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i want not
do not want what you give me to think about there are no consequences no conclusions the white, the black, the pattern of love, the colors... the longing why do we forget?
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the soprano down on 12th street unleashed the firestorm.
she sucked all the oxygen from the room filled with despondent artists seeking redemption from self denigration, despair, uncertainty and chaos. you must look into her eyes, hold that gaze and do not waver. the turbulence unbearable, the intensity, the burn of years confessing all but love that sat in an unopened box waiting to be claimed. we were fearless companions in the name of art, excess and social justice. oh but for the night of splendor when we touched the hunger fathoms deep as if we would die of starvation when our plates were full the curtain of torrential rain as the wind shear strengthened fire whirls exploding, darting about aimlessly. compensation for obliteration of all things known and unknown. do not look back, do not turn around to see the carnage. that is what we told ourselves because it seemed we could not bear the loss as we watched the dissolution, as if we would lose everything, lose it all. our lives, our loves, our freedom, our history as confidantes in a reckless and morally incomprehensible world. we watched as it all burned up and found among the charred remains the box. line by line
i move through day and night in foreign tongue the suggestion of, the possibility, the inevitable outcome. flashing in time with the past, the unexpected resurrected. with the longing of endless nights and lost days in your arms, future past, imperfect, imperative and present tense. rescue us from transparency and thin disguise wandering aimlessly, unavoidably exposed. the embodiment
the presence the essence of love as it expands and contracts as familiar as the haircut you gave your baby brother before you pushed him off the porch as foreign as a language, beautiful and incomprehensible looking for gesture and nuance as the years add up mining deeper even though depth is always risky as any miner will tell you when he descends into the darkness prospecting for bodies, weighing profits, extracting material before the reclamation. break it down, build it up. it's all here rising slowly to the surface face to face, open handed, willing, ripe, seductive Longing for the we of us,
inseparable, invincible and free the you of us, art and mindfulness, tender to the touch. Stronger than carbon steel, consciousness higher and deeper, always gaming the years and trading up. Visions in broad strokes from the strange to the bizarre. Visions of loveliness, delicate and perishable. Exquisite this life with you... Beauty incarnate, my love. One morning you walk out and there is nothing to fear.
Another, nothing more than fear itself. The steepness of the hill, the thunderheads, the ominous outlook sheltered deep inside to protect you from the worst case scenario as all life seems to be measured against. Worst to best, with nothing of consequence in between. That is our depression, our longing, our escape from the moment which seems so ordinary when it is all that we have. How did we arrive here? The photo on the wall I always wake up to never seems the same. She is still alive, my mother, with or without judgment but always wanting to explain that my life was not the first one lived, nor the last. That there is always a solution to a problem that seems so insurmountable but not always the solution I am looking for. Why after all these years am I not satisfied by this? You book, you’re always telling a story,
always characterizing, always plotting to find that part of me that may or may not exist. Love is fiction, baby. It comes and goes and grows and recedes and sometimes tells the truth. Entire worlds are crossed and uncrossed and canceled out due to marketing failures. We are human after all, and after. The most, the broadest, the widest, the largest, the ‘est’ is the problem. Nothing more. Face value, that’s what we’re afraid of. Giving is an act, treason a cause. Lying is a desperate attempt, loving a lunar landscape. Light my way, oh desperate one in the common of the more desperate among us. Designer fashion before it meant anything to me, those heels a vibrant color, a dizzying pattern, so mesmerizing. To my total naiveté I embraced my Aunt Lillian even when she banished me, implored me to take a nap when she just couldn’t take it any more. I never knew her struggle, the body she couldn’t own that owned her, a mind that tricked with sardonic humor to cover up all that she could not control. Today I bought a hat at a fancy department store, the same day I heard the news that she left this earthly plane with all of its faults and pleasures. I will miss her so.
Farewell, my beauty. You will always make me remember to laugh in spite of it all, to dress like it was the last opportunity, to love like I never loved before because you showed me change, that change can happen against all odds. My remarkable, amazing, Aunt Lillian. Love love love...
You forget it because you think you have to. You remember it because you don’t. You cling to it as the last bastion of humanity, rival government, too governed or no choice. How can it be, this and that and yours and mine and lengthy and short and desperate and divine and sacred and blasphemous? How can it keep coming back like a virus? What incredible views from down here,
from that place we all travelled before but this time the destination is new. A touch, a glance, an impression so powerful it floats, like the gravity of a new planet undiscovered, brilliantly lit and surrounded by an atmosphere you no longer have to adjust to. Family, that strange and other worldly space nothing else can replace, to which nothing else compares. All the years that passed, all the oblivion and misconceptions, all the baggage you cannot check, has somehow disappeared. |
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