The temptation is too strong and that’s part of her charm. She is an itch you must scratch, a scab you have to tear open. A sealed scab is fine on its own, just leave it alone and it will heal by itself, but its coarse protrusion on a length of flesh attracts interest. There is a desire to caress the stretch of flesh, to feel the thrill of the rough nub. The fixation of the sore; a body coated in alabaster fibres seamlessly woven, flawless except for the one red knot; the knot is the obsession that must be undone.
First, a loving encircling of the perimeter, to define the line of where the skin turns sour. At the outskirts you will find a crisp ridge, the creviced walls of a volcano, dormant – hot burgundy liquids hardened and overgrown with a milken, calloused web. Pluck at the edges with a fingernail, test the steadfast commitment of the coating, rub the gnarl to discern its malleability. Pull up the roots and feel the sinews scream as you pry open the lid of the boiling pot, torn open and exposed; blood rising until it dries up and crusts over again, or worse – pry open to nothing, dried up. It is a guessing game: is the skin ready, has it run its course; is it willing to let go, or does the wound go deeper – and once the scab is picked, will it bleed and bleed and bleed?
Rita and I show up late to a party. She already has a bottle of red wine in her and holds another bottle under her arm. She jumps out of the taxi heels first, with her wild arms descending from the flight like a raven landing, tucks the bottle back under her arm and turns around to see what is taking me so long. Rita: red hair, red dress, red wine, I’ll chase you up the stairs.
I lunge out of the car and grab her by the waist, standing on the boulevard with her heels sinking into the grass, her body loose already and leaning into me. She pushes my hands off her, smiling, and takes off for the door and up the staircase. Rita you’re crazy to try stairs two at a time in those shoes. I have no words only heavy breaths as I chase after her, trying to snatch at the hem of her dress as she turns a corner on the landing. Rita, you are every animal.
She pulls me into a hallway and pushes me into the wall. Her hands feel up my thighs, her lips churn a succulent vacuum over mine. I grab a handful of hair from the back of her neck and pull her against the opposite wall, she claws into my back while I drag my fingers down her spine, spread to the sides, clasp her hips and dig in – we will tear each other apart and it will be beautiful.
“You sure don’t say much, Charlie” she smirks as she slices the point of her heel up my calf.
“Let’s see about this party” I say.
The corner of her lip curls to reveal a snarl of teeth; her eyes spark defiantly at me because she is accustomed to being irresistible. Yes, Rita, you are very charming and your appearance makes it easy for you to be so – but it is not your charms that have lured me to you: it is your tangles, and I have time to run them through my fingers, Rita. I have time.
Stallion Rita enters the party on proud legs and saunters her lushy swagger over to the kitchen to make new friends and find a corkscrew. Rita never has enough friends. She lavishes charm on anyone within proximate distance, indiscriminate of age or gender, for Rita is attracted to attention, which transcends both. Her charm: a vivacious warmth, a sparkling fluidity, a looseness, a concentration, the allurement of her curves leaning toward you, the corners of her mouth curling up, her gaze whole and all-consuming, with eyes of vacuous contraction.
As I navigate through the clusters of conversation, I brush against the shoulders of Victor. Victor: leader of the pack, alpha male, narcissistic photographer; old friend.
“Charlie! You’re very ambitious Charlie, very ambitious.” His mouth savours gloating contentment in the trap he is creating. I stand perpendicular to his shoulder blades with my arms crossed.
“Ambitious.” I repeat to him, monotone, not wanting any inflection to enhance the mounting tension of his intrigue.
“Trying to finish that composition while working a full-time pansy job - trying to break Rita in when she doesn’t belong to anyone…”
“I’m not trying to break her in.”
“If you’re trying to spend more than a night with her, you are trying to do something unnatural.”
I look over at Rita across the room, her back turned to me, leaning over the counter, readjusting her hips as a beckoning gesture at an eager young gentleman she has coerced into conversation. Rita is at her best; at home in her skin, like a cat reacquainting itself with each vertebra, clawing into the carpet as leverage for the great arch. Rita, you have found Andy. Very resourceful of you Rita, you have him cornered and he is defenseless – yes, very keen nose you have. Be kind and make it quick; don’t play with your food.
“I think it unnatural to require a rotation of lovers when one already has a mate. Even animals exhibit traits of loyalty, Vic.”
A slyness encroaches Victor’s face and his arm reaches blindly behind him to paw at the familiar bird-boned back of a poised blonde woman. She turns around unaffected by his rude graspings and stares into me with placid inquisition.
“Charlie, did I mention that Sylvia and I just got married?”
“No. My invitation must have gotten lost in the mail.”
“We didn’t send one, Charlie.” Sylvia gently offers as she places her hand on Victor’s chest in marital solidarity. We.
“I would have behaved myself.”
“Yes, I’m sure. But would you have really wanted to be there?” Her head cocks to the side with bluebird eyes.
“Probably not.” I mutter, bitterly.
Victor raises his glass to chime the air, “So then a thank you is in order! We’ve spared you! Now buy me a drink, Charlie.”
Rita bustles between us abruptly; kisses Sylvia on each cheek and embraces her.
“Syllllvia! Marvelous you!”
Rita releases her to be held affectionately at arms length by the elbows. How the hell do you know her, Rita. Victor finds this encounter temporarily more interesting than the bar and stays, his arm vaguely wrapped around the waist of his wife.
“Rita, how lovely to see you again.”
Sylvia’s elegance is unwavering.
“The Red Shoes? Has it really been since The Red Shoes?! Oh, you look wonderful, Sylvie.”
Hens, preening each other.
Sylvia knowingly intuits my confusion and elaborates, “Rita and I danced together years ago,” then looks at Victor as though the information were meant for him.
Victor interpolates the data of Rita, is he calculating her in light or in flesh, I can’t tell – his eyes are processing her like a typewriter and he doesn’t miss a line. She is a complaisant piece of paper, happy to be rolled through his consideration.
“Rita and I were studying ballet together and she convinced the…”
Victor, you taunt me for Rita’s reputation and yet all you want is to be a part of it.
“…to perform The Red Shoes for the year-end production – it’s very rarely produced, and he was reluctant at first, because it’s very demanding for the…”
Rita’s eyes meander from the conversation and flare toward Victor.
Don’t you dare, Rita, goddamnit, don’t you dare. He is a snake with an endless appetite; he is just as hungry as you are. Retrieve those leopard talons and don’t pounce; he will bite you back. You are dangerous, Rita, but he is poison.
“…but those shoes must have had some kind of power, once she put them on she just couldn’t stop…”
I tear my eyes from Sylvia’s eloquent gestures to spear them at Rita, point blank. Her eyes snap down like a trained dog. So, Rita… someone has tried to train you before; you are obedient, and guilty, and though you pretend to be amused by the hardwood floors for my sake, you cannot deny what you just said with your eyes because I saw you.
You will comply with my expectations, but I cannot control your desire. It’s OK Rita, it’s OK. I knew you would betray me, I just did not know how.
Part 2
I resign myself from the conversation in favour of the bar. I may not be able to stop what is happening, but I don’t have to look at it either. Rita adorns her audience: offering them trinkets of stories, ribbons of compliments, improvising jeweled embellishments around the edges, making a spectacle of sincerity. Sylvia politely accepts, she has learned to appreciate Rita from a distance – nothing is to be taken seriously, Rita is a one-act vaudeville folly and is allotted the amount of consideration appropriate for such a show. Sylvia: you see through everything.
Victor’s mouth withholds the smile that Rita is striving for – lips tingling, murmurs of curves in the corners; he will not give her the satisfaction that she has won, so she will continue to play the game. Victor, you’re a bastard in a No Man’s Land of morality. Sylvia Sylvia of all people why can’t you see through him? One of Victor’s girls is on the baby grand right now, playing only the sprite, friendly, unobtrusive keys. Oh, Beth.
Rita sidles up next to me, I am not in the mood. What’ll it be, Rita, what twinkling anecdote are you going to try to bestow on me now – I will not have your deflective affectation. I will not be persuaded from my anger; I will not be publicly uncloaked. I turn to stand back against the bar to watch Beth play. Wiggle wiggle her little hips on the piano bench, wiggle waggle jingle jangle, the strands of her ashen bob twirling like a skirt on her head. Beth, will you always look like a little girl playing with a puppy in the tall grass? I hope so.
As she leans against the bar, Rita’s arm scarcely grazes mine. Silence. Your adaptability must be of great use to you, Rita. And then I feel a little hand curl around the inner crook of my elbow, the arm that upholds my drink and my livelihood. The tiny fingers crawl into the fold as a dog accommodates to your shape in bed, willing to compromise but still needing affection. Oh Rita, you find all the secret places. You’re so sweet and so small. Oh Rita, I know you, I know you, I know you’re not as bad as they all say.
Still Rita, you can’t do this. There must be a firm pull on the leash. There are things that you can and cannot do, not even imposed by myself, but by the way. The way wolves are loyal to their pack; the way penguins incubate their eggs; the way bees take pollen, yes, but never more than they need – and not without giving back. There is a way that things are and are not done, Rita; you must be reminded. Not from me as a possessive date, but as a member of your species who does not want you to stray.
“He’s married, Rita.” The terseness of my jaw, the tightening of the hold.
“Hmmm?” She hums dazedly. Is she really not listening, is she just playing cute, is she stalling for time?
“He’s married, I said.”
“Who?”
Wherein the puppy is given direction but continues to play. You require me to be more explicit, Rita? First I pull the reins on her with my eyes. The prize stallion that entered the party reveals spring fawn eyes and wobbly knees. She understands the limits of my patience.
“Oh yes, I’m so happy for Sylvia.”
“Good. If you are happy for her than you should see no reason to intervene.”
“Why would I want to–”
I turn to face her, chin jutting forward in warning. If you are going to tread on my territory, if you are going to spend time in my life, you will be honest in this space, or you will be thrown out. I unclasp her from my glare and free her to run around the party. Go, Rita. I will not hold down your haunches to teach you how to sit. You will come back to me when you are tired. Or hungry. Or when no one else wants you. Rita soars around the room, her arms spread easily around the shoulders of strangers, swooping in on appetizing flocks of conversation and gulping them up.
Beth plunks the conclusive major chord and wheels around to greet the polite pattering of hands with a sweetheart grin. Up she hops from the bench, and teeters through the crowd, zigzagging to familiar faces for pleasant exchanges of how are you and thanks so much, her jubilant pinball trajectory brings her towards me at the bar. The grin extends to a bright-eyed smile, an invisible embrace warmly suspended in mid-air.
“Charlie!” she scurries closer, “How are ya?”
I inflate with a foolish feeling; I am not accustomed to associating with such enthusiasm. “I’m fine, Beth. And you?”
“Oh you know, a little of this, a little of that…” a giggle for punctuation.
“I actually just wanted to thank you Charlie, fer listenin’ and bein’ so nice you know, when…” eyes flash towards Victor in adjacent conversation.
A parched constriction occurs in my throat. I scoff to clear it.
“It’s nothing, Beth. He should know better.”
“Ya, well I was all messed up about it, y’know? An’ you really set me straight, Charlie – I just kept to my keys like you said an’ takin’ care of myself an’ what-have-you, an’ it’s been getting a bit better ev’ry day, you know?”
“Mmmhmm.” I look past Beth’s sparkling blues and pull focus to Victor in the background. He’s never actually present in his interactions – his body is anchored in place while his mind drifts towards more attractive destinations across the room. Then he is gone.
Instinctively I detect Rita in my periphery – she has gotten herself into some kind of intellectual conversation that she has no opinion on, as she nods vacantly to the lecturer. Her eyes fixate on the profile of Victor in the distance, while trusting Sylvia has her back turned behind him. A vehement clenching of my jaw and hoarse internal condemnation: Rita.
Looking down at her toes, Beth daintily steps in towards me, enclosing us in an orb of confidentiality. She picks at her fingernails and winces as she looks up at me, “You didn’t tell Sylvia, did you?” The tips of her ears turn red and the high hills of her cheekbones flush. No Beth, I have no interest in further complicating the relationships of others, especially Sylvia’s – my motivations are uncouth and my involvement would add extraneous implications. No Beth, I have no interest in wrecking your illusion or Sylvia’s illusion; if Victor has chosen to terrorize the hearts of the innocent, a tattling and a strict aside from his wife will not change him. Do I fault his hunger or the sheep that allow themselves to be eaten? No Beth, if Sylvia wanted to know, she would know.
Finally my lips form shapes and air filters through the inner tubes to resonate an audible response: “No, Beth.”
To hell with this party, to hell with faces and cackles and murmurs and whispers, outward introductions, secret judgments, mingling, schmoozing, stewing, sludging through a toxic slew of godawful. A solemn relocation to the balcony is in order, an inoffensive escape. Beth’s pupils flicker as a film projector; the spaces of frames dictate an eager Morse code of light. Questions, she has more questions. I allow the silence to envelope our conversation and seal it. In less than one minute it is apparent that I have withdrawn from the enclosure and moved on. I disengage from the leaning stance and deftly make my way through the throng. How to be surrounded but unaffected: keep your eyes down, be firm and assertive in your movements, and largely you will find you can get to the other side unprovoked. If you don’t want to be seen, you won’t be.
To the balcony: fresh air and freedom. The lining of my suit jacket, the inner pocket, the cigarette case yet to be engraved, the lighter in the right side front pocket; I stand beside the pillar to avoid confrontation from the group clustered outside. The cigarette is inserted, ignited, inhaled: pulling the flavour from the center, pulling the flame closer to me, pulling out the essence, exhaling the excess vapours. A glance at the city line, lights of rooftops and concrete, the sky is overcast despite the dark. A sheen of cloud veils the moon’s screwed-up face, a reluctant bride opposed to the consummation of marriage to the night. Another pull into the lungs, another release through pursed lips, the ghost launches into the vastness of space and I am relieved.
The sliding door is pried open and hauled shut, the congregation of smokers slips inside as two figures wheel around the pillar on the opposite side of the door. The sounds of enrapture carry from around the corner, intermittent muffled kisses and giggles of mutual elation. And then a singsong sigh, a voice teasing in a honeyed, languid tone: a candied cadence with aphrodisied spice. Rita’s voice always changes when she speaks to the men she seeks to entangle, as though she is already wrapped in bed sheets the morning after, husky-voiced and familiar; self-assured, with matted hair and stained eyes.
I peer around the column to see Andy, the earnest trumpet player from the big band, and the unmistakable red heel of Rita sliding up the side of his leg in much the same manner it did mine mere hours ago. Rita, I want to tear off your skin and tie it into knots, I want to claw the ugliness out of you and hold the throbbing mass in my hands. It is in your blood, it flows through you too close to the surface. Everyone has this scarlet stream that runs through them, but buried deep below flesh and subtle intentions. You, Rita, are exposed. Your obviousness is your mystery, so blatant and primal, no subtext, no goddamn decency.
There is no escape. A moment of exhale between the lovers and Rita coos, “You look so fresh-faced.”
That’s because he hasn’t been torn apart by a woman like you yet, Rita.
“How is it different from other faces? I don’t know what the difference is!” Andy jovially goes in for another kiss. Rita pulls away from his lips to quietly disclose, “You just look ready to love, that’s all.”
Ready to love. Ready to love – goddamn you Rita, ready to love. Who? You? And what will you give him? Your best illusion? Goddamn you Rita, I will show you love, I will goddamn massacre you with love.
“I’m always ready to love!” Andy exclaims, “I wanna love you at the first opportunity!” He fondles at her hips, pulling her in to kiss her again.
“Goddamnit!” I tear out from around the corner and pull Andy apart from her, grab her to me. “That’s enough, Rita! We’re going home!” Andy stands back, shocked. I pull her through the party like a petulant child, all flushed and red in humility and resistance, her ferocious nails dig into my hand and her eyes are ready to tear out my jugular. I pull her into the elevator. As soon as the doors enclose us, we erupt.
“How dare you, Charlie! I have every right–” Her wild arms flare up and I grab her by the inner elbows and hold her against the wall as the elevator descends to the ground floor.
“You’re free to run off with whoever the hell you want, but you will not be so disrespectful as to come to this party with me and then mess around with someone else!”
“Then what the hell were you doing at the bar with that girl, Charlie?!”
“Having a conversation – not swallowing someone’s face on the balcony!”
“Goddamn you Charlie, don’t talk to me like that!”
“Show me some respect Rita, and I’ll do the same for you.”
I unclench my hands from her and the door opens.
“If I mean nothing to you, then let there be nothing, and go.”
She looks at me with furious shiny-streaked raccoon eyes. I press the doors closed again and step towards her. In the smallest space, at the very bottom, it comes as an incantation, ‘I hate myself and I don’t want to be alone.’ Nothing chews up that feeling but allowing yourself to be consumed by someone else. And so I step towards her and look down at her with punched out broken eyes, “Rita, I only want you, Rita.”
Her hands slide around my waist. “I’m sorry Charlie – I want you, I want you, I want you too.” She nestles her face into the crook of my shoulder and sways her body slowly, soothingly, “I didn’t mean to mess you up, Charlie, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to.”
“Let’s go home, Rita.”
The taxi ride home is drained of words; Rita slumps in my arms, drunk and curled up around me like a wet kitten. I rhythmically comb through her fallen tendrils of hair with my fingers. We get to my apartment and don’t even turn on the lights; just walk defeated toward the bedroom. I don’t think we want to see what we have done to each other or what we will do. I try to kiss her, to embrace her, to help her out of her clothes, to find something out of her, but she dismissively swats me away. The crisp unbuttoning of my shirt makes the silence more acute; Rita sits on the edge of bed, picking at a small scab on her inner arm. I have not seen you perform this at parties, Rita.
She rounds the edges, a digging in of nails to crust, a snap of the friction and defiance in the skin, she loosens the hold until she unleashes the wound, collecting the blood droplets on her fingertips and supping it in with her lips and tongue. She crawls into bed, sleeping with her dress on and her back facing me. After all that, Rita: high heels and anticipation, animalism, you lie there like roadkill. Are you too tired, drunk, or still angry with me? I wrap my arms around her. Where are your charms now, Rita? A tiny hand folds into mine; I inhale her scent through her mane of hair, foraging through all the passages, stirring my busted heart. Oh yes, there they are. I accommodate my body to surround her shape, and try to sleep as I watch drips of blood stain the sheets.
Part 3
In the night, Rita elongates as a crane. She unfolds her limbs, releasing them to levitate in rising crests. Then harnessing her muscles to gather firm, the ghost inhabits their tense sculptures: the muscles twist up, self-aware and swaying with slow caresses to the surrounding air. Her mighty wingspan stretches across my chest amassing the weight of the room. Rita writhes her legs, rubbing them together like a grasshopper, but there is no sound. Her face is stoic, unknowing and engrossed in sleep. Circular ankle rotations flex to pointe; quick spasmic contractions of the thigh flesh pump life into the legs in vigorous pulsation of her somnambulist waltz. Arms careen up in a curve and roll from the elbow to the fingers in a ripple of flight. Her spine arches as her shoulder blades dig into the mattress, launching her into a tangled pirouette, winding the bed sheets around the circumference of her torso. Her cheek comes to rest at the crux between my ribcage, her hair collapses across my body, the strands curling in their own dream. A perpendicular approach to bed sharing. It will take more than ballet for you to get away with stealing all of the blankets, Rita.
Each lock of your hair strikes a key, Rita, and each key opens a lock and it isn’t fair, how easy it is to love you. The sky is drenched with the dusk of dawn, of blue and rose and reverie. The notes trickle in my mind, accompanied by tympanic heartbeat: Fats Waller’s promenading piano roll, “What Will I Do In The Morning?” When Rita wakes up, she will try to think of a reason to leave. I can make it easy for her. The piano waits for me in the living room. She can pass by with a simple wave and I will scarcely have to look up from my hands.
I will let her off with a warning for the blankets; this is her first offence. I tug a corner of the linen to unravel her knees from the constraints, with which she unintentionally bound them, and re-cover her. A leg kicks out and she folds over to abandon the blanket and splay out over the initiating limb. Facedown and spread-eagled, she gives herself entirely to sleep, her body swallowing up the expanse of the bed. It is so easy to be so trusting with eyes closed for eight unpredictable hours, but when the eyes are open, the instincts are intact, wariness overtakes, and love is fear; intentions are untrusted, and the conscience constructs conflict. Perhaps we’d be better off if we never had to look at each other, and we could just trust the feeling without interference.
The first streams of sunlight are crawling into the apartment. I seat myself at the piano. There is an etiquette; a posture, a respectful raising of the key cover, a soft caress of the ivory surfaces before pressing in. And gently at first, something congenial: a solid handshake, a gift to the host. Once you are welcomed into the good graces, then you can tickle the eighty-eight teeth of the ever-smiling mouth. And once you have the momentum, you can plunge in for intensity: a stampede of ivories, a herd of elephants, reverberation of walls, hammering cords, building a song. For this morning, something introductory: “Stardust.” “Sometimes I wonder… why I spend…the lonely nights… dreaming of a song… the melody… haunts my reverie… and I am once again with you...”
Eighty-eight. Why eighty-eight? All black and white, no grey keys. Major or minor, no medium. Why hammers and strings? The piano is an instrument of percussion, of violent force. The piano is a machine, a circuit board of buttons, when pressed in conjunction perform different functions. The piano is a loyal and resilient instrument. Push the keys away and they come right back to you. I transition to the piece I’m working on, starting sentimentally but mounting into an unknown.
Very ambitious, Charlie, very ambitious. Victor is a true friend in the sense that he can exacerbate my doubts to my face. Trying to finish that composition while working a full-time pansy job. Victor, I am just helping my sister at her pet store while her son is so young, I have to pay rent Victor – we can’t all marry rich. We can’t all marry Sylvia. Or I couldn’t, anyway – she wanted you Vic, and that’s fine, I just wish she’d have told me first and not wasted my time. Trying to break Rita in when she doesn’t belong to anyone… Well, I’m not breaking her in, Vic – I’m letting her go, aren’t I?
I knew when I met her and watched her dance by herself nearly all night, she was her own leader, her own follower, self-sufficient, a complete molecule, a whole note; she didn’t need anything. She doesn’t need anything, yet she wants everything. When I was playing at that party last week, her banshee vigor encouraged me to bolster up the brightness of my playing – I didn’t want to tame her Vic, I wanted to join her. I was riveted on the piano bench and pounded a prowl down the keys, while she whirled with vibrant effervescence across the floor, weaving between couples. The band went wild, the horns turned loose. Rita brings in the brass section wherever she goes. The floor was on fire and everyone was hopping. Sweat was sliding into my shirt collar and dangling from my brow. We were lost: plummeting, soaring, gallivanting, raucous, outrageous, aflame, alive! Rita, you’re crazy! Rita, I could kill you for this! Rita, you are the greatest to have ever lived! Rita! Rita! RITA! The final notes crashed down. She leapt up on stage, collapsed on the bench beside me, and then it had to be.
Am I playing a piano or a carnival calliope in a memory carousel? That was free and wild, free and wild. I frantically try to recall what I just played, marking hasty notation before the fire sparks out and I lose it – when I hear movement in the kitchen. I must have woken Rita. The sound of tap and faucet. A glass of water and she will go, fine. Fine. I hunch over toward the music: what the hell did I just play, concentrate, concentrate, keep to your keys. I am caught between two notes for the next measure, how the hell did that start, what the hell is she doing? Rita rounds the corner from the kitchen and leans sleepily against he wall in my dress shirt from last night. The sun has swarmed the room, I did not look up until now. A percolating rumble sounds from boiling water in the kitchen.
“Where do you keep your coffee, Charlie?”
The kettle steams its whistle.
“In the cupboard above the stove.”
Staying for coffee… I had not anticipated this. Are you this easily domesticated, Rita? I turn back to my notes, she will want to go right after this Charlie, don’t get your hopes up, just get those notes down. Hell, I don’t know what to play. It’s been quiet for too long already. I can hear her getting a cup from the cupboard, and rustling through dry goods. She leans out of the kitchen, “How do you take your coffee, Charlie?” “Black.” I say without looking up from the keyboard.
She enters the living room, placing the coffee on top of a red cloth napkin on the piano. Sitting at the table with her coffee, she crosses her legs on the chair and looks into her cup sheepishly. Lambishly, more like. She grazes her coffee cup in protective, coquettish sips, holding her cup in her lap and her eyes down. Her body is apologizing but she hasn’t said a word. Animals do not discuss conflict, they act upon it. “Would you like – I could put on a record?” I ask, while walking over to the shelf, anticipating the answer. I guide the record from the sleeve onto the table and cue the needle, the breaking brass intro of a Billie Holiday tune comes blasting through the speakers, Rita’s eyes widen and she puts her cup down on the table. “Good morning to you too.”
I sit down on the couch with my coffee and look at the bouquet of sunlight gathered in the corner of the room, shining from the window at my back. Rita rounds her spoon in her porcelain mug. “You dance in your sleep.” I say. Tap, tap, spoon on rim and settles on the table.
“Your fingers twitch.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes, I think you were trying to play ‘When The Saints Come In’ on my ribs.”
“Could be. You’re out of tune, though.”
“Is that so.”
“Yes.”
We’re pulling half-smiles from each other like lopsided venetian blinds.
“More coffee?” I offer.
“Yes.”
She follows me to the kitchen, her shoulder ticks to the bassline instinctively. I start filling her cup, “Just halfway.” She fills the next two quarters with sugar and cream. Her hips are ticking as she stirs, quick pendullic beats. “Now baby or never…” Step step triple step, step step triple step, spontaneously in sync, I pull in her arm, I am a clumsy lead, but I make up for it with exuberance. Then Rita takes over and turns and arms and shimmy, and now we’re whirling around the kitchen and I don’t know who’s what. Again, caught up in the whirlpool of Rita, tumultuous kinetic whirlwind of dancing. Ballet dancers are trained in poise and grace, the goal to achieve the ultimate weightlessness of flight – dancers are to keep mindful of every precise movement bringing them closer to levity. Rita can move so freely, can stomp through the floor, as though she has learned how to let loose from another dance on the side.
Waltz swing jig jive, turn it loose turn it loose, the head of the horns and hot legs careening around the kitchen. Push out, pull close, arms slide, twist, “Now baby or never…” When the song ends, Rita laughs and falls into my arms. This is just fine Rita, but this has to end sometime, and I give you permission to go. “Well I should get back to practicing.” Rita looks at me incredulously and leans in to coax a kiss out of my firmed lips. It’s wonderful and course it’s wonderful and so sweet how her little hands climb up the back of my shirt. She is honey: not just simply in sweetness and suspension, but in the complexity of spice, the grains of her tongue dissolving in my mouth. It all seems so sincere, the temptation to believe her is so strong.
“You’re my thrill… you do something to me…” She kisses where my jaw meets my neck and claws her fingers between my fists to hold my hands, skitting across the floor in her stocking feet, pulling me towards the bedroom, we turn and tumble into blankets. She’s wearing my shirt, she’s crawling under my skin, she’s making coffee in my kitchen and leading me around my apartment. I can’t say no to any of it.
to be continued in January 2010.
At five years old, Vera and I were uncomplicated and volatile. Vera had the mischievous upturning of the eyes, the colour elusive and deceptive itself: blue, grey, green, turquoise, cerulean, indigo; influenced by light, mood and circumstance. Really I think she made them whatever colour she wanted them to be. Her eyes contrasted with her tanned olive skin and sandy-sunned hair, the result made her look milky and lucid, seductive but withholding, even at five years old.
It was only during this time that my mother's paranoia provided her with searing intuition. As Vera and I grew older, this hair-trigger worrying would become overbearing and gratuitous, but back then my mother was very sharp. She intercepted our scandals with a reactionary concern that was completely accurate. Although I seemed very trustworthy, and was skilled at making believable explanations to reassure any questioning adult, my mother was never quite convinced.
When we were caught, I loved to watch Vera lie; the thrill of being implicated in the truth, knowing her so well and the trouble we’d been in, standing by her as she constructed sly falsities that were clumsily wrought, it was only then that I felt as though I did not know her, (the source that inspired her fabrication or her wildly improbable logic) and that I wanted to.
Vera was attracted to me because I had devious ideas, but lacked the confidence to see them through. She would take my quiet suggestion, make it into the action of scandal (in her charming way), and I would calmly justify the whims of Vera to the surrounding adults – when it had been my idea all along. This was why my mother could not trust me; she knew that Vera was just the face of mischief, while I was the mind.
Since Vera and I had climbed onto the roof of the house from my bedroom window and set fire to the curtains (two separate incidents that were resolved by trucks with sirens), we were no longer allowed to play in my bedroom with the door closed. Vera and I migrated to the screened-in back porch. My mother had seemed to relax, thinking that daylight and the neighbours would stop us from exploring the intricacies of danger.
The floor of the back porch was covered in green turf reminiscent of false grass at indoor driving ranges, but coarser, like a carpet of densely-laid scratchy shards. The uncomfortable sensation of roughhousing barelegged over the grating texture inspired Vera and I to bring blankets down from my bedroom; the quilting would prevent us from skin contact with the menacing bristles.
While the sun shone through the porch screen, the roof filtered the light from the heat, so at that time in the mid-afternoon, Vera and I were incubated in the delirious humid shade. Her bronzy legs were crooked at the knee and strewn out in front of her as she hunched her concentration on pulling the matted knots out of a doll’s hair.
Playing dolls had long ago proved to be insignificant and unriveting; an interest feigned for the intervals between our indulgences. I was trying to concoct our next thrill in my head, but was captivated by the flecks of hair on Vera’s legs as they shone gold (the gold hairs on the bronze skin, her skin against the blanket, the blanket chaffing over the bristles with the momentum of her comb strokes, the stiff bordom induced by dolls). We had climbed on top of the roof of my house and seen the sun drench the trees in honey-glory light, but I did not know the truth of her body and it made me squint at her with critical curiosity.
My mind crept toward the idea that Vera and I should take off our clothes and look at each other. Children are often naked without being self-conscious, but I knew the difference between the children who loved to run around naked and unthinking at parties, and the proposal I was consciously making to Vera, which would not be deemed acceptable by my mother.
Vera and I pulled a blanket over our heads; it was white and opaque but allowed enough sunlight to permeate the cotton fabric so our makeshift tent was illuminated within. We outstretched our arms to bridge a canopy between us, and the weight of the fabric created a slouch in the tension that we had to compensate for by folding our shoulders forward to make our faces visible.
We tucked the blanket underneath us to protect our softest parts from the jagged turf and sealed the edges of our cocoon. Vera was enamoured with my idea and wanted to go first. She took off her jean shorts and t-shirt and sat gleaming in her summer skin; her eyes were glowing orchids in the hazy white light sheen. I took off my underwear and pulled my sundress up so it hung off the back of my neck like a cape. I wished Vera had been wearing clothes that were not so difficult to reassemble in case we were caught. I looked at her with lilting, moony eyes. My pale translucent skin was obedient to the protective sunblock my mother slathered on me with obnoxious fervour throughout the day, while Vera had tanned to a taupe earthy colour that crowed with the freedom that was allowed to her.
As mutual explorers, we gave a tour of ourselves and told the stories of our skin: the origin of scars or the question of elbows. My shins had bruises aligned like notches on a doorframe, showing the measurement of a rambunctious and full-lived summer. Her shin bones were more protrusive, like the bow of a muscled instrument. Vera cradled the flesh of her calf back and forth in her hand and the instrument played the bow. I pulled the extra allowance of skin on my knee between my fingers to make a mouth, and the mouth grumbled a greeting to Vera. She threw her hands to her face, laughing, causing the canopy to fall lopsided on her end. I crumpled my accordianed fleshfolds, heaving giggles until tears sparked at the corners of my eyes. We tried to re-establish our limbed tent frame, but the subsiding hiccups of giggles made the structure wobbly.
We opened our legs to make a connecting diamond shape with our feet. This we were more bashful about, because we knew we were encroaching a delicate moment and did not feel the audacity to forcibly trespass upon each other. Vera began her analysis of observation of the presence or lack of hair at this location; as compared with what she had witnessed of her mother. She pulled the skin taut, and described the supple skin feeling with a focused perplexity and confusion: how could something so soft and sweet be so hidden and undiscussed?
Prompted by our prolonged quietness, my mother (of course), stormed onto the porch suspicious that she had left us unattended for too long, and from our cocooned enclosure immediately knew that Vera and I were in scandal. “Kim! Vera! Get out of that blanket! What are you doing under there? Get out of there and stay out where I can see you, or I’m calling Vera’s mother to come pick her up!” There was no rationalizing with my mother; there was not even a question. We crawled disappointedly out of the blanket. I didn’t know what she wanted from us – we had to entertain ourselves somehow.
“When you’re driving down the deserted highway and the bats are flapping at your windshield, nevermind that, nevermind, as they dissolve into black ink and slide down the pane of glass – you’ve struck oil, my friends, you’ve struck oil, toiling in the glistening darkness of the magic behind the curtain of your eye. Pull over to the side of the road friends, pull over to that gravel shoulder before you experience a head-on collision with your conscience, tilt your seat back and listen, we will tell you how to get there.
When you’re in a room alone friends, and you hear voices in the room below; and you feel the skin of the memory climbing up the stairs, you can try it on friends, try it on and from another room you hear a radio. You hear a radio and that’s us friends, the radio from your dreams. We’re live while you’re sleeping, but it’s still living, synchronized swimming in blankets, welcome, yes, we’re all here and we’re free.
There is the bristled beard you swallowed in search of lips; all your lovers are lying in one bed friends, drawing circles around each others ankles in a cabin in the woods. Your hair-mess gathers in gusts around your face as you ride your bicycle over the gnarled cantankerous roots of the forest. Sensations too vivid to name overtake you friends, for a precious reliving, wiping flour from your hands onto a linen apron in someone else’s kitchen; the vault of consciousness is opened, your conscience sits down for a conversation, the mad highways are slick with rain and your wheels are tearing through the asphalt and flying over the fields...
Friends, you are tucked in by a strange man with slow and truculent hands on a sloppy drunken evening, you’re sorry and splayed out, but we’ve come to gather you in our rolling momentum, tumbleweeds and summersaults; catch on and start turning. You’re with us friend, you’re tagging along with the kids from your neighbourhood as the street fills with rain and the houses outpour with familiar faces swimming in the street, your great grandmother is playing piano curbside while you’re twirling in the water, her unkempt fingernails clacking on the ivories; you are making love in an abandoned movie theatre about to be torn down, your fingers crawl into caverns filled with oil while nothing plays on screen. There is a skin peeling, a shedding, an emergence in the urgency of complete freedom – notwithstanding flailing limbs contained in blankets, not confounded, compounded well-rounded the edges of your mind filed soft in the exploration of the frontier.
Your head is poised above your pillow friend, in the alleyways of oblivion, on the endless milky night highway, the dreams pull you toward the wilderness, the lampshade tips his hat adieu; you are engulfed in chariots and whirlwinds, feathers in your hair, nettles, leaves; sitting on the rooftop of a roadside shack watching the horses run through the flax fields, as you are about to fall asleep and the sun is about to rise.”
At five years old, Vera and I were uncomplicated and volatile. Vera had the mischievous upturning of the eyes, the colour elusive and deceptive itself: blue, grey, green, turquoise, cerulean, indigo; influenced by light, mood and circumstance. Really I think she made them whatever colour she wanted them to be. Her eyes contrasted with her tanned olive skin and sandy-sunned hair, the result made her look milky and lucid, seductive but withholding, even at five years old.
It was only during this time that my mother's paranoia provided her with searing intuition. As Vera and I grew older, this hair-trigger worrying would become overbearing and gratuitous, but back then my mother was very sharp. She intercepted our scandals with a reactionary concern that was completely accurate. Although I seemed very trustworthy, and was skilled at making believable explanations to reassure any questioning adult, my mother was never quite convinced.
When we were caught, I loved to watch Vera lie; the thrill of being implicated in the truth, knowing her so well and the trouble we’d been in, standing by her as she constructed sly falsities that were clumsily wrought, it was only then that I felt as though I did not know her, (the source that inspired her fabrication or her wildly improbable logic) and that I wanted to.
Vera was attracted to me because I had devious ideas, but lacked the confidence to see them through. She would take my quiet suggestion, make it into the action of scandal (in her charming way), and I would calmly justify the whims of Vera to the surrounding adults – when it had been my idea all along. This was why my mother could not trust me; she knew that Vera was just the face of mischief, while I was the mind.
Since Vera and I had climbed onto the roof of the house from my bedroom window and set fire to the curtains (two separate incidents that were resolved by trucks with sirens), we were no longer allowed to play in my bedroom with the door closed. Vera and I migrated to the screened-in back porch. My mother had seemed to relax, thinking that daylight and the neighbours would stop us from exploring the intricacies of danger.
The floor of the back porch was covered in green turf reminiscent of false grass at indoor driving ranges, but coarser, like a carpet of densely-laid scratchy shards. The uncomfortable sensation of roughhousing barelegged over the grating texture inspired Vera and I to bring blankets down from my bedroom; the quilting would prevent us from skin contact with the menacing bristles.
While the sun shone through the porch screen, the roof filtered the light from the heat, so at that time in the mid-afternoon, Vera and I were incubated in the delirious humid shade. Her bronzy legs were crooked at the knee and strewn out in front of her as she hunched her concentration on pulling the matted knots out of a doll’s hair.
Playing dolls had long ago proved to be insignificant and unriveting; an interest feigned for the intervals between our indulgences. I was trying to concoct our next thrill in my head, but was captivated by the flecks of hair on Vera’s legs as they shone gold (the gold hairs on the bronze skin, her skin against the blanket, the blanket chaffing over the bristles with the momentum of her comb strokes, the stiff bordom induced by dolls). We had climbed on top of the roof of my house and seen the sun drench the trees in honey-glory light, but I did not know the truth of her body and it made me squint at her with critical curiosity.
My mind crept toward the idea that Vera and I should take off our clothes and look at each other. Children are often naked without being self-conscious, but I knew the difference between the children who loved to run around naked and unthinking at parties, and the proposal I was consciously making to Vera, which would not be deemed acceptable by my mother.
Vera and I pulled a blanket over our heads; it was white and opaque but allowed enough sunlight to permeate the cotton fabric so our makeshift tent was illuminated within. We outstretched our arms to bridge a canopy between us, and the weight of the fabric created a slouch in the tension that we had to compensate for by folding our shoulders forward to make our faces visible.
We tucked the blanket underneath us to protect our softest parts from the jagged turf and sealed the edges of our cocoon. Vera was enamoured with my idea and wanted to go first. She took off her jean shorts and t-shirt and sat gleaming in her summer skin; her eyes were glowing orchids in the hazy white light sheen. I took off my underwear and pulled my sundress up so it hung off the back of my neck like a cape. I wished Vera had been wearing clothes that were not so difficult to reassemble in case we were caught. I looked at her with lilting, moony eyes. My pale translucent skin was obedient to the protective sunblock my mother slathered on me with obnoxious fervour throughout the day, while Vera had tanned to a taupe earthy colour that crowed with the freedom that was allowed to her.
As mutual explorers, we gave a tour of ourselves and told the stories of our skin: the origin of scars or the question of elbows. My shins had bruises aligned like notches on a doorframe, showing the measurement of a rambunctious and full-lived summer. Her shin bones were more protrusive, like the bow of a muscled instrument. Vera cradled the flesh of her calf back and forth in her hand and the instrument played the bow. I pulled the extra allowance of skin on my knee between my fingers to make a mouth, and the mouth grumbled a greeting to Vera. She threw her hands to her face, laughing, causing the canopy to fall lopsided on her end. I crumpled my accordianed fleshfolds, heaving giggles until tears sparked at the corners of my eyes. We tried to re-establish our limbed tent frame, but the subsiding hiccups of giggles made the structure wobbly.
We opened our legs to make a connecting diamond shape with our feet. This we were more bashful about, because we knew we were encroaching a delicate moment and did not feel the audacity to forcibly trespass upon each other. Vera began her analysis of observation of the presence or lack of hair at this location; as compared with what she had witnessed of her mother. She pulled the skin taut, and described the supple skin feeling with a focused perplexity and confusion: how could something so soft and sweet be so hidden and undiscussed?
Prompted by our prolonged quietness, my mother (of course), stormed onto the porch suspicious that she had left us unattended for too long, and from our cocooned enclosure immediately knew that Vera and I were in scandal. “Kim! Vera! Get out of that blanket! What are you doing under there? Get out of there and stay out where I can see you, or I’m calling Vera’s mother to come pick her up!” There was no rationalizing with my mother; there was not even a question. We crawled disappointedly out of the blanket. I didn’t know what she wanted from us – we had to entertain ourselves somehow.
“Does time kill intensity
or does intensity kill time?”
She asked me,
but her eyes were
too blue
to answer.
When it was
too good
I knew it was
too good
But I forgot to remember
that it was on the verge
of breaking
I stood very still
I held it in my hands
and waited.
When I looked down
at my hands
and saw the shards
I could not tell
if it had broken
or if they were
just pieces
I was holding together
the whole time.
every turn of your ankle
I am coiling around your
protruding bones
mimicking your movements
your millimeters are miles
the acuteness of my desire
You, precisely:
make me savour our distance
in anticipation
the stampede of particles
charging battalions
microscopic microcosms
of silent intentions
we are stealing
ravishing glances
mouths pursed
doubt perched
on the intangible everything
love begun and done
through airborne molecules
unaddressed
who are you, enigmatic woman
ringing resonating bells
of palpitations in my heart
who are you
I would like to know
1. she is brilliant
she drags words from all sides
and bends them to bid her meaning
her letters are square scratches
characters like tables and chairs
clothes do not know how
to perch on the expanse
of her broad magnificence
her movements are necessary
not tinged with false grace
the obscene beauty of
her carved experience
the penetrating opacity
of her untranslatable tongue
her eyes have seen my mind
and winked excitedly
2. she knows
I flew to Chicago to see her. In my loneliness in my mind, I think I made her better than she was. At the time I thought she was the radiant, obvious answer to everything in my life that needed solving. I thought she was worth going to Chicago for. She knew I was coming, she said she couldn’t wait, but when she opened her door and I stood on the step… well, I’d seen her face in my head–and she was going to look at me differently than that. She didn’t need it the same way I did.
We tried to be romantic, we held each other and pressed our lips together with false urgency, but the vital something was missing and it made me cling harder to her skin to try to pull it out of her. In the morning she turned the lights on even though the sun was already up, and told me that she hadn’t actually expected me to come. She was seeing someone else. She said she didn’t mind if I stayed with her, but asked if I could stay in the living room instead. No, I had known Gloria for too long and I had traveled too far to sleep in the next room. There had always been the glimmer of what could be, but when we tried to move toward it, there was flickering and disappointment. She thought I had come for the city, but I grew up in the city, I’d had it already–I’d never had her.
There was nothing for me in Chicago. All of my old close friends had moved away, I could have stayed with my parents and chased after the vapours of everyone else, but I decided to take the first flight back to New York the next day. I felt like hell, my whole head felt swollen, my body was wrung out, my heart had betrayed me. All of the time I had allowed myself to think about Gloria, while looking out of windows, into my cup of coffee… I had been so sure, and so wrong. The fluidity of liquids flowing through my body felt leaden and solid as I walked from her house downtown.
Gloria Gloria Gloria how could you, Gloria. The illusion of you, Gloria. Displaced in my own hometown, Gloria. How can you want and then not want, Gloria? Should I have come sooner, Gloria? I wish you’d have told me, Gloria! Why did you even try, Gloria? Did you ever feel it at all, Gloria? Gloria, how could you? How could you Gloria Gloria Gloria?
I managed to waste the day in a café, thoughts of Gloria were hanging in the curtains and embedded in the lines of my own hands. I was glad I was going back to New York. It was better to be busy with work than to be stuck with those thoughts. I had no one to talk to, I was swelling and bursting… I walked through the streets searching the sidewalk for answers.
Finally I stopped in front of the bar where Angelheart Mitchum used to play. Mick “Angelheart” Mitchum played Chicago’s best blues harmonica. He was a bear of a man; his chest was a furnace, he was always cooking up wind and emotion in there, sending those sailing notes out of the harp, so true, so saturated, they clung to the air and dangled from the dusty chandeliers. He had clear blue eyes, giant boxcar boots he rhythmically stamped on stage, he always carried a bit of the wilderness with him, in his unshaven face, in his stern bones and strong movements, but his heart was pure, it was too good, it was too true–that’s what his music told you, and that’s why they called him “Angelheart.”
I had always trusted him to know what was right… his music told me what to feel before I even knew how to feel it. I used to count on his shows to solve me. His music was pure sorrow, but in the expression of the excruciating he overcame it, he rose to a solace above it, like a ship captain who understood the torrential devastation of the waters but made peace with it and sailed gracefully.
Seven years ago Angelheart had disappeared. The stories that surfaced were tinged with secrecy, with a mysterious disgrace. I couldn’t believe that he would have left unless it was for something better. I wanted to find out where Angelheart went and go there. I wanted to trust his fate to navigate my future as he had steered me so wisely in the past. I opened the door to the bar, determined to know.
Part 2They called him Eddie Brassbones because he moved the saxophone like it was another finger. As the last remaining patriarch of the Chicago blues scene, I knew he would be a guaranteed source for knowing the story of Angelheart Mitchum. I was lucky Eddie hadn’t gone straight like the rest of them, I’d buy him a couple of drinks and he’d talk – Eddie had ridden the slow tide of alcoholism gracefully; he never had to clean up his act, his regimented daily scotch made him enduringly suave. I knew from the poster on the door that Eddie wasn’t playing that night, but I thought he’d be there to oversee the evening.
I walked down the stairs to the bar. Even though smoking indoors had been banned for two years, the bar had still retained its musty atmosphere – a culmination of the intensity of past chain-smokers and the owners lighting up after hours, I was sure. The attitude of the lurking patrons only encouraged the feeling. Eddie was leaning against the bar on the other side of the room. I didn’t recognize him at first in the murky red candlelight, but when I saw the way he held himself: elbows rested on the bar, rocks glass in hand, dark eyes like wise pearls nested in tired pockets of skin, wearing a ship captain’s hat, surveying the room – I knew it couldn’t be anyone else. He was proud, prominent and magnificent.
We had met on several occasions. I always introduced myself too eagerly, a gangly white boy in a blues bar. Eddie was always courteous, kind, receiving – but he never remembered me. I never held it against him, I knew he met a lot of people, and I knew I had never said or done anything worth remembering. I hoped to one day earn his approval, though if that’s what I was striving for, I shouldn’t have been trying to ask about “Angelheart.”
I ordered a beer at the bar; I needed to pace myself in comparison to Brassbones, I knew I was much younger than him and would not be foolish enough to try and match a professional drinker drink for drink. I wanted to seem casual when I approached Eddie, though I felt he could already see through me from the across the bar - he probably hadn’t even glanced in my direction. I tried sauntering over to him, but my explicit intentions made every meandering stride seem more and more obvious as I approached him. I decided I should introduce myself to avoid making him uncomfortable, in case he really didn’t remember me. I knew no matter how eloquently I would try to plan out my words, it would all become a frantic splutter in the moment, the best I could do was buy him a drink and tell him the truth.
“Hey Eddie,” I extended a hand, “I’m a big admirer of your work.” Eddie readily shook my hand – he was always sociable, “Alright, alright, glad to hear it, kid – what’s your name?” His hand was a leather paw, the shake strong and amiable, he was the real thing, through and through.
“Jeremy.” I was smiling so hard my lips weren’t even touching my teeth. Anyone would have felt honoured to have been in his presence. “Glad to know you, Jeremy,” he said with a Cheshire smile, “have a seat, have a drink, you got a drink? Well start drinking it, heh heh heh.”
Eddie swiveled on his stool to face the bar, tilted the glass toward him to assess how much scotch was left and took it all in a last swig. The ice cubes clacked a concise percussion against his teeth and rang out as they hit back at the bottom of the glass. His eyelids lowered and I estimated he’d been drinking since the early afternoon; I wouldn’t have to buy him as many drinks as I had thought.
The empty glass summoned the bartender over. She was a pretty thing; she reminded me of Gloria, but so did the lamps. She was classy and teasing, a welcome distraction.
“So Eddie, you’ve found your benefactor for the evening?” she smiled at me, “Yeah, another scotch please,” I said. “Don’t let him bleed you dry…” she winked. “Aw c’mon Elise, be nice, girl – or I’ll start dedicatin’ songs to Tina.”
Elise made a face at him while pouring the drink. Eddie elbowed me to let me in on the joke, “That’s the weekend bartender, heh heh heh.” Elise set the scotch in front of him and stormed off in a mock huff, Eddie called after her, “Aw, Elise baby, you know I love you best!” He turned to me, “No matter how old you get, you’re never too old for a woman.” We clinked our respective glasses to the declaration.
“Are you going to be playing tonight?” “Naahh, I’m just on supervisin’ duty.” I braced myself with false confidence, “Did uh… Angelheart Mitchum ever show up here again?” “Oh no, oh no, come on boy… not you too… why is everybody always so FAScinated with folks who disappear and don’t even take into account the people who are still livin’? You didn’t even ask me how my day was, kid.” Eddie chuckled at the joke he was trying to make, but I knew he meant it.
“Angelheart, Angelheart… I know kid, it’s a real loss, but you don’t want to hear the story, it t’ain’t a story I want to tell, you can read about it in the newspapers, you didn’t have to come all the way down here. Elise! My new friend here wants to know about Angelheart.” “Surprise, surprise,” Elise called back while she slammed the cash register drawer shut with her hip and handed a customer his change.
Of course, it had been foolish of me to think I was the only one affected by Mitchum’s disappearance. Mick was loved by everyone, he was a testament of the true Chicago soul, he could bring any man to tears in one note, sustained. I used to come to that bar to drink underage, I didn’t know much about music then, I knew even less about the blues – but I remembered the first time I heard Mick play, he had struck me with feeling, those harmonic howls had found an inherent longing inside me, his very inhalation and exhalation had meaning, he breathed emotion.
“Listen kid,” Eddie leaned in so low his eyes had to look up to make contact with mine. “There’s a reason nobody talks about this, right?” His shoulders were grinding out the emphasis of his words. “It t’ain’t a pretty story. I know what his music made you feel, it made everybody feel like that too, so remember him that way, beautiful like he was, don’t let no time or no story change that for you…”
“But it’s not… true…” I persevered. Eddie went hawkeyed, staring me down, and through, protectively encircling the vulnerable truth. Elise wandered over to our spectacle; she was probably well accustomed to this scenario, ‘Angelheart’ pilgrims searching for answers, Eddie bristling with resistance. It was like the looming truth of Angelheart’s fate determined a destiny for the lives of everyone.
Eddie was closed off to me now; he was frustrated with the burden of gate-keeping the secret. Elise leaned in on the bar, smacking her chewing gum between her tongue and the roof of her mouth, searching Eddie’s furrowed brows with doe-eyed encouragement. Eddie softened. They had a connection that I’d never had.
Elise spoke for him, “You gotta understand… uh…” she searched my face with those same eyes. “Jeremy,” I volunteered. “Jeremy. You gotta understand that this is a very sensitive subject…” her arms writhed forward on the bar and her long hair fell to enshroud her face. “Angelheart was like a hero for people, right? People kinda need something to believe in that way – and telling about what happened, well it’s not for everyone, right? You just gotta know that there are still good things out there, no matter what he did, you just can’t put all your chips on one man…” She turned to Brassbones for approval and he nodded with feeling. I was surprised that someone as young as her knew the story. I studied her face to see if I could see traces of how it had affected her, I expected anyone who knew the truth to be changed somehow. She touched Eddie’s forearm and gave him a look, then crossed the bar to serve another customer.
Eddie sighed, “OK… ok…” he shook his head in disbelief, as though just by speaking he was breaking a vow he had made to himself. “Alright Jeremy, you want to know, I’ll tell you, but I got to impose a law, that once you know, you got to know what to do with it, how to treat it… this ain’t parlour gossip if you know what I’m sayin’.” “I understand.” “Alright, alright, well, what can I say now… it started the way ev’rything does begin, with a woman…” Elise was pouring pints mid-bar and still listening, she rolled her eyes at Eddie.
He turned to me, “Well you’ve seen Angelheart play before, you know the kind of man he was – impene-trable and radiant. He loved women, always had them dangling off of his arms like feathers – he was sweet with them all too, but a heartbreaker, natur’lly. He had a kind of affection for ‘em, but you know, I don’t believe he’d ever really been in love before. He was alright with that too – coz you saw how his music filled him, but uh… as time went on, I think it started to create a real hollow, a real vacancy in his soul. I have to say that I wasn’t payin’ too close attention, but I felt the songs started burnin’ in new places, like he was tryin’ to call the animals down from the mountain, cryin’ out for his mate – I’d never heard his songs reach so far, you know, the longing… and finally she came in one night with some of her friends.”
Part 3“I’d never seen her in here before; she didn’t stand out to me at the time – I don’t even recall what she really looked like. Brown hair, brown eyes… I never would have suspected her as anything. I was sitting in that front booth over there, in the back corner by the stage, entertaining the fabulous Sadie Mae. I was jus’ half-watching Angelheart’s set, ‘cause I was goin’ on after. I’d seen him play every night for years; he was always just one big light of sound, but I saw that night he started flickerin’ – imagine: ‘Angelheart’ Mitchum, nervous – my only idea is that he must have seen her.
So natur’lly, I started to tune in a little closer; I was distracted away from the embracing arms of Sadie Mae… I mean, his stature was shrinking, he was clumsy, fumblin’, the songs were too scared to come out – he cut his set early and didn’t even pack up, he just left ev’rything on the side, put his harp in his shirt pocket and walked offstage. By now I was concerned, I thought he’d taken some kind of ill - but I saw him approach a table with a few women sitting ‘round. Angelheart never chased after women, he just had to go about his way and they’d fly to him and try to hold on.
He stood at her table, all sheepish, with his head down, like he was havin’ to confess that he done somethin’ wrong. She looked up at him like she was jus’ lookin’ at a table or a chair, it didn’t look like nothin’ to me… but he bent down beside her and introduced himself, took off his hat, and shook her hand – took off his hat! Ho! Like a real gentleman! I’d never seen Angelheart without that broad-brim black hat on, and to be true, I think it was ‘cause he was beginning to lose the harvest on his head, if you know what I mean. I can’t say for sure what happened after that – I mean they talked for a time, she seemed quiet, polite… Angelheart with his hat off the whole time, and his head bowed down like at Sunday mass – ho! Never had I seen…
Well, I digress. She left with her friends. As soon as she was gone, Angelheart was like a lion on fire. I was playin’ a Sadie Mae serenade when I saw him slammin’ ‘round the bar, packin’ up like he was goin’ to leave town. He was all cagey, waitin’ by the bar for his payout from Les. I strolled up next to him to see what he’d been hit with, you know. I didn’t know how serious it all was, I was just playin’ around… I slid in beside him at the bar and jus’ said, “What’s her name?” The name is always the most important thing, that’s what rings ‘round in your head when you’re in love, it makes a song of itself… he looked at me and his eyes were like two tears broke, his voice was just a choked scratch: “Marion,” he told me, then he took the money and left.”
Elise wandered over to us. She picked up Eddie’s glass and shook the ice at him, like the well-intentioned bell-shaking of charity collectors. Eddie nodded dutifully. I tried to order another beer, but Eddie recommended something “stealthier” to carry me through. “Rum & coke?” I looked at Elise; Elise shrugged her shoulders at Eddie. Eddie shook his head, “Two scotch.”
I was concerned that Eddie was trying to get me drunk so I wouldn’t remember the story. I was adamant to conserve every aspect of the truth. I would not drink it. I would drink it very slowly. I would not swallow. I would swallow in small controlled increments. Elise came back with a round of whisky shots. “Compliments of Les,” she smiled, “I think he wants you to make ‘Angelheart’ merchandise.” She giggled and for a moment I saw exactly the precocious seven-year-old girl she must have been. “Oh yeah…” Eddie was unimpressed. “You’re good at bringing in business, Eddie…” she insisted, and it was true: the night had never really picked up. The bar was near vacant, with just a few scattered regulars in their respective corners, brooding. The musician onstage was playing lackluster guitar.
In my first memories of going to that bar, the noise used to be scorching; there was no way anyone could have carried on a conversation like we were now. If there had never been an “Angelheart,” would the bar still have experienced a lull of public interest? With no obvious cause would it be accepted as just a fact of business, or would they find something else to blame? Would I drink the whisky in front of me, or try and spill it unnoticed?
Elise plucked up her shot glass between her forefinger and thumb and gestured it carelessly forward in mid-air. “What should we drink to?” She looked at Eddie. “The truth,” I suggested, too eagerly. “Heh heh heh, wherever it may be…” Eddie smiled. We drank, and I decided I would just swirl the ice around in my scotch thoughtfully, hoping Eddie wouldn’t notice that I wasn’t actually drinking it.
Eddie’s eyelids were getting heavier, “Yeahh, Mick, he wasn’t right after that. He’d show up late to play, or sometimes not at all; he really felt for her – and when Mick had a feeling, it was like a stampede. They went out for a night; he was swimmin’ in stars about it all, but I don’t think she was ever really interested. She was quiet; I think he was just too much for her, and Mick didn’t understand – he could not accept it, you know, it was like the feeling started draggin’ him around, made him do things… he started goin’ to her house, standin’ outside. He wouldn’t even let himself in the gate; never tried knockin’ on the door. He tried to be a gentleman ‘bout it all. He’d just stand in front of the picket fence and wait, watchin’ the lights turn on and off in diff’rent rooms – tryin’ to be with her any way he could, I’d say…”
The light from the nearby candle made Eddie’s drink glower, he stared into the smoldering glare like a cauldron of memory. His heavy fingers were wrapped around the ridges of the glass, turning it in his hand. The rotating motion refracted the light through the glass sides, conjuring vivid thought from all corners of his recollection. He swayed the drink back and forth, following the gleam with his eyes, trying to unlock the invisible combination to the safe of the secret. He hung down his head and all of his thoughts seemed to fall forward and weigh on his brow. If he had been vacillating on whether he could proceed, he had surrendered.
“Well, I guess one night Mick was standing outside, and… her dog was wanderin’ the yard… a gold’n retriever… and the dog didn’t say nothin’ – animals tended to love Angelheart, he just had that way that worked with ev’rything – but uh… I don’t know… I think Mick was feelin’ pent up, frust’rated, ashamed… ‘Cause he – uh… he seemed to have took up that dog, and he… he crushed it, in his arms… kill’d. You know, there were no signs of strangling,’ so I have ev’ry reason to believe that Angelheart was just tryin’ to embrace it, just needed some love I think…
So, if Marion wasn’t scared before, she was sure as hell scared then. She found the dog’s body all crumpled up in the yard… thought it was a threat on her life, so she got in a car and left town. I think she had a sister someplace out west – and when Angelheart saw she’d gone, he got in a car and he followed her. The fact that she had a couple of hours ahead of him was ir-relevant; Angelheart was followin’ instinct: investin’ ev’ry intuition in her direction. He asked around and stayed on her trail.
Finally he found the motel where she was stayin’, and he got a room right across the hall from her. He washed up and tried to make himself presentable – all the while tryin’ to think of what he could say, how to explain himself. I think he was hopin’ that if he could tell her what happened, the how an’ the why, that she would understand; she’d understand that he didn’t mean to – that it was jus’ circumstance, feelings at the time… I think he knew that she couldn’t love him, but he felt the need to confess; that she had to know. When he went to knock on her door, there was no one answerin’. When he looked for her car, it was gone. Maybe she had seen his car and got scared – it was just eating at him, that she was afraid.
He drove after her again, but that time she didn’t take none of the main roads, didn’t stop at any place. Angelheart had no leads; he just had the feeling pulling him forward. Days, he was driving. Weeks, from what I heard. He didn’t stop to eat, sleep, use facilities, nothin’… and all that hurt he was feelin’ became a violence within him. As hard as he could cry into that harmonica, that feelin’ didn’t evacuate once he put the harp down – when he wasn’t wailin’ out his sorrows, where do you think all those howls went…?
Angelheart drew them in, like one big breath: howlin’ in reverse, inhalin’ from the inside. All that power and pain that you heard in his songs, he held it in, and he didn’t have control over it no more – all the re-jection, the re-gret, the loss: it manifested a devouring grief inside him, a swallowing of himself, and believe it or not, his insides started to quicksand, and all his face – the features got tucked in to the folds, his arms and legs shrunk under the strain; his whole body began a retreat, sucked in to the burning pull inside of him, ‘til he couldn’t even reach the gas pedal or the steerin’ wheel…”
Eddie’s eyes were quivering. His thumb seemed like it was trying to rub the ridges right out of the glass. I felt sick. Elise stood by us, silent. My insides were heaving, trying to pull down from my chest. Everything stung. I was burning with disgust and fear, and a despair – a despair that I did not know how I would live with. Elise put a hand on Eddie’s cheek, her fingertips curving behind his ear. She put her other hand on mine. Eddie looked down at his drink, and she moved her hand onto my forearm and leaned over. I looked up to her eyes, and it hurt; it hurt to see, to feel, to know. A customer stepped up to the bar; Elise turned and left.
Eddie cleared his throat and raised his eyebrows. He took a deep, laboring breath. I almost regretted asking him the story: I could tell it didn’t get easier, no matter how many times he told it. I looked at his wounded eyes for some kind of hope. “Did you ever… see him again?” Eddie grabbed the brim of his ship captain’s hat and repositioned it on his head, trying to collect a new emotion from the air. “Well,” he sighed, “Sadie and me went driving through the South about five years ago – we stopped at a gas station in the middle of absolute nowhere, and I heard this real quiet hollerin’ of a harmonica, the feelin’ was tremblin’ true, though the sound was hushed. I saw this man sitting on a stack of firewood, playin’… he was maybe jus’ three feet tall, he looked more like a pile of clothes to me. I approached him, amazed, ‘cause no one could play like Angelheart – and when I got close, I saw those clear blue eyes; they were buried deep in his face, but they were recognizin’. I tried to convince him to come back to Chicago with us, but he wasn’t speakin’; his mind was gone. I don’t think there was anything I coulda done. He did it to himself you know… a part of him musta wanted it that way.”
I was seized with questions. “Why did it have to be Marion? Why her? He barely knew her…” Eddie slanted his gaze diagonally upward, as though he were trying to look at his own thoughts. He looked at me with tired eyes. “It didn’t have to be anythin’ – it’s jus’ what happen’d. It happens to ev’rybody. Sadie Mae was my Marion; I just found a better way to live with it.” He took another drink of scotch, and hit the glass down on the bar, staring out at something I could not see. Now I knew.
My flight left on time the next day. I thought of Gloria as the wheels left the ground. In my loneliness in my mind, I think I made her better than she was.
What you give to someone
You will not get back
You will get many things
From different people:
Misshapen fragments
Not in the initial form
You bestowed
It would be:
Borrowing a book from the library
Lending your friend a pencil
Offering a cigarette to a stranger
Taking your empties to the beer store
But never returning
The book
The good
Will sludge through the streets
But never get
The address right
And when you tell someone
You love them
Your exhalation may be met
With stagnant air
Who you love will not stop there
They will topple over too
Take comfort in that
Like dominoes
And see-saws
And unreliable limbs
They will stumble slowly
To the humble ground
And the Kings and Queens
Above us
Will bow to Popes and Angels
And the Holy will love the clouds
And the clouds will love the sun
And the sun will love itself
And spill its juices
Down
We will all be soaking
In the desert
When the pyramids
Melt
The next person
I will love
Must
Be able
To whistle
It is
Nonsensical
Impractical
Aimless
And proves
Nothing
Except that
They know
How to
Enjoy
Time
Weathered and whimpered
Waltzing broken
Cascading cross the floor
In swooning decay
Yes it really haunts me now
When the momentum
Has slowed down
And it’s not twirling grace
It’s the look on your face
Solid hate meets its mate
To devour desperation
Fucking to get closer to
Something far away
Staring solemn stubborn
Somebody’s gotta move, sometime
Edgy trigger fingers
Well blow this whole thing
Down, out of proportion
In fact we’ll never speak
Again, about that
We’ll write each other off, as assholes
And declare ourselves, misunderstood
In the whipping wind we will
Be called to, and we will
Slump down cowards
We will solidify
In Texas Hold ‘Em poker face
And never say what
That really meant
To either of us
Catherine got off work at 5 o’clock, but it was already dark out. It was November in Winnipeg, Manitoba. This was one of the hardest times of the year. She had watched the snow fall from the diner window all day, now she had to negotiate with it. The great white Unreasonable was piled up, and she sank in well above her ankles on her way to the bus stop. The bus arrived and took her on the Main St. graveyard tour toward her home: a procession of pawn shops, convenience stores, methadone clinics, eroded brick warehouses and dilapidated hotels verified that the dream of what the street was intended to be had died. The disappointment was so heavy that the buildings dissolved beneath it, the remainder eventually demolished by the city, for the sight of them was just too sad to have around.
When she reached her stop, Catherine stepped into the cold and began walking. She could have transferred to another bus that would have brought her even closer to home, but closer was relative: The time spent waiting for the bus would become a funny game of wondering if she could have been home already just by walking - and the game would stop being funny rather quickly.
Catherine buried her face deep into her knitted scarf, inhaling wet wool and exhaling necessary warmth. She pulled her shoulders up to her ears and contracted the muscles of her stomach to keep her internal organs warm. She was so withdrawn inside herself now that it felt as though she were stranded in an arctic wasteland instead of walking down a residential street.
The hood of her parka framed her narrowed perspective as she trudged through the snow, a reminder of all the times she wasn’t sure if she would actually make it home alive. That was one of the few survival adventures left in urban city life: To plow through the storms in knee-deep snow with only eyes exposed, half crazy from the cold, half blind from the wind, plowing on, plowing through, all adrenaline and determination, primal and savage; a test of endurance, strength and courage, the city and those winds whittled you down to your gut truth and broke you in for life.
Catherine swiveled her hooded head to look around as she walked, like a submarine eye navigating its course. She felt a sense of pride and accomplishment, and the snow sparkled its congratulations. The snow seemed to unite an entire existence: everyone under the same blanket of stillness; everything frozen, dead or dormant, waiting for its cue. She thought to herself, “Is this the closest we will be to stopping time?”
Just then, Catherine took a step onto deceptively soft snow concealing sleet ice beneath it. She slipped and fell flat on her back, in the middle of nowhere and the street she grew up on. She lay there thinking that snow seemed so non-threatening because it was white, but if you woke up one morning and the whole world was dusted red, you would think, ‘This is Hell on Earth.’
Defiantly, Catherine got up off the ground and stuffed her sopping mitten-hands into her pockets. She bent her knees, tucked in her chin, and continued the long walk home. The crown of her hood was facing turmoil: This was the new cavalry, the new knights marching on, everyday citizens in down-filled coats and leather mitts, knee-high Sorels like clumsy gorilla feet, punishing the falling snow into the concrete. Like a steam roller, like a crusade, like a mad asylum escapee wandering blind - just moving, right foot left foot, today tomorrow, January February March, this was the first snowfall of the year in Winnipeg. The Winter was just beginning.
It was raining outside
And we were running late
You were waiting downstairs
I grabbed my umbrella
And ran out the door
Your umbrella was broken
And mine wouldn’t open
So we gathered under yours
We had to prop our heads
Underneath the spindles
To keep them extended
I was looking around simple
Trying to take it all in
But the things you were saying
Revealed staring at the sidewalk
So radiant
When the lights went up
At the end of the movie
I saw the button
That I was supposed to press
All along
“But it’s bad luck to open an umbrella inside!”
I laughed out loud
As it flourished in my hand
Because happiness
Is more courageous than luck
Like two chairs touching
Underneath a table
Maybe they are holding hands
Maybe they were
Just pushed together
But it’s wonderful
To believe in meaning
Isn’t it?
And I was just glad
I finally got that umbrella
To open
You remind me of myself
Three years ago
With raw discomforting
Accuracy
As though
This is my chance
To be that person
To you
That I needed
When I was eighteen
Oh yes I remember
How it felt
To be that soft squished sigh
Quiet and thinking
You follow me around
Like a humming cloud
But don’t you know
I’m looking for someone
With all the answers too?
Why are we never given
Fulfillment
Why must we drag our sorry selves
Toward the sun
Parading our permanent
Vacancies
Like the shit out of luck motel?
Why is it
That patching your tires
Inflates me?
Will life never give us
That kind nurse
And only teach us
How to doctor
Ourselves?
To spend so many years faceless
To be suddenly recognized
To feel unknown by anyone else
To pick up the phone
To tell the truth
To lie to my parents
To jump in your car
To drive through lost prairies
To put dreams on the dashboard
To outrun wild dogs
To the haystacks of our homeland
To build a monument of idealism
To stand on top of it
To see future unknown cities
To see through the night
To trust any road
To lead someplace good
To feel a sureness
To be hypnotized by possibility
To make declarative statements
To sing off-key
To talk of sweeping romance
To sweep down highways
To always be in the right place
To see the dream realized
To see grace personified
To see the magic magnified
To feel shakingly present
To life kinetic for the first time
To be believed in
To reciprocate belief
To see your home
To be included in your life
To be new and radiating
To give you everything
To shiver in slimey reckless emotion
To be cupped in your hands
To be understood severely
To be cordially introduced
To myself
By you
Catherine was a bartender
In a bar like all the bars
When Joe showed up
She fell for him
Like she fell down
A flight of stairs
As a child
It was a slow night
Whiskey on the rocks
They talked about work
And women
He revealed
The secret snag
To a woman’s wool
Was to get her drunk
And slowdance her
To Elvis Presley
Until she unraveled
Catherine loved
Elvis Presley
He stayed ‘til close
She followed him home
And they fucked
Because that’s what people do
He kept her in his repertoire
And they fucked symphonies
But did not slowdance
To anything
One night
After particularly longing eyes
And magnums of red wine
He got up to get a glass of water
And she stumbled naked
To the record player
And recklessly splayed
Albums all over the carpet
Until she found
The right one
It slid out into her hand
And in her drunken haze
Of swirling world
She carefully queued the needle
To a certain song
He entered the room
She stood tipsy
In her guilty skin
And they saw each other
Naked at a distance
She demanded dancing
He rolled his eyes
But didn’t mean it
He took her yearning body
Into his arms
And held her
Like a gentleman
Held a lady
In pre-war times
They turned slowly
Until they were
A two-headed shadow
And she winced
At what wise men
Had said
But continued
To rush in
Believing in what
People want to believe
In moments
On nights
Such as this
Some weeks later
She called a friend
To ask
If he would accompany her
If she had to get an abortion
And her friend said yes
Because that’s what people do
And dancers are
Never very good
At standing still
You move your mouth like x
Dominate conversation like y
Tell engrossing stories like z
Who I loved most of all
Can a person ever really be new?
Or will they just be facets
Of a face
I’ve loved before
In a completely different city
In a completely different time
I long for what I have lived
In what I am living
Therefore: I want you
But it has nothing to do with
y.o.u.
And everything to do with
x.y.z.
A conglomerate of
Unnecessary callous
Clings together
Of common tread
But in testing quakes
Tectonic plates
You clunk through the
Cracks effortlessly
I’m shaking my sieve
Furiously over a river
After the gold rush
And Charlie Chaplin
And the Yukon
Clenching my teeth
In the searing mountain air
Diligence diminished
Still cradling bones
And carving homes
For displaced limbs
In the soil
And forlorn organs
In my fleshy chest of drawers
Shaking crumbling dust
Until it’s clawed into the wind
Skipping stones
To chip their liquored
Lacquer sheen
Tapping the syrup
From the stream
Sifting through the
Stragglers, the hagglers,
The danglers, and fangs
Spill out over the sides
And down the drain
Once I shake my metal tin
Who will want
To climb back in?
Everything was wrong and it was perfect.
Clumsiness belonged there
Any mistake made it more full and real
The vanished broken jukebox
The empty ice cream stand
The warm blanket of dust over mish-mash antiques
The dreaded milkshake machine
Arthritic swiveling barstools
Sunken eroded booths
Contaminated ketchup containers
Burned coffee
How I danced through those aisles
Like Fred Astaire with a serving tray
Shirley Temple winked at me
While I took hamburger orders
Douglas Fairbanks flew on his eagle
While hangover kids ate greasy spoon eggs
The whole world was sunny side up
Nothing gave me greater pleasure
Than kicking those swinging doors open
While laughing at what the cook had said
Open Mike Night
Where all the rough and tumbleweeds
Rambled in
Dispossessed from everywhere
We all lived under that red neon light
The deflated man
Who would play sad renditions
of Sweet Jane
The veteran with a shrapnelled mind
The beekeeper woman
Who had a glass of red wine
Every Thursday for her husband
Who died on the street
The woman with a pickled tongue
Who survived 4 strokes
And abandonment from every man
Who rolled in every day on a wagon
That old rebel
Tried to sneak smokes
In the restaurant
Because she was too crippled
To clamber outside
And sometimes
I just let her
Because everyone
Deserves to feel free
And free beer for the window washers
Crazy from the heat
And for strippers celebrating
Courageous achievements
And Fleetwood Mac was played
Every Sunday like church hymns
All broken dreams
And battleaxes
All we could do
Was play rock n roll
And wait for something
Good
To happen
When I walked by
The other day
I saw it had been
Bought and sold
And I wondered
Where any of us
Would belong
Again
They are plastering
Pristine white wallpaper
Over the withering
Discord pastel paint
And The Lakeview
Will never
Make sense to any of us
Again
A little bit of all of us
Sunk with that ship
The Lakeview Restaurant
With no view of the lake
And something
That was your life
Stops being
Something you live
And becomes
Just some story
You tell at gatherings
That no one
Really
Understands.
The Death of Magic
As the dusk of dawn rises
The screeching sun
And blind man’s blue
Paint a glaucoma on the
Stone-faced buildings
We emptied the car
On the side of the meridian
It was going to be a big show
This
Staged on the railroad tracks
At sunset
I was going to wear a web of silver
And you were going to pierce me
In the heart with a sword
In our best impression
Of theatrical tragedy
I never thought
It would happen this way
At 6:30am on the side of the road in Barcelona
The ringleader caught in his own whip
You packing your
Bags on the pavement
With puffy eyes
Me sitting in the trunk of the car
Silent
Watching the clouds claw
The sky open blue
I wasn’t ready
To see myself
In the haunting glare
Interrogation of searing sunlight
I thought that when the magic died
It would be like fireworks
Disappearing into the night
Fulfilled and justified
Not at 6:30am
When I could consciously see
My hands
Strangling the spark
Until it spit out on the street
As I drove away
First,
Gather a few good people
In a small room
It can be a basement apartment
With low ceilings
And bad ventilation
It doesn’t matter
Congregate around a table
In chairs of all sizes
Share a good bottle of red wine
Share a warm home-cooked meal
Share sincere conversation
Hold your plate out
Precariously over wine glasses
While laughing
Recklessly young and invincible
For second helpings
Share a joint
Share a Charlie Chaplin folly on the staircase
Share unanimous laughter
At the absurd wonder
Of the beauty in your life
Find the wordless words
You’ve always needed
To communicate
Who you really are
And when there is a brief lull
In conversation
Everyone will privately realize
In a hushed consensus
That there is absolutely nothing missing
In that moment
In life
That this is the answer
To so many questions
It is now
That you should glide to the oven
And reveal freshly baked chocolate cake
To the room
Share the first bite in time together
Pull the cake blossom apart and the fudge will ooze slow
It gushes in your hands
Like the overwhelmingness of life
It erupts over your fingers volcanically
And dives into your mouth
Reciprocating the succulence of your tongue
It is your first real kiss bursting in your mouth all over again
Your first touch of passion
Your first taste of luscious fervor
It massages the masturbating taste buds
Until all the gushing juices are swallowed
You become 5 years old and innocent
Experiencing the epitome of a delicious delirium
And the beginnings of a voracious lust
Syrup dripping from the corners of your mouth
Jealous of your fork, of your plate, for more
Look at each other around the table
Smiling dumbfoundedly
Drink another sip of wine
And have another bite
For this is your life
And you are living it well
Frequently exhausted
By all the frequencies my antennae receive
In the shower I am eroded
I melt deeper into my skin as the water pounds down
The heavy hand of water and who I am
Who I am boiled down in the downpour
Who am I this peeled grape shriveling under pressure
With wild shards of hair blinding me
This is my distilled essence
Yes this is my chemical equation
Hot pink and swollen
Sure as you’re born
Here it is
The hail, the fire & the fury
The water comes down
To silence the crickets
And their banal daily concerns
It could be a vacuum cleaner
Distorted guitars
Or a room with too many people
But I need to distract the surface hum
To hear what I am really saying
What floats in my dreams
What juices my guts and heaves my heart
What resonates deep within muscle tissue
What reverberates to the bone
What say you, marrow?
What is your great concern?
Is it the softening of the moral spine that brings you such sadness?
The conductor of the orchestra is slouching over his stand
The column cannot support the coliseum
A spine has no excuse to be insecure
I had a silly summer, fair enough
Just as the cankerworms hang ridiculously from the trees like marionettes
Just as the trees ooze sap in a reckless drool
Silly from the sun
I’ve had my drinks and my laughs and my sex
And the DJ played my song at least twice
And now it is time to take myself seriously
This is the burning soggy vow I make to the bathtub faucet
Once more
Who if had eyebrows, would raise one
Waiting for proof.