love-song.

____all our secrets melt like ice

_______gravity, Bic Runga







untitled, tamara lichtenstein



in the other room there's talking and eating, noise.
here: dark but for one lamp. cold hands. green pens and quiet, concentrated reading.
distilled humanity: just single tasks.
breathing. looking right to left. turn a page. (left to right. breathe. turn page.

for once it feels real. objects stand erect in their place. last night's RedBull bottle where i left it.

___i cannot understand why people could be mad. and i'm shouted at, and i stare back with a confused face and say but what advantage is there, to you, in shouting at me? and i'm shouted at some more. and i keep looking... grasping inside my head, thinking what it is about table-cloths or the smell of vinegar or lunch-parties that could possibly be worth this. (and i'm shouted at some more).

but love is a 5mg tablet. a woman's naked body. a mouth reeking of rum, sticky around the lips. it is needle-points and smokey rooms. tolerance is a misplaced bottle away. and i want to feel concerned about this...

but there is a yellow notepad. soo beautiful. thin slices of sun. and the wordless roads i travel down, with my car, or my beat-shoes, or my confused frown... are ok with me. walls that let me lean, and seats that let me sit. and special friends who don't mind me soo much.

___but what is this sound?, how strange. how loud. how it makes everything red, fists clenched. i would do anything to make it stop.

and there's talk, in the other room. and guests come and smile. and angry faces smile back. and no one notices table-cloths. the smell of vinegar. (i'm convinsed love is confined to my chest. i feel it there soo strongly. it is tight a little and my hungs are too huge to fit. even with Sun 5:35PM. it is ok, it is ok, my love. even with myself. and my confused face.

no one notices table-cloths. the anger still sticking to the walls. fidgety hands. in another room no one notices me. how i'm eating silence. swimming in a puddle of shadows that don't intimidate me. i love the name of today. it's ok my love. it's ok. (remember that sound, to be just two people, and it sounds loud when you are together, every surface reverbeating, when i woke up in the morning i fumbled for my phone to call her, everything beautiful and loud like air rushing past, life moving a gajillion miles an hour- The sirens all fill this room till we both have to shout, like that. i don't even miss it, i just... enjoy the memory of it. feel it for this empty bottle of RedBull. and a pen. and a yellow-notepad. and Sun 5:40PM. these are my brothers. who take recourse in contented quiet. where things do not shout. we speak the language of trees. there is no anger, that is not something we know. something we need. my love, what advantage to it?

but it can't be escaped can it? how this is life, or has become life, i'll never understand. how it came to this. how anyeverything led to now. i never will. how patience comes in 5mg serves. in 10 second puffs of smoke. in Gucci handbags. another cup of coffee, i already see her hand trembling. she says she's cutting back, but still needs it. i nod. yesyes. no, i understand. if anyone understands it's me.

i'm sure this is me. i'm sure of it. i'm sure right now, in this quiet room, alone, away, a satellite in orbit, floating, this is soo much more me. happy with my shadow and my quiet and my cold hands. nothing more is needed. dear life, you have given me everything. i could not ask for more. (and outside my skin, away from me, around me, everyonething is angry and hurt and ravaged and seething and sharpening their teeth to bite into each others' necks.

i am soo in love i don't even miss it. my empty bed, i am enough even for her. my flaccid clothes, that limp on my skin, enough enough. my car that makes strange noises. my clear, clinical mind. this bottle of RedBull- it is all enough.

but words are redundant. etiologies- who cares. who cares how, we're all stuck here. (in our lonely sunday afternoons. in our arguments. in our pills and our magazines. in our singleness and our marriages. with our names and our addresses. our empty back accounts.

yell all you want.
___(it is ok my love, no-one will notice the table-cloth, and even so, what advantage is there in making your face look like that?

if only someone could understand that...
___we'd all be ok together.