And then the lights faded and we were left alone in the dark once again. The sounds were all distant, all echoed whisper-like in the memory of the roar that only seconds ago consumed the air between us.
We just were. Lee, and I.
When I finally get to work, it seems like an hour of tired driving, my throat is a dry, tight muscle. I keep a hardhat in my car, and I put it on. It mats my dirty, wet hair to my forehead. I cringe at the feeling.
I sigh, and know that Lee and I will make it, eventually.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Today has been a good day.
Today at work I listened to a Neko Case concert from NPR that has been sitting in my podcasts on my work laptop for a few weeks. Then I looked up when she would be playing close to me: July 25th in Nashville. It would be nice to get away for a while. It would be nicer to get away with someone special.
I also think Nashville is a very pretty town. I would like to drink with someone special in Nashville, let the cool and calm water of the river cover our night-time selves. We could keep a bed warm, together.
Neko Case mentioned a book, "In Watermelon Sugar," as the inspiration for the song Margret Vs. Pauline. It's a story written in a strange way, a very simple common kind of way that I feel I'm emulating too much. Sometimes when I spend a lot of time with something I can help but put all my words and thoughts in that form for a couple of hours afterward. Hopefully later tonight I will forget all about watermelon sugar and write my normal way, because I've been hoping to get a few things written.
The book is about a man, the narrator, and his love interest Pauline, and his ex-lover Margret. The thing I hate about love stories is the way they remind me of all those interesting electric tingling feelings that come with new love and comfortable love. Love is interesting, I think I write about it more than I think about it, and when I do write about it I sound like I desire those feelings. Sometimes I do, but usually not. I really used to, really really. Life is strange that way.
I'd rather write something interesting, like a story or a poem, than this boring little blurb about my day.
I would like to continue to post "My Quirky Novel" posts, even though I don't really have any kind of intentions of linking the story together. Maybe I'll see where that narrative goes, but I never think about the over-arching story really. Mostly I use it to sit down and brainstorm and practice, but I find that I don't have the time for that every day. Still, I feel I'm staying creatively busy, so that's good.
But I do like Lee. She's an interesting character to write about, I think.
I'm going to let the story continue, but let the inconsistencies persist.
I also think Nashville is a very pretty town. I would like to drink with someone special in Nashville, let the cool and calm water of the river cover our night-time selves. We could keep a bed warm, together.
Neko Case mentioned a book, "In Watermelon Sugar," as the inspiration for the song Margret Vs. Pauline. It's a story written in a strange way, a very simple common kind of way that I feel I'm emulating too much. Sometimes when I spend a lot of time with something I can help but put all my words and thoughts in that form for a couple of hours afterward. Hopefully later tonight I will forget all about watermelon sugar and write my normal way, because I've been hoping to get a few things written.
The book is about a man, the narrator, and his love interest Pauline, and his ex-lover Margret. The thing I hate about love stories is the way they remind me of all those interesting electric tingling feelings that come with new love and comfortable love. Love is interesting, I think I write about it more than I think about it, and when I do write about it I sound like I desire those feelings. Sometimes I do, but usually not. I really used to, really really. Life is strange that way.
I'd rather write something interesting, like a story or a poem, than this boring little blurb about my day.
I would like to continue to post "My Quirky Novel" posts, even though I don't really have any kind of intentions of linking the story together. Maybe I'll see where that narrative goes, but I never think about the over-arching story really. Mostly I use it to sit down and brainstorm and practice, but I find that I don't have the time for that every day. Still, I feel I'm staying creatively busy, so that's good.
But I do like Lee. She's an interesting character to write about, I think.
I'm going to let the story continue, but let the inconsistencies persist.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
My Quirky Novel Chapter 3 - (i don't have a title) - experimenting
The city held in the heat and light of midsummer well through October and we were held close to the bosom so we were most warm, and still Lee wore an extra thick sweater. She said she wanted something to wrap herself up in, wanted to be sure that something was touching her, wanted the comfort of tactile contact.
We sneak through in a quiet old car, Lee's mother's Chrysler. Lee said once that she liked sliding down into it, like a warm safe hole, told me she remembered riding to primary school inside the deep cloth bucket seats. I elected to drive this car for that reason alone.
The light of the October moon splintered in the haze, soaked up by the sidewalks, covered all the drifters and the kids with bad intentions. They said, I remember, that we loved the devil as we walked into the little doctors office. They said that we would burn forever in hell. All I could think of was a scene on the side of a river, the hills wide and tall like expecting mothers' womb, and two people discussed what we were just to have done. They only let in a puff of air, said he.
The line repeated it's self over and over inside my mind, darting back and forth and invoking some sick twisted sense that perhaps we were doing something hard and worth hearing about. We had become characters beneath the pen of Hemingway or Faulkner, Salinger or Lee.
It also welled up the deepest sort of guilt, the kind that sticks to your soul and weighs you down, the exact kind you don't need when you are drowning like were back then.
My fingers parted on the steering wheel and Lee lit a cigarette. She'd been chain smoking, one after other, until her voice was rough with my ears; the distant sound of gravel voiced beneath tired treads of an old blue pickup and a dusty Tennessee road.
She filled herself up with the cheapness of smoke; I couldn't help but think she was trying to replace what was lost. I want to replace it with myself, I want to take that sacred child's place, the one that we sacrificed on a cross around midday.
I named her Luanne in my head, and I called her Lu for short. It was Lee's mother's name, and it was a permutation of Leeanne. I wanted to think of her, pale thing framed, razor thin dark hair hanging loose, maybe with flowing and sloping curls she stole from my head. She had Lee's soft eyes, the eyes that flooded out pale light with the intensity of the waning moon. The eyes that drew me in, the soft hurt eyes that seemed to splinter some time today and I worried would never heal.
I drove past our hotel room and Lee follows it with her eyes. "Where are we going?" She asks, her voice a harsh whimper like a kicked and broken dog.
Sometimes when I was 16 and I was just able to convince my parents to go out, I would drive not into the city to see friends and talk loudly in moderately quiet places until past midnight most people my age would have. Instead, I would take two borrowed cigarettes from my father when he wasn't looking, and maybe Saturday nights, when I had to come home early anyway, I would drive to the little airport.
It was a municipal airport, not for public use. I never saw any planes land or take off, but I also knew they didn't have any traffic after dusk, and the only times I was able to come, even unhindered by the freedom of summer, was later than eight or nine.
And so, like so many times before, I sat on the hood, this time of that aging relic Chrystler with a cigarette hanging limply from my lips. Lee leaned her lithe frame on mine, feeling lighter, less burdened by the weight of a second soul. I could feel the ache welling up inside of her, but she suffered through her cigarette, the smoke coming in spouts from her nose and mouth.
Lee didn't cry.
I did.
It came in heavy sobs, all the guilt I felt that Lee could hold down and keep beneath her lungs and ribs. Always quiet and strong.
"Lee." I say her name in a long huffing syllable, gasping before and afterward. She puts my face into her breasts, they muffle the words but she feels the vibrations in her shirt. "Did we do anything right: today, ever?"
The air shakes between us and a noise and light flood our car for a moment then dissipate, spread across the field. The dim glow of the fog lights gain a companion and the noise fills the inside of our ears, make our drums tremble.
Through eyes streamed with tears, between Lee's short dusty hair and my own fingers, I wipe my mouth and watch for the first time ever a plane descend from flight and return to the safety of land.
more later...(?)
We sneak through in a quiet old car, Lee's mother's Chrysler. Lee said once that she liked sliding down into it, like a warm safe hole, told me she remembered riding to primary school inside the deep cloth bucket seats. I elected to drive this car for that reason alone.
The light of the October moon splintered in the haze, soaked up by the sidewalks, covered all the drifters and the kids with bad intentions. They said, I remember, that we loved the devil as we walked into the little doctors office. They said that we would burn forever in hell. All I could think of was a scene on the side of a river, the hills wide and tall like expecting mothers' womb, and two people discussed what we were just to have done. They only let in a puff of air, said he.
The line repeated it's self over and over inside my mind, darting back and forth and invoking some sick twisted sense that perhaps we were doing something hard and worth hearing about. We had become characters beneath the pen of Hemingway or Faulkner, Salinger or Lee.
It also welled up the deepest sort of guilt, the kind that sticks to your soul and weighs you down, the exact kind you don't need when you are drowning like were back then.
My fingers parted on the steering wheel and Lee lit a cigarette. She'd been chain smoking, one after other, until her voice was rough with my ears; the distant sound of gravel voiced beneath tired treads of an old blue pickup and a dusty Tennessee road.
She filled herself up with the cheapness of smoke; I couldn't help but think she was trying to replace what was lost. I want to replace it with myself, I want to take that sacred child's place, the one that we sacrificed on a cross around midday.
I named her Luanne in my head, and I called her Lu for short. It was Lee's mother's name, and it was a permutation of Leeanne. I wanted to think of her, pale thing framed, razor thin dark hair hanging loose, maybe with flowing and sloping curls she stole from my head. She had Lee's soft eyes, the eyes that flooded out pale light with the intensity of the waning moon. The eyes that drew me in, the soft hurt eyes that seemed to splinter some time today and I worried would never heal.
I drove past our hotel room and Lee follows it with her eyes. "Where are we going?" She asks, her voice a harsh whimper like a kicked and broken dog.
Sometimes when I was 16 and I was just able to convince my parents to go out, I would drive not into the city to see friends and talk loudly in moderately quiet places until past midnight most people my age would have. Instead, I would take two borrowed cigarettes from my father when he wasn't looking, and maybe Saturday nights, when I had to come home early anyway, I would drive to the little airport.
It was a municipal airport, not for public use. I never saw any planes land or take off, but I also knew they didn't have any traffic after dusk, and the only times I was able to come, even unhindered by the freedom of summer, was later than eight or nine.
And so, like so many times before, I sat on the hood, this time of that aging relic Chrystler with a cigarette hanging limply from my lips. Lee leaned her lithe frame on mine, feeling lighter, less burdened by the weight of a second soul. I could feel the ache welling up inside of her, but she suffered through her cigarette, the smoke coming in spouts from her nose and mouth.
Lee didn't cry.
I did.
It came in heavy sobs, all the guilt I felt that Lee could hold down and keep beneath her lungs and ribs. Always quiet and strong.
"Lee." I say her name in a long huffing syllable, gasping before and afterward. She puts my face into her breasts, they muffle the words but she feels the vibrations in her shirt. "Did we do anything right: today, ever?"
The air shakes between us and a noise and light flood our car for a moment then dissipate, spread across the field. The dim glow of the fog lights gain a companion and the noise fills the inside of our ears, make our drums tremble.
Through eyes streamed with tears, between Lee's short dusty hair and my own fingers, I wipe my mouth and watch for the first time ever a plane descend from flight and return to the safety of land.
more later...(?)
Thursday, June 11, 2009
My Quirky Novel - Chapter 2 - brotherlove
Her brother called me a new-moon-sissy, cause he thought I was either a hippie or that I was gay. Or, maybe those words held another kind of abstraction for him, and they did in their own way mean that I was a special kind of sissy. A rarity, the once-a-month kind that took people's sisters and daughters and broke them in some strange arcane kind of way where they would never be fixed. He told me he'd pound on my kidney's till I pissed out blood. I got all consumed with the image. Would it just be sorta milky-clear watery blood piss or just blood, lively and newly red as though it came straight from a gash in my kneecap?
It barely matters anyway; he took what little life he had, and like the last bit of gel in the toothpaste tube squeezed it all out over his walls and floors. Lee won't ever forgive him, she still says so sometimes as we sit outside and wait for the cold of dusk to catch up to us. To shake our bones until our teeth hum like old refrigerators.
When Lee slides in next to me she breaths her sorrow and hunger and wanting for money and time out into the back of my hair. I feel the way she moves and settles on the thin mattress and with her added weight I can almost feel the hard thin carpet that covers the floor. She puts her entire weight against mine and I am the little spoon. I lay back into her, put my butt in her crotch and feel her pubic bone through the thin pants she sleeps in. Her little breasts press into my shoulder blades and I can almost feel them deflate on the jagged bones that are cresting my back skin.
Just before the sun wakes up, evil intentions fresh from dreams, to burn the masses once again, I get up and set about working in defiance. I dress quickly. I can't shave or shower. I take to staring at myself in the mirror for the minutes those activities would have filled.
My skin is gray on my face. Three weeks of stubble but I don't have it in me to grow a beard, it never really seems possible. My hair looks too dark and a little wet, and clumps and mats on my head, it's disgusting really. I haven't touched it for fear that maybe it's hard, covered in some thick crust or wet with weeks of oil and sweat. I stink, I can tell. I imagine little bits of shit and dirt clinking to the forlorn follicles that vomit long and thin strings that I'm still calling hair.
I drive to work but listen to nothing except the humming of the tires as they fight against the road. Droning my hears the road said the words to me again, the words that have been on my mind since yesterday haunting me. The pale ghost of her brother, overly healthy and fed, stomach just ripe, a little to big to fit exactly inside of his pants so it spills over slightly.
I am a new-moon-sissy. I was right. I'm not a writer. All I think about is the sun and the moon.
I'm the highest order of fuck up because I lied outright and did exactly what I said I wouldn't. And even though mostly it was an accident, I took his sister and I broke her good, and now she'll never be the same again.
We got up at 8AM. We were shower soggy when we stepped into the mid-October sunlight, the air was warm in pockets making anyone uncomfortable enough to bully you into wearing long sleeves. The thermometer betrayed you in that respect.
It was 2002 Lee had Bob Dylan's hair. I couldn't keep my hands off her stomach, it was smooth and fresh pink, bounced at the touch. There was something of mine growing somewhere beneath there and I felt like it was the shame I could only hide with my fingers.
She didn't show a single sign. We had waited six weeks just to be sure. We stayed at her parents house but we didn't tell them why. Her mother made an obvious (and mostly wine fulled) declaration that we should get married once and for all. We had been together for 3 years then. Her mother had gone on about that until Lee's brother died, at which point she locked herself into a room and didn't say much else on the subject.
We shared a cigarette in the car. The feeling of my lips where hers had just been took some of the weight from the situation. I started feeling sick, I could only imagine what Lee was feeling. She looked out the window and didn't make a sound except the little sucking noise she made when she took her drags. She told me that she didn't mind smoking since she knew what we were about to do, and she knew she was going to see this to the end.
The road still hums it's gentle haunting and the smokestacks loom quietly ahead, white pavement glows with a liquid film, the white hot sea of the sun come down to consume anyone foolish enough to be caught out walking their dogs.
After work I sell the last of my books, including a few old and first editions that I collected from professors in college or got from my father. He was an unquenchable scholar on weekends, picking up old copies of Whitman, Hemingway, whatever else he could find. I haven't told Lee that I've been selling them; mostly because I don't want to burden her and her empathetic sadness that she holds like water in a broken glass, so careful and it keeps dripping out. Our time together lately has been so spare that I hardly feel it worthwhile to fill her up with such sour emotions and let her walk around all high-school-crush broken for a few days.
My hands shook, it was freezing inside the waiting room. It was unbearable, the silence ticked out with the steady broken-faucet drip of the clock on the wall. Almost a relic in these times. I think to grade school learning to read such a clock, and realized that there are children alive and aware today that can't begin to know how to read one of those. They have far to little practice, they have spent their whole lives sleeping in our digital dreamscape.
Lee's arm is hot on mine, the skin on my forearm cools and she leaves a pale stain where the blood fled her touch. A ghost left her handprint on me. I remember the stark image it drew it my head, of our unborn girl placing her future hand on my arm sometime down the line, when Lee and I were old and still happy in the quiet way where we read our books in the same room, leaning on one another, but never say a word. It killed me. I was a coward.
The man at the bookstore looked my copies over slowly. Turned all the pages. Looked for mars or marks. He is quickly satisfied with his findings, and hands me a hundred dollars. I contemplate what to do with it as it dries my hands.
I hit the curb and already my pocket is sweating. That pack of cigarettes doesn't seem so selfish anymore. I feel like if I take one out it will self immolate in the weather. I'm sticky with sweat, glistening really. The more I wait the more I realize this is part of the prescription when it comes to being outside, you form a thick film; an interesting side-effect of the human cooling system.
Lee has already left for work when I get home. There is a note on the table. Love is all it says. The power is out, the house is tinted in brown light, the toilet bowl is brown, our lungs our brown. Love. I put it in my wallet.
It barely matters anyway; he took what little life he had, and like the last bit of gel in the toothpaste tube squeezed it all out over his walls and floors. Lee won't ever forgive him, she still says so sometimes as we sit outside and wait for the cold of dusk to catch up to us. To shake our bones until our teeth hum like old refrigerators.
When Lee slides in next to me she breaths her sorrow and hunger and wanting for money and time out into the back of my hair. I feel the way she moves and settles on the thin mattress and with her added weight I can almost feel the hard thin carpet that covers the floor. She puts her entire weight against mine and I am the little spoon. I lay back into her, put my butt in her crotch and feel her pubic bone through the thin pants she sleeps in. Her little breasts press into my shoulder blades and I can almost feel them deflate on the jagged bones that are cresting my back skin.
Just before the sun wakes up, evil intentions fresh from dreams, to burn the masses once again, I get up and set about working in defiance. I dress quickly. I can't shave or shower. I take to staring at myself in the mirror for the minutes those activities would have filled.
My skin is gray on my face. Three weeks of stubble but I don't have it in me to grow a beard, it never really seems possible. My hair looks too dark and a little wet, and clumps and mats on my head, it's disgusting really. I haven't touched it for fear that maybe it's hard, covered in some thick crust or wet with weeks of oil and sweat. I stink, I can tell. I imagine little bits of shit and dirt clinking to the forlorn follicles that vomit long and thin strings that I'm still calling hair.
I drive to work but listen to nothing except the humming of the tires as they fight against the road. Droning my hears the road said the words to me again, the words that have been on my mind since yesterday haunting me. The pale ghost of her brother, overly healthy and fed, stomach just ripe, a little to big to fit exactly inside of his pants so it spills over slightly.
I am a new-moon-sissy. I was right. I'm not a writer. All I think about is the sun and the moon.
I'm the highest order of fuck up because I lied outright and did exactly what I said I wouldn't. And even though mostly it was an accident, I took his sister and I broke her good, and now she'll never be the same again.
We got up at 8AM. We were shower soggy when we stepped into the mid-October sunlight, the air was warm in pockets making anyone uncomfortable enough to bully you into wearing long sleeves. The thermometer betrayed you in that respect.
It was 2002 Lee had Bob Dylan's hair. I couldn't keep my hands off her stomach, it was smooth and fresh pink, bounced at the touch. There was something of mine growing somewhere beneath there and I felt like it was the shame I could only hide with my fingers.
She didn't show a single sign. We had waited six weeks just to be sure. We stayed at her parents house but we didn't tell them why. Her mother made an obvious (and mostly wine fulled) declaration that we should get married once and for all. We had been together for 3 years then. Her mother had gone on about that until Lee's brother died, at which point she locked herself into a room and didn't say much else on the subject.
We shared a cigarette in the car. The feeling of my lips where hers had just been took some of the weight from the situation. I started feeling sick, I could only imagine what Lee was feeling. She looked out the window and didn't make a sound except the little sucking noise she made when she took her drags. She told me that she didn't mind smoking since she knew what we were about to do, and she knew she was going to see this to the end.
The road still hums it's gentle haunting and the smokestacks loom quietly ahead, white pavement glows with a liquid film, the white hot sea of the sun come down to consume anyone foolish enough to be caught out walking their dogs.
After work I sell the last of my books, including a few old and first editions that I collected from professors in college or got from my father. He was an unquenchable scholar on weekends, picking up old copies of Whitman, Hemingway, whatever else he could find. I haven't told Lee that I've been selling them; mostly because I don't want to burden her and her empathetic sadness that she holds like water in a broken glass, so careful and it keeps dripping out. Our time together lately has been so spare that I hardly feel it worthwhile to fill her up with such sour emotions and let her walk around all high-school-crush broken for a few days.
My hands shook, it was freezing inside the waiting room. It was unbearable, the silence ticked out with the steady broken-faucet drip of the clock on the wall. Almost a relic in these times. I think to grade school learning to read such a clock, and realized that there are children alive and aware today that can't begin to know how to read one of those. They have far to little practice, they have spent their whole lives sleeping in our digital dreamscape.
Lee's arm is hot on mine, the skin on my forearm cools and she leaves a pale stain where the blood fled her touch. A ghost left her handprint on me. I remember the stark image it drew it my head, of our unborn girl placing her future hand on my arm sometime down the line, when Lee and I were old and still happy in the quiet way where we read our books in the same room, leaning on one another, but never say a word. It killed me. I was a coward.
The man at the bookstore looked my copies over slowly. Turned all the pages. Looked for mars or marks. He is quickly satisfied with his findings, and hands me a hundred dollars. I contemplate what to do with it as it dries my hands.
I hit the curb and already my pocket is sweating. That pack of cigarettes doesn't seem so selfish anymore. I feel like if I take one out it will self immolate in the weather. I'm sticky with sweat, glistening really. The more I wait the more I realize this is part of the prescription when it comes to being outside, you form a thick film; an interesting side-effect of the human cooling system.
Lee has already left for work when I get home. There is a note on the table. Love is all it says. The power is out, the house is tinted in brown light, the toilet bowl is brown, our lungs our brown. Love. I put it in my wallet.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
My Quirky Novel - Chapter 1 - a love story
blah blah blah, just brainstorming words
I'm teething on lights outside in the parking lot, the day-time is a sickening well of pressure and hot. Everything clings to me. My shirt, the smell of smoke, the heavy burning dark lump in my lungs.
The sun sits up in his sky and plays with matches. He burns all the little ants that run around the earth, he's a kid with a magnifying glass and a feeling of entitlement. I want to lay outside naked in the sun and let his gentle fingers touch me.
My dick starts to get hard at the thought. I'm laying outside naked covered in sweat. My body hair is already matted to me and Lee is there. Her pubic bone covered in an auburn swatch of short, visible curls.
Soon I'll move on to bigger and better things, I say aloud. No one listens or hears or maybe even cares. They probably think I'm sharing their dream; get the fuck out of this stupid mindless middle class minimum wage monotony and into something better and bigger. Let my legs stretch out a bit.
I call it big fish syndrome.
But no, I don't got it that bad yet. I don't got it at all. I'm clean and healthy as hell, ever been and ever will be. I'm fifteen years younger than all these fucks and I know it's a waste of dream time. No, I'll buy a pack of filters when I head home.
Irony melts the thoughts at the beginning of my brain. I work an hour for the money to buy one pack, and each pack takes 30 minutes off my life.
Lee stomps on my toes every night when I get home. She digs the balls of her feet into the tops of mine, stands up on tip-toes (as she calls them) and firmly, with such finality to it, places her tongue inside my mouth.
She whispers how cold the kitchen tiles feel on her bare legs when she sat down to fill the cat's water. She softly puts her knee just below my groin and she takes a cigarette from me. The only time she smokes in the house is when she gets really horny or really sad.
Those days all she does is lay on the couch and watch trash tv- the montell williams show is her favorite. She can't try since the water got shut off, so she sits and put my hand on the lump in her throat and try and work it over and soften it.
She wears an old, over-large long sleeved shirt. It hangs from her body like vines of ivy spiraling up a decaying chimney. I can see her rib-cage stretching for the hell of it beneath thinning skin. They pop and creak then quake like plate tectonics as she twists around beneath her covers.
She invites me beneath those sheets on the old leather couch her parents gave her when she moved out 5 years ago. Her body is spoiled by inside air, she is accustomed to the cool of the tile in the kitchen. Her limbs are lithe and pale. A little bit of her stomach skin peaks out at me; the rift where her pants part from her shirt, the way she lays, one hand above head, the other curled beneath breast, tugs and contorts the fabric of the too large shirt. Her left shoulder lays exposed, draped quietly with the slow sloping curls of her unwashed hair. Eyes quiver and she spreads her legs, her long denim shorts tighten around her thighs, the only place her bones seem invisible, only sacks of fat dangling from limp muscles.
In this light it betrays her. She looks beautiful and I realize that she needs my body and I need her mind. I lay down on top of her, most of my weight in my shoulders and I start crying.
Heavy sobs and heaving for air sounds fill the room. Lee moves to sit and I bury my face deep in her lap, my nose dripping yellow water. She doesn't say anything, or maybe she does. I don't stop crying to ask her repeat herself. Her voice doesn't crack at all inside the quiet room where I think she lives most of her life.
When we eat I refuse to have any, feeling wrapped up and selfish for buying the new pack of smokes. It's one of our last meals, we have to ration.
We feed on one anothers' bodies later in the dark before she goes to fill out the grave-yard shift. Lee is starving and she lets my affection fill her up as much as the food I go without and I fill up on guilt for treating her bad. Tomorrow I'll figure something out, but lately it's all been bullshit about the sun and the moon.
I'm not a fucking writer, I whisper to her when she leaves.
I love you, too. She says back, and it crushes me so hard and fast that I don't really sleep but just shiver under the covers and wait for the one hour when she gets back before I wake up, and she slides into me sideways and we touch half-clothed bodies in the utter darkness, no sex no blood flow, just full of love and longing for more time. She puts her mouth on my neck, hunger palpable in the way she teethes my skin and I wish I could fill up her collapsing stomach.
I'm teething on lights outside in the parking lot, the day-time is a sickening well of pressure and hot. Everything clings to me. My shirt, the smell of smoke, the heavy burning dark lump in my lungs.
The sun sits up in his sky and plays with matches. He burns all the little ants that run around the earth, he's a kid with a magnifying glass and a feeling of entitlement. I want to lay outside naked in the sun and let his gentle fingers touch me.
My dick starts to get hard at the thought. I'm laying outside naked covered in sweat. My body hair is already matted to me and Lee is there. Her pubic bone covered in an auburn swatch of short, visible curls.
Soon I'll move on to bigger and better things, I say aloud. No one listens or hears or maybe even cares. They probably think I'm sharing their dream; get the fuck out of this stupid mindless middle class minimum wage monotony and into something better and bigger. Let my legs stretch out a bit.
I call it big fish syndrome.
But no, I don't got it that bad yet. I don't got it at all. I'm clean and healthy as hell, ever been and ever will be. I'm fifteen years younger than all these fucks and I know it's a waste of dream time. No, I'll buy a pack of filters when I head home.
Irony melts the thoughts at the beginning of my brain. I work an hour for the money to buy one pack, and each pack takes 30 minutes off my life.
Lee stomps on my toes every night when I get home. She digs the balls of her feet into the tops of mine, stands up on tip-toes (as she calls them) and firmly, with such finality to it, places her tongue inside my mouth.
She whispers how cold the kitchen tiles feel on her bare legs when she sat down to fill the cat's water. She softly puts her knee just below my groin and she takes a cigarette from me. The only time she smokes in the house is when she gets really horny or really sad.
Those days all she does is lay on the couch and watch trash tv- the montell williams show is her favorite. She can't try since the water got shut off, so she sits and put my hand on the lump in her throat and try and work it over and soften it.
She wears an old, over-large long sleeved shirt. It hangs from her body like vines of ivy spiraling up a decaying chimney. I can see her rib-cage stretching for the hell of it beneath thinning skin. They pop and creak then quake like plate tectonics as she twists around beneath her covers.
She invites me beneath those sheets on the old leather couch her parents gave her when she moved out 5 years ago. Her body is spoiled by inside air, she is accustomed to the cool of the tile in the kitchen. Her limbs are lithe and pale. A little bit of her stomach skin peaks out at me; the rift where her pants part from her shirt, the way she lays, one hand above head, the other curled beneath breast, tugs and contorts the fabric of the too large shirt. Her left shoulder lays exposed, draped quietly with the slow sloping curls of her unwashed hair. Eyes quiver and she spreads her legs, her long denim shorts tighten around her thighs, the only place her bones seem invisible, only sacks of fat dangling from limp muscles.
In this light it betrays her. She looks beautiful and I realize that she needs my body and I need her mind. I lay down on top of her, most of my weight in my shoulders and I start crying.
Heavy sobs and heaving for air sounds fill the room. Lee moves to sit and I bury my face deep in her lap, my nose dripping yellow water. She doesn't say anything, or maybe she does. I don't stop crying to ask her repeat herself. Her voice doesn't crack at all inside the quiet room where I think she lives most of her life.
When we eat I refuse to have any, feeling wrapped up and selfish for buying the new pack of smokes. It's one of our last meals, we have to ration.
We feed on one anothers' bodies later in the dark before she goes to fill out the grave-yard shift. Lee is starving and she lets my affection fill her up as much as the food I go without and I fill up on guilt for treating her bad. Tomorrow I'll figure something out, but lately it's all been bullshit about the sun and the moon.
I'm not a fucking writer, I whisper to her when she leaves.
I love you, too. She says back, and it crushes me so hard and fast that I don't really sleep but just shiver under the covers and wait for the one hour when she gets back before I wake up, and she slides into me sideways and we touch half-clothed bodies in the utter darkness, no sex no blood flow, just full of love and longing for more time. She puts her mouth on my neck, hunger palpable in the way she teethes my skin and I wish I could fill up her collapsing stomach.
Monday, June 8, 2009
Storms - my chain of thoughts, this weekend and further past
I will teeth the outskirts of my Monday morning brain. I spent a too much lung smoked weekend, wait patiently though Sunday, starving through Saturday, a beer or three on Friday.
Try and recall what I thought I might put down into words sometime, somewhere. I will cough or sneeze out all the words like a January head cold too close to school's starting day.
I haven't been out of this state in over two years. The last time I was I went to Memphis and watched the Decemberists craft some of my favorites (and far too few of my most favorites) on a stage before my eyes. Somehow all those different little instruments (harpsichord, banjo, mandolin, accordion) moving between fingers, the scent of other bodies rubbing against mine, the dark and the heat, the gentle craving for one more smoke, my lungs freshly accustomed to the taste, all move around inside the hard admiration, the transcendent jealously of her body, the swishsway of her sliding hips moving to pop-lite in the bleeding red stained light of the stage. Be my actor, one more time, cum hard and fast and fake beneath me just like you used to, and tell me it was amazing, your voice crack slightly and distantly. I will hold this all for you until I can no longer, until you are replaced with someone who maybe fill that crescentmoonhole you left in my soul one first of June morning.
It's been two years since I was no longer a child. It's been two years since I was only flesh and love. I remember the night well.
It was 2AM on April 30th; my 19th Birthday. You are now the only girl I've ever been with. There is some kind of stigmata associated with those words. I bear the stain-handed mark of truth. I'll show you my palm for less than a quarter, because I love the shame of association. I'll tell you all my secrets for this reason or that, because the shame on display is the closest I'll really ever come to exhibitionism.
Sometimes I think about your new lover tangled beneath covers. I have only seen him once, so I let the ambiguity twirl around inside my imagination. I wonder how his fingers, his tongue, his dick curves and moves and brush up against you, get you going, get you off.
I'm having problems removing my hopes that you remember me. I know you can't, it's not fair to him for me to even ask you to. It's probably not fair to me to hope you do or pretend you do.
I'll be fine, in the meantime.
Try and recall what I thought I might put down into words sometime, somewhere. I will cough or sneeze out all the words like a January head cold too close to school's starting day.
I haven't been out of this state in over two years. The last time I was I went to Memphis and watched the Decemberists craft some of my favorites (and far too few of my most favorites) on a stage before my eyes. Somehow all those different little instruments (harpsichord, banjo, mandolin, accordion) moving between fingers, the scent of other bodies rubbing against mine, the dark and the heat, the gentle craving for one more smoke, my lungs freshly accustomed to the taste, all move around inside the hard admiration, the transcendent jealously of her body, the swishsway of her sliding hips moving to pop-lite in the bleeding red stained light of the stage. Be my actor, one more time, cum hard and fast and fake beneath me just like you used to, and tell me it was amazing, your voice crack slightly and distantly. I will hold this all for you until I can no longer, until you are replaced with someone who maybe fill that crescentmoonhole you left in my soul one first of June morning.
It's been two years since I was no longer a child. It's been two years since I was only flesh and love. I remember the night well.
It was 2AM on April 30th; my 19th Birthday. You are now the only girl I've ever been with. There is some kind of stigmata associated with those words. I bear the stain-handed mark of truth. I'll show you my palm for less than a quarter, because I love the shame of association. I'll tell you all my secrets for this reason or that, because the shame on display is the closest I'll really ever come to exhibitionism.
Sometimes I think about your new lover tangled beneath covers. I have only seen him once, so I let the ambiguity twirl around inside my imagination. I wonder how his fingers, his tongue, his dick curves and moves and brush up against you, get you going, get you off.
I'm having problems removing my hopes that you remember me. I know you can't, it's not fair to him for me to even ask you to. It's probably not fair to me to hope you do or pretend you do.
I'll be fine, in the meantime.
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