Il me semble que je serais toujours bien là où je ne suis pas…
Not the first time it’s been said but no longer true: I am here, will always be here until the final decay, the final disintegration. My nightmares have ended, a certain kind of peace, the restlessness ebbs and flows as it should: an equilibrium of desire and contentment. I am not all I once was, the figment of an idealized self. I still struggle but not with how to end the demons within me, rather how to put them to use.
Monthly Archives: January 2009
it seems to me (from baudelaire’s Flowers of Evil)
Il me semble que je serais toujours bien là où je ne suis pas…
Not the first time it’s been said but no longer true: I am here, will always be here until the final decay, the final disintegration. My nightmares have ended, a certain kind of peace, the restlessness ebbs and flows as it should: an equilibrium of desire and contentment. I am not all I once was, the figment of an idealized self. I still struggle but not with how to end the demons within me, rather how to put them to use.
icy (sub)mission
surrounded by icy flood, we float, haggard in the snow, drenched in a certain kind of nostalgia. i like the greek version better, the bend of the tongue, nohstahlllgeia. we have always been like this, on the bend of the tongue while icicles swam up our sleeves and my mouth found your breast. have you been bad? she smiles, slides an arm around me, pulls me near, i have been very naughty. and we dance, we dance, while winter drowns the rest of this little town into submission
cityscapeless
you have to wonder if this possible has been exhausted, a tire blown and remnants of torn rubber strewn across the highway. i had driven many miles and the sun used to be blaring, an angry god for my lack of sleep. but the city was straight lines and although cold, the night was appealing. she marked her territory well.
always a way out
Somehow we find a way through it, me myself and I, this jumbled presence of a person with runny noses and bruised knuckles and lungs filled with lead.
Somehow, she says, you talk yourself out of anything.
I choke until we are all laughing.
one moment broken free
“one more dedicated peaceful moment
just give me one more dedicated peace moment”
-a perfect circle, “Orestes”
just one moment not out of rage or sorrow, one moment broken free from all the rest, an icicle driven through my lip, limbs into trees into fingers into eyes into love into skin without wounds, scars without pain, laughter without despair.
i drove myself into brick walls to feel bones crack through battered muscle and the swell of my cheek bruised into a bright blue and purple specked with blood and the uneasy feeling that yet this wasn’t enough, still not enough, all this not ever enough.
work the machine
I think in general it’s good to do something, anything that requires some sort of effort/exhaustion: keeps us even keel about ourselves. This idea of progress, of improvement, of staving off the undertow of time and decay. Not to put a too dismal point on it, but the remarkableness of the human body lies in it’s ability to generate, regenerate and perpetuate.
It is the only machine we get to keep for a lifetime.
here isn't
there is nothing i cannot do. but there is nothing i can undo. the paradox of your heel, the stretch of my neck, this memory that will not leave me alone, tortured comfort. we are all things, skin twisted against the bone, a lip caught on barb wire, a tooth scraped against concrete.
i had held you against the night with some flimsy promise we made to each other but only you made it to the dawn while i shattered in the sun
here isn’t
there is nothing i cannot do. but there is nothing i can undo. the paradox of your heel, the stretch of my neck, this memory that will not leave me alone, tortured comfort. we are all things, skin twisted against the bone, a lip caught on barb wire, a tooth scraped against concrete.
i had held you against the night with some flimsy promise we made to each other but only you made it to the dawn while i shattered in the sun