water searching the uncoming set. Smoke from an outside pit floated by scenting the air in a way that made his stomach growl vaguely. He never noticed her toes nails before. They had seemed painted almost luridly, at first glance, in a color like the one surrounding the setting sun only brighter and more intense.
She surprised him with a yell off to the distance. He had been lost in his thoughts and when she called to their daughter Chloe he had a bit of the feeling that you had when you just missed being in an accident, where your body instinctively anticipates trauma. He felt an ache in his thighs and he could hear his heart beating--it was all about the blood, he thought. Chloe had allowed the crack of her ass to show again and her mother, his wife, had been chasing her around all afternoon complaining about that little dimple of flesh flashing out to the world.
She stepped away from him to yell into the wind and he dropped again to the blanket they had pulled off the hotel's king-sized bed to bring down to the beach. The hotel preferred you use the over-sized towels they provided at the entrance to the steps leading down to the sand but they wanted one large blanket the way they always had over the years and hundreds of trips first to Coney Island and then, after some time, all those years at the Jersey Shore. He raked his stiff and sea-sticky hair feeling the sand graining his scalp. Josh was paddling into the waves and they bobbed him and his reckless youth almost cinematically. The sun was down now maybe 40-45% and the sea had begun to boil around it. His wife was laughing and Chloe crossed her arms over her chest and stared down at her feet. She gave Chloe a smack on the ass and turned back to him smiling. Chloe sneered at her mother's back and stuck out her tongue. He shut his eyes and concentrated meditatively on the wind blowing on his face, moving the whiskers of his beard and the hair on his chest.
When he opened them he was looking right at her left foot planted in front of him as she scanned the water for Josh. He looked more closely and it was the nail of the smallest toe that really bugged him. It was tiny, a sliver really, it was hardly even a nail but more like a deposit of hardened calcium in a stony crevice of the foot's poorer neighborhood. And yet she painted it, or had it painted. It was just the thinnest stripe of orange, so narrow in fact that the color didn't seem to match the other toes, as if there wasn't enough of the color in one place to help your eye form an impression of the shade in-full, the same way a swatch at the hardware store never really gave you a sufficient enough sense of the color you finally painted on the living room wall and so after it dried you stood with the swatch holding it a different angles, unshading lamps and squinting one eye and then the other and though the swatch seemed to blend in with the finished surface the swatch by itself still looked different from the wall.
Why paint it? When had the toenail gotten so small, was it always like that? He remembered, far away now off in the distant past, a weekend in her dormroom when he had kissed her feet, allowing himself a glance up past her spread thighs as she stared down at him over her breasts, gloriously naked, and uninhibedly so and he had quickly and impulsively popped her pinkie toe into his mouth sucking it and sweeping it with his tongue imagining somehow the roles reversed and it being her mouth instead, and his penis, a suggestion maybe, hopefully, to her as they began to wade into the deeper intimate waters of their physcial relationship. He hadn't thought then to look at it or remark on anything about it, not the nail or even if it was painted. He didn't really remember anything about it. Now he stared at it almost 30 years later and looked up at her again.
She stared out at the water. Josh was turned toward the shore now looking back over his shoulder at the waves as they came at him and washed over him, unsure in his inexperience which one would be the best to ride. He had all the equipment and expensive lessons all week, but he hadn't really gotten the hang of it yet. The sun was almost fully down, just a thin semi-circle staring back at them. Meat was almost certainly now on the luau's fire pit and something like tropical Hawaiian music was playing, or at least he thought that was what it might be. He reached out and covered the foot with his hand. She looked down at him and smiled, almost suggestively, as if she could read his mind and the fact of his hand on her foot also summoned for her the same momery. She was so happy here he knew.
I'm gonna get one more swim in he said and stood and ran toward the water as he always did when he went into the ocean. Ever since he was a boy he approached the waves that same way--he made the committment to go and then ran deciding that there was no changing your mind, just the inexorable physical motion at the water. As he ran now he felt the camera bouncing against his thigh but he didn't want to stop and he didn't want to go back. He had drained himself of thought and he had stopped caring about anything other than just in this moment being under the sea.
The water was shallow for a few yards but then dropped off quickly at this part of the beach, he knew. A few strides first and then he lunged, diving at a wave, his body slicing under. The water was just cool enough to chill him but warm enough still to take him in comfortably and he pulled at the tide trying to swim out as far as he could on the breath he had taken in before going under. He came up briefly for air with his back to the beach and then resubmerged swimming out even farther before surfacing again and finally floating in water in which it was too deep to stand.
The light now from the set sun was a generalized reflection on sky and water alike, the half-light of dusk still enough as it eased the whole beach across into night. The hotel had at some point illuminated the patio torches and from across the water he could see the luau pit cast shadows of flame on a corner of the hotel garden.
His wife and daughter huddled together on the towel. Josh lay on his board on the sand in the shallows the waves tiding into him and then draining away. A pair of girls to his right seemed to be approaching him though he lay there seemingly unaware. He pulled the camera out of his pocket and out from under the water into the air. Treading water he held the camera in front of his face and pressed the power button.
For a second the picture of his wife by the tree, the last picture he had taken, flashed across the screen. It glowed slightly green, seemingly suffering from an infusion of water. Then the screen went black flashing momentarily a jagged lightning blot signfying a dead battery. The lens blurted out from the camera's front halfway and stopped dead impotently. He let his arm drop back under the water and let the camera float away with whatever tide there was, in or out.
Chloe and her mother (his wife) seemed to be sparring at this distance. He could imagine the discussion. Easily. Josh had stood and was carrying his board toward the family blanket. He turned to look at the horizon and to where the sun had been and had set. He himself sank under the water and he began to swim toward the other side of the world.
Friday, April 22, 2011
Suitcase Full of Porn
Suitcase full of porn, he ascended the staircase with indolence jumping jacks in his heart, and pockets. The steps were white, and smooth, yet with a newness not irregular, except for the second to top step, which wasn't completely flat, and rose and fell underneath the length of his foot (usually his right, but he would often plan it in his head and either let the right have its day, or occasionally force the left one to have a go, but that took concentration from at least ten steps beneath, and when the left did fall onto the wavy, roman-like stone step near the top, it never felt natural), and he already heard her stirring from behind the closed door. The echos of the breeze outside her open window was making its way underneath the door, and into the bottoms of his pant legs...the suitcase was muttering something about the way skin tasted when you went at it like is your God given right. God given.
He knocked, low and with only two raps. She yelled, but the distance and thickness of the door made it seem like a voice of a medium level at most. "You know I never lock the door". He did know, and the fact that he never put his suitcase down at the door somewhat proved this fact. He turned the handle, notable not a knob, downwards and heard the click, not easy but controlled force made it work best. Of this he was also fully aware. He glimpsed her as the vista changed to the inside of the room, and the bright light pouring from the open window blinded his sight in its majority. "It's too cold to have the window open".
The suitcase, full up with tarts and cunts, cock and bull, quietly touched the ground, as he felt for his chest, and his heart, beating with said indolence and growing force. He couldn't see yet past the sunshine and wind oncoming, but felt warmth in the wind as she passed by close in front of him. "It's not too cold to have the window open. The air is dead in here without it". He heard this contradictory statement, and just after the word "dead" came the corresponding and also contradictory thick click of the window being shut, and the curtain drawn nearly all the way to the middle plane. "I see you've brought your files with you again", she added, as he finally caught her in his sight, now with a shadow overcompensating in his retinas, onto her skin and lips as they spoke.
"You never had a problem with it before", he said as his vision cleared and he saw her, again just in her underwear, with one piece of a dress on, and opened, always in a state of half undress. He walked up to her, and she smiled at this small, but worthy attempt at contradiction, and her lips grew outward, into the open air around them, and she gently tossed off the one piece of actual clothing she had on, and pulled him to her. There was no time for any more formalities.
Like the beats of a well structured drama, her eyes ate him up, and her hands with the grace and arc of a well turned heel in dance, reached downwards and out onto his cock, growing in all directions as did her tongue in his mouth, biting and pulling at his bottom lip in soft staccato. His hands then decided it was enough for him to set aside any passivity, and that he would drive forth at her with all the filth and depravity that he held inside that suitcase, watching eagerly from the floor near the window. He forced her down onto the bed, and her legs wrapping round him, the great divide stretching out into the pit of his belly, as she sucked his cock like a pro, and he begged her off of him at the last quickening second, since he wanted to come with her writhing underneath him, which is the way she always preferred as well - fighting the good fight, her cunt acquiesing to the rigor of his overtaking her, only because she herself had allowed it. But once it did, there was no going back. She was the irregular stone step and he would tread onto and into her empire, conquering and building up new nations, as he tasted her sweet in his mouth, and her moans went wildly alongside the smell of her skin, thick and fragrant with her indolence, which she stole from her with her lips.
Once actual fucking began, it seemed like the room closed in onto them, and they ate up the breeze, and he would rise and fall in breath and climax with each and every thrust, her pulling the walls of her cunt close inwards onto him, only to release him back like a wave killing you and tossing you back, every minute and every time it wanted to show you what life was really all about. The fact that you were not in charge was the key. This went on, as he buried his face driven with sweat into the burrow of her neck and she scratched at his back and bit at him with the feebleness of a slow thinking child.
He smelled fresh air mingling into the murk they had created, on her cheeks and on the top of her breasts, and glanced over for a moment, seeing that the window was not all the way closed, but indeed open a crack. She noticed and smiled wryly, her eyes half closed from the activity and she bit her lip and forced him to go deeper into her. Her mumbled words like someone on the brink of drunkeness, "see, the wind is more alive, yeah?..." became simply yeahs to moans without any question mark, as he kissed her with his tongue and full intention. His beasts and deepest sensations rose to the top of him now, and they fucked their way clear through that crack to the outside breeze, coming loudly until and for hours after the wind finally died down out of exhaustion.
M. Lucia
He knocked, low and with only two raps. She yelled, but the distance and thickness of the door made it seem like a voice of a medium level at most. "You know I never lock the door". He did know, and the fact that he never put his suitcase down at the door somewhat proved this fact. He turned the handle, notable not a knob, downwards and heard the click, not easy but controlled force made it work best. Of this he was also fully aware. He glimpsed her as the vista changed to the inside of the room, and the bright light pouring from the open window blinded his sight in its majority. "It's too cold to have the window open".
The suitcase, full up with tarts and cunts, cock and bull, quietly touched the ground, as he felt for his chest, and his heart, beating with said indolence and growing force. He couldn't see yet past the sunshine and wind oncoming, but felt warmth in the wind as she passed by close in front of him. "It's not too cold to have the window open. The air is dead in here without it". He heard this contradictory statement, and just after the word "dead" came the corresponding and also contradictory thick click of the window being shut, and the curtain drawn nearly all the way to the middle plane. "I see you've brought your files with you again", she added, as he finally caught her in his sight, now with a shadow overcompensating in his retinas, onto her skin and lips as they spoke.
"You never had a problem with it before", he said as his vision cleared and he saw her, again just in her underwear, with one piece of a dress on, and opened, always in a state of half undress. He walked up to her, and she smiled at this small, but worthy attempt at contradiction, and her lips grew outward, into the open air around them, and she gently tossed off the one piece of actual clothing she had on, and pulled him to her. There was no time for any more formalities.
Like the beats of a well structured drama, her eyes ate him up, and her hands with the grace and arc of a well turned heel in dance, reached downwards and out onto his cock, growing in all directions as did her tongue in his mouth, biting and pulling at his bottom lip in soft staccato. His hands then decided it was enough for him to set aside any passivity, and that he would drive forth at her with all the filth and depravity that he held inside that suitcase, watching eagerly from the floor near the window. He forced her down onto the bed, and her legs wrapping round him, the great divide stretching out into the pit of his belly, as she sucked his cock like a pro, and he begged her off of him at the last quickening second, since he wanted to come with her writhing underneath him, which is the way she always preferred as well - fighting the good fight, her cunt acquiesing to the rigor of his overtaking her, only because she herself had allowed it. But once it did, there was no going back. She was the irregular stone step and he would tread onto and into her empire, conquering and building up new nations, as he tasted her sweet in his mouth, and her moans went wildly alongside the smell of her skin, thick and fragrant with her indolence, which she stole from her with her lips.
Once actual fucking began, it seemed like the room closed in onto them, and they ate up the breeze, and he would rise and fall in breath and climax with each and every thrust, her pulling the walls of her cunt close inwards onto him, only to release him back like a wave killing you and tossing you back, every minute and every time it wanted to show you what life was really all about. The fact that you were not in charge was the key. This went on, as he buried his face driven with sweat into the burrow of her neck and she scratched at his back and bit at him with the feebleness of a slow thinking child.
He smelled fresh air mingling into the murk they had created, on her cheeks and on the top of her breasts, and glanced over for a moment, seeing that the window was not all the way closed, but indeed open a crack. She noticed and smiled wryly, her eyes half closed from the activity and she bit her lip and forced him to go deeper into her. Her mumbled words like someone on the brink of drunkeness, "see, the wind is more alive, yeah?..." became simply yeahs to moans without any question mark, as he kissed her with his tongue and full intention. His beasts and deepest sensations rose to the top of him now, and they fucked their way clear through that crack to the outside breeze, coming loudly until and for hours after the wind finally died down out of exhaustion.
M. Lucia
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Bok! (Go With God)
The night, the family wine swirling in my pores, my mind is calm
half asleep, I drag my illegal suitcase full of contraband
to the car.
the same song again, playing on repeat on her radio.
I don't think to ask why; she's related to me, so I understand.
We're late, since we were up all night raising up our name to the sky
via vino, food and soul, complete and unapologetic.
They call for me, and I am the last to board,
the ladies ("we are good looking, beautiful family", we are more women than men, we are strong, and stubborn and striking all) say they will drink coffee, at the airport, for me, while I fly off.
The last words I hear in the country of home are from a security airport employee who makes me take out
my hairspray to show him it is what it says it is. Just like us, who are what we are.....his words are
"you are very beautiful woman"...my reply:
"you should see me when it's not 6 in the morning in an airport"
He smiles and I walk, medium paced to the plane.
I am still walking at a medium pace.
M. Lucia
half asleep, I drag my illegal suitcase full of contraband
to the car.
the same song again, playing on repeat on her radio.
I don't think to ask why; she's related to me, so I understand.
We're late, since we were up all night raising up our name to the sky
via vino, food and soul, complete and unapologetic.
They call for me, and I am the last to board,
the ladies ("we are good looking, beautiful family", we are more women than men, we are strong, and stubborn and striking all) say they will drink coffee, at the airport, for me, while I fly off.
The last words I hear in the country of home are from a security airport employee who makes me take out
my hairspray to show him it is what it says it is. Just like us, who are what we are.....his words are
"you are very beautiful woman"...my reply:
"you should see me when it's not 6 in the morning in an airport"
He smiles and I walk, medium paced to the plane.
I am still walking at a medium pace.
M. Lucia
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Zagorka
The zagorka is wild, but there is a microcosm of earth, which offers it protection above and below. It is, as we are, nestled in between the looming white and brown mountains and independent blue clouds and sky, and the earth below - and below - and below. Seeds of ground, of herb and rocks, which built modern life from ancient life, and roads which are born of recent machines are still, stoic with minimal needs. The rocks are a blanket over dry and then rich soil, reams of creatures which live in and around her surface, smooth and inviting, motherly and wild.
The men have planted some land mines and have tried to remove the tops of her homes but she stands still, and defiantly turns her head away from the engines that roar for her, when those engines lack fire and only know air and cement. She prefers to take her levels inward, into the deepest of vistas and out again, laced with her wild ways to the wind and the sea, which surrounds, and is always moving, even in stillness it advertises to the rest. When you stand above her, you can peer below to the finest constructions of tall paintings made into your world; when you think you can control her, out she runs again, pushing her way back to you and up your backside, making her way into your ways and not apologizing for it. But, then, you will find her wilds laced with cherry and olive trees, and vineyards which carry you through to the thinking onto your head which you call imagining.
She is the blanket of moist, warm grasses and the circling dogs roam her like their own, and is the lap for the weary head to regenerate itself -- that inexplicable feeling of waking up from a much needed sleep on her earth, the wind dancing about your feet, the drop just out of frame, down to her other, equally as stubborn, skies which simply exist for you to look upon. To see yourself in her crystal clear waters. She is everything about you, secrets all, but not hidden, all that she is she has always been. I wake up from her moonshine dirt with the scent in my skin, the pallour of fullness making offerings to my mouth and steps.
The zagorka is the untamable place, winds making gladitorial battles and animalistic lust games and passion plays and childrens tales all at once, beneath an understanding, open and starred sky. The sun warms my ways and my touch is grand, because she has showed me that I am her wildness equally, and wildness contained in every presence, the moments I eat birth and death like stray flowers worn in my hair, rocks in my bag and a constant barely drunk soul which guides me on with curiosity, and a pounding heart. The zagorka runs the highways in my veins and the new skin beneath my feet. Once awakened, she will never sleep again, and there is no need to be afraid of her anymore. She lives to love what she recognizes as her own, to shield and retreat, to open her eyes bright to me.
Her mantle is digested, my father is racing the moon above it all, and my heart is made fragrant and expanding, my touch the nexus of the adjoining universes which I can yield to, because I do not have to yield. I am her contradiction and spin around the rocky, seamless and downward/upward coastal measures without care of how far I go...as I am always looking out from inside the contained wilds of her spellbound eyes. I am zagorka. I am home.
M. Lucia
Monday, April 18, 2011
WHAT'S THE STORY WITH RORY?
----- Original Message -----
From: Michaelene Friedersdorf
To: Rory Friedersdorf
Sent: Mon Apr 18 12:24:49 2011
Subject: What happened to you?
Where did you go? I waited over 2 hours at the hospital the whole time calling Daniel at home to see whether you went there...we're both worried sick and didn't even TELL Dad (or Mom God forbid). Please don't tell me you're flaking out again! Really Rory when are you going to wake up? Our mother's laying in a hospital bed tubes in every direction and all you can think about is...I don't even want to know what! I'm about ready to give up altogether but Mom still needs you (especially now) so if you're somewhere and need to come back call my cell and I can come get you. I'll have to use Dad's car since on top of everything else this week something happened to my brakes or something and my car rolled down the hill and crashed into the big oak on Canaan Avenue.
Please call me at least. If you can find the time...
From: Michaelene Friedersdorf
To: Rory Friedersdorf
Sent: Mon Apr 18 12:24:49 2011
Subject: What happened to you?
Where did you go? I waited over 2 hours at the hospital the whole time calling Daniel at home to see whether you went there...we're both worried sick and didn't even TELL Dad (or Mom God forbid). Please don't tell me you're flaking out again! Really Rory when are you going to wake up? Our mother's laying in a hospital bed tubes in every direction and all you can think about is...I don't even want to know what! I'm about ready to give up altogether but Mom still needs you (especially now) so if you're somewhere and need to come back call my cell and I can come get you. I'll have to use Dad's car since on top of everything else this week something happened to my brakes or something and my car rolled down the hill and crashed into the big oak on Canaan Avenue.
Please call me at least. If you can find the time...
CARING (INTENSIVELY)
Michaelene is downstairs complaining to our father. I can hear her and you know what? I actually think she knows I can hear her. It's just like her to not give a fuck. And it's not even out of any plot, you know, like an attempt to manipulate me by making me overhear her bullshit and even making me hear my father agreeing that I'm a fuck up, which is really the only hard part about it. Like I'm going to somehow "come to grips" with her complaints and with my own "bad behavior" and "change my ways" and suddenly "be there for our mother," by which Michaelene, of course, means "be there for Michaelene."
I'm sitting at the window on the third floor of M.'s giant house, in her "office," the place she presumably does all her big thinking in. I rolled the desk chair over to the window and from this angle I can see my father's car parked in front of M.'s. They're both identical (in all but color) "green" cars, you know, environmentally low-impact cars. My father purchased his right after hearing M.'s enthusiasm with her own and with her influence presumably. He always pretty much went along with whatever she said. My old 15 MPG Wrangler's a horror show presumably, another symbol of my self-indulgence, like the frowned-upon extra glass of wine, and the request for the dessert menu, or the display of ANY emotion at our mother's hospital bed.
Mom's out of surgery and M.'s plotting hospital shifts--when we'll all take our turn being there (the timing of course being M.'s decision because "someone has to decide"), expected to hold Mom's hand and be "a presence" for the nurses. M. assumes everyone's a fuck-up, like her sister, and if given the chance to slack-off will take it, so her theory is that if someone's always there then the nurses won't have a choice and Mom'll get better care. She's got it all figured out is what I mean to say ultimately.
When I asked Angie, the ICU nurse assigned to Mom last night, where she was from I got the inevitable look of betrayal from M. like I had shown our collective hand or something, shown a weakness. My father defended me later in the car ride home but only with a tactical argument along the lines of saying that if we make friends with THEM they're more likely to help us out, at which M. snorted and chuckled to herself shaking her head. She has an amazing ability to register contempt even when viewed in profile from the back seat. I wondered if she was only showing that expression on the side of the face I could see since it was directed only at me. Like the dark side of the moon, I imagined the other side of her face being expressionless and impassive. Or maybe the other side of her face compensated for the ugliness of the side facing me so that her expression over-all would be some kind of zero-sum game. Once in awhile I still sorta wished that the loving side would face me once in a while, but the moon never did show her dark side, and Michaelene always did. Anyway, I was really just wondering where Angie came from, that was all.
I could really hear her going at it now down there. When you get right down to it I think what I find most amazing is how she could just make her mind up about everything so easily, including me. She's just locked in as they say. And I know now that I'm definitely leaving today, no matter what her plan is for bedside vigils. I can't be here anymore, no matter how sick my mother is. There's always one, isn't there? The kid who leaves their parent in the hospital and never comes to visit. I think I get it now. Sometimes you just can't compete. And when the game is "who loves Mommy more" who even wants to play?
I'm sitting at the window on the third floor of M.'s giant house, in her "office," the place she presumably does all her big thinking in. I rolled the desk chair over to the window and from this angle I can see my father's car parked in front of M.'s. They're both identical (in all but color) "green" cars, you know, environmentally low-impact cars. My father purchased his right after hearing M.'s enthusiasm with her own and with her influence presumably. He always pretty much went along with whatever she said. My old 15 MPG Wrangler's a horror show presumably, another symbol of my self-indulgence, like the frowned-upon extra glass of wine, and the request for the dessert menu, or the display of ANY emotion at our mother's hospital bed.
Mom's out of surgery and M.'s plotting hospital shifts--when we'll all take our turn being there (the timing of course being M.'s decision because "someone has to decide"), expected to hold Mom's hand and be "a presence" for the nurses. M. assumes everyone's a fuck-up, like her sister, and if given the chance to slack-off will take it, so her theory is that if someone's always there then the nurses won't have a choice and Mom'll get better care. She's got it all figured out is what I mean to say ultimately.
When I asked Angie, the ICU nurse assigned to Mom last night, where she was from I got the inevitable look of betrayal from M. like I had shown our collective hand or something, shown a weakness. My father defended me later in the car ride home but only with a tactical argument along the lines of saying that if we make friends with THEM they're more likely to help us out, at which M. snorted and chuckled to herself shaking her head. She has an amazing ability to register contempt even when viewed in profile from the back seat. I wondered if she was only showing that expression on the side of the face I could see since it was directed only at me. Like the dark side of the moon, I imagined the other side of her face being expressionless and impassive. Or maybe the other side of her face compensated for the ugliness of the side facing me so that her expression over-all would be some kind of zero-sum game. Once in awhile I still sorta wished that the loving side would face me once in a while, but the moon never did show her dark side, and Michaelene always did. Anyway, I was really just wondering where Angie came from, that was all.
I could really hear her going at it now down there. When you get right down to it I think what I find most amazing is how she could just make her mind up about everything so easily, including me. She's just locked in as they say. And I know now that I'm definitely leaving today, no matter what her plan is for bedside vigils. I can't be here anymore, no matter how sick my mother is. There's always one, isn't there? The kid who leaves their parent in the hospital and never comes to visit. I think I get it now. Sometimes you just can't compete. And when the game is "who loves Mommy more" who even wants to play?
THE STREAM
I bought the water because I was eating and I thought "I'm supposed to drink something too, right?" So I have the water and I'm just carrying it with me. Carrying it around unopened.
I'm so tired. I'm bone tired. I'm dead tired. I'm even SO tired of being tired, and TALKING about being tired. I'm tired of the way it shows on my face. "You look different," yes I know, you know what it is? I'm older. I'm very suddenly older. "Your eyes are so red," yes, I know. I've stopped trying to figure it out. I'm greyer, I'm circled and lined. More now than before.
I'm tired of carrying this bottle around. This spring water. This miracle of the world when you think about it and when you look at it from the perspective of the other 90% of the world--I'm one of the ten percent with an unwanted miracle-bottle of unbelievably clean water. I can't just throw it away just because I'm sick of carrying it. That would be sin itself, right?
So I return it to the inventory. I place it in a pile of water bottles of a different brand at a different store miles from where I bought it.
What's going to happen? Does anyone ever just give back something they don't want anymore? How often does that happen? And what are they going to do--at Starbucks--when someone tries to buy the bottle of water that they don't sell? And if the person who wants to buy it finds out they don't sell it are they going to want it anymore? Even if it's free? "Take it" they'll say and the person will frown and say "well can you give me one that I can actually buy? I don't want this one if it's free."
Maybe it is only good if it costs something.
I'm so tired. I'm bone tired. I'm dead tired. I'm even SO tired of being tired, and TALKING about being tired. I'm tired of the way it shows on my face. "You look different," yes I know, you know what it is? I'm older. I'm very suddenly older. "Your eyes are so red," yes, I know. I've stopped trying to figure it out. I'm greyer, I'm circled and lined. More now than before.
I'm tired of carrying this bottle around. This spring water. This miracle of the world when you think about it and when you look at it from the perspective of the other 90% of the world--I'm one of the ten percent with an unwanted miracle-bottle of unbelievably clean water. I can't just throw it away just because I'm sick of carrying it. That would be sin itself, right?
So I return it to the inventory. I place it in a pile of water bottles of a different brand at a different store miles from where I bought it.
What's going to happen? Does anyone ever just give back something they don't want anymore? How often does that happen? And what are they going to do--at Starbucks--when someone tries to buy the bottle of water that they don't sell? And if the person who wants to buy it finds out they don't sell it are they going to want it anymore? Even if it's free? "Take it" they'll say and the person will frown and say "well can you give me one that I can actually buy? I don't want this one if it's free."
Maybe it is only good if it costs something.
Bitter and Sweet
These last pains have left,
and also they say they will
have to stay
again, but softly
there in between the rocks of the house
in the knots amidst our internal rivers
running always back to us.
There are vistas which stretch up like wildcats
tearing and eating at our memories
until they are happening now, along with the songs
from the radio, the twisting of the old roads made new
the moon of gold bearing down on us
glittering skies of pride
and stubbornness which has, at its crux
the makings for a history
worth understanding.
M. Lucia
and also they say they will
have to stay
again, but softly
there in between the rocks of the house
in the knots amidst our internal rivers
running always back to us.
There are vistas which stretch up like wildcats
tearing and eating at our memories
until they are happening now, along with the songs
from the radio, the twisting of the old roads made new
the moon of gold bearing down on us
glittering skies of pride
and stubbornness which has, at its crux
the makings for a history
worth understanding.
M. Lucia
Friday, April 15, 2011
Those Eyes
Those eyes I see them everywhere,
under the sun, through the winds
walking through roman ruins.
Those eyes peer out at me,
trying to communicate, left
mostly to hand gestures which
resemble the form of drinking up...
Those eyes glance by, sometimes in blue
but mostly in the warm brown tones
sipping rakia, vino and mineral water.
Talking, and talking and smiling through wrinkles
which were not there before.
Those eyes are my father s
showing me photographs and talking of the village,
the one I will see on sunday.
How many people get to see the physical spot
wherein their entire genetic universe had its big bang
growing barks of brown wood, smoking lamb and laughter
which causes fear and excitement
to be back in my home - with this history implanted
of our name
in the windy night behind my eyes.
Those eyes which I have beaming still,
how will they look upon you and themselves
when they return, mended and billowing
with calm and might.
M. Lucia
under the sun, through the winds
walking through roman ruins.
Those eyes peer out at me,
trying to communicate, left
mostly to hand gestures which
resemble the form of drinking up...
Those eyes glance by, sometimes in blue
but mostly in the warm brown tones
sipping rakia, vino and mineral water.
Talking, and talking and smiling through wrinkles
which were not there before.
Those eyes are my father s
showing me photographs and talking of the village,
the one I will see on sunday.
How many people get to see the physical spot
wherein their entire genetic universe had its big bang
growing barks of brown wood, smoking lamb and laughter
which causes fear and excitement
to be back in my home - with this history implanted
of our name
in the windy night behind my eyes.
Those eyes which I have beaming still,
how will they look upon you and themselves
when they return, mended and billowing
with calm and might.
M. Lucia
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Kavana at Noon
Why is it that we get everything wrong?
Why is it that technology has wrapped its cords round our neck, raped and unmanned us,
and left us in the closet, asphyxiating on our own sex drives and vomit capitulated
in a stream of radiation and bliss which mows us down
pissing on our humanity and we - mute as a clown - watching it get dragged farther
and farther away...
How sad it is for me to sit in a cafe, indescript and typical
watching children, girls not even 21
smoking and drinking coffee and talking
yes Talking-
did I stutter?
TALKING to each other, to me
even though I speak near none of their (my) language.
They send odd texts to get closer together
to meet up
They make phone calls, with their very own Voices
to make plans,
to keep plans
to be alive in each others presence.
Their phones work just as fast and efficiently as ours do.
But they still refuse to live as fast and inefficiently as we do.
They use this extremely modern technology simplistically
and it brings them closer together. Once they have achieved this:
it is back to talk, and food, and drink, and smoke and coffee
and laughter and mimicry and dark humor and ideas.
The technology sits back into its place,
and knows when to shut its trap.
Something is wrong with us.
I sit there, with young girls
who know more about being human beings than I.
But you see, I remember.
Its in my blood and it cannot be cut out,
no matter how hard you try, America.
Still, I sat in a cloud of macchiato and malboro reds
and thought about how I used to do this, more than a decade ago.
How I dont remember the last time I did, or tried, or was -like this.
Normalcy creeps in slowly, and I laugh again at who we think we are,
over there in that free world. Hanging in the shadows of our closets
the cords of electronica slicing at our necks, as we turn away
from each other, and ourselves.
M. Lucia
Why is it that technology has wrapped its cords round our neck, raped and unmanned us,
and left us in the closet, asphyxiating on our own sex drives and vomit capitulated
in a stream of radiation and bliss which mows us down
pissing on our humanity and we - mute as a clown - watching it get dragged farther
and farther away...
How sad it is for me to sit in a cafe, indescript and typical
watching children, girls not even 21
smoking and drinking coffee and talking
yes Talking-
did I stutter?
TALKING to each other, to me
even though I speak near none of their (my) language.
They send odd texts to get closer together
to meet up
They make phone calls, with their very own Voices
to make plans,
to keep plans
to be alive in each others presence.
Their phones work just as fast and efficiently as ours do.
But they still refuse to live as fast and inefficiently as we do.
They use this extremely modern technology simplistically
and it brings them closer together. Once they have achieved this:
it is back to talk, and food, and drink, and smoke and coffee
and laughter and mimicry and dark humor and ideas.
The technology sits back into its place,
and knows when to shut its trap.
Something is wrong with us.
I sit there, with young girls
who know more about being human beings than I.
But you see, I remember.
Its in my blood and it cannot be cut out,
no matter how hard you try, America.
Still, I sat in a cloud of macchiato and malboro reds
and thought about how I used to do this, more than a decade ago.
How I dont remember the last time I did, or tried, or was -like this.
Normalcy creeps in slowly, and I laugh again at who we think we are,
over there in that free world. Hanging in the shadows of our closets
the cords of electronica slicing at our necks, as we turn away
from each other, and ourselves.
M. Lucia
Monday, April 11, 2011
Marasovica 29
The thought was disturbing to her. The thought was extremely disturbing to her. The thought - it repeatedly disturbed her.
Our lives were bullshit. There was no other way to get around this very plain fact. We existed back there, in the so-called land of freedom, of opportunity, of any dream you wanted to dream up. But that's just the problem with the American Dream - it is for the patterns and happy trails in your head, not for the life you think you lead there, in so-called Americana, land of the free. You're only free when you're dead, and you there, living in the land of the dead.
It is as if every anger that plagued at me, every rage and reason that smacked me all about town, if you can call it town, is gone away. It does not exist in me here. Because *I* exist here. Without my defenses up, without my fists curled into angry baby dragons...coiling and strategizing and shaking its fist at the world.
The world, it goes by here. There is a vista both in front of me, my past behind me, and all about my mind. There is the homemade wine I consume, sometimes with water and sometimes not, which exists in me in the very same way, the meat made in the town of my father's birth. The family talking loudly, smoking outside, there the sea and the ferries, the beer I had on the promenade, my hands caressing the walls of Rome. I can never leave this place because it has been inside me all of my life. Now, it is free and does not claw at me as it does in your land of the living, so-called. All of these things are there, present in that very moment - as the moment I am living in right now.
Ami the big black poodle barks - the Bura wind is coming in for the night, into my quiet apartment rooms, with the bathroom in which I remember sitting on the toilet at 6 years old and someone opened the door, because I did not lock it. I am here now. The woman raised somewhere else, but existing here all the while.
I have tasted the tip of it on my tongue and it glides down my throat - glistening all spit filled, salt water kissing, roman relic on my heels --- this is water, indeed. And I'm soaking at its shores, far away from the idealistic and self deluded bullshit of the workaday American dream.
Time does not exist here. Everything will work out. Every moment is a golden one, indeed. Henry was right. This is my Paris, the Roman ruins collapsing my neuroses and telling me to be still. He would never ever have dreamed of suicide if he had been alive and present in the waters of this city. Every place we are, every one we can be, is golden and renewed, sprouting up and in all directions, and nobody has to get hurt. A house with all its right parts, and a family with all its right members. Each love in its own right place. That's the lesson. The wind comes by and will paint me up a sunrise for tomorrow, advancing from all the shores.
M. Lucia
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Worldweary
The world and its ways
dont sweep my face as it
used to do.
Force every boredom
clinical relief
battle blister and
sweet comfort......
To the firing line.
The night is turning its wheels
fast into day;
and Ive got to open my eyes in
Every direction
and be up with it. Here.
goes
nothing!
M. Lucia
dont sweep my face as it
used to do.
Force every boredom
clinical relief
battle blister and
sweet comfort......
To the firing line.
The night is turning its wheels
fast into day;
and Ive got to open my eyes in
Every direction
and be up with it. Here.
goes
nothing!
M. Lucia
Friday, April 8, 2011
Parallel
Here in the shadowbox everything is reflected...but so...I like to keep my back to the ledge because sometimes I get that vertigo thing, you know, really bad.
Hard part is though just having the mirror to look into. Only that.
Because it's me in there.
I mean I can see me but I wonder what's going on beyond the corners, you know behind the other me. I don't think it's always the same as here, you know, on THIS side of the mirror. I suspect it isn't.
Sometimes I feel like I catch little wisps of smoke coming from back there. Or a shadow from around the curve. Which just then calls into question the "ME" part of the reflection too. You know, because if anything is different then EVERYTHING must be different.
Or, how do I know that what I'm seeing right here in front of me is really me and not just some prop, some elaborate deception? I don't, that's how.
Maybe there's another me--the one who propped up the fake me on his side of the mirror so he could do something different--and maybe he's having a lot better time of it all. Maybe that me has the grace unlike THIS me, the real one (at least to me), to not press his face so hard against the mirror and to just go ahead and walk the path along the edge and see what else life has in store--"fuck the vertigo," he might say.
I watch him sometimes and I think--maybe I imagine--I see him peel his face off from the other side of the mirror against mine and then circle around behind me. I can't move so I have to crane my eyes around in their sockets. I feel them darting around in there, my eyes I mean and that makes me panic. I must look panicked with my eyes darting around but then it's also worse because you know your eyes can only really move just a little bit.
I'm not like a cow who apparently has like 360-degrees of peripheral vision. Or at least something approaching that. That according to something I read somewhere in an article about meat.
It's strange to read something about "meat" and only really retain the one fact about eyes. And a cow's eyes to boot.
I still can't move. Not until he comes back. It's like we can't BOTH be flouting convention. One of us has to keep the faith, carry the torch.
Eat shit--at least ONE of us has to.
SO I have to stand here waiting until he comes back from whatever fun he's off having. HE'S the lucky one--the other me is. HE gets to have all the fun. Well I'll be here when he gets back and we're going to have a word or two, let me tell you....
Windowless
We all stood there, at the bus stop – some of you I know very well, and others I see your faces every single day or every third day or once a month, but you are all still a cyclical number of people, in various coats and colours and hair and stances that I see, on the corner of my street.
Today is different. Ever since Monday, we’ve looked up at that house with trepidation.
The lone, beautifully gutted reminder of the old waterfront. The small, economical brick a golden yellow even teetering on a rusty orange. The windows facing front – no panes, all boarded up cleanly. They are so long and seem like they stretch from the ceiling to the floor of that second floor front of the building. Everything about its structure is not of now – there is care, there is a tallness, reaching so straight into the sky. The neighborhood cats have community board meetings in there, and all of you and I stand there, every morning, dreaming and thinking and examining it. It has no purpose in this modern version of our street. But, it is surrounded by mildly industrial field and parking lot. They used to park old props for movies in that field - a cross country bus, a shot out glass police van, a vintage and rounded ice cream truck – anything you desired. On the other side was the phalanx of yellow school buses – our street was where they came to sleep their nights away.
Now, the parking lot is empty – the school buses gone. There is progress in the air – it’s not shocking. The view from that lone three story house must be magnificent. You always envied those cats that could climb up the vines which, in summer, grew from brown root to green varieties up the sides of the house and the boarded windows. It was the back of the house that held the surprise. The View. Those windows, facing the back street and the water, they didn’t have boards or anything holding them back. They were empty holes looking out into the water, the clouds, the tugboats and steamships and cranes. You, and presumably others, stared up into that view and transported yourself into the driver’s seat of anywhere else you wanted to be. It would always be slightly disappointing when the bus rounded the corner, but off you went with that vista still in your eyesight.
Not since Monday, though. A crew of men has arrived – there is a barrier of boards to protect the surrounding areas, when they throw and toss and kick and knock the bricks down – they are stubborn, and just won’t go that easily. But, it’s coming down. It’s clear to see. Even today, the whole top floor is practically gone. You all stand there, and wonder what will happen to your one sided street, where there was nothing before but empty school buses, lots and sky, at the center of which was this dreaming place. This monument to the individual quality of this place which chose you to be its resident. Everyone seems accepting- some take pictures, some just watch intently. It’s as if each of our year in and year out, daily dreams and thoughts and fears and workings are implanted into each brick face which gets knocked to the ground, without care.
It is most possibly alright to accept this and let them go – it is, though (in fact) jarring, and whatever takes its place, there will be an emptiness without a center, without a fixed star from which to view – one which shows us where to focus our sight onto briskly moving morning clouds and sun. The sky has been let loose, and, other than the rumble of the bus coming from around the corner, you can hear footsteps, light and modern, and you sigh a little more as you ascend the bus’s steps and watch the home you all shared get smaller as it rides away from you.
M. Lucia
Today is different. Ever since Monday, we’ve looked up at that house with trepidation.
The lone, beautifully gutted reminder of the old waterfront. The small, economical brick a golden yellow even teetering on a rusty orange. The windows facing front – no panes, all boarded up cleanly. They are so long and seem like they stretch from the ceiling to the floor of that second floor front of the building. Everything about its structure is not of now – there is care, there is a tallness, reaching so straight into the sky. The neighborhood cats have community board meetings in there, and all of you and I stand there, every morning, dreaming and thinking and examining it. It has no purpose in this modern version of our street. But, it is surrounded by mildly industrial field and parking lot. They used to park old props for movies in that field - a cross country bus, a shot out glass police van, a vintage and rounded ice cream truck – anything you desired. On the other side was the phalanx of yellow school buses – our street was where they came to sleep their nights away.
Now, the parking lot is empty – the school buses gone. There is progress in the air – it’s not shocking. The view from that lone three story house must be magnificent. You always envied those cats that could climb up the vines which, in summer, grew from brown root to green varieties up the sides of the house and the boarded windows. It was the back of the house that held the surprise. The View. Those windows, facing the back street and the water, they didn’t have boards or anything holding them back. They were empty holes looking out into the water, the clouds, the tugboats and steamships and cranes. You, and presumably others, stared up into that view and transported yourself into the driver’s seat of anywhere else you wanted to be. It would always be slightly disappointing when the bus rounded the corner, but off you went with that vista still in your eyesight.
Not since Monday, though. A crew of men has arrived – there is a barrier of boards to protect the surrounding areas, when they throw and toss and kick and knock the bricks down – they are stubborn, and just won’t go that easily. But, it’s coming down. It’s clear to see. Even today, the whole top floor is practically gone. You all stand there, and wonder what will happen to your one sided street, where there was nothing before but empty school buses, lots and sky, at the center of which was this dreaming place. This monument to the individual quality of this place which chose you to be its resident. Everyone seems accepting- some take pictures, some just watch intently. It’s as if each of our year in and year out, daily dreams and thoughts and fears and workings are implanted into each brick face which gets knocked to the ground, without care.
It is most possibly alright to accept this and let them go – it is, though (in fact) jarring, and whatever takes its place, there will be an emptiness without a center, without a fixed star from which to view – one which shows us where to focus our sight onto briskly moving morning clouds and sun. The sky has been let loose, and, other than the rumble of the bus coming from around the corner, you can hear footsteps, light and modern, and you sigh a little more as you ascend the bus’s steps and watch the home you all shared get smaller as it rides away from you.
M. Lucia
Thursday, April 7, 2011
CHINA'S BIG CHILL
What is this shit?
This I'm thinking to myself, of course. Just putting it out there in case I wasn't making myself clear that I'm totally just thinking that and not saying anything of the kind straight out in the open in a room with my future wife, my mother-in-law and grandmother-in-law (RIP-since she's in the room but not actually IN the room, if you know what I mean, overlooking, as she is, this sweet little pre-nuptial scene from the cheap seats-i.e. as urn-bound ashes on the mantle next to the brass candlesticks and the framed photo of my future parents-in-law one of whom [the MIL] is actually present in the flesh, as previously indicated and with the FIL not present in the room or even in the state since he's still touring with Glenn Campbell's band, being one of the better steel guitar players in the southwest at a minimum) present.
I'm looking at china patterns, of course. I don't know why that would be "of course" since you have no way of knowing what I'm looking at and yet somehow I assumed if you thought of a list of things that would get that kind of reaction out of me (i.e. "what is this shit?") right at the top of the list I bet you dollars to doughnuts would be china patterns. Anyway, I'm looking at a catalog of them as it happens. These are things, I should say at the outset, with which I am not familiar--china patterns I mean, of course. Is anyone? Familiar, I mean? And when I say 'anyone' here I mean specifically any man? And now you chime in the way you always do with a few examples right off the top of your head without having to take really any serious type time considering the question (which is an indication of just how stupid my statement is right?...given the examples contradicting my statement that are just cold leaping to the front of your mind and to the tip of your tongue even with just practically zero brain energy put into the question) of men in your experience who know all about china patterns - "take my Uncle Charlie" you might say and then regale me of how good old uncle C. just loves getting himself lost in the Dining & Entertainment department at Macy's blah blah blah...OK I get it...it's just me.
So I ask again. What is this shit?
Does anyone entertain anymore? Isn't it just Super Bowls and Final Fours and Oscar parties and BBQ's? When am I going to need china? Maybe that one time your Dad comes off the road and after the requisite decompression period, a few long soaks in a hot bath, a brief period detoxifying cold-turkey style off the cigarettes and Jack Daniels and Vaseline Intensive Care applied to his sore calloused fingers...and he sits down at the table, his face just dried out and leathered and hair pompadoured and greasy and your mother walking a little funny from sore privates presumably your Dad being a randy bugger but faithful nonetheless saving six weeks of lust up for your Mom post-tour, and so he sits there and saws away at your dried out Steak Diane - your favorite recipe - see? I listen...and he drinks the lemonade and au gratin taters slurpin and sawin and sawin and slurpin...I'm not bitter --I love your Dad. No, I do. But point is does he need to eat off the china?
This I'm thinking to myself, of course. Just putting it out there in case I wasn't making myself clear that I'm totally just thinking that and not saying anything of the kind straight out in the open in a room with my future wife, my mother-in-law and grandmother-in-law (RIP-since she's in the room but not actually IN the room, if you know what I mean, overlooking, as she is, this sweet little pre-nuptial scene from the cheap seats-i.e. as urn-bound ashes on the mantle next to the brass candlesticks and the framed photo of my future parents-in-law one of whom [the MIL] is actually present in the flesh, as previously indicated and with the FIL not present in the room or even in the state since he's still touring with Glenn Campbell's band, being one of the better steel guitar players in the southwest at a minimum) present.
I'm looking at china patterns, of course. I don't know why that would be "of course" since you have no way of knowing what I'm looking at and yet somehow I assumed if you thought of a list of things that would get that kind of reaction out of me (i.e. "what is this shit?") right at the top of the list I bet you dollars to doughnuts would be china patterns. Anyway, I'm looking at a catalog of them as it happens. These are things, I should say at the outset, with which I am not familiar--china patterns I mean, of course. Is anyone? Familiar, I mean? And when I say 'anyone' here I mean specifically any man? And now you chime in the way you always do with a few examples right off the top of your head without having to take really any serious type time considering the question (which is an indication of just how stupid my statement is right?...given the examples contradicting my statement that are just cold leaping to the front of your mind and to the tip of your tongue even with just practically zero brain energy put into the question) of men in your experience who know all about china patterns - "take my Uncle Charlie" you might say and then regale me of how good old uncle C. just loves getting himself lost in the Dining & Entertainment department at Macy's blah blah blah...OK I get it...it's just me.
So I ask again. What is this shit?
Does anyone entertain anymore? Isn't it just Super Bowls and Final Fours and Oscar parties and BBQ's? When am I going to need china? Maybe that one time your Dad comes off the road and after the requisite decompression period, a few long soaks in a hot bath, a brief period detoxifying cold-turkey style off the cigarettes and Jack Daniels and Vaseline Intensive Care applied to his sore calloused fingers...and he sits down at the table, his face just dried out and leathered and hair pompadoured and greasy and your mother walking a little funny from sore privates presumably your Dad being a randy bugger but faithful nonetheless saving six weeks of lust up for your Mom post-tour, and so he sits there and saws away at your dried out Steak Diane - your favorite recipe - see? I listen...and he drinks the lemonade and au gratin taters slurpin and sawin and sawin and slurpin...I'm not bitter --I love your Dad. No, I do. But point is does he need to eat off the china?
Pain is Beauty
As I was suffering steadily on the second evening of a substantial cold, the usual parameters of the spa and the experience of getting what ladies in modern society refer to as the “bikini wax”, something that, due to my ethnicity combining pre-colonially at a crossroads between Slavic, Mediterranean and possible Near Eastern aspects (mostly thanks to the roving and raping Ottoman Empire utilizing the rule that Croatian women under their rule had to sleep with the local Princely ruler first on her wedding night), was an accepted fate of my visage, over and under. It was routine to me now, so much so that I could almost gage to the minute just how long it would take, and usually I would be in and out of there in about 15 minutes or so, when there wasn’t a delay. As usual, on this rainy Wednesday evening, very well put together Manhattan women of mostly under 50’s wandered to and from the place, neat and pressed khaki coloured rain coats and not a cat hair or a wayward fold in their outfits. One was carefully strategizing her next beauty appointments pre-vacation, first asking if the 11th of May would work, since she is going away on the 13th – to that, the older, Slavic woman with short spiky blond hair behind the very demure counter, all plums and products, tried to book her in on that day, “as early as 11” she could take her, to which the woman reconsidered and pushed for something closer to 1pm. I was waiting a slightly longer time, staring up and down the walls of products which I could never afford, thinking about how when you need certain things, and oh so many certain things with lovely, syllabically lyrical names and packaging, wherein you have no idea what it does, but damn, it looks like it does something pretty amazing what with the pin up girl drawn on the front label, in thick black strokes, all Jane Russell and lips puckered, when you need more things like –that-, you would keep needing them, wouldn’t you. And then that might lead to more routine, and ritualistic purchases and scheduled appointments and no wonder life seemed full up with this stuff for these women – they depended on it. I stuck to my bare and main necessities, and blew my nose repeatedly, feeling slightly less attractive while doing so.
The small corner couch that was L shaped wasn’t comfortable for women to be packed in to, so two different women were taking up two separate spots, spreading out their high end beauty and lifestyle magazines around then. There were a selection of short, round cushion chairs with no backs, which I put myself to – along with the rain and the sick making me feel like a washerwoman who had no business in this place of expensive products and finely coiffed society women (even though I had been a regular for almost 7 years now – the root of my ethnic line not bowing out of the game easily), I had sat on the round cushion chair facing the hall, where the women in white, Polish mostly (I wondered repeatedly why that breed of women all in all were the majority of those who liked to rip the hair off of, in and around the privates of various paying customers – and how does one find that profession?) would come out and say the client’s name, slightly muddled in their strong accents but with the alacrity of a doctor about to perform a life saving or life-changing operation. In my sitting, I sat with my legs apart, in the world between straddling and not, and was very comfortable, but the seated style made me feel further like I was less than they were. Like I was the street beggar in some early Victorian novel, squatted with my bustle up in my face, hoping to make a few pound for the family I had procured at a young and decent age. Finally, out came a woman with blond, curly hair, in her mid to late 40’s. She was not my regular – Rena. Rena looked like a teenager, though had two kids and always complained at me about them, her house, cleaning it, going (or not going) on vacation – she was a young woman with an old woman’s life and spirit. Over the years I had gotten used to her conversations and complaints, and how they merged with so much ease, with her style (fast, un-invasive, ending with the legs up in yoga-type mode –when one felt the height of humiliation and/or ridiculousness at this act which one put oneself through, while paying money to do so!) and just the general feeling a woman has with another woman seeing her 95% of the time with no pants on. Comfortable. But, as of late, schedules had forced me into taking whoever was available on Wednesdays and Thursdays when Rena wasn’t in. Once or twice, one of the “other women” (it did feel like I was having an affair – I would have to apologize to Rena, when I saw her again, and accept her further complaints about the job that the “other woman” did – she would ask me, addressing me with an added “anka” at the end of my name, which was such a prevalent and regular part of my day to day life that a few years back, the man I was with at the time started calling me by this name, which now afforded it a sort of bittersweet nostalgia, bitter or sweet depending on the day and memory of course) stuck in my mind, and as this woman came down the hall, I knew she was one of them, my other women. She said with force as if she knew me so well – my name, with the “anka” at the end of it, which surprised me – was this a Polish thing or were she and Rena sitting behind closed doors, sipping coffees on their break and comparing clientele over bar chart analyses and projected hair growth?
She was thrilled to see me – and I knew I was in for it. What the “it” was, was not known just yet. She instructed me specifically to not leave my coat on the floor near the door (the room had thrown me off – in all my years it was not one I had ever been in before), since she would be standing there at some point (she never did). Secondly, she stayed in the room with me, while I stripped down bottoms wise. It wasn’t all that strange – nothing in the doing of it would reveal anything she wouldn’t be seeing as it was, nor hadn’t seen before, but somehow there was something a little unsettling about taking your boots off, and rolling down the tights that you had bought when they read “leggings” but you knew now that they were just tights. There was something freeing about sitting at a job you know you didn’t belong at, with the knowledge that you weren’t Really wearing any pants. Still, you were out of it sick-wise, so all of this might prove to be a dream in betwixt tossing and turning and trying to clear your sinuses up. You set yourself on the table, the paper making the scratchy, elevated noise it always does, remarking on how you’re wearing the perfect shirt dress for “this”. She is all business, but acts like she and I are old friends, and asking about my upcoming trip to Europe, and airfares and such. It hurts more than usual, I feel, and she tersely reminds me of the breathing exercise she taught me, which, as she mentions it, all comes back to me, though I think it couldn’t have been more than once or twice when I had her as my “attendant” – breath in deep with her, and then fast exhale when she did the ripping. My growingly stuffed nose found this level of work slightly taxing, as I tried to breath in and then out with each and every rip – whereas my good friend Rena wasn’t seemingly pleased nor disgusted at the job she did attending to the privates of ladies the city over, this woman seemed to clearly be enjoying herself with each new rip and tear. She peppered this very forward and direct action with somewhat forward and oddly chosen (for the times during with they were spoken read having no pants on under bright lights) compliments – She told me to life up my left leg (which Rena wouldn’t do, as she always had this method of having the one leg supinate in a V shape, which afforded her the right angle to make it happen), adding my “beautiful left leg” which forced me into another self effacing statement, of what exact detail I cannot recall. Then, the breathing started again and I was so good at it apparently, that she began to say “good girl” every time I breathed right, and she ripped – she must have said “good girl” at least twelve times during the 15 minute session. When I was face down, and asked her if I should “hold” the buttock area for her, she remarked with all manner of directness, for which I had recognized in her in this short time – “you know I am assertive and say what I need. If I needed you to do that, you think I wouldn’t tell you?” To which I laughed and she followed with “you think I would just suffer in silence?” We chuckled again, and I said quietly “it’s my job to suffer in silence”. She enjoyed the wittiness of that, and then went to work on that side of things. Something felt strange, however, about lying prone, and having her repeat the “good girl” remark, quieter and more intimately. I felt slightly vulnerable there, but then again who doesn’t feel vulnerable face down with a Polish woman further into your ass cheeks that you ever really want a Polish woman? I somehow got into the “stance” if you will of holding my left leg (the “beautiful one”) against the tile wall, to give her better leeway and this did not add to my sense of dignity nor ladylike qualities in any way.
It ended in the same way it did with Rena – the legs up and over, except she emphasized widening then versus the totally up and over quality that I was used to with Rena. She brought me back down aways, and remarked that she loved watching flexible people – to which I added the last of my self effacing remarks about always have flexibility, even when not exercising. While I said these words, I couldn’t help but be slightly creeped out by her flexible people remark. I was glad this experience was rounding down. It ended with one more direct jab at my vulnerability, when she lotioned up that which she had ripped, sewn and tuckered out – somehow, Rena was able to get said lotion everywhere it needed to go, without any feeling of invasiveness, but not my friend here. She really worked those hands of her farther along and about the things than one would expect from a technician of her variety. I suppose it was her duty to defrock me mentally one last time before the night was out. She told me to enjoy my trip and there was a moment wherein I felt like she was expecting a hug, but lying then, pants still off, skin all lotioned up, I just wanted her to get out so I could get dressed, pay up and get the hell home. I’d admit she does a fine, fine job in her work, but it was all so different than what I was used to. On the way out, in making the next of appointments which would stretch into infinity or death, I was asked if I wanted the appointment with Mariola (her name finally! Oddly familiar but all I could think of in a 12 year old boy’s mind which was mine at that moment was Areola and how it was nearly fitting for her name to at least resemble and rhyme with said nipple vocabulary)…I had to explain that I was used to going to Rena, so I’ll choose Rena next time and go between the two, laughing like I had to juggle these Polish women between my legs and in my wallet for years to come. When all was said and done, I hurried off through the light rain, blowing my nose and feeling that oh-so-awkward feeling of lotion in between ass cheeks, as I descended the subway stairs and got myself home. Sick as a dog, but smooth as a baby’s behind in springtime.
M. Lucia
The small corner couch that was L shaped wasn’t comfortable for women to be packed in to, so two different women were taking up two separate spots, spreading out their high end beauty and lifestyle magazines around then. There were a selection of short, round cushion chairs with no backs, which I put myself to – along with the rain and the sick making me feel like a washerwoman who had no business in this place of expensive products and finely coiffed society women (even though I had been a regular for almost 7 years now – the root of my ethnic line not bowing out of the game easily), I had sat on the round cushion chair facing the hall, where the women in white, Polish mostly (I wondered repeatedly why that breed of women all in all were the majority of those who liked to rip the hair off of, in and around the privates of various paying customers – and how does one find that profession?) would come out and say the client’s name, slightly muddled in their strong accents but with the alacrity of a doctor about to perform a life saving or life-changing operation. In my sitting, I sat with my legs apart, in the world between straddling and not, and was very comfortable, but the seated style made me feel further like I was less than they were. Like I was the street beggar in some early Victorian novel, squatted with my bustle up in my face, hoping to make a few pound for the family I had procured at a young and decent age. Finally, out came a woman with blond, curly hair, in her mid to late 40’s. She was not my regular – Rena. Rena looked like a teenager, though had two kids and always complained at me about them, her house, cleaning it, going (or not going) on vacation – she was a young woman with an old woman’s life and spirit. Over the years I had gotten used to her conversations and complaints, and how they merged with so much ease, with her style (fast, un-invasive, ending with the legs up in yoga-type mode –when one felt the height of humiliation and/or ridiculousness at this act which one put oneself through, while paying money to do so!) and just the general feeling a woman has with another woman seeing her 95% of the time with no pants on. Comfortable. But, as of late, schedules had forced me into taking whoever was available on Wednesdays and Thursdays when Rena wasn’t in. Once or twice, one of the “other women” (it did feel like I was having an affair – I would have to apologize to Rena, when I saw her again, and accept her further complaints about the job that the “other woman” did – she would ask me, addressing me with an added “anka” at the end of my name, which was such a prevalent and regular part of my day to day life that a few years back, the man I was with at the time started calling me by this name, which now afforded it a sort of bittersweet nostalgia, bitter or sweet depending on the day and memory of course) stuck in my mind, and as this woman came down the hall, I knew she was one of them, my other women. She said with force as if she knew me so well – my name, with the “anka” at the end of it, which surprised me – was this a Polish thing or were she and Rena sitting behind closed doors, sipping coffees on their break and comparing clientele over bar chart analyses and projected hair growth?
She was thrilled to see me – and I knew I was in for it. What the “it” was, was not known just yet. She instructed me specifically to not leave my coat on the floor near the door (the room had thrown me off – in all my years it was not one I had ever been in before), since she would be standing there at some point (she never did). Secondly, she stayed in the room with me, while I stripped down bottoms wise. It wasn’t all that strange – nothing in the doing of it would reveal anything she wouldn’t be seeing as it was, nor hadn’t seen before, but somehow there was something a little unsettling about taking your boots off, and rolling down the tights that you had bought when they read “leggings” but you knew now that they were just tights. There was something freeing about sitting at a job you know you didn’t belong at, with the knowledge that you weren’t Really wearing any pants. Still, you were out of it sick-wise, so all of this might prove to be a dream in betwixt tossing and turning and trying to clear your sinuses up. You set yourself on the table, the paper making the scratchy, elevated noise it always does, remarking on how you’re wearing the perfect shirt dress for “this”. She is all business, but acts like she and I are old friends, and asking about my upcoming trip to Europe, and airfares and such. It hurts more than usual, I feel, and she tersely reminds me of the breathing exercise she taught me, which, as she mentions it, all comes back to me, though I think it couldn’t have been more than once or twice when I had her as my “attendant” – breath in deep with her, and then fast exhale when she did the ripping. My growingly stuffed nose found this level of work slightly taxing, as I tried to breath in and then out with each and every rip – whereas my good friend Rena wasn’t seemingly pleased nor disgusted at the job she did attending to the privates of ladies the city over, this woman seemed to clearly be enjoying herself with each new rip and tear. She peppered this very forward and direct action with somewhat forward and oddly chosen (for the times during with they were spoken read having no pants on under bright lights) compliments – She told me to life up my left leg (which Rena wouldn’t do, as she always had this method of having the one leg supinate in a V shape, which afforded her the right angle to make it happen), adding my “beautiful left leg” which forced me into another self effacing statement, of what exact detail I cannot recall. Then, the breathing started again and I was so good at it apparently, that she began to say “good girl” every time I breathed right, and she ripped – she must have said “good girl” at least twelve times during the 15 minute session. When I was face down, and asked her if I should “hold” the buttock area for her, she remarked with all manner of directness, for which I had recognized in her in this short time – “you know I am assertive and say what I need. If I needed you to do that, you think I wouldn’t tell you?” To which I laughed and she followed with “you think I would just suffer in silence?” We chuckled again, and I said quietly “it’s my job to suffer in silence”. She enjoyed the wittiness of that, and then went to work on that side of things. Something felt strange, however, about lying prone, and having her repeat the “good girl” remark, quieter and more intimately. I felt slightly vulnerable there, but then again who doesn’t feel vulnerable face down with a Polish woman further into your ass cheeks that you ever really want a Polish woman? I somehow got into the “stance” if you will of holding my left leg (the “beautiful one”) against the tile wall, to give her better leeway and this did not add to my sense of dignity nor ladylike qualities in any way.
It ended in the same way it did with Rena – the legs up and over, except she emphasized widening then versus the totally up and over quality that I was used to with Rena. She brought me back down aways, and remarked that she loved watching flexible people – to which I added the last of my self effacing remarks about always have flexibility, even when not exercising. While I said these words, I couldn’t help but be slightly creeped out by her flexible people remark. I was glad this experience was rounding down. It ended with one more direct jab at my vulnerability, when she lotioned up that which she had ripped, sewn and tuckered out – somehow, Rena was able to get said lotion everywhere it needed to go, without any feeling of invasiveness, but not my friend here. She really worked those hands of her farther along and about the things than one would expect from a technician of her variety. I suppose it was her duty to defrock me mentally one last time before the night was out. She told me to enjoy my trip and there was a moment wherein I felt like she was expecting a hug, but lying then, pants still off, skin all lotioned up, I just wanted her to get out so I could get dressed, pay up and get the hell home. I’d admit she does a fine, fine job in her work, but it was all so different than what I was used to. On the way out, in making the next of appointments which would stretch into infinity or death, I was asked if I wanted the appointment with Mariola (her name finally! Oddly familiar but all I could think of in a 12 year old boy’s mind which was mine at that moment was Areola and how it was nearly fitting for her name to at least resemble and rhyme with said nipple vocabulary)…I had to explain that I was used to going to Rena, so I’ll choose Rena next time and go between the two, laughing like I had to juggle these Polish women between my legs and in my wallet for years to come. When all was said and done, I hurried off through the light rain, blowing my nose and feeling that oh-so-awkward feeling of lotion in between ass cheeks, as I descended the subway stairs and got myself home. Sick as a dog, but smooth as a baby’s behind in springtime.
M. Lucia
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
March of the Cloves
The cloves bitter and resounding
with rooted symphonies of direct
bliss march their way
up the spine,
nails crackling
earth in the burst-open
brain of Christ – a bloody mess,
as it time travels from one seat to the next,
taking
and eating
and rummaging as they go.
Jaysus was just one of the dominoes,
who
forget
his lines
in the
show.
M. Lucia
with rooted symphonies of direct
bliss march their way
up the spine,
nails crackling
earth in the burst-open
brain of Christ – a bloody mess,
as it time travels from one seat to the next,
taking
and eating
and rummaging as they go.
Jaysus was just one of the dominoes,
who
forget
his lines
in the
show.
M. Lucia
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Miracle on 34th Street
The boss, for the very first time, acted not as the elderly, cloaked-in-wealth-and-grace and therefore not as elderly as she was, mother-culturemonger figure who adored me from the moment I walked in the door, then planning to write some films and perhaps sell some (though by that time the phrase "making it" was pared down and recombined into something more life-like, though still words, words, I had hoped you would save me from yet another office), but she was terse with me, telling me that I should concentrate on my work and not on the phone converastion I had been on for an obviously long time. I felt instantly shamed, like I had disappointed my mommy warbucks, who was always kind and never made me feel like an underling, was interested in my thoughts about art, music, the opera....she was the upper west side writ in delicate jewelry and perfectly held hair. I felt badly for this, as I was on the phone with someone who embodied weakness, and who taught me that a kind and giving heart sometimes bled too much and all over my shoes, dammit.
He was on the rooftop, My rooftop in Astoria - he was desperate, lost, quasi-suicidal as usual but not really (he lacked the backbone)...smoking and looking out from my home, which he had made his, due to his many life failures (he was the sort of person who practically Begged you to tell him to just be a man). The sad part was, I was never even attracted to him really - we had become close over a set of fantasies about wanting to live as if it was the 70's - Easy Rider, The Band, the seeming freedom that people didn't exhibit anymore - it was the tiniest slice of myself brought out by someone in a moment when I needed to be taken for a ride. He was never my type - Greek, for starters. And claimed he was 5'9" but pretty sure he was not. He lived in delusions....he was Jim Morrison in his mind, so of course life looked pretty hellish (and Astoria too, for that matter) when he was the son of a father who shot himself, and who fancied himself some dark piano playing poet, but really, he was just a scared kid who had an occasional stutter and a nervous eye twitch (and a cocaine problem). Either way, he was mooching off of me, everything from my home to my food, to my nights and mornings, to my body, which, looking back and slightly off to the side, was barely affected by anything he asked me to do to him. He was not an aggressor, nor forceful nor even decisive about anything. Anyway, I guess we all need one we're regretful about. I'm thankful it's not more than the one.
On that day, he kept me on the phone, "talking him down" but really he just wanted to hear himself talk. He had no core; and from what I hear still does not. I remember staying over at his Astoria basement apartment, early in summer, with his friend who I was much more enamoured with. The former Mormon boy with blue eyes and lips that made me weave as many scenarios as I could about him. The cowboy kid from out West. We all three fell asleep in his bed after another of our all night music / drinking hideaways...I was sleeping next to him, as I did for some reason, and felt something around the back of my knees. A few times, when I woke up, drunk but not hungover as my tolerance was skyrocketing that summer, I looked down and saw the boy, wrapped up in the fetal position around my knees, his face buried in my belly. Sleeping soundly. How is it possible to live a life and then feel years after it all that I wouldn't know what to do around those two people, around myself then if I ran into her drunk outside the Irish bar on Ditmars Boulevard....I would tell them both to stop letting the past define you, and to make those artful fantasies your Own and move through the adventure, and stop wallowing in your own selfish disgust. I don't think they'd like me very much now. Well, the rooftop phone caller would not; but the Mormon - now married to the chubby Asian girl who wears no makeup because you can't take the Mormon out of the boy, well, he might actually look back on me as that wild, older woman who presented him with some stories when surely he pops a few dozen kids out as his parents did. I think he may smile a little sideways smile at me, and think still fond thoughts of those racked up, bramshackled times. I don't work for someone I respect anymore. And I don't take too many phone calls at work anymore either.
M. Lucia
He was on the rooftop, My rooftop in Astoria - he was desperate, lost, quasi-suicidal as usual but not really (he lacked the backbone)...smoking and looking out from my home, which he had made his, due to his many life failures (he was the sort of person who practically Begged you to tell him to just be a man). The sad part was, I was never even attracted to him really - we had become close over a set of fantasies about wanting to live as if it was the 70's - Easy Rider, The Band, the seeming freedom that people didn't exhibit anymore - it was the tiniest slice of myself brought out by someone in a moment when I needed to be taken for a ride. He was never my type - Greek, for starters. And claimed he was 5'9" but pretty sure he was not. He lived in delusions....he was Jim Morrison in his mind, so of course life looked pretty hellish (and Astoria too, for that matter) when he was the son of a father who shot himself, and who fancied himself some dark piano playing poet, but really, he was just a scared kid who had an occasional stutter and a nervous eye twitch (and a cocaine problem). Either way, he was mooching off of me, everything from my home to my food, to my nights and mornings, to my body, which, looking back and slightly off to the side, was barely affected by anything he asked me to do to him. He was not an aggressor, nor forceful nor even decisive about anything. Anyway, I guess we all need one we're regretful about. I'm thankful it's not more than the one.
On that day, he kept me on the phone, "talking him down" but really he just wanted to hear himself talk. He had no core; and from what I hear still does not. I remember staying over at his Astoria basement apartment, early in summer, with his friend who I was much more enamoured with. The former Mormon boy with blue eyes and lips that made me weave as many scenarios as I could about him. The cowboy kid from out West. We all three fell asleep in his bed after another of our all night music / drinking hideaways...I was sleeping next to him, as I did for some reason, and felt something around the back of my knees. A few times, when I woke up, drunk but not hungover as my tolerance was skyrocketing that summer, I looked down and saw the boy, wrapped up in the fetal position around my knees, his face buried in my belly. Sleeping soundly. How is it possible to live a life and then feel years after it all that I wouldn't know what to do around those two people, around myself then if I ran into her drunk outside the Irish bar on Ditmars Boulevard....I would tell them both to stop letting the past define you, and to make those artful fantasies your Own and move through the adventure, and stop wallowing in your own selfish disgust. I don't think they'd like me very much now. Well, the rooftop phone caller would not; but the Mormon - now married to the chubby Asian girl who wears no makeup because you can't take the Mormon out of the boy, well, he might actually look back on me as that wild, older woman who presented him with some stories when surely he pops a few dozen kids out as his parents did. I think he may smile a little sideways smile at me, and think still fond thoughts of those racked up, bramshackled times. I don't work for someone I respect anymore. And I don't take too many phone calls at work anymore either.
M. Lucia
DISCONSOLATE {draft}
Sisters, now as then,
vying, debating, staking
territory and well-aimed barb.
Knowing weakness
exploiting without mercy
pitching complaints toned and zoned
to effect devastation.
Disconsolate and inconsoled.
In time they fall into each other's sleep funk,
breathing both the air of a bed
like the womb they once shared
though years apart.
Their dreams, so different, though in the same language
not spoken but symbolled and also but signed.
Personae dramatis all the same to you and me
if the you and me be the she, and the she.
Line of light through drawn curtain awakens
again a new day and battle,
rejoining armies and lines thus redrawn.
They notice perhaps not that the night had passed too
over decades of time and yet still they lay,
not still, but rolled in and in roles.
Old ladies now all abicker,
sisters then as now.
vying, debating, staking
territory and well-aimed barb.
Knowing weakness
exploiting without mercy
pitching complaints toned and zoned
to effect devastation.
Disconsolate and inconsoled.
In time they fall into each other's sleep funk,
breathing both the air of a bed
like the womb they once shared
though years apart.
Their dreams, so different, though in the same language
not spoken but symbolled and also but signed.
Personae dramatis all the same to you and me
if the you and me be the she, and the she.
Line of light through drawn curtain awakens
again a new day and battle,
rejoining armies and lines thus redrawn.
They notice perhaps not that the night had passed too
over decades of time and yet still they lay,
not still, but rolled in and in roles.
Old ladies now all abicker,
sisters then as now.
Monday, April 4, 2011
Application for Memory
Not one, but two
fog horns sound for me, and no one else
in the middle of the mustard lit waters out there.
I haven't had the feeling of walking, running, striving or stumbling home
with the thought that I was pulled and taken and belonged
to the place I needed to return to.
I haven't followed anyone down a dark dirt road with no street lights
in some time,
hand in hand in the dark but what's the point in the dark
when you can be in a car, rain beating on your skull from up and around you.
Streaks of dull thunder sounding you and creating a pathway,
not like those times when I followed you into the water.
The water that belonged to us, but all I remember
is the white moon thick and high up,
the cold water which seemed particularly wet to my clothes and feet
you grabbing me up onto the wooden plank, where we walked the pirate ship
the reverse way,
smelling like dirty country water and no one in sight.
That road, the one I haven't been down in some time,
since before I learned I could find my way home without dramatics
or planned out tactics
or houses I needed to rebuild in the king's honor,
one miscalculated plank at a time, from the ground floor up.
Still, I stare out the lighted subway car, into the darkness that is
dirty, rancid and never completely black,
into the lighted telephone of a woman who doesn't feel me standing against her,
gently so, not with malice or weight,
swiping inspirational phrase after inspiration phrase
across her expensive phone.
The origin - philosophy, guru, religion or otherwise
is unbeknownst to me, but
I exhale, and cannot take the length and breadth of her quiet desperation
because it is my own, and I close my eyes
and think how fucking good the soles of my wet feet felt, in the summer night
after we fucked in the lake at the end of the street,
walking back under warm, black starry sky
over charcoal gravel that felt soft and elaborate
level and charming, like him following me with desire in his eyes-
her spring morning is my summer night in a different plane of shadow,
she notices my presence and is threatened as we both exit the train,
and we part like that, in the steps of collective memories.
I smell the water and wind as I climb the subway stairs and
feel his steps still close behind me.
M. Lucia
fog horns sound for me, and no one else
in the middle of the mustard lit waters out there.
I haven't had the feeling of walking, running, striving or stumbling home
with the thought that I was pulled and taken and belonged
to the place I needed to return to.
I haven't followed anyone down a dark dirt road with no street lights
in some time,
hand in hand in the dark but what's the point in the dark
when you can be in a car, rain beating on your skull from up and around you.
Streaks of dull thunder sounding you and creating a pathway,
not like those times when I followed you into the water.
The water that belonged to us, but all I remember
is the white moon thick and high up,
the cold water which seemed particularly wet to my clothes and feet
you grabbing me up onto the wooden plank, where we walked the pirate ship
the reverse way,
smelling like dirty country water and no one in sight.
That road, the one I haven't been down in some time,
since before I learned I could find my way home without dramatics
or planned out tactics
or houses I needed to rebuild in the king's honor,
one miscalculated plank at a time, from the ground floor up.
Still, I stare out the lighted subway car, into the darkness that is
dirty, rancid and never completely black,
into the lighted telephone of a woman who doesn't feel me standing against her,
gently so, not with malice or weight,
swiping inspirational phrase after inspiration phrase
across her expensive phone.
The origin - philosophy, guru, religion or otherwise
is unbeknownst to me, but
I exhale, and cannot take the length and breadth of her quiet desperation
because it is my own, and I close my eyes
and think how fucking good the soles of my wet feet felt, in the summer night
after we fucked in the lake at the end of the street,
walking back under warm, black starry sky
over charcoal gravel that felt soft and elaborate
level and charming, like him following me with desire in his eyes-
her spring morning is my summer night in a different plane of shadow,
she notices my presence and is threatened as we both exit the train,
and we part like that, in the steps of collective memories.
I smell the water and wind as I climb the subway stairs and
feel his steps still close behind me.
M. Lucia
MARGARETVILLE
A private moment, suddenly, walking the back field alone, with four lowing cows, purchased neither for beef nor milk but instead for this very thing, scenery, munching grass.
Early morning, a weak chill promising a milder day, a line of trees to his left in the foggy middle-distance like black spiderwebs against the grey morning sky, and to the right his own architecturally-enhanced 1890's manor house re-designed to impose over this stretch of northern Westchester former-farmland and dwarf the other "luxury" homes in the neighborhood, themselves all built in the late-1980's & early 90's. To "impose" not so much to look down on them (the other homes, that is), but, since his entire estate was landscaped and sight-lined via an expensive project of photography, surveying and digitally enhanced 3-D modeling to give the impression that no other house even existed for miles around, to make the other homes and their inhabitants feel self-consciously inadequate, when gazing out their seemingly tiny windows only at mature pines, rolling hills and the occasional sprinting, riderless horse, yet knowing what lay beyond.
The "Great House" as it was called is similarly enfogged, all its windows lightless, extended family members there all still aslumber, even his father, the very man himself, overtaken by last night's celebration, wine-soaked and sauced into sedation, and administered aspirin and antacid prophylactically last eve, pre-tuck-in, by a dutiful son, with the band still playing My Way downstairs in the ballroom, and his father humming along and muttering about what a classy gentleman Sinatra was, when he knew him, even for an "eye-talian."
He is filled with a sense of satisfaction, of accomplishment. A man in full, as they say, or at least he likes to think so. He is momentarily self-conscious about not really knowing what that phrase might mean, "man in full," and now suddenly reminded of being corrected, ill-advisedly, by his former assistant when he suggested the assistant add the phrase "jack of all trades" (meant as a compliment), to a speech he (the assistant) was ghost-writing for him, to be delivered at a ceremony honoring NY's mayor.
"...and master of none?" the assistant had said, finishing the phrase but adding the upturn at the end as if in question, at least having the grace to do that, suggesting that perhaps this might not be the best thing to include in the speech but knowing, too, as soon as he opened his mouth that it was the wrong thing to say to his boss.
He waited a few months to fire him not wanting to associate the termination with a question of pride on his part and allowing, to himself, that the assistant should have known better, but not so much because he shouldn't have corrected him, his boss, but more so that it ultimately didn't matter what a man of his stature said in a speech to even the mayor. Money mattered and in this town it was all that mattered. Gazing down the hill, past the cows and the horse paddock at the antique barn he had had moved from a town in upstate NY called Margaretville, at great expense, and had painted bright red so it couldn't be missed from the third floor bedroom window, say--the bedroom incidentally his father now slept in--he knew that if money mattered, then HE must certainly matter.
So yes, a man in full. And speaking of which, he is now thinking of Beef Wellington, which had been on last night's menu. Of the two kinds of powerful men (either (a) the classic disciplined self-denier who allows himself no vice save greed and never lets down his guard for an instant or (b) the life-to-the-fullest glutton indulging every whim and spending always for the finest) he was more the latter although he didn't engage so much in the so-called lustful vices preferring more to eat, drink and play-at extreme sport than to "chase tail" as it were, which was a phrase he had overheard his father use speaking to one of his banking acquaintances on a hunting trip long ago in Colorado, the phrase sticking in his head then, at thirteen, since they were hunting quail at the time and he had vomited in the bushes when he had come upon the remains of a bird his father had shot out of the sky, essentially a bird in two pieces, one of which was a bloody stump of tail feathers, i.e. the birds ass. No surprise then the bad associations with "tail-chasing" or that his wife, Noelle, around the office and behind his back (and of course hers as well), was referred to instead, when spoken of, as "No-ASS."
The expanse of his estate, its rolling grass hills, its bushes and trees had a sort of laxative effect on him, the way a bibliophile, for example, might feel after a few hours in a really good bookstore, or a child in a really first-rate toy store--the feeling of excitement and of belonging in a place, and of being "home"--there's a certain feeling of comfort. Or maybe it was the Wellington, either way he felt in that moment the need to evacuate.
He considered the walk back uphill to the house. It was maybe 300 yards away and would require him to leave the outdoors and abandon his walk and most likely end his "private moment." The barn, more like 150 yards in the other direction, and downhill, was often locked and he didn't have his keys with him. Still though not so far a walk to give it a try but it occurred to him all at once that this land here, these 1,856 acres of utter privacy, was his property, it was the physical manifestation of all that he had accomplished. And no one was around except the cows, the farm staff had all been given the morning off. He was known in the circles of so-called high finance as a decisive man, with the ability to very quickly weigh the facts and to make a choice--to roll the dice, and live with the consequences.
He removed his workout pants, tossed them aside and, underwearless, lowered himself, bending at the knees and spreading his feet wide enough to establish a firm hold on his center of gravity. He considered his position, looked around himself once more, saw the cows were all turned away strangely but no less amusingly, and with a profound sense of satisfaction and self-assurance he relaxed his sphincter and issued forth.
In the back of his mind he worried that once started he would regret what might be considered a relatively crass act. Yet even as the acrid smell of his own offal mixed with the cool scent of the grass and wafted to his nose it didn't dampen the feeling of satisfaction he felt, as if the entirety of his life had led up to this moment of utter well being and comfort, and, let's face it, self-expression. He thought again of his family and especially of his father, the man he had tried so hard over the years to please and impress, sleeping there in the distance, in the safety and comfort of his home, under the auspices of his protection and provision. What was the phrase? The sweat of his brow? One cow suddenly turned its head and looked at him. Even at a distance he got lost in its soulful brown eyes and felt akin, in that moment and via that inter-species connection, with all of nature and all of God's creation.
His father, returning from the large bathroom his son had told him was furnished entirely of white Georgia marble ("just like the Lincoln Memorial") and where he had peed for the fifth time that night, sighed in the half-light of the room, exhausted, spent; a lifetime come to this. Not even able to get a really good night's sleep anymore. He gazed out the window spotting the luridly painted red barn his son had found somewhere upstate and had moved absurdly here. "Why not just fucking build a red barn," he had thought at the time but was sensitive to his son's feelings and knew, just as he had in his day, that his son needed to make his own mark on the world. He was just about to return to bed when he spotted his son out in the field with the cows. He squinted and wondered. In the army they called it "copping a squat."
The sun rose higher in the sky and the cows alternated between sunning and shading. The trees swayed in a faint breeze. The barn baked all that summer and its red soon faded again with time just as it had before in another place.
Early morning, a weak chill promising a milder day, a line of trees to his left in the foggy middle-distance like black spiderwebs against the grey morning sky, and to the right his own architecturally-enhanced 1890's manor house re-designed to impose over this stretch of northern Westchester former-farmland and dwarf the other "luxury" homes in the neighborhood, themselves all built in the late-1980's & early 90's. To "impose" not so much to look down on them (the other homes, that is), but, since his entire estate was landscaped and sight-lined via an expensive project of photography, surveying and digitally enhanced 3-D modeling to give the impression that no other house even existed for miles around, to make the other homes and their inhabitants feel self-consciously inadequate, when gazing out their seemingly tiny windows only at mature pines, rolling hills and the occasional sprinting, riderless horse, yet knowing what lay beyond.
The "Great House" as it was called is similarly enfogged, all its windows lightless, extended family members there all still aslumber, even his father, the very man himself, overtaken by last night's celebration, wine-soaked and sauced into sedation, and administered aspirin and antacid prophylactically last eve, pre-tuck-in, by a dutiful son, with the band still playing My Way downstairs in the ballroom, and his father humming along and muttering about what a classy gentleman Sinatra was, when he knew him, even for an "eye-talian."
He is filled with a sense of satisfaction, of accomplishment. A man in full, as they say, or at least he likes to think so. He is momentarily self-conscious about not really knowing what that phrase might mean, "man in full," and now suddenly reminded of being corrected, ill-advisedly, by his former assistant when he suggested the assistant add the phrase "jack of all trades" (meant as a compliment), to a speech he (the assistant) was ghost-writing for him, to be delivered at a ceremony honoring NY's mayor.
"...and master of none?" the assistant had said, finishing the phrase but adding the upturn at the end as if in question, at least having the grace to do that, suggesting that perhaps this might not be the best thing to include in the speech but knowing, too, as soon as he opened his mouth that it was the wrong thing to say to his boss.
He waited a few months to fire him not wanting to associate the termination with a question of pride on his part and allowing, to himself, that the assistant should have known better, but not so much because he shouldn't have corrected him, his boss, but more so that it ultimately didn't matter what a man of his stature said in a speech to even the mayor. Money mattered and in this town it was all that mattered. Gazing down the hill, past the cows and the horse paddock at the antique barn he had had moved from a town in upstate NY called Margaretville, at great expense, and had painted bright red so it couldn't be missed from the third floor bedroom window, say--the bedroom incidentally his father now slept in--he knew that if money mattered, then HE must certainly matter.
So yes, a man in full. And speaking of which, he is now thinking of Beef Wellington, which had been on last night's menu. Of the two kinds of powerful men (either (a) the classic disciplined self-denier who allows himself no vice save greed and never lets down his guard for an instant or (b) the life-to-the-fullest glutton indulging every whim and spending always for the finest) he was more the latter although he didn't engage so much in the so-called lustful vices preferring more to eat, drink and play-at extreme sport than to "chase tail" as it were, which was a phrase he had overheard his father use speaking to one of his banking acquaintances on a hunting trip long ago in Colorado, the phrase sticking in his head then, at thirteen, since they were hunting quail at the time and he had vomited in the bushes when he had come upon the remains of a bird his father had shot out of the sky, essentially a bird in two pieces, one of which was a bloody stump of tail feathers, i.e. the birds ass. No surprise then the bad associations with "tail-chasing" or that his wife, Noelle, around the office and behind his back (and of course hers as well), was referred to instead, when spoken of, as "No-ASS."
The expanse of his estate, its rolling grass hills, its bushes and trees had a sort of laxative effect on him, the way a bibliophile, for example, might feel after a few hours in a really good bookstore, or a child in a really first-rate toy store--the feeling of excitement and of belonging in a place, and of being "home"--there's a certain feeling of comfort. Or maybe it was the Wellington, either way he felt in that moment the need to evacuate.
He considered the walk back uphill to the house. It was maybe 300 yards away and would require him to leave the outdoors and abandon his walk and most likely end his "private moment." The barn, more like 150 yards in the other direction, and downhill, was often locked and he didn't have his keys with him. Still though not so far a walk to give it a try but it occurred to him all at once that this land here, these 1,856 acres of utter privacy, was his property, it was the physical manifestation of all that he had accomplished. And no one was around except the cows, the farm staff had all been given the morning off. He was known in the circles of so-called high finance as a decisive man, with the ability to very quickly weigh the facts and to make a choice--to roll the dice, and live with the consequences.
He removed his workout pants, tossed them aside and, underwearless, lowered himself, bending at the knees and spreading his feet wide enough to establish a firm hold on his center of gravity. He considered his position, looked around himself once more, saw the cows were all turned away strangely but no less amusingly, and with a profound sense of satisfaction and self-assurance he relaxed his sphincter and issued forth.
In the back of his mind he worried that once started he would regret what might be considered a relatively crass act. Yet even as the acrid smell of his own offal mixed with the cool scent of the grass and wafted to his nose it didn't dampen the feeling of satisfaction he felt, as if the entirety of his life had led up to this moment of utter well being and comfort, and, let's face it, self-expression. He thought again of his family and especially of his father, the man he had tried so hard over the years to please and impress, sleeping there in the distance, in the safety and comfort of his home, under the auspices of his protection and provision. What was the phrase? The sweat of his brow? One cow suddenly turned its head and looked at him. Even at a distance he got lost in its soulful brown eyes and felt akin, in that moment and via that inter-species connection, with all of nature and all of God's creation.
His father, returning from the large bathroom his son had told him was furnished entirely of white Georgia marble ("just like the Lincoln Memorial") and where he had peed for the fifth time that night, sighed in the half-light of the room, exhausted, spent; a lifetime come to this. Not even able to get a really good night's sleep anymore. He gazed out the window spotting the luridly painted red barn his son had found somewhere upstate and had moved absurdly here. "Why not just fucking build a red barn," he had thought at the time but was sensitive to his son's feelings and knew, just as he had in his day, that his son needed to make his own mark on the world. He was just about to return to bed when he spotted his son out in the field with the cows. He squinted and wondered. In the army they called it "copping a squat."
The sun rose higher in the sky and the cows alternated between sunning and shading. The trees swayed in a faint breeze. The barn baked all that summer and its red soon faded again with time just as it had before in another place.
Saturday, April 2, 2011
One (Two) Nights in Atlantic City
The manifesto buckled in his head, stanza by stanza, then a few jumbled words at a time....he was exhausted, and his ears wouldn't stop sweating....some combination of milky liquors, malt balls and some small dosage of gummy candies that now he could just feel floating in his upper belly - the milk products and alcohol and weed was forming some kind of solid pool for them to float around, as if, even though he had chewed them considerably, somewhere after heading down his throat they reformed, but for the tiny chunk or two removed, which sunk to the bottom of this thatched roof digestive hell, as the operatic lights of the hotel casino reamed him from behind. About thirty eyelids tried their best to open and close for him, lumbering fat pigeons that she had poisoned hours earlier. His tie crumpled in his right hand, as he carried it smothered inside the fist he made, while his other bag, stuffed with indolent items that held no account to him anymore tonight, and a camera which he would regard later as his self entertainment, long after she got on the bus, or in a stranger's car, or wherever she decided she was headed on this sunny summer morning on the outskirts of Atlantic City.
The part without the shine, and not even the boardwalks that liked to pick themselves up when they heard themselves referred to in old Springsteen songs.....no, these weren't those songs.....their references were even dead, and their irony complete. She stumbled her way outside the hotel room, after pulling up her stockings, always holes forming in the netting around the crotch. It never failed. She pull them up so hard, just to mask it, though this morning no one was looking anymore. Probably best to not constrict herself there; she'd been through some trials over the last sixteen hours or so, so her cunt needed some time to herself, some air in which to breathe and catch up on the all day pass she had granted him, via about 12 or so gin and tonics with overly sweetened cherries floating in her belly , likewise. The only fruit she's eaten in some time. The ingredients to this short weekend at the Traymore in Atlantic City, months before it was to come down via more than 1 wrecking ball, were fastened in place by their want to be in that room, paint peeling, mice and odd creatures conducting miniature roulette extravaganza and fucking each other's little mice brains out just east of the outlet next to the bed, open and raw, with no cover.
She thought to herself, and tried to figure out the trajectory and how it had followed down the highways to this room, color of eggplant, time stands still and it bothers her that there is just...no...wind...outside. Their laughter cackled through the halls, and somewhere during the fucking and the sleep and the dreams and the further fucking, she could have sworn they had been in the halls, sliding down slight inclines past other rooms on cheap water slides burning and delighting their skins with gin, infused cherries which turned out to be his hands smacking her ass, reverberating to her teeth, and gums, which she hadn't now bit in a while, thanks to this little Atlantic City getaway. Was that part a dream or was the feeling of his hands gripped around her, like the great roots of a redwood warming the sides of her hips as he bit her on the shoulder, just barely of course, as he was only trying to climb on inside via any viaduct he could locate. His milky liquored up saliva leaving tiny pools indented in average sized teeth marks, which would only last on her for about a minute; after which they were onto a whole other era of fucking.
"Combining these drinks would lead to the apocalypse...end of the world, you know", she said, smiling, as she tugged her top a little lower, and lightly grazed the right side of her ass as she was prone to do when feeling electric and wanting to say so.
At the same time, the lights left a shadow on his face, finally, so he could open his eyes fully and not squint into hers, and take in the full view properly. "Or just a little more time in bed to be sick about it all". She felt herself wrapping her legs around the one of his nearest to her. Sunshine drummed up in her heart and she was wetter than some kind of rainstorm, you know the kind they talked about in novels of the romantic variety. She felt him there, and hoped he didn't sense her stocking's holes in the inner thighs, forming and enlarging with each forward move, from above the wooden table, brimming with cocktails.
She could feel a grand woooooooosssssshhhhhhhh, from beneath her feet, inside the cats cradle crossing lines in her mind, reading his thoughts, and encircling their bellies of drink and absolutely un-bendable circumstance. With that, they left the ground for good and dragged all their mismatched ideals and defiances with them, hand in hand and toe to toe, down flew the roller coaster and down she went, which wouldn't be the first time. Funny that the room was able to keep the two of them inside its desecrated walls, but what a way to leave a message on the ceiling that watched the whole, sordid thing. This ride could go on forever, since the old junkie woman who ran the levers had excused herself a long time ago, and didn't care who came and went, long as they didn't make a fuss.
He ripped her stockings and for the moment they enjoyed tearing the hell out of each other, with the strength of kittens bouncing their bound up yarns against the sky and hoping they didn't come back down to fall around their heads. Her sweat and makeup and growing nausea from the gins left her in the perfect state - she was naked, but felt like red sequins atop a girl's big haired head, reaching for her dreams from beneath and between her legs; where he was reaching for them too, his cock an unyielding explorer who wouldn't stop until they both had broke through to the Pacific Ocean, washed clean in the waters they worked so hard to dirty up on the way out West. They drank so much that their overused tongues ceased to feel, and they were left, struck dumb but still able to breathe, and ache, and laugh- indistinguishable but free laughter, as they stained the sheets and blamed their own souls for it, again and again and again. Sleep would come after they couldn't anymore, but then the hollywood dreams began with the roller coasters out of the windows, and the hallway velvet rope water slides, cascading their bodies back down and towards each other, to wait out the hollow of the day, under a single sheet, blanket wrapped around his head for comfort.
She got herself dressed and decided to put on only a few bits of the jewelry she had come in with - one earring was no good to anyone, so she left it abandoned on the floor near the wall and the mice, who would probably drag it inside their realm to glitter up their saturday night. She climbed the bus, her sore cunt and bare ass now part of the holocaust remains of her original stockings, as the engine gunned loud - surrounded by strangers whose faces knew her secret games and could see him written all over her face - makeup perfectly brought down to daytime wear after more than a half day of riding the dragon they both brought inside for the nights and days. Seconds away, he drank one single beer, to set himself right. No milk in sight. He wished he still had her hips in his hands, and stared off to the clouds over the city or town or highway next door, the clouds that wouldn't give rain, as the day began to grow dark again, just an aging inch at a time. His fingers twitched, and he wondered just what colour that lipstick she wore was, after all. Something like the cherries in the gin that soaked her soul and delivered her right down under him. She slept with her head against the window, and didn't feel like watching the landscape go by, the taste of him working its way to the back of her neck and blowing little breezes over her, as she passed out on the strains of highway.
Friday, April 1, 2011
Roses are Red
I don’t pen thoughts about you so much. I prefer to re-mythologize the mythical man who became more than mythical when he left this world. You are still here, and it’s not the way it should have been – you should have been in the house still, one of the many he built for you, for us. You shouldn’t be so poor, and poor in spirit. You shouldn’t have kidney failure, and dammit they re-term Everything in this fuck-all world into something nice and clean and detached from what it is, but in this one case, it’s still just plain old kidney failure. You were stubborn always and sheltered and “backward” as you put it, from being born in Manhattan, only to move to Queens with the rest of the tribe.
You had but one lover in your life, and one man who it’s been said was like a “god send” come to take you away from your rigid and stoic father’s house, from the bed you shared with your only sister until you got married at 23. He, your husband, knew more about your family history than you did. And though you called him ‘daddy’ or ‘dad’ for the remainder of his days (a mere 45 years), which always struck me as not right somehow, he was not your father figure. He was the youth that kept going until it burned up into the sky. But no, this is about you. Half of me is optimistic adventure and half of me came from a place of fear. A place you only really escaped when he was around. You told me that he was the one, in bed at night, that used to talk out the future with you – you were always afraid and truthfully, he led the ship into some uncharted territory and you probably won’t ever get back from now, but, as you told me sitting by his side on that last day when the fear left you, “we had Such Fun doing it all”. Sometimes now, you can’t see the meaning of that and those sacrifices, because you came from such a rigid place.
Your father hit you too – because you talked back. Your mother’s younger daughter, gone also, the sick and frightened one who you would protect from being hit, which you would never admit unless asked, she just didn’t look like the rest of you. That story about the Sicilian makes sense when I think of her small stature, her jet black hair. Who knows…..he was away on the ships a lot, stealing Irish whiskey and English novels and games for you all. A card carrying Communist who you still blame for your lack of vision, of hope, of imagination – that he drilled into you that he didn’t believe in anything he could not see. To which I told you that I don’t believe much in what I see. It doesn’t hold its face up to the light as it should, and most realities are scratched out story over story and you can’t even begin to get at the real one. But I refuse to stop looking for it.
I don’t mind that I give you money towards your rent every month that I cannot afford to, I don’t mind that I let you come by my big two apartment 3rd floor to visit with cats, watch cable and dust because you “like to”. Your energy when I was young was indescribable. The house clean all the time, the gardens, the errands, the late night baking sessions when you would stay up and cakes would be born in the night. I don’t think other than Catholic pizza every Friday that I saw the inside of a fast food joint for dinner or a night of “eating out” for same more than 30 times before I became an adult. I didn’t eat Chinese takeout until I was 22 or so. The old man loved to tell people that “from the morning after we were married to this morning, there has always been breakfast waiting for me. I don’t tell her to do it…that’s just you momma (meaning your momma)”.
Somehow little by little in your old age, alone with your thoughts, and memories, you tell John things about your life together that you don’t tell me – why I don’t know, and I don’t mind that you’re not warping my mind with imagery of your sex life. A personal thanks from your own personal daughter. I know it was seven years before you had kids and even so, you always told me how much “fun” you had – the tray you brought him early on, with a cigarette and a shot of whiskey or some such liquor”…..I have some of this in me, I know I do, but you lived it on such a simple trajectory and I don’t know if I pity that, or am jealous of it. Both, most likely. But, I put men on a pedestal that women have to crawl and beg to get to around me. The ones that I dealt with growing up did their best to assure me of the meanness of women, is all I can say. Some things you can’t rise above, so just play along without someone getting hurt.
I worry, is the point. I worry even though it is not in my nature to do so. I worry in ways that are engulfed in sediment acres below the earth across my eyes. Ways that tighten hips and bite lips and won’t let me settle into a thought process sometimes. Ways in which I have to stare blankly at television or the same old song like my father used to, and have to explain “I’m thinking, I’m not watching or listening”. Solving problems all the time and making new ones just for kicks. In these problems I think about you, and when you might need to go on dialysis, and how you seem ok, but yet will you deteriorate and when your negativity comes over you in spells I can’t fight off sometimes, and you say you don’t want to do it, and you want to go soon and it’s too hard up there, and everywhere, and then I hear the old man saying “I was with her thirty years, and still can’t reverse what her father did to her. Everything is negative…”
I realize this strain of blackness is in my family line, and I’m glad my genes fell mostly on the other side of that hill, in the light of oncoming waters and sunshine, in the moment and the joy and the lack of worry and a beaming smile, even when I felt my sadness out completely in every inch of me. I think about what it will feel like when you are gone, but won’t let myself get that far, since a lump always forms in my throat and a general lack just washes over me. My nemesis, my closest gossip monger, now my mother, she is my child…..
M. Lucia
You had but one lover in your life, and one man who it’s been said was like a “god send” come to take you away from your rigid and stoic father’s house, from the bed you shared with your only sister until you got married at 23. He, your husband, knew more about your family history than you did. And though you called him ‘daddy’ or ‘dad’ for the remainder of his days (a mere 45 years), which always struck me as not right somehow, he was not your father figure. He was the youth that kept going until it burned up into the sky. But no, this is about you. Half of me is optimistic adventure and half of me came from a place of fear. A place you only really escaped when he was around. You told me that he was the one, in bed at night, that used to talk out the future with you – you were always afraid and truthfully, he led the ship into some uncharted territory and you probably won’t ever get back from now, but, as you told me sitting by his side on that last day when the fear left you, “we had Such Fun doing it all”. Sometimes now, you can’t see the meaning of that and those sacrifices, because you came from such a rigid place.
Your father hit you too – because you talked back. Your mother’s younger daughter, gone also, the sick and frightened one who you would protect from being hit, which you would never admit unless asked, she just didn’t look like the rest of you. That story about the Sicilian makes sense when I think of her small stature, her jet black hair. Who knows…..he was away on the ships a lot, stealing Irish whiskey and English novels and games for you all. A card carrying Communist who you still blame for your lack of vision, of hope, of imagination – that he drilled into you that he didn’t believe in anything he could not see. To which I told you that I don’t believe much in what I see. It doesn’t hold its face up to the light as it should, and most realities are scratched out story over story and you can’t even begin to get at the real one. But I refuse to stop looking for it.
I don’t mind that I give you money towards your rent every month that I cannot afford to, I don’t mind that I let you come by my big two apartment 3rd floor to visit with cats, watch cable and dust because you “like to”. Your energy when I was young was indescribable. The house clean all the time, the gardens, the errands, the late night baking sessions when you would stay up and cakes would be born in the night. I don’t think other than Catholic pizza every Friday that I saw the inside of a fast food joint for dinner or a night of “eating out” for same more than 30 times before I became an adult. I didn’t eat Chinese takeout until I was 22 or so. The old man loved to tell people that “from the morning after we were married to this morning, there has always been breakfast waiting for me. I don’t tell her to do it…that’s just you momma (meaning your momma)”.
Somehow little by little in your old age, alone with your thoughts, and memories, you tell John things about your life together that you don’t tell me – why I don’t know, and I don’t mind that you’re not warping my mind with imagery of your sex life. A personal thanks from your own personal daughter. I know it was seven years before you had kids and even so, you always told me how much “fun” you had – the tray you brought him early on, with a cigarette and a shot of whiskey or some such liquor”…..I have some of this in me, I know I do, but you lived it on such a simple trajectory and I don’t know if I pity that, or am jealous of it. Both, most likely. But, I put men on a pedestal that women have to crawl and beg to get to around me. The ones that I dealt with growing up did their best to assure me of the meanness of women, is all I can say. Some things you can’t rise above, so just play along without someone getting hurt.
I worry, is the point. I worry even though it is not in my nature to do so. I worry in ways that are engulfed in sediment acres below the earth across my eyes. Ways that tighten hips and bite lips and won’t let me settle into a thought process sometimes. Ways in which I have to stare blankly at television or the same old song like my father used to, and have to explain “I’m thinking, I’m not watching or listening”. Solving problems all the time and making new ones just for kicks. In these problems I think about you, and when you might need to go on dialysis, and how you seem ok, but yet will you deteriorate and when your negativity comes over you in spells I can’t fight off sometimes, and you say you don’t want to do it, and you want to go soon and it’s too hard up there, and everywhere, and then I hear the old man saying “I was with her thirty years, and still can’t reverse what her father did to her. Everything is negative…”
I realize this strain of blackness is in my family line, and I’m glad my genes fell mostly on the other side of that hill, in the light of oncoming waters and sunshine, in the moment and the joy and the lack of worry and a beaming smile, even when I felt my sadness out completely in every inch of me. I think about what it will feel like when you are gone, but won’t let myself get that far, since a lump always forms in my throat and a general lack just washes over me. My nemesis, my closest gossip monger, now my mother, she is my child…..
M. Lucia
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