Hold my hand.
I don't know where I'm going. There was a splash, a slash, then a clawing against the linolium. A moan, that guttural groan, a gutter throat, he cut his own throat. His skin like dead ivory.
Then I held him.
I stepped into the tub. He steeped the water like tea with his blood. I folded myself round him like a ship sail round the wind. My legs became his legs. My lips became his lips. I pressed my chest hard against his back so that my heart could echo through his body and remind his heart how to live.
Hold my hand.
“I like the way you move!” He screamed it. He liked my geriatric gig! Where was it? Unity? By the end of the night, I had my back pressed against a 6-foot-tall-speaker while we made out furiously, shirtlessly, to Lady Gaga. He slipped his tongue down my throat so far that I nearly chocked. “Gagging on Gaga!” he yelled. I died!
Now I hold him.
The muscles in his arms feel like dumplings. I unclog the tub so that I can slowly feel the weight of his body press into mine as the water empties out. I want to support him while his blood searches out the sea.
Friday, September 18, 2009
Sunday, April 26, 2009
tides
When you weren't looking, I slipped open a glass valve that sucked in the breath between us, that pant and humidity. I collected your airborn spittle with a porous fan, passed it through a chromatographer, so that I could isolate the compounds that once conjured a flower garden to untangle from my mouth. I clipped your toe-nails, scrapped off skin from your elbow, shaved the hair off your stomach, clipped the bristle from your nose and did all that was required of me to hone that poison that so gushed from lip brim to flesh rim, for an antidote, so that I could be immune of you.
____
Paper-thin boys with scribbled-on-black-marker moustaches with pic nic tablecloth worthy plaid shirts. How? A cohort of EarthFirst!ers laced birch bark with serrated steel saws to bark back at lumberjacks, they caught in their machinery, and sliced a few jugulars. Now, there are all these plaid shirt spectres haunting society and seeking vengeance by strangling the torsos of Green-indie hipsters, belying themselves as ironic. In truth, plaid shirts are preying on society with a bloodstained thirst for vindication. Be warned.
____
Where was I? It was somewhere between the moment when I wasn't and when I was about to. In other words, when I had yet to begin but hadn't quite finished. To clarify, I was doing nothing. That's it. This is the story between when it happened, it being that aforementioned instant when it had yet to happen at all. I was drinking out of an empty water bottle. Viz, I was breathing. Something was written on the underside of my eyelids, or so I had been told, but I lacked the necessary light as to illuminate the message from inside my head. To resolve my predicament, I took a knife and cut along the seams so connecting my fleshy eye flaps to my face, and held them before me. Confused, I had somehow managed to muff the order. Did they read “I am” or was it “am I?”
___
What of whales that fall in love 10,000 leagues beneath the sea, stumbling into each other amidst the dark, and forget to breathe?
___
Look at all this space! 'Nough to fill a yawn! Or clog the ocean! Or bridge you and I!
____________________
We've become like backwash from two months ago: dilute and residual. You were my doorknob moment: fleeting and relevant. Now, I am in a different room. Here, there are white paper-thin blinds, blind walls: they are pale as the eyes of a walleyed fish. There's a wind, it feels like steel against my cheek. There is no furniture, nor ornaments, or fixtures. I am its sole adorement. Here, I do crouch, a makeshift couch, a property. Here have I sat so long that a ring of dust does mark itself along the floor, skin particles having shaken from my shoulders, my hips. I am without water.
____
Paper-thin boys with scribbled-on-black-marker moustaches with pic nic tablecloth worthy plaid shirts. How? A cohort of EarthFirst!ers laced birch bark with serrated steel saws to bark back at lumberjacks, they caught in their machinery, and sliced a few jugulars. Now, there are all these plaid shirt spectres haunting society and seeking vengeance by strangling the torsos of Green-indie hipsters, belying themselves as ironic. In truth, plaid shirts are preying on society with a bloodstained thirst for vindication. Be warned.
____
Where was I? It was somewhere between the moment when I wasn't and when I was about to. In other words, when I had yet to begin but hadn't quite finished. To clarify, I was doing nothing. That's it. This is the story between when it happened, it being that aforementioned instant when it had yet to happen at all. I was drinking out of an empty water bottle. Viz, I was breathing. Something was written on the underside of my eyelids, or so I had been told, but I lacked the necessary light as to illuminate the message from inside my head. To resolve my predicament, I took a knife and cut along the seams so connecting my fleshy eye flaps to my face, and held them before me. Confused, I had somehow managed to muff the order. Did they read “I am” or was it “am I?”
___
What of whales that fall in love 10,000 leagues beneath the sea, stumbling into each other amidst the dark, and forget to breathe?
___
Look at all this space! 'Nough to fill a yawn! Or clog the ocean! Or bridge you and I!
____________________
We've become like backwash from two months ago: dilute and residual. You were my doorknob moment: fleeting and relevant. Now, I am in a different room. Here, there are white paper-thin blinds, blind walls: they are pale as the eyes of a walleyed fish. There's a wind, it feels like steel against my cheek. There is no furniture, nor ornaments, or fixtures. I am its sole adorement. Here, I do crouch, a makeshift couch, a property. Here have I sat so long that a ring of dust does mark itself along the floor, skin particles having shaken from my shoulders, my hips. I am without water.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Friday, November 21, 2008
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Online Psychology
(Young woman in web-cam held psychology session. She is sitting in front of the computer with an earpiece; the rest of the room is dark).
Well, I must have been nine. No! It was later. Yeah, I was a teenager, he was thirty-something. Tall, slick man with a sports jacket and jackass grin -something about him that one. Well, it doesn't matter what he looked like, I guess. I think we met at one of my dad's family functions. I remember being introduced to him, he took my hand with a little too much force, took a little too long to let go and I had to look him in the eyes. I could see he wanted something from me, that he wanted to shovel out my insides, latch onto my mouth with his lips and breathe in and out, inhaling and exhaling, and watch as my hollow self inflated and deflated, using me as a third lung. As a brown-paper bag. We might have been standing by the veranda that selfsame night when it happened. A knee grab, muscles flinched, sucked-off spaghetti straps, tug at an earring. Then someone opened a door and he looked like a rat caught in the garage under all that light. I was looking at his profile, his measly scruff, crater-face from bad acne abuse, weak chin. Then I crossed my legs and he stormed off like a tin soldier.
I don't think so. Every relationship since has ended more or less in the same way. Somehow someone else manages to hold them under a hot lamp.
Well, I must have been nine. No! It was later. Yeah, I was a teenager, he was thirty-something. Tall, slick man with a sports jacket and jackass grin -something about him that one. Well, it doesn't matter what he looked like, I guess. I think we met at one of my dad's family functions. I remember being introduced to him, he took my hand with a little too much force, took a little too long to let go and I had to look him in the eyes. I could see he wanted something from me, that he wanted to shovel out my insides, latch onto my mouth with his lips and breathe in and out, inhaling and exhaling, and watch as my hollow self inflated and deflated, using me as a third lung. As a brown-paper bag. We might have been standing by the veranda that selfsame night when it happened. A knee grab, muscles flinched, sucked-off spaghetti straps, tug at an earring. Then someone opened a door and he looked like a rat caught in the garage under all that light. I was looking at his profile, his measly scruff, crater-face from bad acne abuse, weak chin. Then I crossed my legs and he stormed off like a tin soldier.
I don't think so. Every relationship since has ended more or less in the same way. Somehow someone else manages to hold them under a hot lamp.
Twist-offs
(Overweight man in worn-out t-shirt, center stage, slumping in his chair)
Sometimes I'll just be looking westward, rather west I say, sitting up from having lain on the train tracks for, for a few hours, and watch as the sun set itself across the horizon like an egg yolk oozing from a cracked shell. And I would think that maybe the only thing in this entire universe that doesn't actually ever have it's own shadow is the sun. I mean, if you think about it, when is a dimmer sun ever going to come across a brighter one so that it would cast a shadow? And onto what, pray tell, would the sun cast a shadow onto? If not empty space, of course.
Then other times I’ll look into my coffee cup and see a galaxy of foam swirling therein. And how most of what's microscopic is mirrored by what is infinitely large. Then I get sticky wet thinking of what the universe could possible be expanding into? I mean, we hear, us that is, we hear often enough of the universe expanding, still expanding, ever expanding, but the way I understand it, you must expand into something, you must! Now, if the universe is mostly empty space anyways, dappled here and there a bit by some coma looking comets, or a spitting nebula looking like a percent sign, and empty space can't expand into empty space, what could be beyond that wall of an expanding universe? I don't know! I just don't know! I just don't understand it! So then dusk would fall, and the sky would yawn into this purple hue and would toss up a moon disk as if it were a vint-cinque sous. And then two sister moons would join me along the track, swelling and growing brighter. And I would say, “Hello sister moons!” And then, and then the ground would rattle something noisy and I’d be shaken off the tracks like popcorn off an aluminium pan held over a fire, and I would just laugh there rolling amongst the hawthorns and haycocks while this great heaving machine whizzed on by telling me to “PISS OFF!!”
Sometimes I'll just be looking westward, rather west I say, sitting up from having lain on the train tracks for, for a few hours, and watch as the sun set itself across the horizon like an egg yolk oozing from a cracked shell. And I would think that maybe the only thing in this entire universe that doesn't actually ever have it's own shadow is the sun. I mean, if you think about it, when is a dimmer sun ever going to come across a brighter one so that it would cast a shadow? And onto what, pray tell, would the sun cast a shadow onto? If not empty space, of course.
Then other times I’ll look into my coffee cup and see a galaxy of foam swirling therein. And how most of what's microscopic is mirrored by what is infinitely large. Then I get sticky wet thinking of what the universe could possible be expanding into? I mean, we hear, us that is, we hear often enough of the universe expanding, still expanding, ever expanding, but the way I understand it, you must expand into something, you must! Now, if the universe is mostly empty space anyways, dappled here and there a bit by some coma looking comets, or a spitting nebula looking like a percent sign, and empty space can't expand into empty space, what could be beyond that wall of an expanding universe? I don't know! I just don't know! I just don't understand it! So then dusk would fall, and the sky would yawn into this purple hue and would toss up a moon disk as if it were a vint-cinque sous. And then two sister moons would join me along the track, swelling and growing brighter. And I would say, “Hello sister moons!” And then, and then the ground would rattle something noisy and I’d be shaken off the tracks like popcorn off an aluminium pan held over a fire, and I would just laugh there rolling amongst the hawthorns and haycocks while this great heaving machine whizzed on by telling me to “PISS OFF!!”
Sunday Brunch
(Ostentatious man sitting at the table, outside on the veranda, of a chique restaurant. White tabletops, he’s wearing matching cream blazer with a lime green blouse underneath it. It’s a sunny day with mild traffic, and he’s on his cell phone)
Well, he was gayer than Clay Aiken on Tyra, unfortunate highlights, talked an awful lot about his mother.
I couldn't say, maybe it was something about the way he walked. His left elbow kind of jutted out so that the entire arm swayed with him so he looked like a post-cornea victim.
Are you sure it’s the right?
Anyways, it was distracting. Luckily, he's one of the few bearded men I know who can pull off v-neck; usually the facial fuzz casts this shadow just above the neck line so that they look like Arabian bobble-heads.
I know, materials weak today.
Well, I was thinking somewhere along the canal.
There’s this new place, relax! A friend of mine works there. Well, more like a third cousin. And what I mean is that I hope he's a third cousin. Did I tell you what happened a few weeks ago at the Ivy? Well, you are not going to believe this. I was just sitting by the bar, you know, tilting my head ever so gently to the right so the light overhead would fall on the better side of my face. It lures them in like park lamps do shadflies.
Have you ever wondered why bugs aren't drawn to firelight? I mean, you light a candle and it's not like a swarm of mosquitoes comes issuing past and suddenly there's this airborne fireball buzzing around.
Good for you! It's not every day you see a moth dive into a fireplace. What I was saying though is that I was tilting my head when suddenly this kid, believe it, this kid comes prancing and plots himself on the barstool right beside me.
I don't know, scruffy, mid-twenties; for the most part I was impressed that he could somehow pull off Sean Penn hair. Well, he turns to me and says-oh and he was chewing gum, the arrogant twat was chewing gum like an absolute cow- and he says, now hear this out: “You're a walking gay paradigm.” Gay paradigm! How does he get off calling me a gay paradigm!? Now, before I went and got my tail feathers all in a twist I turned to him and said, calmly now: “What do you mean?” To which he repeated: “Gay paradigm.”
Now, he seemed to me to be one of those artistic, liberated fellows- his jeans were patched up and his shoelaces untied. And I wasn’t in much of a mood to tolerate, rather to interpret what it was he meant by “Gay paradigm,” so I slammed my drink on the counter and told him off, I mean I really told him off:
“Who do you think you are?” I said, “Who do you think you are you insufferable chump, getting off on calling me a gay paradigm?”
Now, I didn't want to copout like some Creatine-pumping bros with a few “Youdonknowme's” or any “I'lltellyouwhayouare's,” so instead I looked him dead in the eyes, and I said, with a deep breath:
“You, you, youuuuuu”
And then I breathed out, and then I breathed in again and said:
“I, I, IIIIIIIIIII”
And then one more breath and with that:
“Well, I’ll let you know something, my gay paradigm certainly doesn’t include any washed-up, frowsy, freeloading, kid as some mid-90’s backwash. I work over 60 hours each week. I come home each night to a hungry, slobbering Doberman who knows more about my needs and wants than anyone else I know, or more than you for that matter. I am liberated, and competent. I might come off to you as some well-to-do dandy but hell if I’m going to be pigeonholed as any one thing or lifestyle in particular. It must be easy enough for you to slot any well-dressed pomp like myself as a “Gay paradigm,” which only seemingly makes sense, I though you should know. I'd rather not be reduced to a walking simplification.” And I hurled myself out of there.
And...his name is Ralph, he works for some publishing company and we’re supposed to go to the Y this weekend for date #3.
Well, he was gayer than Clay Aiken on Tyra, unfortunate highlights, talked an awful lot about his mother.
I couldn't say, maybe it was something about the way he walked. His left elbow kind of jutted out so that the entire arm swayed with him so he looked like a post-cornea victim.
Are you sure it’s the right?
Anyways, it was distracting. Luckily, he's one of the few bearded men I know who can pull off v-neck; usually the facial fuzz casts this shadow just above the neck line so that they look like Arabian bobble-heads.
I know, materials weak today.
Well, I was thinking somewhere along the canal.
There’s this new place, relax! A friend of mine works there. Well, more like a third cousin. And what I mean is that I hope he's a third cousin. Did I tell you what happened a few weeks ago at the Ivy? Well, you are not going to believe this. I was just sitting by the bar, you know, tilting my head ever so gently to the right so the light overhead would fall on the better side of my face. It lures them in like park lamps do shadflies.
Have you ever wondered why bugs aren't drawn to firelight? I mean, you light a candle and it's not like a swarm of mosquitoes comes issuing past and suddenly there's this airborne fireball buzzing around.
Good for you! It's not every day you see a moth dive into a fireplace. What I was saying though is that I was tilting my head when suddenly this kid, believe it, this kid comes prancing and plots himself on the barstool right beside me.
I don't know, scruffy, mid-twenties; for the most part I was impressed that he could somehow pull off Sean Penn hair. Well, he turns to me and says-oh and he was chewing gum, the arrogant twat was chewing gum like an absolute cow- and he says, now hear this out: “You're a walking gay paradigm.” Gay paradigm! How does he get off calling me a gay paradigm!? Now, before I went and got my tail feathers all in a twist I turned to him and said, calmly now: “What do you mean?” To which he repeated: “Gay paradigm.”
Now, he seemed to me to be one of those artistic, liberated fellows- his jeans were patched up and his shoelaces untied. And I wasn’t in much of a mood to tolerate, rather to interpret what it was he meant by “Gay paradigm,” so I slammed my drink on the counter and told him off, I mean I really told him off:
“Who do you think you are?” I said, “Who do you think you are you insufferable chump, getting off on calling me a gay paradigm?”
Now, I didn't want to copout like some Creatine-pumping bros with a few “Youdonknowme's” or any “I'lltellyouwhayouare's,” so instead I looked him dead in the eyes, and I said, with a deep breath:
“You, you, youuuuuu”
And then I breathed out, and then I breathed in again and said:
“I, I, IIIIIIIIIII”
And then one more breath and with that:
“Well, I’ll let you know something, my gay paradigm certainly doesn’t include any washed-up, frowsy, freeloading, kid as some mid-90’s backwash. I work over 60 hours each week. I come home each night to a hungry, slobbering Doberman who knows more about my needs and wants than anyone else I know, or more than you for that matter. I am liberated, and competent. I might come off to you as some well-to-do dandy but hell if I’m going to be pigeonholed as any one thing or lifestyle in particular. It must be easy enough for you to slot any well-dressed pomp like myself as a “Gay paradigm,” which only seemingly makes sense, I though you should know. I'd rather not be reduced to a walking simplification.” And I hurled myself out of there.
And...his name is Ralph, he works for some publishing company and we’re supposed to go to the Y this weekend for date #3.
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