reading #80

AME AND THE TANGY ENERGETIC

lost weekend

i lost myself last weekend
in the gaze of hazy summer
burn, on tray liners, in fast food
wrappers

i lost myself riverside searching
for water lily gardens. little girl
chasing ducks. swings her bell
off a low tree branch in the shade

i found myself fearful
sweating the small stuff with you
again. fuck. how many moments
away from the deep

simplicity blue. one pack holds
all we need to survive. one road
an entire adventure

one laugh into the chasm one
prayer. i am here. you are there
nothing stands between us

the lost

a half-sunken bridge spanned a boggy marsh and every other year or so someone from the adjacent towns there was lost, never to be found. boundary lines were redrawn which made the bog a sorta no man’s land and no one had to claim the dead upon their land. children were outlawed from crossing the bridge and when they grew into teenagers the bog became a common hideaway where adults rarely looked. were they to be sought out, they would not be found. for those who wished to be left alone would never be seen again. only the bog and the bridge, and the sky kept the secrets.

loss six

another loss – vi

faith is porous on the streets. you only have what you see, and anyone wants you to believe there’s somethin more for you, if only you trust them for a moment. you gotta keep your faith deep in your heart, and not extend it to those who would use you… i tried explainin’ to you about your bike, and how i needed to switch it out for mine, and could get it back to you tomorrow if that was okay. but you lost some confidence in me and could i blame you? we did not run in the same circles anymore. we argued for a while. i implored you the bmx was safe inside my new digs on Magnolia. i offered you collateral if you wanted, i would leave my rings with you. if you wanted we could go and get it later. you thought about it and either you extended some faith in me or else you didn’t wanna argue anymore, and let it lie. i helped you pack your stuff and clean your place so you could get your deposit back, and you let me shower there before checking out, because where i was going, well, they might have had the law behind them and plenty of cash, but these corrupt attorneys letting me a room, well, they coulda been arrested for uncleanliness…

some friend

some friends
you cast out for them

too small

they have to be tossed back
to the sea

lost in books

When I was a little kid and the youngest of my family, I remember there was a lot of safety in intimacy I mean touch, there was a lot of playful gripping and holding and caressing and embracing, playful fighting and running and pushing and pulling, between kids and kids and adults and kids and friends and cousins and kids and family, there was a lot of charging and edging and rolling and rough handling of me, picking me up and tossing me in the air, or letting me get on your back or sit up on top of your shoulders when I was young enough to be light enough to be carried that way to be held that way to be safe that way and those days were so wonderful they could not last long enough. There was even a sad time somewhere when I could not reach out to you – nor you me – and I knew not what to do with myself, only get lost in my books.

a prayer

i want only to live my life and let you go, please, may i have the courage to walk away and wish you well, healing and happiness and all the things cash cannot buy. no matter how many phone numbers are blocked, hurtful text messages deleted,  email addresses registered as spam; no matter how many doors i lock and photos i delete and letters i recycle, nothing changes unless i settle with myself. yes i am branded, yes i wear your imprint on my heart. and how can i regret, what with all the goodness you gave me before we fell out? those moments in love were unbelievable. i am incredulous, shocked, having lost you. years have passed and still you find a way to me. to hurt me some more with the painful rewriting of our history. please forgive me, but i must for my spirit and forever walk away from you. when i remember you, i promise to try and remember when you were the greatest. we were the best and for a second. no one will remember but us, the flash the spark we were and then were over. and now i say goodbye. and i love you.

pa·pier-mâ·ché

When i put forth the greatest of effort and try

then left all forlorn

with my why?

y-y-why?

 

When my eyes

see your eyes

and the eye lashes back

 

the honesty says

look away, now

love, look away

 

How I feel all alone

and your loneliness

too

 

i wish for your love

though there’s nothing to

do

 

i hate all my wishing

i hate all my hating

hate all my feelings

this way and that

 

hating you

hating me

 

and then

get quiet

all turn

to stone

 

Then come dark clouds, the fifty thousand dark shades

the long and dark nights, the endless dark days

 

my ears start to bleed

my sight starts to fail

in exchange for choice words 

my Latin

your Greek

 

choice merciless words

me to you to me speak

 

The storm in my head wants what happened, unreal

the turning over, my hands, what got stolen, not to steal

 

i stole from you steal from

away from us

now

 

the wall between rooms

made of pa·pier-mâ·ché some

how

 

How I would pull all apart! all the glue and the pulp

and i know you would, too! i swear this is

true

 

i will

Send out my linens now, white flags on the line

If only to know you were part, my design

 

i will

unshape the monsters, tie them with twine

with hair if i have to, to keep unrefined

all the hatred between us

the base

solid kind 

 

Above which we once drew our cottons, with care 

before they got soaked in all our red sea, phantasm glare

 

unmoored

in the midnight dead sky

freshly fallen

lost love

 

Instead i am left to wonder what was

with this broken heart, because and because

 

surrounded by white flags

and my 

why why?

why whys

 

the tears

the wood floor

now dries

 

Soon to burn

in the hearth of my heart

down below

 

Knowing exactly

what i never wanted 

to know

to those who are true and not afraid

Yes, this is all i can tell you. we loved one another for a very long time, okay. the flowers you braided in my hair i then pressed close to my heart, petal by petal, colors bleeding into my bloodstream, then out my pores and touching you touching me.

you carried me some times, part of the way. this was my path in yours. we could fight it, or we could like it. Or we could try to like it or love one another and our selves through it, embrace it, take it, appreciate it, hold it in our hands and hold it up to the light, let it reflect in the light. Absorb the light and take notice of the shadows also where they recessed. how they came over and dampened the heat of the white light, softened the potency…

The lines in our skins, the patterns, the spirals, the curve that our eyes traced and followed, lost and found, dipped into and cooled, rose out and ascended with our spirits to the open air. The boys who showed love all the time on front street. some curious wondering. most admiring. nice and sweet. strangers and how we meet.  and we made an organic whole. the wholeness we saw, they saw and reflected back to us. well that would bring on smiles. that would last, remember? for a little while at least.

we were really of the same kind, the same blood. This would only matter if we cared to come in line and believe in it, the world, in us, our family, in self, our selves. This seemed to me, the youngest, another chance for that to die for kind of attention. Received when i was not wanting or needing something impossible for you to give. Because this is true. That we are our most formidable challenges. This i would risk it all on. The whole house I do not own. The health i still possess, on a youth level. A phsyiological level.

The psychology is only so prominent as our experiences. The heavy traumas are fresh and remembered in my daily life, i cannot help how they run. They run sometimes close to the surface like salmon running home. The subtle ones are deep running, like they do not move at all, my eyes might suggest. Nothing going on down there, just peaceful easy subcurrent substorm lethargy of egg guarding and backward pull of crayfish tailspins. Yes, these are subdued or so seem. But you and I we have together swum the waters from top to tail. We have gone with, against, and stubbornly for the sake of love and love lost… i can say embedded in my heart, i often most did so unremitting and unfashionable. not so pretty, and without fail.

Well at our best we were grace. Full of grace. Inspired by our mothers. Mom, i love the gift she gave me in grace.  They had more to give, our moms, they could now but they refuse to part with their wisdom. Why? Were the transgressions of our youth so devastating to cause the divide? To deny us these wonderful blessings? Failure to give with the not knowing of outcome or consequence or even the course of the ride through to the outcome.  We have lost their expectations.  We are no longer predictable in any way.

Who will ever come to familiarity with the methods of survival in a relationship which manifested seven years of sincere absence? Who will not bleed by this Conscious impact? Who will feel the violence of this horrible Truth through omission? Rendered what was once a great and savory fullness of love and life and laughter and tears, to some empty background behind form, some staged back blender. The efforts to blend are lost even, as may be the efforts toward translation, communication so long lost. Why?

We long ago stopped asking …

we long ago lost the towns that sheltered us, the homes receding, the wood thinning, the blankets smothering, the smiles insincere, the feeling when the one who made you cannot forgive you. Digging subconsciously. Mining for the passion that once sustained the momentum you all started, when you contribute to creation.

Long before february first, nineteen seventy-three… even before my brother was born… before june, nineteen seventy….   before my love she came to be, before  may…. What happened to that love? All we feel today… is the

shy light, 2011 by Katya

absence.