I mean, you can look back.
You thought you knew what was going on, but you found out you really didn't. Everything around you is charged with some officious reason, but can you shake the feeling that the officious is the least momentous? Somehow, you wonder if maybe it's just a little too late to fix all the problems around you by wearing the uniform you shoved into the back of the cupboard.
You know, you can look back.
The room is plain, wooden, studded with bare nails. The bed is small, sagging, tarnished brass-paint, discolored white comforter. The mirror is spotted, warped. No curtains hang in the window, and it's not a pretty view. The town is as bare as the room.
But still, you can look back.
Sometimes, at night, you hum to yourself. 'milk alloy' at 2100 hours. It's not a soothing song, the metallic mistaste, but maybe it quenches your thirst. Sometimes, in the morning, the sun is like honey stained on the floor. It's not a satisfying thing, that moving sun, but it reminds you of eden behind, paradise before.
And yeah, you can look back.
That night you were born, the mud-black hole, the body waste and the labor pains, was a quiet dead first note. But you're in the second movement now, and it's all crescendo on from here. Your feet, they walk on trash-filled ground, deep sucking mud, and sometimes far from the right way, but yeah, it's all crescendo from here.
And you, you can look back.
All the opening notes were like white soap. All the closing notes will be like golden rain, milk alloyed with honey. And in between the click of the light and the start of the dream, some will taste like milk alloyed with brass, and some will feel like honey stirred with trash. But you don't have to put on that uniform. You don't have to get too tired and fall asleep in the mud. But you don't have to feel the imprint of bare nails in your cheek; but you can feel the imprint of bare nails. And if the music is like blues, sobs of distorted guitar sometimes, you don't have to forget that it's all crescendo going up, even if the movement's not all joyous.
But still- you, you can look back.
listening to 'milk alloy' at 2100 hours
rocking the 5-7-5
am in love with haikus today. never wrote them before now.
--
exercise#chinatown
she had even more
character than the red wooden
sign hung overhead
in the lab I think
in green, forgetful of your
multipurpose blade.
I like to pretend
that your wildly flashing pen
does not inspire me.
when you look my way
my body turns African;
I think in rhythms.
you could tell by how
he watched her mouth moving-
he thought it a waltz.
I never thought blood
from my lips could fall down so
like tomato juice.
search a bit harder;
I know you'll find cane sugar
hidden in the trash.
humanitarian ghost sedan
you think I'm paying you off?
see, every afternoon, every weeknight, is the last one, for me. It's the way I keep sane, pretending that I'm about to see the end. Pretending that this afternoon, this weeknight, is the one where I'll go quietly, like a needle over vinyl, up the stairs to my room. There will be a couple thousand dollars that I can slip into a knapsack, some sweaters, notebooks. The make up I never go anywhere without. Markers, scissors and maybe a copy of Walden to steel me or a copy of The Little Prince to remind me what the grown ups do. And I'll blow a kiss to my vinyl and my drums and my books and the bed I've been saving, saw through the chains of my anchors. And I'll write a note to my family- something kind but final. And that afternoon or that weeknight, I'll start walking.
Eventually, I'll hit the city. I'll be tired, terrified. My body will be inscribed on every grimy wall I pass. Alone. Alone. Alone. It will thud against my skull, ache in my ribs. That will be my baptism. The kind of alone no one keeps walking through will wash it's city-trash over me and there will be some new life somewhere in it.
After a terrifying few days (I'll hide in libraries and coffee shops where it's tame, but the savagery will still be working it's root into me) I'll get on a bus or a train and go to somewhere else. Maybe Chicago, maybe Alabama. It doesn't matter, really, only I'll think about what I feel like before I go. Maybe Alabama, maybe San Diego. Maybe Amish country. It doesn't matter, really, as long as it's a place that isn't here.
I'll walk and learn to breath after my baptism, like a toddler in photographs, gradual jerking motion. I'll find a place to live, unusual and maybe sunny. I'll learn to talk to strangers just like I was always taught not to. I'll make friends, but only on random meetings of eyes, not on introductions. A year will pass. Maybe two. It doesn't matter, really.
I'll get on a plane. I won't have any money to my name after I get on that plane, but I won't be needing return fare. I'll get to Europe, maybe Africa. It doesn't matter, really, as long as the sun breaks out of a cloud when I get there and my jeans are worn in with a few months worth of soft dirt. I'll be on some mountains then, coming home out of my home after so long. I'll go to a city, maybe, but sometimes not a city. It doesn't matter, really, as long as I work harder than I ever wanted to back home, and give my money away or find out how not to keep it. After a few months, there will be a boy, too. His jeans will be worn in soft with unwashing, and he'll move like vinyl around me.
I'll have a child. I'll visit my home. I'll spin like vinyl around my boy, maybe my boys. Maybe I'll have two children or three or four. Maybe one will be a girl. I'll be getting old. Looking like I was born yesterday. Maybe my belly will be swelling with another child. The blankets on my bed- my bed and my boy's bed- will have squares of sunlight on them, and sometimes we'll lie down together in the sunlight and he'll rub his fingers over the wrinkles coming on my face. Maybe we'll die like that, together, when our children bring their children to play on the floor of my small house.
You think I'm honestly here?
This is no half-dream. I've planned it all.
Maybe this afternoon, this weeknight, will be the one where I go quietly, like a needle over vinyl, like a flame finding a wick.