Trouble in St. Cloud

he'd heard about it from the woman in black lace. she'd related it in slow whisper, clutching her campari, the story of the Subtle Man. he was here a few years back, before the poverty set in, molasses-thick. the children spotted him at the old docks, late one december night, the mist still heavy, fog-horns seeking fragile ears through the dark-wet black. he stood motionless and brooding, his long black coat making him out to be an amorphous threat, eyes set apart and white, brilliant. he'd been seen several times after that, in the old lamp district, at the edge of town, and at the docks again. for a month or two, who could remember in those days when the liquor flowed and the opium clouded rooms and minds, no one had seen him and assumed him dead or moved on to some other lonely town. then one night, during a waning moon, he was spotted again at the old docks. he was motionless, amorphous still, black coat tricky-billowy. it's funny what legends dead men spin. i left that sickly-still town that night, hitched a ride with the cattle-dealer on his way out.

"the way you drop is like a stone, making like you're flying, but you've just been thrown."

"it's a mad world.."

"she's gone with the man in the long black coat..."

The Thin White Line

I said she was hopeless.
She looked at me like I had slapped her. hard. After the last of it was gone, she sat back and sighed, eyes rolling back and forth, measuring the room. Her cigarette smoke had a tendency to curl up and around her face, framing her like a photograph.
She needed just a little more, she said. So she pulls on her dirty blue overcoat(fits too big) and we climb into the car. The heater takes a while, like it always does, so we shiver in silence. We head out, and the lights speed by so fast that I wonder how fast I'm going, but I don't check the speedometer, only assume that I'm only just speeding by a little. a lot. zip----------------------->my thoughts keep smashing in and out, bumper cars. I remember her name, then I don't. I'm back. gone again.

We finally pull up to his house. The headlights shine mistily on his front porch; everything looks so soft and paper-like, like a warning.

She's in and out in a flash. I barely noticed she was gone. She's sitting next to me again. She laughs and I don't know why, her hand clutching her little plastic bag. I smile, and I don't know why.

The Bottom Drops Out

"....if the gondola falls.", she said. And Theodore replied, " But it would be a grand adventure, surely." Jasper stared out at the undulating blue that shimmered just below. The cotton-candy pink and blue ferris-wheel turned slow and steady, the sounds of the pier and water below came in and out as they rose and dipped, laughing, laughing.

The wind blew strong. whip, snap, rumble, tumble, crash, and splash.
After the shock subsided, the three rapscallions stared out over the lip of their pink water-borne gondola at the hazy image of the misty beach and noisy pier, then it faded altogether.

"We may see China!", exclaimed Jasper, lazily leaning over the water, splashing little hands.
Jasper was afraid of heights. He never climbed long ladders, never rode in elevators.

"I may never see another carnival again!", cried Clara, sulkily tearing at her ruffled dress.
Clara feared the Red Baron. She never rode in Aeroplanes, never pressed her button nose up close to window-panes.

Theodore was silent for a moment. He wondered when their gondola would hit some distant shore, and when the sun would set. Then in his hushed and serious tone, "I lost my Cracker-Jacks."
Theodore was not afraid of many things, but wary of what lie ahead. He never lost a bit of sleep, and yet he'd never had a dream.

They tumbled over the swishy waves, the somber children three, and wondered wondered what the end might be.

Shipping News

zipped up fast. freeway like an unwinding ribbon, satin-slick. pulse to the beat, working-girl missionaries, concrete-dwellers, sunglass-figures in ice houses, youth with eyes wide, breathless. pretty pretty. i find it hard to decide, to let go, to understand. i know who i'm not, and yet. the ocean is blue, is a comfort, is deep, is a mirror. i'm here. eyes wide. this is something. the jump-off.
wouldn't wonder.

"Are these times contagious? I've never been this bored before."

"There is beauty in the breakdown."

"So if you think you know what I'm doin' wrong, you're gonna have to get in line..."

Frangipani with Subtitles

hang on to it, the stem, you are heavy in your fullness. fat-full with sticky-sweet, and you bloom up and out, unfolding. origami damask. locate the beauty, the source of it's breath, and pluck it out. I will wear you around my neck, with your dead sisters.

"Long black dress/Hawaiian shirt/ Kicking pair of trainers/ Electro-shock faders/ Guiding your voice through your veins/ Sick of all this working/ longing for a sinking/ Ship that rules at the bottom of the sea/ A bottle as a prison not really my idea/ Of a perfect environment it makes you see/ Everything's a blur/ Do you know what I mean?"

"Yes but here I am alone./ A wave/ builds up,/ perhaps it says it's name, I don't understand,/ it mutters, humps in it's load/ of movement and foam/ and withdraws./ Who/ can I ask what it said to me?/ Who among the waves./ can I name?"

"One breath away from mother Oceania/ your nimble feet make prints in my sands/ you have done good for yourselves/ since you left my embrace/ and crawled ashore/ every boy, is a snake is a lily/ every pearl is a lynx, is a girl"

Rabbit

È bella.
Non gridi.
È persa.
Non elemosini.
È fredda.
Non cada.
Ricordisi di che li amava una volta. È sola.
pick up and drive away, sugar, pick up and fly away.

"Rabbit, where'd you put the keys girl?"

"Yet nothing can to nothing fall,/ Nor any place be empty quite,/ therefore I thinke my breast hath all/ those peeces still, though they be not unite;/ and now as broken glasses show/ a hundred lesser faces, so/ My ragges of heart can like, wish, and adore,/ but after one such love, can love no more."

"But why ain't you straight with me; why do you put up that kind of bluff? You know there've been times when you were bothered - damned bothered - and as a girl gets older, and things keep moving along, why, before she knows it, the things she wants are liable to move past her and not come back."

"I thought only dreamers destroyed themselves."

Delilah Turned Away

removed my old hat. worn and wet. i discover, slow-like, you are not the nightingale and I am not your voice. Misjudged you, Philomel. the exorcisms weren't enough, and didn't work. incense is not the trick. you show me puzzle-pieces of myself in doses, large enough to kill, and remind me that i am not part of the cannon, am no 'Santero'. my improvisatrice, i have been your painting long enough, have leapt off the wall. art can walk away.

je sais que je ne peux pas vous changer. je ne peux pas vous sauver. je ne peux pas etre votre nordique tiens le premier role.

old hat. worn. discover no santero. you have your voice. pieces of myself in doses large enough to choke on. i am not your Samson, your personal Jesus.

"all your life you've never seen a woman taken by the wind.."

"I poured my full and burning heart/ in song, and on the canvas made/ my dreams of beauty visible"

"in the garden I did no crime.."

"and I learned what black magic can do.."

Pulpy Seafoam

wash up to the gristle-sand. sun on my back and my skin feels heavy and golden, blue rushes slip up and over me. naked, but for a multi-colored hawaiian sarong, i get up, push myself up and onto the street. i think that there are cameras everywhere, buzzards with unblinking eyes, circling. the sun solidifies my reverberating skin-cells, nourishing. milk, milk. i wander into his apartment, a boy that i don't know sleeps here, we've never met, and he isn't home. the shower is cold and white, the soap makes me feel dry. i drench myself in his sun-tan lotion, borrow his wake-board, and leave the place, careful to lock it on my way out. my skin picks up from where it last left off, prickling and glittering, softening and smoothing, elastic drawn slick. i wonder why i still have no clothes, and i am dark as summer. the water looks inviting, i want to return, but i'm not sure where i came from, when i first washed up that day, 4 months ago. i realize i have been here for such a long time, skin dying and being born new, glistening and olive-like. but for the life of me, i don't remember which shore i was first drawn from, that let me slip out into the waves, that brought me here, to new kingdoms of dawn. blue wonder.

"Water is the principle of things; Water sustains all, and to water, everything returns."

"There is inborn in every artistic disposition an indulgent and treacherous tendancy to accept injustice when it produces beauty."

"Battersea how it is/ it's over forget/ memories full of chocolate/ I've got to get over I've got to forget/ and s'gurd is the one I don't like/ I'm afraid of him I've got to forget"

Quietly Measure the Shape of Things

a box is a house is a distinction between in and outside of it. track it with lines and numbers...skim skim along the sides. 1,2,3. A triangle is more interesting, is sharp, is dangerous. Isosceles was terrified. I love the shape of things and nothings, like the egg that hobble-wobbles under its own weight and laments the betrayal of the circle. And mostly, I adore, in the mornings, the love shaped smell of your gazes.


"I put the hood right back where you could taste heaven perfectly."

"but it's you....I can swoon inside me, then you'll accept my things."

"Constancy purifies new skins."

Breakfast with the Gestapo

I saw you there. uptight in your way, waving your white flag like an admittance of disaster. he didn't seem to notice. instead, his glass-speckled eyes roll over you slow like a snail, the slime of his stare glossing you. i could have turned and gone, could have looked away, not said a word of this to anyone. instead the tears fell and turned tumbles inside my stomach, and words fell out and away as calendar pages of a year gone too quickly. i never gave way to their push and shove. the waiter brings the check, you sip your lemon-wedge water, and i.......i whisper something about the force of a thousand prayers.

"hope to tell the secret I have learned. Till then, it will burn inside of me."

Amor Vincit Omnia

"Pretty things.....so what if I like pretty things?"