some stories for Al, a notapoem

in the early hours, i sit on a milk-crate on my porch
and watch the strange clouds ,
eating cereal and enjoying the hope in my veins


___*___*___*

i am a different man when i wear a beard.
quieter usually, more alone,
but always surer of myself ;
and my hands better touch women nearby.


___*___*___*

it changes around me. shapes, colours, moods.
one day, this dust-covered-hell-pit will be my home
and i will love it because it will be every single part of me
skinned and put on display.


___*___*___*

'i'm worried, i should tell you, i'm concerned'
'every woman i have been alone with for more than an hour
i have slept with this month.'


___*___*___*

so i took the pills.

was lost and got loster

___(was fallen and fell


___*___*___*

late-afternoon was so handsome. the sky violet,
a perfect blanket to wear.
perched with legs on either side of a ladder i paint a window,
too slowly and too deliberately,
and stop.
and start to cry to myself.
for the second time in a decade ,
only this one inexplicable.
without mourn or happiness.

when he asks me why later i have found the answer:
it was the hurt of my face up against that bottom rock

(and fifteen minutes later cried again).


___*___*___*

and then it finished.
get me out of here mom i need to not be here. 

she was shocked. shiny and perfect and glowing with
labour and fresh and rosy as dawn, to leave now?

far.
farther.


___*___*___*

q remember to shave your beard and clean the paint out from under your fingernails before you start work tomorrow. 


___*___*___*

so much silence ,
at 1am i painted with one lamp
illuminating the room.
my knees quivered.
i have not known such a complete death before.


___*___*___*

q, you haven't spoken to anyone in months. you have to come. you must. you can't keep refusing to see people. you're coming. 


___*___*___*

with the heavy rains puddles have formed along the driveway.
the weeds that broke my back spring up,
perky and happy and mistaken as youth.

so now i know, that was all a waste of time.


___*___*___*

was fallen and fell ,

and stayed down

(oh don't worry about the house, it's a hundred years old it's tougher than you or i)

and it ate me as an apple


___*___*___*

i have not worn glasses in months
i sit as the bus moves on and am unsure how to hold my briefcase
i hear wind through my bones

tuesday, 22 Jan 2013

Sometimes Fusun yawned so beautifully that I would think that she had forgotten the entire world and that she was drawing from the depths of her soul a more peaceful life, as one might draw cold water from a well on a hot summer day.

____from the Museum of Innocence 







Viktoria by Lina Scheynius


there's no reason to be early, but that's what i am. i make pleasant small-talk with the receptionist as i wait my turn. , when i come-back out it's time to pay. it's expensive being crazy i say with a smile. but she doesn't smile. mine recedes too, as an unrequited outstretched hand.


___*___*___*

it's a small package in brown-paper wrapping. is it a box of chocolates? i ask playfully.
- yes, we knew how much you'd appreciate that.
- yay.
___right there, sitting at the dinner table, i open the packaging:


_________FOUR

______  QUARTETS

_______T. S. ELIOT


most beautiful design imaginable. simple, minimal. with a plastic protective cover. it's... so. beautiful. i say as i flip through it, remembering various passages and feeling pleased to see them still there. ___

- you guys really shouldn't have - is this what you got at the bookstore last week? [he had sent me photographs of a big second-hand bookstore he'd visited last week]
- oh, i don't think we'd find that particular book in that bookstore. ___in fact, i can tell you, it can't be found in any bookstore in Australia.

i stop, abruptly. it's a decisive motion, but i fumble it a bit because i'm holding it like each page is made of lace and gossamer - turn to the first page.



_________copyright 1943



that's all.

- is this... is this , what i think it is?
- c'mon, it's your thirtieth [a matter that still hadn't been spoken aloud]
- yes. but. __this, this, is it...
- ___yes q. it is.

then there is silence as i look at it again. with new eyes. it's startling. i'm startled - i felt a chill pass through me , this book really is made of lace.

___do you understand what this means? i ask. no one answers, i guess they know i'm about to tell them what it means: it means this book, this bundle of papers is almost as old as these poems - at least - it's as old as the first times that people like us ever had a chance to know them... this book is a revelation. the first time something happened - something big and important and... a revelation. a new world happened when this book came out and the shopkeeper in a store somewhere first flipped through it in... [checking the first page again] 1943. my voice trembles as i speak. i'm holding a newborn - something that's a newborn even when it's 70, it's a fossil of a newborn. ___they nod but i'm not sure they find it as momentous as i do. we're glad you like it q. happy birthday.


___*___*___*

- how are you feeling?
- terrible.
- how are you passing your days?
- i take lots of pills. i used to put on my headphones and work [on the house] through the day. then i'd get dinner with a friend. and frequently have sex with them.
- and now?
- i take lots of pills. i work on the house. i try and be alone. i think i'm addicted to it.
- does it make you happy?
- no. but i crave it.
[sigh]


___*___*___*

dear q:
keep trying bro.
(and spend some time with your book)
sincerely, q.


___*___*___*

it's... so. beautiful. i say as i flip through it, remembering various passages and feeling pleased to see them still there [

______Dawn points, and another day
Prepares for heat and silence. Out at sea the dawn wind
Wrinkles and slides. I am here
Or there, or elsewhere. In my beginning.

(from East Coker by TS Eliot)]

blah blahs

i've understood now that i can never have back
all those things i've lost.
___except i'm still too young to know what i've lost ,


___*___*___*

all i think about nowadays is happiness, what it is,
where it comes from ;
why i'm impotent, barely able to sustain it for a few minutes,
before limp and flaccid i recede back into shame
___for never knowing where it is,
and my people must wonder why i can never know where i've
misplaced it this time,

like the irresponsible adult who's always losing his keys.


___*___*___*

there is so much i want(ed) to write about last week.

i went home.
i turned a corner and turned thirty.
i saw an ex, just for fun; and spent the afternoon looking through
her clothing and seeing her naked body as i remember it from
11 years ago, when we would race all over town between her parents' home, my parents' homes, whose-ever-home was empty for long enogh.

i saw friends. and their wives and their babies and their lives unfolding.
i haven't yet understood how i fit in with that. but i managed it well enough, for once.

i watch girls and archer, things they hadn't heard of. they give each other knowing glances as they make references to the coffee-cups and junk mail of life, details they know from daily blahblah. they ask me why i look so tired i say i went to the beach house concert last night. (they haven't heard of it, they'll look it up). i want to say, then, after the concert we came back to my house so i could show her the fort i've built with all my furniture in the middle of the room. and then we spent 5 hours having amazing sex, and how after the fourth hour even i thought we might be done. but she asked for a glass of water, and i went to get it, but instead of handing it to her, i poured it on her naked body, heard her say wha tha before i grabbed her and was lost for another hour.

that's what i want to tell them about. but they're talking about when babies should start speaking. so i stare at the music videos playing in the background on the tv. i love this tune he says, as he goes to turn it up, followed by: but i never heard it on the radio, i don't know what it is. I say: it's A$AP.
- what?
- A$AP Rocky, it's the new A$AP LP.
- i've never heard of... that
- it's good. as demonstrated to us by this awesome tune. [sensing things getting a bit awkward, i add: ] and the Kendrick Lamar album is great too if you're-
- oh that's fantastic!
- [saved]

sometimes i feel like the greatest disappointment my hometown ever spawned. other times simply a straggler.

in any case: i'm far now. too far.


___*___*___*

i had a panic attack. i can't be here for two more years. i have to be, but i can't be. i'm very scared.


___*___*___*

six years ago i met a girl. we spent about two months together. i spent about two years after that trying to get over it. there's more to it, but it's a familiar enough story. ___i'm reading the museum of innocence, which in many aspects has an uncanny resemblance (in its details) to my story. it is horror to read. but compelling. especially because Kemel Bey and i have gone in different directions. and our museums are very different places. but still. i think orhan pamuk has spied on me.

thoughts (fragments)

la notte by marta bevacqua


THINGS I AM THINKING (OF)/(ABOUT)/(AROUND)

white tiles are crisp. like snow.

i am nearly 30 i dream of escape and hate myself for not doing it enough.

will i ever impregnate someone and have to sit in a crisp white room waiting for her abortion?

what are the names of the future people i will meet who i will love and who might will could (hopefully) make me feel something

why don't you care anymore q? why?

if i will live my fantasy of spending my birthday with a bottle of rum lying on the floor of my house staring at the ceiling imagining it is a sky that i can reach out and touch (escape, escape, escape)

there is a carpenter helping me with a few jobs on the house. this bothers me. i don't like needing help on my house. i see it as an extension of myself, and therefore, it should only be me who does anything to it, with it, for it. i feel emasculated. inadequate. needy. i hate these feelings.

am i still an interesting person?

maybe mom's right. maybe i need a girlfriend. maybe my therapist is right. maybe i just need friends , or at least to permit people to befriend me.
___ i think i want a pseudo-skanky girlfriend this time. someone who gives lapdances and drinks too much and gets angry and starts c-bombing everyone. who calls me crying at 3am because she can't find her leather bracelet. who matches her tutu with docs. who uses me and leaves immediately after f&cking me. ___(maybe i think it'll justify me , who i am, what i do... to be objectified for once and not objectifying.

how come i never tire of listening to Hospice?

i can explain exactly how i feel right now, i feel very much like this:

jono winnel

and so it was.

12 days ago i climbed a mountain. i didn't really care about the mountain at all. i just wanted a good workout. ( object. if. ying. )

are you my friend?

i really want to tear out my kitchen. don't tear out your kitchen q. i really want to. don't.

don't talk to her. don't text her, don't call her don't talk to her. walk away from her on the dancefloor, don't stare at her don't smile don't scowl just don't don't. (all i want to do is slam her against the wall and hold her shoulders and kiss her hard. (like last time) you know how that all ends q.

maybe i just need to stop believing (hoping?) there's more. (of what i don't know - but just... more).

i can't shake Shame off me. i mean it, i didn't breathe for the whole thing, i've never seen anything quite like it. and when i don't want to think about i can still hear carey mulligan singing new york new york (i'm not going to link it because i don't want to ruin how powerful a scene it is in the movie. in its context. where it belongs. in its unhappy home amongst 120 other minutes of tension).

"do you think i should be an alcoholic?"
"do you want to be?"
"well, we're not doing the pills anymore... so..."
"so you want to drink instead?"
"just considering it."
"what about just talking?"
"i don't want to be reliant on speaking to you."
"why not?"
"... makes me feel inadequate."
"but being an alcoholic is okay?"
"fine. how about sex? i have a friend who's a sex addict."
"you think that will work?"
"not really."
"you sound disappointed."
"i am."
"that being a sex addict won't make you feel better?"
"no. in myself."
"what?"
"even my unhealthy coping mechanisms are inadequate."
"something is up with you today."
"amen."

what day is it?

screw this.

roots / fear / longing

untitled by amber marie chavez

at the outset, i want to say this thing: towards the end of every year i do a recap. often this involves lists. i was trying to find my tune/album/music of the year, that is, number one on my list. there's an obvious winner, but it isn't what i thought it would be. in fact, it's not even from 2012 (i understand it was composed in 2001). but it means everything to me and i found it this year. maybe that's not true. whatever, this is its year. almost every emotion i can muster feels like this. it's what i think heaven sounds like. it's what despair sounds like. (everything to me). it's patient music, so... be patient. if that is difficult for you, watch the below version, someone's set the music to scenes from an (apparently brilliant) hungarian film: arvo part's salva regina and... (everything).


___*___*___*
Introit
there is a war here. a devastating one. there's soil everywhere - it's been upturned and now shows its dark(est) underbelly. lush. cool. everything moves because the worms and bugs are stirred. a war is being waged. the roots of wretched bamboo hold my home's foundation in their claw. meters of upturned roots lay on their sides like ever-extending vertebra. there's a central nervous system under my house. around my house. extending everywhere.

Scene 1
- this is a war?
- aye m'lord, a war indeed.
- a war with adversaries and victors and those left devastated?
- the same.
- and the magnitude of this war?
- depends m'lord -
- are they old adversaries?
- both they are, and are not -
- h-
- only recently acquainted this here man and this here foe, and perhaps only a moderate plot of soil, but the feud is ancient. the oldest. that of man versus nature.
- this is no war son!
- how not?
- wars have victors. wars have defined boundaries. wars are commenced and played and concluded, each to cry their losses, this is no war. this feud, to mirror thy words, is perpetual. man's hopeless attachment to hope met by the mechanism of nature. nature's patient, perpetual, unmitigated rules. always always good son. no winners here. no losers. this is no war, this is, simply: life. it is what there is.


___*___*___*

just get someone to do it...

but i cannot. i cannot. this is my earth you see. my land. these roots, these hold my home in their gasp. it cannot be delegated. cannot be entrusted. it is how love is shown (this above all:

you meet, you kiss. that's love not. love is in the caring : in the protecting - in whatever way it is you can donate ( and when she sleeps at night, and i am her blanket, then she is loved, not before)

on the ground with black soil in my face. crawling up my arms. under my fingernails. gloved hands pulling and shaking. inches coming free. these are the first gazes of a mother and child.

)

this house will soon by home. you see, my hands are cut. i have bled now into the ground. the next weed to sprout will be me. i will know it. it will know me. we will be forged. this is love (i want your blood in me, i want mine in you. i want your petals, your flutters, the length of your hair matches my arm-span perfectly, line my arteries with it.___ i am yours)


q, it's dangerous!

i am fascinated by this proposition. beware your garden, it has spiders. it has snakes. beware the sun it has cancer on its lips. beware walking on your roof, gravity is relentless -

what's is more fundamental than soil and plants and sun? i do not understand it - for the entire course of history, men and women have laboured under the sun. have toiled in the fields. have trail-blazed through forests. have submitted themselves to the so-much-bigger-than-our selves.

i will tend to my own garden. i will stand on my own roof, and clear my own gutters. and why? :

(she hands me my breakfast, a skinny latte and a pain au chocolate
- do you like my healthy breakfast?
- [smirk]
- you only die once. ___)


___*___*___*

i think i want to write something big-ger. a short story or something. about roots. and homes. and people. or whatever it is that ties us. networks and pivots and things. i'm not sure. i don't have a story (i never have a story). all the words in the world and not a story to tell.

(and the funny writing before? i'm kinda reviewing some shakespeare. so. i was amusing myself.)


___*___*___*

my hand has been shaking all day. i'm terrified. i have soo many things to say. but i have not written in too long. i want to pace myself. this is me stretching. i'm trying to stretch. to prepare. we're on the verge of something, i feel it _(i feel something!)_ but i don't know what. there's a fear, and a longing. and i know neither of them - what it is i crave, and what it is i'm scared of. i don't know how they're intertwined. all i know is... i have two months off. at least for now, it's just me. alone at last. it's quiet and sunny and alone. and the garden is large. and every wall needs to be painted. and things need to be sanded. and mended. and i want to be lost here. adrift.

adrift. 



adrift.


while i think it through.

and when i wake up from this meditative spell, i want to never remember who i was.

portrait of tuesday morning

who's year is this?,
did i borrow this from you, it's on me now.
___do you mind then?

seems familiar enough now that i try and decide
what shape box to put it back into.

___like (always ) its edges are tattered now.
___feels normal to touch , like your girlfriend's skin.
______(in january it was so electric!)

it drips along the sides some year. too much for one box.
needs to be hacked down.
some years a little sandpaper does the trick.

it's too neat now. sits right in.
maybe even slides around a little.

such small twelve months
(no one, not even the rain has such small hands -
indeed no one does, your hands are huge.
they cast a shadow from monday now till monday next.
every minute under your shadow:

'two thousand and twelve'

sits there like gravity or beautiful women who know what they are:
simple facts of reality.
unavoidable, inescapable facts.
brutal, really.

'two thousand and twelve'

just like that.
unrepentant.
unapologetic.

as december has its arms disassembled three things come to mind:
bow ties that i learned to tie,
a purple tin shed that i scribbled my name on the outside of,
and slept one-eye-open on the inside of:
and magic little pills i (mostly) ignored the calls of.
___(Odysseus with wax in his ears -
___ sing then, sing if you will.
)

on this tuesday: two thousand and twelve long decembers.

and counting. 

PORTRAIT OF TUESDAY MORNING

two eyes i wish i'd lost are all i've got
blinking at a white screen.

i can't tell if i'm underwater or not ,
this worries me i choose not to inhale.

soon another year will be done.
i'll sit at a table somewhere and count
the hairs sperm and sunday afternoons i've lost,

compare them to the gains ,
and decide my worth.

but for now
the same two eyes,
the same white screen.

the same named days of the week.

next year i'll rename them: Marcy, Constantinople, Wednesbury,
Catharsis, Felicity, Scoundrel and Lucy.

then i'll pretend every moment of my life were
a pearled string of Lucy afternoons
i'd swim in.


*

remind me to delete this post later.