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[09 Sep 2008|02:43am] |
So, it had been almost three years. He'd came back and many of his friends were gone, buildings he'd inhabited torn down, the fruit seller on George Street moved on by the police to an undisclosed location. Nowhere else in this postcode could such fragrant passion fruits be acquired, with skins so plump and ripe their ink bled out and gloved your hands in iridescent purple.
She was waiting inside the cafe on Edgeware Road. He walked past her outside the window, opened the doors and walked over. She'd still not lifted her head.
"Hey"
"You came. I wondered if you would." "You look great... How is he?" "Oh, Michael? Good, yeah. He says hi."
He sat down, paused for breath for just a moment and stared at the menu. "I can't believe you're marrying that prick"
"Jesus John, shut up. All this time and that's the first thing you say? Had i known you'd be like this..."
"Four years for nothing. It's an investment, that amount of time, you expect to get something back after that."
"You haven't changed. You're still...you. How is Portugal, by the way? Or have you cashed in on that particular investment?"
They talked briskly in the cafe which was poorly ventilated and, on account of the reflection of the sun off the chrome furnishings, and the profusion of heavy, dark coats that hung on the backs of chairs or on the rack by the door, compounded by the limited amount of space in which to move or breathe, the place began to seem a lot warmer than it actually was.
Strangely his thoughts returned to the time the pair of them went fruit-picking in the Ardennes, how it was so hot and the protective gloves, which for safety reasons you were required to wear in order to tear the pears from their sockets, became all sweaty and moist on the insides. At the end of the day when you went back to your room your hands would be shriveled up like an over-ripe passion fruit, as if they'd been immersed in warm water for hours on end. Then you'd spend the evening rehydrating, filling yourself up with fluids, working out all the creases on your hands. He had not thought about the trip in years. Glimpsing at her hands now, there were a few new wrinkles by her wrist. He wanted to reach over and touch, to refill the gaps.
He had thought of all the things he'd say to her when they reunited, what boasts he could craft about his time away. But none of it came out like that, his voice sounded strange, as if he was asking or begging for something unspecified, unknown. In return it seemed as if she was trying to give him something, to gift or offload a present upon him, something she was tired of carrying, or eager to be relieved of. Yet for all the pleading tones, it seemed the exchange was never fully ratified. Visibly perspiring now, John drank his coffee and ordered a juice to cool down. He did not plan on staying too much longer.
"Yes, i'll go to the wedding if you want me to, but I wouldn't want to make a scene or cause a fuss, and it might be uncomfortable for him, too." "No i don't think it would be, it is a wedding you see, it's not about you, no one will be looking at you. I just thought it might be nice considering you were a big part of my life, and that you might be happy for me."
"Oh I am, I am. He's a great bloke, the best, you couldn't find better. it's quite miraculous you met, after all." "Don't start that. There's no point. Anyway, here is your invite."
She reached into her purse and slowly pulled out an oversized envelope with his name written on in delicate, ornate handwriting. The lower curve, the cup or lip, of the J flowed outwards softly before crossing over itself and underlining the other letters of his name, ending in a small, flowering flourish. He did not know if the names on all the envelopes had been given such calligraphic attention, or if it had just been his. He took it, thanking her, and placed it in his pocket without opening.
They were somewhat more cordial upon leaving, lingering for what he thought a moment longer than they should by the doorway. They promised to at least stay in touch and then departed. As he was due to travel in the same general direction as her, he pretended to go a separate way. She held her arms up as if to wave as she pulled her purple gloves down over her long delicate fingers, and finally round her soft, plump palms. She walked quickly down George Street without looking back. He watched her until she turned a corner and was gone. Then he stared vacantly into the blank air where she had just been. He could still detect the scent of her perfume in the air until it too was swept away.
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| still alive sort of |
[03 Dec 2004|02:41pm] |
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mood |
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fuck off |
] |
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music |
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me shivering |
] |
i hate my lazy eye
this morning: i look into this book and see only (mostly) myself.
this lunch-time: jealousy and fear provoke the imagination like little else (i am not the only one to love my love).
this afternoon: either my voice will not last as long as my words, or my vocal haste will outpace my mind.
this evening: leave it unfinished, cut before the bud, a rosebush clipped with shears. hope for an overnight blossoming, as red as the frost is white.
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[03 Nov 2004|05:25am] |
bush CANNOT win!
all journal keepers must pray to their patron saint samuel pepys.
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| roman |
[16 Sep 2004|03:58pm] |
| [ |
mood |
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vanishing |
] |
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music |
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vanished |
] |
pastorale
her nomadic hands are riven with wires and coarse as loose rope.
her vertically plaited hair, as is the custom, kept away from the driven eyes.
her lipless confession - a roving hurt from below the bow of her dress.
her hurting shin submits to my hand and i tend to her as she grins with pain.
her face, annointed by the dark, her shadow, burnt into the earth.
her cotton flannel pillow shepherds day into dream.
her country is at nigh, awaiting, pilgrim of the night.
lead me there, and always there i stop, the night thy pasture is, the stars thy flock.
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[23 Jul 2004|12:22am] |
sorry we did not get to talk today. i feel stupid for not picking up. sorry.
i played your message over and over again because i like your voice.
tomorrow i may be in love.
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| vignettes gathered from my brother's wedding |
[10 Jul 2004|01:07pm] |
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mood |
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how come i did not notice you before? |
] |
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music |
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when did you inquire of me? why? how far has this altered my judgement? |
] |
rachel
I have been sleeping for too long, the duvet as comfortable as the idiom of my dreams.
There she sits in black and blonde.
"you look good, smart, all dressed up..."
A slight frame to my left, a poise of quiet disdain and resignation, the fresh beauty of being unaware yet also the quality of sin in her eyes.
the lacings of the hem of her gown approach her turned knees, dutifully resting upon her thighs, fine fabric yet coarse upon the soft skin.
"everytime my mother looks across i'm not talking to anyone so she thinks im not having a good time." more so than ever in her unrest, the polite hands rest upon the proper knees.
she speaks with rare voice, it is like the portion of myself that has remained unspoken.
I have been here before - a mercenary love. The coins of her eyes in the cusp of her youth. She holds her currency in her face.
I ask her... (inaudible) I see a smile. Her final sweet response makes a debt of my heart.
Amongst the others she withdraws, her shoulder is by mine; a loose leaf sustained on the mild wind (too light to fall, too frail to cast shadow).
A blush of prudence on her cheeks, the red of an andalusian rose.
Iberia is in her face and in her hair a northern wind.
An inlet of opportunity! A heaven of ascending sails all full with jet stream! ('tis deep waters now cap'n)
My shaking throat loudly breaks words into nervous music; an elect of octaves less loud than silence.
"I never expected you to (inaudible)"
The lips own a language other than that of words or of dreams. A dialogue of exhalation, of soft shallow pressure, of her lipstick on my cheek. A kindred kiss.
the seasonal night sky blesses us with the darkness of seclusion, (yet at this time of year it is never truely night)
on the bus it seems, too close, we are seated at the back in error, thigh pressed against thigh, a discreet whisper, "what of tomorrow? (inaudible) what of -----?"
- epilogue
it has been a day's worth of night and a sleep of spoken psalms.
the seal of night breaks, the leaves are shaken from the branches by the wind.
if i am in the full throat of the morning of my life, (full as the beak of blackbird with morning song) then why do i yearn that the duvet would fill itself?
i am about to sleep there (soft contented sheets!) yet another bed (of oriental quilt) still awaits my sleep, still awaits the break of awakening.
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| names of renown |
[30 Jun 2004|04:39am] |
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mood |
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shem |
] |
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music |
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by any other name |
] |
elam - he blushes as the secretary cleans his jacket.
hilen - the widow forces the shutters open at dawn.
akkub - he sees a crooked footprint in the dirt outside her gate.
puah - a childless midwife tends to the bloody corners of her mouth, drapes her splendid hair across her bruised cheek.
mizpah - the hunched over, wincing security guard tries to make out the dark moving shapes on the cctv image.
shechem - he returns home after nightshift feigning affection for his awaking wife with a brief kiss to her shoulder.
ulla - a child on his father's shoulders reaches for the rising leaf which blows in the wind.
bera - the water clears the dirt from the side of the well as a man shows his son how to pump the water into a bucket.
lashah - the rain moves the wet-haired girls to the bike-shelter where they mix amongst themselves.
aiah - a lost vulture searches for its wake.
migron - the farmer on the landslip has been calling out for help for over an hour. he is fearful he shall lose his voice and die there.
hodesh - "sit down" she says, her heavy breathing cooling the heat of her heart "i have some news".
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| fuckwits |
[19 Jun 2004|07:45pm] |
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"it was Rachel Corrie's fault she got run over, it was thoughtless and reckless to stand in front of a bulldozer like that, or even to be in Palestine"
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[16 Jun 2004|11:11pm] |
bloom what?
who?
in a macintosh you say?
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[13 Jun 2004|09:37pm] |
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i am going to murder the next french person i come across
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| an eye for turbulence |
[10 Jun 2004|03:20am] |
1. a grey clipper - a cigarette lighter. a peerless mark of fire on my thumb. A flame down my throat. dark and cooling once again in the pocket. soon it will be as silent and cool as my heart - love burns; is the nicotine that leaves marks on the soul.
Smoking is a drawing room pursuit - she sits with herself - her limbs, her neck, her long-gloved forearms - they are mere stems, (yet heavy to her) thinner than thin cigarello, wet with life, wet without possibility of catching light. she fills the frame of the shadow but slightly and then with bankrupt poise. i know her. it is charlotte of beauty dusked face - of faded sex, of barren womb - she kisses the fire, the ashy implement. "hand me a smoke" metonyms of a night-fire that has served its purpose and cannot match the heat or light of the morning sun.
2. keeps his promise - i waited so long my shoes became wet in the rain. when i saw him coming i had to leave. my shoes were too badly ruined.
3. "It's off" - the lips are lack in riches and express for the profit of the tongue. a deficit of sound represented by a finger upon lips. the tongue smiles and gilds the air it sours. a Gastarbeiter in Hamburg misunderstands the english woman when she crosses her arms. his finger is upon his wet lips as the limbs start talking (shouting).
4. "there are acts you commit in which you recall most vividly the period of sublime ignorance. this is how you conceive of innocence. not a reality but an absence of reality. You recall it so vividly and rid yourself of the image by reliving the purest moment with the contemporary wisdom. taint it. a well of tears on it. a rain of dirt on it. during the act the image is right there in front of you along with the contemporary image. mutually they destroy each other (each has the others weakness). afterwards you cannot ever love another, for you have lost the love of and for yourself"
5. what i walk upon - a pavement ploughed with poetry. a rut of words, a scarf of grass blowing, a blowing leaf of time, a verse furrowed with dialogue.
6. boats - the sun rises at the bow of day. sets at its stern. (round the cape is rugged coastlne) a heaven of ascending sails, all full with the gulfstream.
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[06 Jun 2004|11:03pm] |
The Doctor's face was red in the blood of others and his shadow stretched over an invalid as he spread a patch of plaster over a wound.
- I tend not to win life but to near it.
He stays turned toward the invalid yet reaches behind his own back into the medicine bag for another roll of plaster. He searches for it with his blind hand yet never touches upon it.
- Sorry, I am empty.
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| rundown |
[05 Jun 2004|01:10am] |
a short sleeved shirt.
she carries a glossary of love in her white arms, she speaks through them, of fingers and pink ridges and cupped palms, of the cradle of forearms and the laugh of shoulders. these are our words, our arms with which to fight for love.
- - - -
cafe photograph.
Stalks of light reached across the table so that the strips of dust on the windows were caught in the rays. Menus were slotted amicably between the salt and pepper grinders and the slender glass, filled to a quarter height with water and from which rose the slotted stems of tulips. The flower was an eclipse of white, a turban of petals, a corolla of colourlust. Yet it reminded him of none of these things. To him the petals were branded with the signature of a hopeless eternity. Seed after seed after seed in a busy hive of petals; a necessarily vicious fertility.
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[03 Jun 2004|09:42pm] |
celestials
I
the night shall tarnish the day,
the moon shall stand toward the sun
and grow red with a heady blood
abandoned from its native heart.
(M.A.)
II
He stands before the sun
so as to see his shadow
before him - distrusting the dark
in his character.
(O.C.)
III
at this hour the moon
controls the light, yet
its face suffers - aware of,
awaiting - the preeminence
of day.
(RIII)
Toll Road
gather up the lease of love,
which by either debt or due,
softens life's tread to move
and follow two-by-two.
catch a counterfeit coin by rim
and flick it for the sun;
it casts a light thats blind and grim;
such shadows grow, such shadows run.
words like electric lightbulbs: burning brightly by the electricity which moves through them. And so too the snap of darkness (more like sleep) by switch or fuel gone; it meets the sentence both at its centre, and again at its full stop.
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| a word in your ear (epithalamion for weekdays) |
[19 May 2004|03:26am] |
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mood |
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your handwriting in pencil |
] |
| [ |
music |
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gone to (illegible) back soon. love you! xxx |
] |
words like electric lightbulbs
shift aside the curtains, say ...no not that one but the thigh of the lips, not where hands flock, there to flutter, softly soft upon shadow deemed skin. A mere silent gesture is more than this. Slighter than a sole bacterium yet somehow firmer, fuller than the flesh; every touch of time or collapse of space into sense is present and yet more. Still though, in speaking of this substantial warmth imagined such coldness raises that of warmth abandoned all things seem cold. Parish of the flesh oblige, prayers shall not invoke this body, the pass of palms do not make the curtains meet (why them? is the sun so that a dusty window may let in, or allow out, meekest light?).
1 is the palpable figure of determination, the numerical patriarch; it condemns the dust of fraction to a neccessarily fractured relationship with zero.
deathproud - his lips vacuum packed to his finely pared front-teeth, the skin wrapping round the incisors, like plastic round a freezedried product. His nose stood proud and erect, the skin of his nostrils collapsed in toward the cartilege.
homoeroticism, pace your breathing "they pass the saxophone round, each take a turn on it, cheeks puffed out, their skin turning red. all red. the white guys - their skin turned red. the black guys - blood through the black in their cheeks, under the tight curls of dark stubble - red. their sweaty fingers on the keys, their lungs in the music. When it came round to me i took it, handled it, felt the metal damp and cold in my hands. The guys were laughing and clapping and smoking. I put it to my lips as if it were a gun, it tasted of gun - all the leaded taste in tobacco, the currency of a thousand coughs in this agora, in their saliva, all of them on the flute, i could taste them all, so bittersweet - their blood on my tongue as music"
a river of one rainfall that washes quickly leaving smoothest, shallowest channels upon the face of the earth:
a man in green anorak stands ankledeep in mud, his arm outstretched and holding a stick to measure depth, flow, the fixture of the sediment. The rain moves cleanly down his anorak and over his outsretched arm, only his hands (reaching beyond the measure of the material) become wet, that is - fingers, palms, wrists - the delicate extremities; more fragile than arms yet more capable of work. at various points down the river he will stand - arm outstretched, the mud up over his ankles - to measure. he says he feels the pressure of the stick upon his fingers for the flow. for the rest a watermark, or stain, shall suffice (just hold it to the light, mark it off with a pencil). At home, in the dark, he cleans himself. He measures with his hands his skin, the features of his face, the fixture of his beating heart beyond his steady set of ribs. In the dark he comes to himself; the immeasurable shade turns him inwards to feel his pulse tapping at his bones for the millionth time, deftly reminding him that not life washes into the night, which is not of face, or earth, the river or light.
the paper catches fire, catches flame - the irresistable lover i shall consume.
the dark girl moves through the pale crowd - in a bedsit in bethnal green a throat shudders with ecstasy.
Esteban is a drum of taut skin. The loudest in a group he sounds but only by others. When alone the skin across his chest tightens, and he is silent. One day (his crown of hair fixed firmly) as he is pattering the roof of his mouth with his tongue something across him will break. He awaits this noise at once with silent trepidation, twice with great tattoo.
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[17 May 2004|03:16am] |
The pale coffeecup (hewn from the tusk of an elephant) leaves a circle upon the table; a brown fossil; the raised ring of a dry moat.
"of course fortitude is one of the cardinal virtues" she says, upturning her pale lips to entrust the flow of the coffee to her tongue. She places the cup back upon the table. She, without intent, places it partially outside the ring of coffee, formulating a new signature upon the table top - two circular reliefs, portending finality yet figuratively ellipsoidal to my downturned eyes.
"if you haven't that, then see how quickly the sins follow, how quickly they erode your fibre"
The cup sits firm and tall, she slips her fingers through its dry ivory handle and lifts it. The newest ring is revealed; meekly the coffee shallows to residue, yet where the two rings meet, the coffee does break its temerity, and breach the hollow with dying warmth.
"dig deep to find the truest remnant of thyself! yes, oldest marrow, strongest bone!"
I sit foward, the rings retract their ovular capacity, and the coffee brings colour to the involuntary sun, and for my eyes is the fortitude of seeds, the piths of the past, the earth as a fossil of no little fundament.
i pick up my cup and put it to my claret lips. She is talking to herself again, yet another sign of age impending age. the joints of her bones harden as we sit. The calcium of her skeleton and of her teeth continues to slowly crumble. I sit silently holding my cup. There is not much left but the hope that even in these last days there is enough fortitude there to defend, enough still there with which we can, at the very end, create some fossils of our own.
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| where did everyone go? |
[27 Apr 2004|04:22am] |
| [ |
mood |
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mittens on string |
] |
| [ |
music |
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boots in snow perhaps (the wrong season) |
] |
i really need to burn all my other books so that i can focus on just one. just one novel. a large novel. something written by tolstoy perhaps. something just like stendhal or dostoevski. which will take my mind off words.
i havent really read anything in a month. not a novel since christmas. a few poems for easter. a scattering of sonnets. when the first blossoms fell in the wind it was sherwood anderson. When they blew away in the wind it was A Moveable Feast. Each of us deserves another chance at flight. the blossoms fell and i read, they blew away and i read. i am for another chance.
but i dont understand.
rain leaves salt stains on the roads.
untouched atmosphere.
unrequited sky.
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| my eyes watch for the night |
[27 Apr 2004|02:21am] |
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mood |
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dark/light |
] |
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music |
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day/night |
] |
listen - none but my heart hurts, heeding meaning.
light - the timid metaphor that brings morning to my mind.
docile mouth - with a full fruit i busy myself eating. how odd that the utensil god disposes for consuming shall be the same we use to speak.
dishcloth - scupper the white, spoil, pale imperative.
quilt - yet it touches, moves. intimate calm.
drench - when they irrigated mexico they awoke the land, yet left the river as a bed.
bucket - gathers drops of din in her ears.
showerhead - rust up the pipes, the shaking throat, the blind cleanse.
porcelain cup - sings when with spoon you patter it.
steel knife - i don't believe he did it even if you do
hand - here i love you with kinetics.
puissant - The men roll barrels down the slope to the boat.
hilen - the widow forces the shutters open at dawn.
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[20 Apr 2004|05:14am] |
i realise i am massively sentimental and disguise this with cynical levity and when viewed through the prism of threat my obscurity becomes the esoterica of a violent extremist - the lone man, the growing shadow, the bitten stalk of a stainless steel streetlamp, the drunk coffeecup , the back naked of meaning and turned to your face, everything shifting and shifting away from significance - what exactly am i trying to hide? what could be so malign?
i am sorry. i was trying to make it exist not on paper but in your head. this is why the moment is broken up. so that it never fits together again. if you dont want to put it together, you think i have destroyed it. but this was the only way i could give it to you. for there are so many more reflections in a broken mirror.
i understand when whatever moderates you perishes that the isolation becomes your blood, your flesh, your mind, everything. i wanted to capture something but in doing so i trapped it and took away its freedom. i am for glimpse but i am not for crystals. and i am not for precipitates. and i am not a fascist. and not a secret. and not shadow. and not that.
now i say "once i stepped into the river almost once."
or say nothing, and return to the old problem.
why do i think silence is superior?
for seeking an answer - i shall keep on talking.
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