Tag Archives: love

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Pulses of anxiety run up my legs and rush up my spine towards my brain the way squirrels climb up bird feeders out back. They collect tiny peices of my mind and run away out into the yard. Every morning I am confronted with the awareness that there are despicable things waiting, and every morning I wake up with less and less of the pieces required to place logic and reasoning in between me and the fear. The Earth feels entirely hollow beneath my feet and inclined to crack and give way at any moment. I’ve spent the better part of 20 years stuck in that tiny bit of helplessness you feel when you go to pay at a restaurant and suddenly discover your wallet missing. 
Vertigo is my consort.
What a repugnant companion.
What an uncharming life.

I lay in my bed and listen to the overwhelming silence and try frantically to discover any type of distraction. I begin to focus on the sound of my cat patting around a small insect – Indifferent to its demise.  It reminds me of being a child in Jersey and all the times I used to bring jars of fireflies in from the field. My mother would smile. Even fully aware that I was destroying all these undeserving little things, she didnt say a word. Innocence is so endearing even though it can mean the destruction of another. A child kills something and we feel empathy, an adult kills something and we feel rage and sickness. It becomes forgivable when we know not our trail of ruined things or countless inflictions. That’s the basis of a lot of poisonous relationships in our lives. Its also the basis of a blissful, childlike existence.

My mother crept into my room each morning and threw away my jar of dead things and smiled. As if I was a cat who dragged a lifeless mouse in as a deplorable gift. To give thanks. She understood that its better to pick the mangled rodent up with a glove and a trash bin than to tamper with that type of innocence and instill the kind of messes within a child that no disinfectant can clean. Thats what we do when we are young – our selfishness and innocence is the most admirable and preposessing thing, even through the complete destruction of all else. 

My only goal in life is to never stop being capable of this. Everything else can drop dead behind me and I’ll hardly notice. I’d like to playfully rip the world apart limb from limb between my claws like an insect and then move on to another without any recollection.

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I dont fall in love with people. Not in the present tense, at least. I fall in love with absence – and the wonder and infinite possibilities that come with it. 

Theres hardly much passion left to the flesh. I lust after it, but I suppose that could be anyone. Thats too easy and its all been done a million times over.

You see, the outside world is terribly boring and it has its limits, but in my mind….

….. she goes on and on forever. 

When we meet, hardly anything goes right but at night alone, the Earth rattles when I close my eyes. So I’ve been awake for days. 

Months.

Years.

I don’t even remember.

I don’t even care.

I fall in love with memories of women long gone.  Memories that I’ve conveniently twisted to suit my needs.

Ideas, dreams, fantasies….these are my tempestuous lovers.

But they are all mine.

Perhaps because these things can be controlled and changed when I need them to change. They leave when I need them to be gone and when I’m desperate, they crawl out of the trees and tie ropes around my neck for me.

In my dreams, she can stay safe. She climbs into my chest and closes my torso like a child hiding in a cabinet from a monster.  She waits til the footsteps slowly fade away, and when its safe again,  she climbs out of my body and lays next to it but she never lets go. She holds me like a snail holds its shell.

But only in dreams – because there is no salvation to me in real life. I am not her shell, I am her anchor.

And I make her sick

She screams at the top of her lungs but I just don’t go away.

It’s 1:30pm

Im sitting on the floor spinning an old hair tie that she left here months ago between my fingers.

And im smiling. 

I’m smiling because shes gone, so I can finally fall in love with her again.

In dreams.

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My past is a wolf tied to an old oak out back. Emaciated and starving.

And it knows shes here….

It’s senses are now just as sharp and desperate as its fangs and I can hear it howling from the garden. It knows when she shivers in the middle of the night, and the hunger digs through its body relentlessly.
Occasionally,  I sneak out and feed its hollowed body – just enough to keep it alive. But my hands have become raw, bloody and chewed. So I try my best to hide them under her body at night, but the flickering lights from the storm outside expose the blackened blood as evidence of all the things she does not deserve. All the things about me that would slowly disgrace her from the inside out.
At times, for our own wellbeing, I starve the wolf for weeks at a time, but its wimpers cut deep under my skin and it wakes me from a dead sleep. I watch the worn mutt suffer outside my window. Harrowed and weakening; I feel the same way.
I crawl back to my bed and I feel her quiver when my lips brush just below her ear, and I tell her that everything will be fine…
And I smile, because it feels good knowing that I can still cut it free from its ropes if I ever stop giving a fuck.

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Take particular notice to the silence and stillness of others. It is these non-actions that expose the true colors of anothers soul.  Not the things that they tell you, but the things they cant seem to. Not what they do, but things that have never been considered. It is the negative spaces of a person that paint the greatest picture. The silence, unintentionally placed, exposes a divergence. It proves true capabilities or complete lack thereof.
Once you present these lack of details to the canvas of another’s life, an entirely different picture emerges. The blank spaces where hands never reached out, or the identical silences before “I’m sorry” and “I love you” as if equally embarassed or ashamed of both. When applied to the canvas, these blank areas create something a bit more sinister. Like the whites of a wolf’s eyes right before striking, just moments before all the blood.

Take great heed in the lack of motion and language in others; Words that never reach the tongue cannot be tainted by sophisms or lies and what lacks movement naturally can not elude.

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She wears makeup like an old house wears bars and wooden boards covering its windows. And similarly,  these smashed-berry and ash colored adornments are applied by external means, because her hands no longer work in tandem with her mind. Her body no longer matches her internal intentions,  and even when she bleeds -and she does quite often – the crimson slips off and splashes away like water on oil and only serves to make all the messes that follow her like hungry dogs even more desirous. Thier mouths foam and thier teeth grit.

Houses dont close their own doors or stain red thier own carpets. These happenings are caused only by the most unfortunate inhabitants….

The car was silent and pitch black most of the ride home until a small flame suddenly splashed atop of her lighter just infront of a crooked cigarette. The amber glow lit up her face just enough to see that her eyeliner was running and smeared as if to show that just like a weathered old home, the boards covering those windows that alluded to her soul has been tampered with. As if someone had broken in and trespassed beyond her locks and rusty fences and warning signs and smashed her insides like disgraced fine china and smashed holes through all the walls, so that everything spilled out into everything else creating an indistinguishable mess. Now which body part shows tenderness? Could it be lips or fists? And what, now, is love without a pit of guilt in her stomach? And faith…is it the kind she prays with or the kind the world preys upon? And a voice inside her tells her that this whole place should be burnt to the ground.

…In the distance you could hear bad lucks stomach growl and it’s mouth water.

She left for good the other day, but I saw her last night by the tree out back. Only it wasn’t her. Perhaps the frayed fabric between dreams and waking life had snapped and let one bleed into the other disgracefully. She was moving as if tangled in some sort of wind, but the air was absent of all currents and there was not a breath within miles. Not even mine. I walked over in silence to show her I hadnt moved a muscle since she left, that my heart had been collecting dust along side the broken furniture and useless, faded old books on the floor of the old house behind those eyes – Behind her eyelashes that resembled iron bars. But the second my fingers seemingly touched her face, I became unbearably confused and withdrew out of fear that I could be lost in that delirium forever, and she dismantled and reappeared elsewhere across the yard. 

I guess every ghost story begins with something lost. In fact, a very basic definition of a ghost could be the return of something that was supposed to be gone forever. So thats where ill re-start this story:

A body. Not the traditional cadaver, this one still had quite a number of breaths still in it. (Though I was trying my hardest to take those away) A body with its warm back pressed against the contrasting, cold dirt in this very yard. Under a different light, maybe our bodies resembled some type of resurrection ceremony,  only time and a little more illumination would prove something much more debauched.  The placement of our hands were contained solely to the vital organs and all my main arteries were, just below the skin, dressed up with her pretty little hands grasping and clawing at each of them. Warm violet blood made its anticipated escape from my chest and spilled back into the dust where we came from, If you believe those types of things.

Just as vandals on the streets not far from here mark buildings as thier own with aerosol cans only to be washed away by mid-day,  so have I tried desperately to claim the charming woodwork of her body as my own. To bend the bars covering her incredible eyes and build my miserable estate back there. To sweep the floors of years of forgotten, broken things and to stumble incidently upon my heart covered in dust and soot and place it next to hers, in the attic where I could finally put a bright candle and chase away the pitch black of an entire life. 

This is not a ghost story in sense of rattling chains or floating tea-pots. But, rather, a haunting of every conceivable sense. An immense teething sensation – a displeasure from deep in my gut that keeps me up at night, knowing that her endearing old house is now miles from my own and perhaps still in immediate danger of arson.  She was not the true ghost in this encounter, even as haunted as her old home had become over the years. She was the very impetus that brought forth the return of something inside me that had been laying seemingly dead and decayed for a lifetime. She was the poltergeist that startled me by rattling my heart and then dispersing into thin air leaving me terrified and alone….

and if only this haunting would never cease….

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I do not wish to undermine the gifts of the worlds most operatic songstresses, but at the moment I find even the most beckoning siren a bit lackluster. Since, in history, there was hardly ever a chord struck more pleasantly to me than these – which are delivered with unfathomable elligance from from her – whos head now lays softly on my chest. And from her lips flow wonderful, dancing syllables that float out like great flocks of doves. I close my eyes and watch them all, in my mind, manipulate the atmosphere above our heads. Each letter of her alphabet flaps its white wings and mocks gravity. Twisting and diving and then floating back towards the moonlight.

Maybe its due to her current proximity to such a vital and nonsensical organ as my heart that makes me mutter these things. Or perhaps due to her voice – which always covers me in such a strange nostalgia. Her voice being the most endearing accelerant to the inferno that is my imagination. If she could only see all the lives I’ve lead in my mind through her words. All the foreign lands I’ve conquered. All the kings I’ve slain….

I lay back and focus on her fingers which tap my ribs to an off-beat. Vibrating my veins like a string instrument. My very being now a grand piano at the fingers of the most astonishing protégé.

What a magnificent symphony has she made of me! I doubt cherubs could pluck away at their harps with such grace! Ha! She has made them all a fool! And look how Ive become the most blubbering concerto!

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I guess its like reading the lyrics of a song without ever hearing it. It usually creates a jarring, unkempt mess unsuitable for any ear or tongue.

But once you hear it, once you lay down in a dark room with it and focus on its nuances and all the tedium that went into creating what is laying there next to you, telling you about the scar on thier stomach or that time up in the Georgia mountains a few summers ago, its often hard to distinguish anything else from it ever again. And even if you do ever run into that jarring mess of words, sounds and actions again, maybe at a party or a bar downtown, its quite difficult to read what they are saying now without hearing that same melody and those alluring nuances. Even after a few years worth of other unsuitable, bland melodies.

And I guess that’s what I’d consider love.  Not that im anyone to even utter a word on the subject,  but there is quite a few brilliant, complex symphonies that play out in my head when I see her occasionally and one day, I’d like for someone to hear something unmistakable like that when I speak.

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Is longing only achievable with knowledge of a target for it? I wonder if a small bird kept in a childs room instinctively dreams of open skys even through its ignorance of them?
Yes. There must be something burried in the soul of all creatures which makes them feel unbearably culpable of thier disguarded fate, even when unaware of it. The same instinct that causes me to be crushed by the weight of places I’ll never go. The longing that makes my heart ache for passion and love, which I certainly know nothing of. Perhaps I’ve kept myself intentionally bereft all this for so many years that my daydreams have become deep-rooted and habitual. I wonder if maybe it is not a matter of instinct, but of compulsions born from continuously running from everything I secretly desire. Perhaps it is all my doing. Suppression is, after all, the main culprit behind all compulsions. So here is whats left; Twenty-nine years without fascinating journeys abroad or whirling, singular love stories. Twenty-nine years of self-inflicted disillusionment.

Outside my window, I can hear the rhythmic juxtaposition between the scraping sound of the wind against the top of the lake out back and the grinding of cars on the highway pavement about a half-mile down the road. Car alarms and birds chirp flirtingly back and forth to one another and burrow themselves into my subconscious – to be used in dreams at a later time. My desires and fears tangle into one another like the most insufferable fabric that separates life, awaiting just past my windowsill, and my all my years of abandoning it to pursue an existence compiled of nothing more than vivid daydreams with images taken from books I’ve read and pictures I’ve seen. Yes, even my fantasies are stolen.

I thought about writing her today,  but my body would certainly cripple and my fingers would snap in all cardinal directions. This is one of the many inconveniences Ive collected through life. How could I write her as such a tangled, broken mess? And what, anyway, would I ask of her? ‘I cant have you back, but please dont go away?’ The foolishness bubbles up beneath my skin and I may as well just smash my face endlessly against the blank page in front of me and have whoever finds me – snapped and splattered – mail it to her, still dripping dark red with my insecurities.

The inconveniences I’ve collected through life drape fittingly about my limbs.
I wear a hideous fabric that only she would adore.

I rummaged through my head for memories to live in.
     It was 5am the other night that I found her standing at my door. Im still not entirely sure how she got here. A strong current must have ripped her from her life and the undertow must have dragged her towards me, down to the bottom of the world where I make my home.
       I watched as she took a drag of her cigarette. The dull light from its end revealed her eyeliner, diluted and pooling grey beneath her eyes. I wished she wouldnt cry but it makes my heart ache for her. The only thing more lovely than her misery was her happiness and I felt greedy for wanting it all. It was her curse that she would have such a wonderful glow, even under duress.  The whole ‘rest-of-the-world’ surrounding her was pitch black and meaningless to me. Im amazed that shes here. Im amazed at her tangled, wet blonde hair and I’m amazed at the new cuts on her hands.  We sat on the dock over the lake and talked about the futility of modern romance, the deaths of our fathers and the dismantling of whats left of our sanity. 

These are the memories that allow me to live here alone. 29 years of nothing else suits me just fine. These daydreams – and my garment of inconveniences draped over me to keep me warm.

She spoke about a crooked, old, wooden house in the dark that visits her at night. A reacurring dream she had or, perhaps its a coping mechanism that allows her to participate in this world, but as she rests her head at night, she wakes up frantic in that terrible place.
The house represents a rusty safety-deposit box in the back of her mind and its inhabitants were thousands of traumas and tragities she suffered through life pieced together to compose scowling, putrid creatures that live in the attic and, at night, slither thier raw bodies down the steps to tangle themselves in her blonde hair.

I feel as if that is where I first met her, in the den of that creeking, old house.
That den was the eye of a great storm that streched the expanse of her entire life. We lived there – so temporarily – among the dusty books on the shelves, and we traded them as if what we couldn’t express through tongues or our bodies pressed against one another could be effectively spoken through those pieces of literature. But I knew I had to leave soon. I did not belong in her dreams no more than she belonged in the home I’ve made for myself at the bottom of the world.

That is the curse of a disobedient mind like mine. The drive that constantly lures me to her – To a life I know nothing of and a love that finds me unsuitable. Is the same drive that pulls me away, trembling and guilt-ridden. What was I doing in that old house? How did I find the key? What brought me to that den burried deep in her mind? Did I come there to dangle the illusion of safety in front of her?

I am irrefutably driven by the bleakness of this life and cannot help but to call out to her, endlessly, from below. From the bottom of the world where I made my home. I sing to her like a caged bird in a small childs room and what could I bother to expect?  Of course I could not expect her to stand outside of this terrible cage of mine and be content. And what would happen if she awakes in that forsaken old house at night?  My arms would fall short desperately reaching out to her through my rusted bars.
They would cripple and my fingers would snap trying to hold her and keep her safe.

29 years of disguarded fates and barren fields. 29 years of waiting in that den holding an old skeleton key and calling out to something I instinctively know awaits, yet am still unable to bare. Something that I somehow know of, but still couldn’t possibly fathom.

I threw the blank paper away and went back to the windowsill.

I still sing to her from my cage. Even through my ignorance.

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There is a dusty old wooden clock in my apartment atop a small minifridge that brings so many memories of my past and it has certainly become just as much a part of my history as any scar or birthmark. It used to chime loudly everyday at noon and again at around 6pm though, it hasn’t chimed in over a decade, or at least I dont think it chimes any longer. (Maybe I’ve grown so accustomed to its sound that I no longer hear it.) There was days long gone now that every chime seemed to be a signal that I was getting closer and closer to where I am now. Today, at one point in time was a future and everyday you see is the future eternally whether you know it or not, and  you’ve dreamed about this very day before.

It’s all too apparent now, as I look at the dusty old clock that played such a part of my childhood.  Back then,  I used to dream of this day. Only, in those dreams I had fantastic imagery of silver cars that drove themselves and great monorails extending the entire county. I had the love of my life and all lives before this one and we were together as great vines of ivy grow into each other and tangle themselves until one is indistinguishable from the other. I had smashed all my enemies and watched as thier blood crept back into the horizon like a deep, red ocean tide. There was towers that poked holes in the sky and reached distant planets in one simple elevator ride and there was wildlife that spoke to us with great prestige and distinction and all of this was clear and very certain to me back then.

This clock has ran out of ticks and tocks and chimes and bells many years ago and I sit still and watch it as if it might start to move on its own. It watches me, too, and if it could wonder,  I assume it would be wondering why I dont move and why im staring as if im waiting for an answer.
Still, we challenge each other while small flashes of memories go off in my head like random lights on the tops of radio towers.
One.
And then another.
And then nothing.
And then another.

The rest of my room is unkempt and filthy as if it was rebeling against me. As if it was giving me an attitude,  knowing I would retaliate by also showing how much of a mess I can be.
But, the clock atop the fridge waits for its chance. As all of time awaits us all. And every moment will eventually be soon.
There are so many parts of me hidden in the inside that clock.  Perhaps even my entire life. Ah, But what better metaphor for the way things should have been and used to be than a dusty old clock? All of us at some point were so incredibly far from where we are at this moment and still farther yet from where we will be soon enough….if it were true that this was how you measure life; not by how many clocks weve outlasted or how many ticks and tocks and chimes and bells we have collected, but how many of our dreams we have endured, then it is true that I have lived and will continue to live forever. Fortunately this is not the case, for in my lifetime, I have dreamt of millions of things but not yet have I put a single one of them to use. So these irritating noises continue still to be consistent, strategically placed reminders that we are being measured still. Time is a badly manufactured ribbon that may or may not suddenly fall off into pieces as its unraveled from the spool.

Needn’t I remind you that you are living your very last days right this moment? What was aching you yesterday is either destroying you right now or just a dull breeze that carried and tapered off from far, far away.

Today, I chose to choose nothing. And I let all my dreams and all the clocks in the world crumble and collect dust. Just as you may choose not to correct your hair or clothes after a strong gust of wind knowing another will soon come. And looking around, you recognize that the rest of the world is frantic and foolish trying thier best to keep themselves together and correct thier hair and clothes and steady thier feet after being blown off thier path. Hurriedly racing back to find where they started. Yet, I chose nothing. Today I let the furious winds blow me off course and tamper with my clothes and hair and realign my footwork and I stay complacent where I am tossed.
You have no choice but to give into what ailes you.  What you endure will either be the end or a great,  new path paved with all the dust of every crumbled clock and stagnant old dream.

Because on some eventual today, I will be riding inside of a freight train or maybe an airplane and all around me will be tumultuous winds. Except I won’t feel a thing from where I sit, motionless inside a peaceful cabin. I will be heading far, far away from the foolish people trying with every ounce of thier being to keep themselves together after every gust. With thier lives just erratic and tumultuous as the wind.

I will be gone and I assure you, friend, that I will never look at another clock again and I will have my peace.

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The best of our days consisted of me watching her take drugs and staring off like she was a wolf that heard a small creature off in the distance.  She waits to piece together it’s location for the hunt, but it never shows any promise. At times I feel like she could quit the chemicals if she wanted but it’s that promise of a good hunt she can’t seem to shake for the life of her. The problem here is that she will never realize that she is the one being hunted.
The sun pulls itself up over the horizon, back from the end of the world, and I hold onto her like a small child holds a red balloon. But the drugs were wild gusts of wind and on certain days, I felt as if I’d “accidentally” let go of her string. It grows tiresome and I am not such a small child anymore.  I guess you could say that was my addiction: my inner child had passed long ago and following on her little “hunts” made me feel as if I was visiting it’s grave site. Filling her needles for her was as if I was giving it flowers and holding her hand while she nods off was like a little prayer uttered.

It’s crazy how my body and mind simply refuse to work together. Sometimes she repulsed me and I only loved her with my mind. Like the way she took the breath right out of my chest the day I saw her standing so awkwardly in the bookstore seeking out a novel she had been talking about for weeks. It was the strangest thing and I couldn’t fathom how her body could even naturally assemble like that. Her legs were crossed and she stood on her toes with her back arched and twisted. Her arms were straight in front of her but clasped inside out and tangled. Like an ancient statue with a million small pieces knocked out, barely holding itself together. Like any day now she would crumble into dust and thousands of years of history would dissolve into a pile of dust. How funny the mind works that I could fall so hopelessly for a mere stance.

Other days, I loved her with only my body and I felt nothing more. It would remain that way for weeks until I caught another glimpse of something that made me come to my senses. She was a helpless old toy and the memories of my youth threw her around as if I had never grown. She couldn’t stray very far.

But I made up my mind one night while we headed back over the bridge towards her place. The passenger seat was pushed back and she was curled into a little ball. She was so small I could barely keep my eyes off the road. How does something so lovely wander so far off and land here with me? I wasn’t even sure if she was still breathing,  it had been a long night and she certainly pushed her limits. I couldn’t concentrate,  I would look away from the road and stare at her sleeping until I felt the tires meet the grass, then I would correct the vehicle and stare at her some more until it happened again and I did this almost the entire way home.  I wanted to keep her like that forever.  I decided I would leave that night and never come back. I couldn’t imagine things ever getting better than that exact moment and I wanted to make sure that no matter where I went from then on, no matter who I was with, I would always have her sleeping so beautiful in my head and I could find peace.
I carried her into her apartment and placed her on the sofa. She didn’t move a single muscle until I started to walk away and her little awkward fingers grabbed at my pant leg without even opening her eyes. She was so weak that her hand just fell right off as I walked away. She was a helpless little toy and I had grown old. I had realized tonight that the memories of things you once loved are much stronger than things you still have.  Love is like a loud roar and people grow so used to it over the years that it eventually blends into the background. The same way people that live near great waterfalls no longer hear it. I carefully created a situation and a woman that I could hear loudly and love forever. This was the only thing that made sense.

People these days naturally put up walls to protect themselves. You can’t blame them, the world is a cold place and “survival of the fittest” has never been so prominent. But sometimes,  its not the walls that you have to worry about. Sometimes they are placed there for your benefit. You could build a great mansion with all the walls me and her built from each other and the rest of the world. But all the items decaying in the crawlspaces behind her walls made this great palace uninhabitable. 

I locked the door behind me and tossed the key to that great home down a sewage drain.

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