Gone by

Here, you look young again,

Old friend gone by,

When you left to the sea

For rest and repose

You found hard shores

And still harder souls,

For in veins grew

Crystals of salt and

Beneath some eyes

Stones wept from cold.

You went by the tides

For solace and sense

And before you felt wet

Sands, you made castles

With hands, and by the pier’s

Lonely stretch, you welcomed

A friend gone by, to the abyss.

Window

My face to your window

Presses for home, against

Ancient time my heart grinds,

To bleeding clocks I am machine

But to your panes I am half-man,

A cog, a needle, a mind of mine

Can be no comfort to your skin,

A flesh so tender to my breath

Can be no journey’s rest,

Your hollow eyes laced in tears

Sing by the graveyard of my years

And should I stop to wait my days,

Shut your lids on my coffin door.

Name

What name is yours that has no voice

And blindly whispers in the night?

What name is yours that cannot cry

And softly whimpers out of sight?

What name is yours that cannot yearn

And meekly reaches for more height?

What name is yours that cannot struggle

And hopes to triumph in the fight?

Name, what folly can you pray for

If only to save you from your plight?

Name, what empty dreamscape

Will cover you in evanescent light?

Go now, go -

Here is the sanctuary, the well,

Deserved resting place of fear

Not the days passed, they are

But the shrinking shadows

Of forbidden gateways

To undesired hideaways.  

Go now, go –

It is time to rest and time to wither

Go now, go –

It is time to yawn and time to fade

Here is the chalice, the vessel,

Upon cloudy seas to sail

Between whitecap and hail

The sands that welcome

Your lonely anchor

At last your restless soul.

Go now, go –

It is time to drink and time to fast

Go now, go –

It is time to flood and time to sink

Here is the stage, the glen

For your solitary play

Masked in the crepuscule

 Of your final day

Canter to the measure

Of time’s endless sway.

Go now, go –

Elegy for defeat

May you stand, body bound
       To invisible chains
       Feet in the ground
       Heavy with all of your pains
       And from your lips of resignation
       Tumble sounds of supplication.

May you stand, blinded eyes
       Turned to the zenith aster
       Under such azure highs
       The blood of your master
       Drips from fingers trembling
       Onto the great pyre crackling.

May you stand, down to ash
       Your soul will burn
       Like a tattered sash,
       For the wind you yearn
       Of wingless dreams and delights
       Broken by morning screams and lights.

Carbon monoxide

I live in a land full of lonely friends. On my street there are no stray dogs, only overfed cats and by the time the mail arrives early in the morning, the streetlights are already shut off. Families have died in these houses. There was a whole block contaminated by a carbon monoxide leak. Twenty families died in their sleep and for days letters piled up in their mailboxes after the streetlights shut off. They still had smiles on their faces when those who claim the dead and dying came for them with cellophane and tape. Be careful! CO is odorless, tasteless and colorless: it is the dream gas. My house is a good house and even though I do trust it, after the twenty families died I had a SERVICE come out and tell me whether my house was really as trustworthy as I thought it was. Can anyone imagine how relieved I was when the SERVICE told me it was the most honest house they had ever met? In this land of flowerless fruit trees having your trust rewarded is rare enough that it merits celebration, so I bought a cake, so sugary and sweet I could only nibble on it. It lasted me for weeks and now that I come to think of it, the entire time the cake sat in my refrigerator getting nibbled away daily by my sensitive mouth, I received no mail. This is of no major significance, receiving mail has always been, in socio-historical perspective, very overrated. I do admit though and not without a little bit of a guilty conscience, to my secret delight upon receiving my first letter in weeks. It was my neighbor wishing me well from his vacation destination. He said in the letter that he was visiting a land where fruit trees bear flowers, great masses of them, blindingly colorful. I allowed myself only a passing moment of jealousy and then flushed the letter down the toilet. It is undignified to leave traces of such things. [Sometimes the closets rattle and the pipes break.] When my neighbor returns, I will have many things to tell him with words as odorless, tasteless and colorless as CO. Perhaps it is better I say nothing at all, perhaps I should swallow my words like alphabet soup, talking is sometimes far more lethal than any gas and this land has no mercy for imprudent lips. Then I shall have a party, with all of my friends. It will be the loneliest party there ever was, but there will be no cellophane and there will be no tape.

Good news

She sucked the smoke in. With all of her life she sucked the smoke in. She had been waiting for the good news, the news the doctors would carry on their professional lips. A few words, only a few, clear succinct, the ones she wanted to hear. The doctor's lips would be tight and between their teeth the words she had been waiting to hear would slip out, almost inaudible, almost nothing, almost silence. Their faces would be grave, sorry and even condescending, yes, why not? Patronizing enough to neutralize their discomfort.

LUNGS + TUMORS = NOT GOOD (e.g: death, etc...)

Cigarette corpses crumpled in her ashtrays. She sucked the smoke in. How much longer would she have to wait? It was taking longer than she had expected or maybe it was simply her impatience that had dilated time. 

SMOKE! SMOKE! SMOKE!

The whiteness of their medical eminence would be powerless before her will. They would offer solutions with grave faces and cold voices, something about it never being too late, about the great leaps in bounds medicine had made since her mother's time. Oh yes, leaps and bounds, great steps, giant steps too large to be filled by human strides. Progress is like a bouncy ball. Was the filter better or worse for you?

READ THE COMMERCIAL! 


She sucked all of her life in. Smoke filled her lungs, like the air of a jazz club at 4 in the morning. Heavy, sweet, tired, dirty and mesmerizing. The cylinder between her lips blazed, inhale heat, exhale ash. She was waiting, she had been waiting, she would be waiting for still some time. Another corpse in the ashtray and the smell of tar and tobacco on her fingers. 

YOU CAN'T FUCKING DIE!  IT’S NOT IN YOUR BILL OF RIGHTS!