The trilogy / quadrangle that I promised. First is the reposting of something from way back on March 5th, followed by others, dated appropriately. Apologies to PhiLL for my quasi-poetic drivel. COMMENTS, lOTS of them please! I want input. I know it's crap, but it's emotion. Maybe I'm an emo girl and not a evilish geniusy type.
DRAFT # 2 (5 March 2003)
I.
He didn't drink coffee
I should have known then
that in an uncaffeinated unhaze it would end
when in a fermented caress it all began
which was the more telling?
it was tenderly sinister
distorted images of a situation
even while it was happening
my eyes too bleared to see it then
my eyes too dark to want to see it now
my vertigo grabbed up tired feet
spun them out in a fishtail from beneath me
and onto a barely clad air mattress
he was to be my sweet departure
/even honey doesn't help to sugar me anymore
but newness lacks the guarantee of goodness
I'd go to service, holding his Republican hand
if he asked
but Christianity is never sweet and hopeful
(sorry Lord) / it's built on fear and trembling
on crucifixion and sacrifice and pain
how was this immature man of no call backs and guarded words to be my hope?
no, it wasn't all his fault
i was a hopeful Nietzschean on my own
so where does that leave me now?
unhinged sun and taken to the ships -- unmoored
as 'better as friends'
seeing a flood of Olsmobiles in deserted streets
even in the same sick metallic green as his
everywhere I go
tho they've stopped making them
complete with the dent he acquired in my parking lot
leaves me thinking
coffee was telling
and i pretended not to see
tried like hagel to believe in happy-go-lucky
when no such thing exists.
II. (15 March 2003)
I was so good
about it, I mean really I
was, when the cars faded from
green to white to noticing with a
funny grin, and then only sometimes --
I could show my dental work in a laugh
and say that things were
fine -- just as friends, better as friends -- peachy keen
but really, beneath my facade of
and the oscar goes to
performances, the role cut deeper than I wanted to know
and I refused to show it, outwardly anyway,
maybe
I was the one who wanted to stay on the
surface, tracing the line of my face as I
look in the glass / when in my car I tear up to a
song / when i sit at a cafe and declare
myself a melancholic offhandedly / when he made me feel
like a whore sometimes/ when everything was, really just fine
I present my skin as callused and worn
while it is paper thin like my grandmother's
my dumb show does me more harm than good
but by bleeding the wound, hopefully the toxins will
depart as well
there's no guarantees here
I hoped in forgetfulness I could remember him differently
pick the moments -- a slight hand on my waist
as we left the dancefloor, him opening my car door,
stroking my hair in the morning
but there are so many others that slice me
if I don't actively make them fade, it's dumb to choose in either / ors
I tell myself in a daily affirmation
that the time will run out on this one too
that when my roommates leave Nashville
he'll stop coming all together
lord knows he doesn't come up to see me
what is it all
this mixed presentation
of shyly asking me to dinner and residual player swagger
that seems a little to big to fit him?
this juxtaposition of sweetness and
disinterested unconcern?
it twists me, bunches my skin up and makes it
crawl makes me pray for vertigo so I don't have
to feel this anymore
I am not these things
III. (15 March 2003) Unfinished
He couldn't even cross my threshold
not a second time, never again it seems
he just lurked in my doorway
peering at my pictures, and lured me out
to tell him what I already knew --
this one's of Berlin, a friend of mine,
Jeanne, sent it to me when she was there a couple of --
it trails off in my mind even now
he didn't want to reenter the scenario
left inside closed doors, while my mind
retraces it all the time, different aspects
mostly with an angry mind's eye
The southern gentleman is neither southern,
nor gentle, nor a man: Discuss.
My roommate debunked the mystery for me
in papered words flung quick and tight
so I had foreknowledge -- but went ahead anyway.
What was I attempting to idealize?
I've been bits and pieces for a while now
long enough to know better really
but can one ever really know better?
IV. (10 April 2003)
This pen ink had traced out
words and syllables sarcastic
telling the page it was
fine just fine while my mind was raging
while even my poker face broke in the breeze /
ever so slight stirring of air
after a thousand uberdramatic utterances
and tirades to self about how
we can't exist on the same planet / even
other worlds theory couldnt' salvage our
non-existent connectivity -- until at the end
of my tether at the end of failed communication
at the end of
how's school? relative conversations
it snapped, refracted, dislodged itself
he showed -- we introduced -- he was warm
brews imbibed -- I was warm -- I hugged him back
this time. we were healed in an inexplicable instant
I won't try to rationalize this, these things, these
emotions for while intertwined, they can't bear
the weight of separation.
Not an either / or
Or a both / and.
Nothing.
