Tag Archives: love

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They are the two most relatable and utterly contagious human afflictions: love and hatred. And passion is the the most ironic impetus behind both, which quite often causes these two emotions to be synonymous. It’s why we keep coming back to the ones that hurt us the most. Its criminals always return to the scene of the crime. Why the feeder rat runs over to sniff the snake.
I woke up outside and searched desperately in hopes that last night was a dream. But, scratches, bruises, bite marks…..These are all binding contracts that can not be refuted. I caught a glimpse of myself in an old dirty mirror and noticed my eyes resembled an old, worn photograph from the 1800s. The meloncholly it brought numbed me a little, just enough to go back to sleep for another hour or so. The animals sleep outside…..

She keeps me here because the thinks I’m good for her. As if i am the one that’s gonna save her, and that makes me the worst type of hero. The ones that lead you out to the fires under the guise of an innocent and loyal companion who doesn’t know better. I am the canine that destroys all her favorite things and she keeps letting sleep in her bed because I am warm at night. I am the wolf she mistakes for her shepard. And that alone must be enough because there’s nothing else. No comfort, No compassion. Just bent fences and torn dresses. Picked locks and talking our way out of handcuffs. Hours later, applying them myself.
Hours later talking myself into leaving.
Hours later waking up outside.
We are all the most terrible when we are alone. We are all the most unforgivable when the doors are locked. Ive seen it all and talked them into most of it. Because I’m terribly afraid to admit that love and hatred are the same thing. It’s why I choke her when I kiss her. Comfort is the warm room where the greatest obscenities occur. It’s the parasite in my chest and the dreams tearing me limb from limb at night. It’s why I refuse to take you home, because I still haven’t found one. It’s why i sleep outside with the other animals.

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Once you begin to feel enthralled and passionate without the need of any type of reciprocating entity or conveniently placed body, the entire population is at your mercy.

“Love” is such an odd endeavor that you learn just as much about when its absent as you do when you’re in its grasp, and the very moment you start to feel those same sensations without any type of target for them,  it becomes no longer a game of ‘who will make me feel that way?’ but instead ‘who will I share this with?’ and you will immediately notice a phenomenal increase in the quality of your enviroment, and particularly your company.

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I can hear the grumbling of a train and feel the low vibrations as it passes by about a block up from the cafe where I’m sitting eating lunch. This place is a little more soothing then back home. The air is softer. Theres a lot of animals here. Thats a good sign. Swans. Any place that has swans can’t be so bad.
      The train growls from up the street and shakes the cafe floor. It feels like my father’s old pizza shop. I never really understood why, but I suppose my parents left a few bad memories at that shop, because no one ever talked about it. But it was definitely there once. Shaking. No one speaks a word of that place in 20 years. Maybe I should ask mother, but I’d be afraid that it might make her start to shake. My uncle shook his whole life. My brother shook when he was over seas. My sister shakes each night shes left alone. The cafe shakes around me.

    Theres more ambiance here. I suppose thats why I crave this place. The architecture of the historic homes sitting behind telephone lines makes it look like sheet music to me in a way. Theres so many churches but they all sit quiet and let me focus on trying to read the sheet music of the old homes along the lake. I let the pedals of my bike wind the entire city up like my mother’s music box as I leave and I feel loose bricks slip under my tires. When I stop peddling – if I  ever stop – the music of over 100 years would begin to play softly for me as I follow along reading each note from the telephone wires along the horizon.

She looks better on this bike. Her dress slips up her soft thighs in the wind as she pedals and she gets embarrassed. My heart races. My loose ribs slip around in my chest like the old bricks under my tires. She warns me about swans and llamas and not going to the bathroom when I need to. If she was here she wouldn’t let me get close to the swans to take pictures like I am now. She wouldnt let me shake. She would fumble around and try to hold her dress down over her thighs while riding my bike. She would make my ribs jostle back and forth like old bricks as she rides my bike over my chest. Fumbling to pull her dress down to cover her thighs as my heart grumbles behind my loose brick ribcage and quakes the entire city like the train next to my fathers old pizza shop. But  we will never talk about that.

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I only study history out of fear, not out of any particular desire. Most times I would much rather pretend it wasnt there, or convince myself that it doesnt mean anything anymore. The same way the young woman softly pushes at the scar on the right side of her chest in a dirty bathroom mirror; studying it like an dusty old map found in a dead relatives attic.

    Its funny how we obsess over the terrible incidents of our lives while memories of happiness and elation so quickly fade. She is trying to keep quiet so she doesnt wake me, but when the dim light from the lamp in my my room catches the tears slowly dripping from her cheek in the mirror, the light creates endless glints and I feel like I’m looking up at the night sky – with an infinite number of planets and stars that are both equally terrifying and negligible to me.

  We push things much farther through agitation than through any type of knowledge or endearment of the subject. I know far more about my enemies than I do of any friend or lover. I can describe in detail every single scar on her body, but I couldn’t tell you the color of her eyes because I only look in her eyes when she weeps.

   I pretend I was asleep when she crawls back into bed.
Ive read all the history books and scripture. They say she was created from Adams rib long ago, but I am so reckless and I break bones. And even though they typically heal stronger after small fractures, I’m still hopelessly drawn to the damage…..the history….the fear that these afflictions carry.

      She lays in the bed next to me and stares at the filthy, cracked ceiling the same way she looks at her reflection.  I let my fingers push at the scar on the right side of her chest, even though I know it still aches her. I want her like a cat wants a tiny insect on the other side of a window pane. Some sort of maddening necessity. Something far deeper than the skin. There is something underneath these flaws and deformities that I crave. Something I need to study.
and fear.
and fuck.
and destroy.
Not because I’m malicious or spiteful, but in the same way we refuse to be alone in a creeky, old house at night, yet we love nothing more than telling ghost stories. In the same way that the cat kills an insect and then get annoyed when it stops fluttering it’s wings.

I don’t know why, but she’s never more sexy than when she is crying.

I study history out of fear, and her skin is decorated with so much of it. I cant seem to help myself. I press gently at the raised tissue and softly drag the back side of my nails across the scar on the right side of her chest. Not because I’m not afraid anymore,  but because she tells me she hates it, and that is irresistible.

… like a tiny insect just outside the window pane.

History and the present are like scorn lovers that still keep a close eye on each other but will never comply to each others needs.

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People like me dont hold themselves upright. We curl in on ourselves like the edges of an old book left in an antique shop. I recognize the sound of dear old friends, and I can hear the sound of pretty young girls laughing and reciting poetry in the back yard of a friend’s house. I know what that sound is, I remember it, but all I do is tremble from behind the window. I look out across the dark yard and hear the most gentle voices. I imagine that I could sit outside and watch thier lips flash different shades of amber, gold, black and yellow and then to black again in the light of the fire pit, but i feel my heart pressing up against my upper chest and all I do is shiver. Perhaps I should call an ambulance.
There’s an overwhelming ferocity to life and I wish only to experience it from behind windows…. Windows of a friends house and windows of lonesome hotel rooms. I lean against the wall and I imagine looking out an old antique storefront on a brick avenue where my edges can curl in and give me some type of value. Give me anything at all.
I like to think that everyone feels this way, but there is this joyful lot that I watch running up and down the brick sidewalks. They are the type that ride in airplanes and visit thier family in the mountains each winter. I recognize the sound of those people from my shop window. They go on business trips and they don’t shiver like I do when they stay up late watching movies with pretty women.
I pull out my phone to check the time and realize that its glow makes it possible to catch my own reflection against the window pane. I’m starting to look more and more like my mother, which is beautiful but it doesn’t feel right because I know that having these similarities on my own face would be doing her a great disservice since, even though my years are much fewer than hers, the unbearable weariness of my life has taken its toll and would certainly accelerate her aging – and that I could not bare. It makes life much too heavy and I curl in on myself.

I suppose I am an antiquity with an aesthetic charm but not much else. An old book bought solely for a coffee table, only to be touched during a spring cleaning. The young girls would enter the shop on that brick avenue and notice me, but if they were ever to pick me off the shelf, all my bindings and glue would betray me and come loose and I would certainly fall apart into a useless pile of curled loose-leafs. They would laugh at my faded pages. I recognize the sound of that distinct laughter.  Its not like the laughter I hear from out in the yard around the fire pit. Its not a lightened laughter that lifts the spirits, its a laughter weighted with humiliation which presses down on my back and makes me curl inward. I can almost hear it now. God forbid women who laugh like this take old antique books like me home for thier shelves or thier coffe tables. I can not endure that type of laughter anymore. I much prefer the silence of my quiet old shop where I lay untouched.

I could start every conversation with women by first explaining how terrified I am, but my posture already does this for me. I stay up watching old foreign films with pretty women and I wonder if should call an ambulance. I don’t feel right and I cant stop trembling. 

I wish it was early morning because my shop on that brick avenue would be closed and that’s the only time that I feel brave – times when I know they can look in through the window with thier friends and whisper that I’m charming,  but they could never reach out and spill all of my blank, curled pages onto the dirty shop floor.

But women luckily dont take antiques such as me home any more. We have no purpose. You cant take ancient objects like me up to the mountains to visit your family each winter or stay up late with me watching foreign movies. There are no business trips or romantic getaways when you live your life as an outdated, soiled piece of literature in an old shop window that fate has written with no intention or purpose. No plot line and no heros or damsels to be rescued. Just a beginning and an end.
  Life like mine is pieced together so gently that if I even moved a muscle, each day of my entire life would fall apart onto the dirty shop floor to be trampled by the whole world as they walk by looking for a more valuable item to take home.  And then I watch from my window as they walk back down the the brick avenue towards better things.
Towards the mountains in the winter. Towards warm fires in an old friends back yard. Romantic getaways and business trips.
And I sit on a dusty shelf in the window and wait for morning when the shop closes its doors so I can finally feel brave.

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Once you begin to feel enthralled and passionate without the need of any type of reciprocating entity or conveniently placed body, the entire population is at your mercy.

“Love” is such an odd endeavor that you learn just as much about when its absent as you do when you’re in its grasp, and the very moment you start to feel those same sensations without any type of target for then,  it becomes no longer a game of ‘who will make me feel that way?’ but instead ‘who will I share this with?’ and you will immediately notice a phenomenal increase in the quality of your enviroment, and particularly your company.

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I knew she was alive and breathing all along. Theres been so many nights when the city dove into complete silence, and I could remember hearing the sound of her chest heaving. So charmingly distinguished from the terrible moan of a million other things that were lost to this sluggish, repetitive town. A place that’s certainly inept towards any type of sensitivity of the human spirit. Most of the year I’m susceptible to a certain diminishment of my vitality. But I knew she was there…  

She is Serendipity and I’ve leared to tell her apart from all other enertias – gravity pales in her comparison to her draw. Even her very likliness can lift the skies and force an entire ocean through the keyhole of my bedroom door.

I awake to pleasant shivers as she traces my cheekbone with the tip of her finger each morning. The way the sun from the window across the room silhouettes her body is more irresistible than any piece of lace she could possibly be draped in.

If only I could translate in succinct verse all of the things she’s showed me. The sophistication of a quiet winter evening sitting alone under the quivering leaves of an old oak. I collected a million different shades of blue and green from her eyes and I would use these fascinating hues to paint my own grayed world for weeks at a time.   I feel the air pass through our twisted limbs with complex softness. Like a crazed feline – too curious to just let each us be and yet much too empathetic to destroy us.  Slowly, her gentle breath on my shoulder begins to distinguish me apart from all the pitiful bodies lining trite American homes and interstates.

When we walk down rainy avenues, I hold her hand like a child holds onto a small balloon. My reaction to feeling that she was much lighter than air and if I should ever loosen my grip, she might drift away into the clouds above and her eyes would color the darkened atmosphere with those intricate blues and greens. So I took small pieces of string and began to sew small pieces of my own life to her, to keep from dancing away into the air – So that my world could retain these wonderful new tones. Past memories and dusty old literature from my bookshelf were sewn to her along with a few love letters written from foxhole of a uselessly romantic young man. Pieces of me strung to her soft skin, to keep her from dismantling in the wind like a dandelion. So that, should she ever get carried away, she would take me along for the ride.

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I sat on my back porch this morning and watched as the blackening clouds above began to create a tempestuous atmosphere – scattering my notebooks around on the table. I saw two small butterflies mating in the midst of all this dismay and watched as they were thrown about in violent wind gusts and torrential rain. Torn apart, then hurtling towards each other again in order to finish despite every type of disorder imaginable. Gripping onto one another regardless of the fact that neither creature could provide any reasonable argument of what is it they expect to accomplish through all this insanity.  Driven solely by subconscious requirements, and a complete disregard of any reasonable voice within telling them to go home alone where it is safe.

I snickered to myself, because I as watched these frail insects endanger themselves and each other repeatedly, I was aware that it was merely due to some type of instinctual desire. Nothing more than sex and survival. A mindless act embedded deep within their DNA.
However, if I was ever asked to give the definition of “love” in humans,  I would describe this very scenario before me.

Love is very capable of becoming a type of institutionalized abandonment of all rational thought.
It is the wings that continually push us towards each other, unaware of the pitch black around us ripping us apart.
Love is collecting every type of type of madness and yet smiling each morning – the way the mentally ill stare off in the corners of dirty asylums, oblivious to anything else.

And sex and survival are merely just an excuse.

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I had a dream about an old man. He was sitting on a chair across from me with his head tilted backwards, and every odd minute, his head swung forward as if he kept nodding off but then sporadically remembered I was there.

“Are you feeling ok?” He muttered in a thick spanish accent.

“I dont know. I feel ok. I just dont feel quite right”

The old man sat forwards and started empying things from the pockets of his faded yellow shorts. Apologies, allowences, a few outdated birthday cards, some soccer games he couldnt attend…. He fumbled around a bit and handed me a VHS tape. I stared at it and tried hard to remember why it had any significance.  It didnt seem familiar at all, and yet there was a crushing feeling in my chest at the sight of it.

“Whats wrong?” He asked.

“I dont think I like this movie anymore.  But thank you.” 

“How’s mom?”

“Shes good. I miss her every day more and more and yet I see her all the time. I stopped looking her in the eyes years ago, Im too afraid. I think there is something wrong with me. Maybe you were right?”

He dug into his pockets again and gave me a wrinkled manilla envelope. Inside was a small, folded picture of himself as a young man standing on the deck of a boat. He was staring outwards over the water with a pensive expression but he had the warning signs of a smile that was just about to crack though on his face. I can only imagine this photo was taken the very second he realized there was a camera next to him. He had my very eyes. No, I had his eyes.

The crushing feeling came back.

“I didnt mean those things, you know.” He told me. “….An earthquake deep under the ocean still causes disaster on land even when its thousands of miles away. Im sorry that my own tremors shook you.”

His head kept rocking back and forth as if he was still on that boat. He would doze off and wake right back up to hand me different things. Things that I had tried to forget over time. Some were very bad things, and some were wonderful things that made the bad things not seem so bad.

“I’ve been having trouble sleeping, Christian” whispered the old man after a few minutes.

“But you look so tired. Im sorry I kept you so long.” I responded.

I didnt know what else to say. I was afraid of saying the wrong thing. I was afraid of everything. And the feeling in my chest was becoming increasingly unbearable . I wanted to cry but I knew I couldn’t until after he fell asleep. But the old mans head kept swaying back and forth.

Finally he spoke again…

“All the hurt that you carry with you causes collateral damage in others lives,  just like the quake sends violent tides towards the shore. And the closer people are to you, the more tremendous the damage you create without intention. I cant seem to get any rest. I had to come see you but I’m exhausted. ”

I stopped looking him in the eyes. I was too afraid.  The pressure in my chest was too much now. Everything I had was breaking through my ribcage.  I started to gasp for air and my hands grabbed hopelessly for anything to hold onto as suddenly massive, towering waves began to expel from my chest and devastate everything in sight apart from us two. My fists clenched tightly around on the manilla envelope.

I started to speak. But with what air? The entire world was now submerged under miles and miles of ocean that came rushing from through my chest.  No breath came in, nothing came seeping out. And yet my voice was clear. 

“Im sorry if my dreams have haunted you. Im sorry if I let you die long before your body did. Can I keep this picture?”

“Yes. You have my eyes, you know.”

“Thank you. Good night, Dad.”

And with that, his head tilted back.  The second his eyes closed, mine opened.

I climbed out of bed and began to get ready for the day.

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Maybe the chemicals needed for these types of things no longer flow accurately… My mind makes a mockery of all natural and fairly simple things. Things that should ideally coexist beautifully – like love and lust.

Yet, these two have become entirely different to me now. They are two ends of the same snake eating its own tail. They will lead back into each other continually but only come together in some sort of violence. They refuse to operate along the same guidelines.

My lust causes romance to become obtrusive and deserving of ridicule. Nothing beautiful belongs in these moments. 
Only hues of black and blue and green underneath.
I do not make love, I make you do everything else. I make you suffer. You burst into flames, then I throw your ashes out over the ocean. 
And my palms pressed into your neck make you feel like you’re drowning.

Then we wake up in a hotel overlooking the east coast. Like we got lucky and somehow drifted back to shore. Your limbs are twisted into mine, and my arms and torso are wrapped delicately in your black hair – like seaweed decorates a shipwreck.
You listen to my heart push blood around inside my body. Back and forth. Waxing and waning like the tide. But now the current is so very low – so very far away from you – because I’m back in love and you are safe. Away from filth and depravity of moments ago. Like it was all swept away in the undertow.  Though, we both know that tonight, my heart will push the tide back in, and soon it will engulf you entirely, and you will once again begin to drown. Gasping for air. Clawing at my chest. Your empty vessel will again be lost in the fury of my seas. My waves crashing relentlessly against you. Doomed to break apart and sink to the bottom of the ocean.

…..then we wake up again, strewn about like broken planks torn from haunted shipwrecks. Waterlogged. Safely washed ashore together.

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