tupelo

It was all new.  I gave myself to whim and looked down the steps, down the steepest hill, and held my pillow tight, crossed arms, crossed heart.  A haze of midges hangs in the air before the keen, westfalia-bound faces; night is nearing and they gather just over the golden silhouette of exhaust.  Through the flaxen fumes I meet resplendent, radiating Marisha (she has shadows in her eyes) and her lover (he has ice).  We are all in the bus, shining hair, mustard limb... the midges follow our palpitations.

Our arrival brings us neon bracelets and small cups.  We drink from these cups, drink amber liquid in the lilting, April light.  Amidst the cacophony we ripple, hunting cattails, a game of hide and seek.  A wan breeze, the clouds turn to ash, we race through the buttery, black air to our resting places.  A lull, one final hush; we make peace with our bodies.

The sun rises, our honeyed mother, and steams us from sleep.  Enter the day! Quickly ripened, we spin from the earth, our toes just skimming the dust; we are lost among grassy ribs, the curvature of a spine, some faint structure.  A tilt of the head, a twist of the lips, our enemies are our friends, we smile and wheel as petals fall from a tumultuous, bright sky.  This is the tupelo love and no one is left out.

caprice

We step out.  Out of bounds and into the streets.  Our glasses clink (clear vials of prized poisons) in the tumult and the sweet perfume.  And who wouldn't want this world?  Secrets behind shimmering slips of hair beside baritone laughter.  Perhaps there are too many of us, or perhaps there are just enough.

We move, all water, all skins, bottles and limbs, lips and eyes, all noise.  Bright lights, bright future, what we move towards.  The silent seconds skim through us, uninhibited by our rollicking joys.  We are spry, and this is our soul, our ego, caprice.

the after-shadows fall on this gypsum city.  with the umbra we sit, legs of sands, eyes of suns.  this is the evening, raven air, pot of dust, what we built is hidden.  we are architects denied our dark materials.  and we are two feathers on one wing

chiaroscuro

Do not touch the walls.  A clamor, an echo braids the dark.  A door sides open, and another, a screen, a  secret transit, a passage through furnished jungles (floral prints, porch prints) and ebony deserts (a sandbox, two courts, crossing lines); watch the chaise (just there!) and the acorns.  All  inhibitions left in drawers, folded beside bathing suits and linens.  Wiry hair (a lovely triangle, it need not be covered) aged and course, behind downy limb.  Enter the night, roseate ridges rise to meet the satin umbra; perhaps a boy (look down) or a girl child, the gleam of willowed nates, under a clothesline, though a fence, a race, a cry, a peel of joy opens and curls.  More follow, breasts, some heavier with countless affections, legs, a collision (an embrace) and a fall, black swans in dark waters.  Air, teeth, sharp chins, wild eyes ascend.  What's this?  A grey mouse?  Quelle surprise!  Cool synthetic on misty, pearling hides (how precious, how dear).  No running, please enfants!  Michelle!  A metallic groan (no, I protest!); frame after fey frame climb rung over rung.  A bucket, a broken handle.  A pass and a tidal wave.  A world of pirates and mermaids (all nude, all lively) in a ceramic lagoon.  A meteor, a light in a charcoal sky; trains of tinsel fall, on toes, blanched ears.  Steam rises off seraphs, silken skins, sequined waves.  What is this place?  Stained feet, hot stones.  A memory in a gold frame, it hangs in the wooded channels of our minds.

eucalyptus

I stare at the light on my ceiling, nacreous, coruscating confetti.  I am rushing across the maps in my mind.  I cannot sleep.

I think of eucalyptus trees, brocaded bark, the softest of yellows; I would braid the branches through my hair.

We drove up the northern coast, through a great divide.  We found a secret bay, a silence, a breath.  The ocean was lost in the land, the waves kissed the banks.  It was raining, wet skin, wet lips; outside it was all eucalyptus.

WOMAN

My best friend, lost.  Her beauty (she is beautiful): smokey, wholesome, supple.  We did everything together.  What a world we had!  Vanished, spun to darkness, silence.

We were a splendid pair, our lives the bright laces, obtuse, riotous, on the simplest pair of gray shoes, bumping and skipping - oh we dirtied ourselves in amusing endeavors!  We planned everything.   Maps and stories and secrets on pillows, shared slumbers with sugarplums fairies, spoke of stories untold, treasures undiscovered, rubies in the sand, if only we would look closer.  Our procedures measured carefully, written again, strange strategies, only to be crumpled (we are wild, we are whim!) and thrown to the garbage.  As we grew, our plans expanded into others, lovers, lively frames, places rashly trashed, we dove into our grimy bins!  So full, so complex, we were swimming amid white waters and paper fish.  Phantasms and shadows, sharks or spinning blades, of doubt pulled at us; a hint of despair, could it be?  Do we dream differently?

It was a slow process, untying a double knot, loops cemented in one thousand days of clay; one I regret and a regret I live with.  This is life, peculiar and extraordinary... this is what happens, and what continues.

It was a though there was a field; ravishing, beguiling, the slithering grasses, clandestine, whispers of possibility in golden, sinking beams.  We were both drawn to it, curious beings, girls.  It was as though we ran through it, only seeing the space, scarcely conscious of each other, our sister, twin soul.  We ran, hushed, breathless, me for the birds and her for the birches.  The bark on her hands was as soft as the wings on mine.  Flutter.  It was as though, in our rapture, in our release (oh world!  What wonders you kept from us!) we did not see the night come.  It was as though we sat in the snakes and watched each other, our glowing faces (bright eyes, wide smile, ordinary, so natural) wane into a universe we thought was our own.  What tricks you infinite devil!  What temptations! We were enchanted, ensconced in honeyed spells outside of which reality grew, her grandfather ailed.  She awoke, shaken back to sadness, the cold, the salient drip of tears.  I stayed, viscous illusions under my feathers, sticky fingers.  In my absence the old man died.  Our friendship faded beside his figure, wise and comfortable, layered.

It was as though we missed each other, our hands briefly touching as we walked between bodies and pavement, mistaking one-another for a stranger, not even raising our eyes, brushing away wind-blown bangs, to confirm that fleeting, momentary sense of familiarity.  One second, an echoing laugh, a ringing, distant call, gone with the pungent fumes of cigarette, just out of reach, around a sharp corner in time, the sidewalk ending.

Where do you hide sweet friendship?  We will find you.

MAN

This is to my great Dane.  To my almond joy, my brown boy.  My peach, my lust, my wonder.  This is for everything that I gained, heady, titillating, exaggerated as it was in my youth, uncontrollable; and for everything I am poised, barely balanced, to lose.  The horror.

This is for us, two sun-eyed, star-crossed lovers.  We saw this country, untamed and wild; we saw our lives, splayed before us, entwined softly, the strings touching, flitting as they looped, caught and fell back to one-another again and again.  The knot seemed impossibly tight, the yarn, our minds, thoughts, frayed, the fibers nearly indistinguishable.  Les deux enfants, we wandered together, perpetually paired, down jutting banks, through tight sea grasses.  We walked right up to the edge and saw magenta waves in the salty waters; we climbed peaks, scrambling over rocks, our skin ragged, dirty as our breathless banter.  We ate like princes though we were paupers, glinting plates set before glowing eyes, smiles, and the cheapest bottle of wine... Yes we would like some bread please, and also some cake.

This is for you, my best friend.  I ache, weighted limbs, heavy heart, in this ocean of bed; my apologies lost in the tides of blankets, unused, drowning me, oh downy reminders of a better heat source!  I want to play.  What games we had!  Let us romp through fields again, bright bocci balls in hand.  Let us wrestle (let me win!) and run between trees, taking pictures, brilliant shadows, sweet candies, a mere taste of our two years.

But what are words? Futile devices.  Something is lost in translation; the fissure between thought and expression is infinite, leaving only cuss words and bitter remarks on our tongues as we swallow (how repulsive, how crude!), ringing in our ears as the fights fade.  Better to leave with the love.  Take it with you, pack it, one hundred suitcases full, the most precious gem, priceless pearl.  Hide it, tuck it away. polished, to admire occasionally, a reflection, rosy in the gleaming surface.  You see two faces, beaming, rays.

This is all for you to recall, my cherub, my moon, in dim dreams, elongated alleyways of potent impressions.  Not this script, sightless signs, but these images, what happened, delicately imprinted on your beautiful brain.  This is for us to remember what once was, and perhaps, world willing, what will be once more.

Martine and her Mind: the ubiquitous battle part deux

My distraction and utter inability to write conclusively directs me towards smaller stories.

Once there walked a girl.  She moved strangely from world to world.  She never stopped but always looked; she looked for a life she read in a book.  And in her haste, her fleeting, sudden tastes, perhaps she missed her chance.  And as she weaves, wandering through trees and dropping leaves from her eyes warm water leaks.  For the division between knowledge and action is infinite.

It is conceivable that in my desperation to find employment, my judgement became clouded.  As I walk back from my latest interview, I ponder the convoluted situation, thinking of what misguided motivations could have possibly culminated in the past three hours.

Suffice it to say that my time as a temp was killing me slowly, so I grabbed my life preserver and bailed from that sinking ship into the roiling, frigid waters of unemployment. The fruit of athletic loins, I navigated the murderous tides patiently, ebbing and flowing, surfing the swells that threatened to sink me, until finally, on a warming Friday morning I crawled ashore and rested, for a mere moment, on the sunny banks of opportunity; one precious interview! However unseemly the situation, I arose rested and ready, shaking a shadow of doubt from my freshly laundered clothing.  Today I can do anything.

As it turns out, the job, which I was hired for upon entry, demanded exactly that, anything, everything... and I did it, all of it.  I met my employer with a smile and mildly averted eyes; I felt uncomfortable, in the beginning, looking at his small, strapped body, straining in his wheelchair towards my desperately willing eyes.  He had severe Cerebral Palsy.  I held water to his mouth and typed as he dictated emails, to this mother, friends, distant relatives.  I laughed as he made nearly inaudible jokes about my qualifications; he should have asked for a certified nurse, a MALE nurse.  I did not flinch when I held a portable, red plastic urinal to his groin for five minutes as he talked to spoiling himself.  The ensuing cleanse would, unsurprisingly, be my responsibility.  (Insert thoughts of suicide here).  Nor did I utter a sound when he asked me, again leering, to hold his medicinal marijuana pipe to his mouth and light it as he drooled on my knuckles and I stood hunched in a plume of potent smoke.  (Insert socio-political caricature here).  Not one, but two bowl packs.  His inadvertent incoherence then considerably heightened, my tasks became nearly impossible.  Two absurd hours later I spouted some delirious excuse and sped out the door, slightly inebriated and completely humiliated.

Deep in colorful thought, I walk into a coffee shop and slump over a double, non-fat latte.  I wait for my lover.  We eat a pastry.  I call into my new job and quit, not a day after my recruitment, apologizing and explaining lamely that another, more suitable option arose.  I will work eight hours a week as a teacher.

The sky darkens and foam licks my toes, mocking, deceptively light as my foundation gives way to urgent, salient, steely waves, selfish in their mighty endeavors.

On Monday I teach.  I have one student.