Rent

"I'm writing a novel," I said. "I haven't time to change out of this and into that."

Parts

And then
just as quickly as it began
it is over
You are left in the ebb
with the dregs
clinging to your calves
and the smell
of letdown
on your lips

It'll be a few days
before you can look at yourself
in the mirror
It's never pretty
when the truth looks back

This Cloud

Comedown from cruising altitude is tricky, it's a shaky landing at a destination for which you did not long. Consider prime flying conditions to try to get back in the air as soon as possible. Like the day after a night with a new lover, today I remembered little moments and smiled like an idiot in the street. I still feel invincible.

If you want to catch up, you'd better start running. 

I'm riding this rocket to the stars. 

Home

(but when it comes
and oh, how it comes, 
it rolls over you like a hurricane
it ignites every corner of your soul, 
it erases every sad song from your heart,
it turns every cell in your being to words, 
until you breathe stories 
until you rage in ink
until you are powerless against it
and no distraction, no hunger, no fear 
can keep you from it. 
You race to keep up 
with the words falling out of your 
fingertips. 

I laughed in the night and thought
nothing else matters,
and nothing ever will)

Follow You Down

You spend an evening mixing everything in the liquor cabinet -- in our youth we called it witch's brew, now you pray for a potion. Vermouth makes its way to the split ends of your hair and it reminds you of your grandmother, the little glasses she'd serve it in, the way her laugh would warble and climb ever upwards. (I miss her terribly.)

The evening is cool, quiet, there's a lightness in the air that makes it perfect for writing. Instead I spend hours staring out at the street corner thinking of your fingertips against my skin and doodling senseless drivel with drying ink. At the end of the day, what does it matter, so long as letters tumbled around the room, so long as the world seemed less drab, more promising. Anaïs Nin whispers mad secrets about the stars under your eyelids, and you think there must be something to this, after all.

If the Word isn't meant to be my salvation,
why does it call me so?

Peaks

It's all chance, isn't it. Missing a red light, taking another way home, last-minute decisions and somehow the Universe guides you to answer just the tiniest wish you made quietly in the night. When the gift lands in your lap you are caught unawares and scramble to make the most of it. Feel the flush on your face and wonder if the mess that is your appearance can cover for it. She says to enjoy the daydreams, but I can only manage to agonize over reality instead.

We sat at the bar, same old bar with sawdust on the floor, same old bartender with her sweet talk and same old drunk mess by the end of the evening, the moment is not lost on you. Perhaps I said too much but my secrets are safe, the bar will hold them. I woke up in a tumble dryer but the night was worth its dues.

Not everything has to be heart-wrenching, not everything has to be the end to all ends. We sat on a rooftop in Gramercy and I thought the city had never been more beautiful, but of course it always was, as it always will be. That, too, is a gift.

But you are ready for it.

That the Cuffs Are Off

Tompkins Square Park, Wednesday night, New York spring has been so good to us this year, all mild breezes and soft sunshine like never before. My typewriter creaks today when I touch it, nothing comes out right and all I can think is if I could only feel the weight of a man's body on mine, maybe this fever would go away. 

I dreamed about you last night, your browned skin and sad Kerouac eyes but I woke with a start, it never works out the way we'd plan. My skin is browner now, too, my limbs are older but they are mine, I recognize the face in the mirror and it's been ages since I saw her last. I wish I could tell you that. 

I wish I could tell you what it's like to be free.  

Overture

A night at the typewriter, walking miles around the hot tin roof and landing face first in trite verbiage about feelings you don't yet know how to have. You sit in a room of voices and hear yours trip on itself, feel your skin boil and your insides turn themselves upside down. Days you wait, weeks, months, and when the moment comes you are at a complete loss for how to catch it; it slips through your fingers and later, in bed in the dark, you know there's no one else to blame. Swan Lake beats through your ear drums in ridicule, all deceit and eternal love transcendental. Piles of poetry build up around you and it says nothing of any use. You wish it would tell you what the hell to do.

You wish you knew how to hear the answer, if it came.

Dies Irae

The remains of alcohol linger in your system, they whisper vile accusations and heckle you before you even open your eyes. A sweet dream with that kind voice disappears in an instant under their thumb; they laugh at your hopeful eyes. Another raincloud rolls in, again you unpack the warm coats from their winter storage, what's the use? Brave the gloom to look his children in the eye and forget yourself for a while, it never fails, they laugh their way straight into your sunniest spots and sit there without shame, until you tumble back down your rabbit hole and let your vision go blurry.

this is me, a voice inside you repeats, and you know she is right. The mechanical claws in your gut keep churning, they play a requiem at your throat and make it harder, if not to breathe, then to want to. I didn't mean to die, I just wanted to see what the blood would look like no longer restrained by this skin. I only wanted to know what it was like to be free.

Perhaps we are not meant to all walk the same path. Some may create life, others art. As long as you leave something behind when you go, you may be excused.

As I Say

You must be wondering why I've brought you here.

Sunny days come and go, it gets cold again and everyone is confused but you revel in goose bumps because you know so well the swimming heat on your brow. A voice from ages ago returns to his seat  at the bar, no time has passed, you relish in the comfort. When everything else shivers around you, how reassuring that smooth wood and scent of beer, eyes that have seen you for years. Spend days in social dances but Sunday night always arrives eventually, it claws at your insides and bangs Rachmaninoff pieces at your ear drums, you realize how tired you are, and not for lack of sleep.

I walked across Manhattan Bridge yesterday, a surreal commute and traversing through Chinatown, picking up ginger root and udon noodles, navigating the crowds north and loving every building, every street corner and strange turn, every view.

There are many causes for gratitude in this life. Do not be overcome by the one thorn twisting in your side. Tomorrow is a new day. Leave the ones that have passed you, behind.

All That You Can Do

Chris Cornell dies. He hangs himself in a hotel room, in a town where he doesn't live. He makes it past 27, makes it past the 90s, makes it past all the pit falls that should have caught him but didn't. He built family, mended fences, cut his hair and grew up, and still he died.

I thought if I could just make it to 28, I'd be too old to have to worry about it. If I could get to my 30s I'd be out of the woods. But the woods do not end because we endure youth. The woods grow, and tangle, and darken, and we have to constantly keep running with the Red Queen to just keep one foot on solid ground. The choice to live requires to be made every day. Every damn day we have to get up and survive again. It's a terrifying premise, sometimes.

You have 18 years left to 52. Put one step in front of the other. Make the most of your clearing in the forest. Leave perennials in your wake.

Strike

They call from across the oceans, happy spring voices fluttering around miles of deep despair. You wish there was something you could do. They wish the same for you. I sat in Tompkins Square Park in the sunlight and ran into an East Village relic, his creative halo making even the bums and the park rats glitter. I thought this is what New York does to you, and my steps were lighter all the way home.

It's been six years today since you lost your words, since we drove a hundred miles and hour across the valleys and he screamed your name at closed doors. There was a moment when you did not know who you were. It's hard to imagine a time before it now, but I've known you much longer and no hospital airlift can erase that from our bonds.

Life is precious, and short, and painful, and ridiculous.

Dead Ringer

The insects inside my skin have returned
I thought they had left
but it seems they were just hibernating,
and the long winter of my peace is thawing
to a world on fire
where they thrive.
They skitter along my arm and make the skin bubble,
gathering in my gut
They band together and dance in nauseating waves
as the cardboard walls and construction scaffolding of my life
I'd so carefully begun trusting
fall to pieces
turn to mush

and all I can think is
Everything in its right place.

2006

A man I loved asked me to come to the Bronx once
He had soft lips and a voice that melted my every defense.

I found out from someone else that he had passed, years ago, that the drugs won and he never left that going-nowhere job to do what he meant to.

I still think I see him in the streets sometimes, 

often, 

he remains here somehow. 

New York holds on to its ghosts at will.