what is this

untitled by helen korpak


what?___what is this?
i'm thankful when no one answers ,
when no one comes.

i wake at 5 it's still dark. i think it's raining but soon understand the neighbour's left his garden fountain on through the night.
a few hours later i wake again , find myself half on the couch in grey socks and black midway briefs , a grey tshirt and a
long cardigan still draped around me.
i leave a note but don't leave. i fold the blanket i borrowed and sit back on the couch staring at myself in the television. ___listen to the fountain.


___*___*___*

sometimes, when Ashtree drives past Santa Monica and Pontius she sends me photos of the dusty starbucks on the corner.
___there's a hidden world on that corner it's important i don't forget , she sees to it i don't.
__you need your friends to remind you of magic and shooting stars and first kisses.

when i get to the corner i'm a little sweaty and the roads are so busy and noisy i step inside without considering it sentimentally ;
so it hits me hard.
suddenly.

i actually get nervous.___ start staring around wildly swimming across the channel between us
my hand shakes a little but i order easily enough.
___sit outside and think about the days i would arrive here at 4am and open the doors and turn on the lights. _with Carla. _she had a little son she did the morning shift and still had time to take care of him throughout the day. she went to community college in her spare time. she joked with me before the sun came up , i admired her immeasurably as that breed of woman that amazes you with its strength and joy and the immensity of its power. ___(in broken man-glish i once attempted to tell her.


___*___*___*

by 5pm i've had a moderate size panic attack regarding just about every thing that's worth having a panic attack about.

employment. relationship. family. finances. friends. health. prestige. impending galactic obliteration. ___failure.


___*___*___*

i watch an education and resolve to devote my life to chamber music concerts and framed 19th century maps and leather interiored sports cars and young, witty girls with delicious shoulders i must kiss incessantly as they lean into me trying to find my lips.


it's one hundred thousand degrees in the valley. it's always dusty so your sweat is sticky. hordes of poor men and women walk around for no apparent reason or stand on corners trying to sell bags of toilet paper (which tumble out of the battered van that's positioned next to the picnic chair the stone saleswoman sits on)


i resolve to lie on wet grass till my clothes are ruined and smuggle home my GF some sunflowers in my suitcase and have slow sex on couches listening to Louis Armstrong and wear pocket-squares and real leather shows like a grown up.


___*___*___*

i like listening to glass vaults tonight.
it sounds like wind not music.
even music is too much for tonight.
wind is right.
some rain wouldn't go astray.

in 2 months i'll be in europe.
it will snow , i will put out my tongue for it to fall on and each will be a delicious kiss i deserve.

i will slow dance on cobble-stoned streets with 40 year old women who have escaped their lives humming the tune into their ear and inhaling the scent of their hair and neck and then read poetry with 13 year old boys who embody it while sprawled on park benches wearing beanies and gloves and wearing tailored two-button Hugo Boss suits (which i must remember to pick up tomorrow) and pocket-squares will listen to Mahler in Berlin and Mozart in Prague and will eat barbecued meat on the side of the road with gypsies in Bucharest.

i will slow

dance

.

my roomates will hate me because my couch will be occupied with a stream of friends who stop by for days and weeks, and when it's too full we'll shower together and huddle in beds and i promise to kiss - man or woman - your forehead goodnight , and if woman: your ankles and knees and belly and clavicles before leaving you alone to retire to my room to read Tolstoy and practice french and masturbate until i can fall asleep.


___*___*___*

leave me my fantasies , today was a bastard of a day.

___