Momentary departures from life and living

The Saddest of Sullen Eyes

The Saddest of Sullen Eyes
Summer, 2010

The beautiful never last long. This is the only relevant truth left for us to believe in; at the very least, it’s the only relevant truth I’m left to subscribe to. Transience only takes us as far as the stories we tell and the histories we share. In this, I hope to be a part of you somehow; situated in my quiet passing, open arms and heart laid bare. For the remaining days I have here, may my voice ring anonymously as the trail to love’s fleeting afterthought. I only have until the fifteenth of May. I hope you never find this and I hope you never find me. Never say my name, just remember what I had to say. This would be all. Mine are the saddest of sullen eyes.

I Don’t See You Everyday

I chose to be alone for the sole reason of being near you. I never complained about how you were always in love with somebody else, neither did I bother to stake claim over what I felt was then unattainable. I stayed for you and no one else. I stayed close because I knew no better and sat myself closer for the part of you that I always felt would love me back. Let’s never settle for short stops and near misses, you always knew what you meant to me.

Apartheid

It’s the colors of love that pull us apart; the vested interest keeps us hanging on and we’re best left with restraining orders.

Neutral Coagulants

I will love you forever- if only for the sake of art.

Rest Assured

It was wrong of me to ever doubt you. In anything and everything, it’ll always be you.

Only In This Yearning

I hope you never find what you’re looking for.

Houses With Secret Gardens

My house’s silent hallways seem so much more peaceful when I’m alone. Every room and corner here breathes with that same serenity; knowing that everything in front of me is mine to spend an eternity with. From the view of my bedroom window, the world has never looked as haunting. You smiled to me and said, “we’re not the only ghosts here.”

Wilson

You have a name. Don’t say you don’t remember.

The Social Dances of Socialist Dancers

Your slow, arcing curvature lives on in the poetry of every lingering movement. In every inch of suspended motion, you speak without ever having said. “Love…” and I quote, “will this be over soon?” In the calmness of that moment, I stared at you and said: “I never knew limbs could bend that way. I never knew my will could bend like this and never break.” Without a word, you let go of my trembling hands and continued dancing. “By the time the sun sets over this amphitheater, we’d still be far from reaching the end. This dance, it never ends. Not for you, not for anyone.” We have yet to end this awkward dance.

Our Lady

Every martyred saint is a lover prior to death.

Commodity Fetishes

We’ve made an artform of walking down opposite ends of the same street. The sidewalks here are conveyor belts and we’re the only people who’d prefer to walk backwards. Honestly, I’d like to think we walk backwards in hopes of meeting halfway. For whatever it’s worth, you’re the best part of this production. I honestly believe you’re the prettiest part of this production line.

Autobahns

When all roads lead to the same place, the drive is always in circles. Close your windows, I know where you live.

On the Verandas of Empty Houses

This place is haunting without you. I’ve been feeling this way since 1994.

Sailboats

Our bridges may burn as bright as the sun but they are sure to end as beautifully as the haziest of Atlantic sunsets.

At the End of November

For the life of me, I couldn’t just let this go.

Central States and Peripheries

Have we become mothers to a brood of hungry fascist children? What then has become of our struggle against totality? This all amounts to nothing. If only for this, we all amount to nothing.

Mountainside Empires

Ghost towns are peaceful, really. It’s the loneliness of the city that makes ghosts of us all. I can’t stand it. For a city of ghosts, we are by no means peaceful.

False Starts

April and May, I’m always yours. This lifetime is ours to own.

…or so we thought

You weren’t who you said you were. That’s exactly who you are. I don’t know why I like you so much that way.

Open Arms to Clearer Windows

Only when I wake to find you here do I realize that none of this is ever real.

I woke up to the sound of a prelude; your name at six and your face at eleven. We sped past a procession of fallen trees and weathered crosses that afternoon, a long death in the eyes of the sun. I had nothing in my pockets that day but at least I had you. False trees, back seats and you right next to me, at least I have you.

The year starts with a pulse and ends with a flat line. Set into stone, it is in these lines that countless cities give rise to the tallest of monuments; to immaculately tower over the heart and mind, to crash as the waves of creation do on the beaches of time. Civilizations collapse in the spaces between each temporal breath and I- situated somewhere in the vastness of this occurrence, remain vaguely consonant amidst the cacophony of life and living. Here is to us, the pulse and the flat line; locked together in an interminable waltz through presence and absence. Here is to us.

I still look outside my window, wondering where we begin; if our hands, they’d fit together or if we’re doomed to start again. I’d pick loving over safety. I’d run the risk of getting hurt. If you’re listening, I am ready. Now let me know what love is worth.

Little Chains

The walls will breathe with no sense of negative connotation; bursting at the seams with the laughter of a thousand starving children, rooting themselves in the hopes we nurtured from the seeds of loss. I saw God’s eyes flash clearly in those headlights we hung beneath the branches of every dead tree in the city; just as lost as mine were. My eyes; those eyes. They shine in every breath I take and in every cigarette you smoke. They shone in every word I said and in every line you spoke. My pretenses are always tenser in the present tense and none of the words I said could ever match your scent. My heart remains though my body is absent, I have no regrets; no voice of dissent.

Bodies spilling outward in full icarian descent, our spirits stare back through the windows of paper airplanes. Outside, looking in; inside, we’re never to see each other again. Arcing through the slow blooming debris, flowers spring from my palms. I close my eyes and call it love, clutching you even tighter; falling the way I should have years ago. Together we fall, together we return to the soil as we did when we first met. In the soil below us, flowers still spring from my palms.

“Stay still, don’t let me wake you” I said, stumbling over from your bedside in the dawn’s drunken haze. Not wanting to stay any closer than I had to, I quietly sat in the corner to watch you from across the room; minding every breath and breathing slower with every movement. The clock remained frozen beneath the soft ambient light of your end table lampshade; pinned to the same 4:18am I left days ago. Your sheets have never been as lonely as this before, it’s such a pity that I’m only beautiful in the morning.

It’s just not the same, the way these things are. No one’s to blame when we’re set this far apart. When we’re always set to leave, the distance only speaks of how desperate we seem to be about what we could and we couldn’t see. The further we stretch, the thinner we seem to spread and at this point we unravel with the tensile strength of thread. We’re never the same with the way these things turned out; I guess we’re both to blame for not knowing what love’s about. We should’ve known better or at least I’d like to say that making up for past mistakes would be the best way of saving face. Do we still have faces to show? I hope we do, I know we do. We still have faces to show. Oh yes we do, oh yes we do. Why don’t you stay a little bit longer?

Continental Drift/Continental Drifting

Resonance. Traces of you still resonate with me. They grasp me in my stillness as you once did, promising never to let go yet the days, they pass so quickly; all these days I’ve spent alone. We are such loveless transients. Daylight waits for no one. Walking steadily in the motion of dreams, she moves in the grace of your every afterthought; quietly passing us by. I’m afraid I’ll never see the sun again.

“I won’t sit still for another moment with you”, I said; sleeping in other lovers’ beds, living by every second we spent between the sweetest fall and the coldest winter. With spring coiled gently in the bases of our shadows, we had but half a season to share. Staring blankly as you took my hand, you moved with the grace of time; time as only time could portray, time as she faded away. Summer looming behind the silhouettes we’ve drawn for ourselves, we burned too bright to stay together; you as the year and I, the season. Of all the words to say in parting, it was “don’t you fade away.”

The view from this lonesome window hasn’t changed much since you left. With the carousels of daylight seeing to every inch of this surrealistic permanence, it lingers on, untouched by all but the thinnest strands of borrowed time; beautifully still and endlessly so. I’ve been keeping the doors cracked in hopes of seeing you again, if only to watch you pass by from behind the gaze of distant horizons. With the turning of battered clock hands comes a summer that never ends, a summer that harbors no regrets and a summer who in her days will make no amends. As timeless as you are unapologetic, you are the sun that never sets.

Love in Retroactive Continuity

You’re so quick to fall in love and I’m put off by the sight of you. Next time you’re here, don’t call me up because I’ll never feel the same way you do. So this is goodbye. Don’t sleep to dream of me, sleep because you need to sleep. From time to time, I’ll think of you but that’s the most you’ll get from me tonight. Even if it never comes to mind, it’s not that I’ve forgotten you. It’s just not worth all the sleepless nights that my sheets would have gone through without you here. I was so quick to fall in love. Now, I’m put off by the sight of you. Next time you’re here, don’t call me up because I’ll never feel the same way you do. At least not again.

Resonance

Two asterisks run swiftly across an open field in hopes of finding shelter from the morning shower of our half-formed ampersands. Stumbling as they move along, they help each other up that they may both still carry on. In a house of hanging mirrors, one says to the other, “Stop, wait, listen to me. We could only go so far.” We stop and listen, pausing for a second; “such fragile asterisks we are…” Our hands are half-formed ampersands.

These quiet mountains march in with a thousand peaks but bear no summit. Gazing upon the horizon with starry eyes and bewildered smiles, daylight hangs as a pendulum for us; meridian only to the space between where heaven and the sea meet. It’s sad for me to say I’ll never see you again.

“Repeat, repeat, repeating…” Subtle echoes bounce back and fourth across seemingly boundless stretches of floor, wall and ceiling. Glistening across the spectrum of perennial resonant frequencies, these signals just keep on repeating; conductor to audience, audience to ambient noise. Laid to tape and taken straight to bed, the song, she sings for no one. She sleeps with me tonight.