I do target practices in my mind, my dart aiming for the
center she exposes, a bullseye on this attempt or that, leaving a stain at the
end, white not red, not blood, but just as precious. I am more than half drunk
on wine when I do it, which always affects my aim, and so I have to clutch my
dart with both hands to assure that I hit what I aim for.
They claim practice makes perfect, though I still crave for
the real thing, doing it when it matters and not just in my mind.
Does it count if I only get a rim shot, or come close, but
not quite all the way the way they say with horseshoes?
To east it in and move it around so that my dart hits the
hot spot beyond the center circle, to that place deep inside, which I pound
out, practice I know will never be real.
In my twisted imagination, I think she’s slept with some
many lovers, I would need a calculator to keep track of them, while I – a jealous
twit – could fit all my on the inside of a matchbook cover.
I imagine her with everybody I see her with, lovers that are
friends, or colleagues or bosses, or maybe even underlings at random, strangers
in the night who she’d never see again at morning light, some more than once,
some times more than one, men or women, tied up, she, then, front door or back,
upstairs or down, right side up, upside down, inside or our, inspired by her
need to feel it all in every way possible, life being too short not to grab all
she can, in any manner, not always to trickle up, some times just to feel good
in that moment, knowing it won’t last forever, and true or not, I envy her.
Frost decorates the limbs of trees as I stroll down a path I
have wandered many times, ice sleeves for bare limbs, ornaments for the
evergreen too early to be Christmas and yet, close enough, the Lord &
Taylor windows filled with images of a world I wished I lived in, the perfect
little village with perfect little people, none of whom are me, though in
looking back from last Christmas to this, I think maybe you are, even though
you no longer share the same village I live in, we both aware that our world has
altered too fundamentally to fit in any store window, where business sells
illusion, and love is not what we thought it was, high road or not.
I stroll through a wood mother nature as decorated, no tiny
people, no phony sleights, just the harsh bit of coming winter on my cheek and
the wish for the sound of reindeer that will never come, the old song playing
perpetually in my head as I walk, all I really want for Christmas is you.
a chill wind blows from the ocean the boardwalk Creek under
each step I take on this day after Thanksgiving ritual I make each year though
too cold for the long walk to the gold trim hotel where I know she won't be
anyway, only in my imagination, this need to be here, to resurrect a past that
goes well past that summer time weekend she spent here or even the birthday
dance she did for her mother on the sand, back to my roots with the band and
the sagging roof of the old Stone Pony, and the parade of people whose names are
memorialized in plaques on the backs of benches that line this boardwalk from the
casino to the theater. I stop and pay my respects to Clarence and wish I could
do the same for her, but the brittle chill makes my fingers ache, so this year,
I got from the heated theater to the casino and back, the images of the past
flowing through my head.
I thought I could avoid this bad luck day by taking a car
ride into the country, only to find the car would not start, a dead battery I
thought was dead till I replaced it and the car still would not budge, charger
be damned and I get to walk to half mile to get my prescriptions and my evening
meal and the other odd bits of ill love that transpires in between this superstitious
silliness, magnified by my discomfort; you don't escape fate easily even when
you don't believe these things have anything to do Friday on this date on the
calendar yet which happens, and yet just happens to happen on this day
the vibration moves up from the wheels on the tracks and
into the train car in which I sit, vibrations too uneven to predict until they
hit, others on this southbound train seemingly unaware of it or could not care,
the man with the cane, maybe or the woman with the baby carriage with the dog
where the baby should be, the young girl with purple hair and red eyebrows or
the old man with a cap from a war no one else in the car recalls except for me,
we all vibrating together, stuck side by side in this journey we know will not
lead to a happy end, the train and its vibrations, all we have, giving us some
sense of passage we might miss without it
I suspect she does it every way possible, not out of love,
not yet, or recently, with lovers, friends, friends of friends, even friends of
lovers, the man who comes each with coke that is neither regular or sugar
free, slept with her best friend’s boyfriend and with his girlfriend, sometimes
one on one, sometimes all together, three does make a pair, done upside down,
sideways, tied up, back door or front, sometimes in her mouth, done in so many
angles she might need a geometry class to untangle it, done with people she
likes or not, even those she doesn’t know, out of boredom or pity, she offering
herself up like a sacrifice, a girl on a half shell, done and done again, she
knowing more about it than anyone, until love comes.
It is not a sound I know I really hear, except in my head,
as I lay down in bed, home or abroad, haunting me the way marly's chains did
old man Scrooge, not because I will carry the weight of it, but because I
cannot, the dream of a dreamer I here moaning and groaning and I'm not its
cause,
I do this to myself,
of course, having no cause to blame her, I insist on dreaming what I dream,
hear what I think I hear, wish I am the one causing it, reacting to it as if I
am, the slow, steady beat of it that is not my heart, only the echo of wishes
tumbling around inside me from head to toes, exasperated by what I want rather
than what is, and how it would all resound if it was for real it
is not a sound I hear
for real yet feel it just the same, clutching myself as I embrace I ache, if
that is even possible, when it is not, the sound coming again and again and all
I can hope to do is hold on, keeping a firm grip on my reality until it all
passes and I can step off into new dreams
All that remains is the music I hear, sometimes only in my
head, sometimes for real songs she sang for some heartbreak that is not mine
bittersweet accompanied by an old lover who used to cheat, maybe this music,
these songs, are about him, but I think not, too soulful, too much coming from
a place inside her nobody can reach, the shell within a shell where her real
self resides, the remnants of this life we lead over this short span of time,
like fallen notes on a sheet of music played over and over until I foolishly
come to believe they were for me, yet it is all that remains, after all else's
gone, like the wreckage of a sailing ship washed up on the shore, each piece
part of some masterpiece of a sailing vessel nobody can reassemble, only mourn,
the songs echoing in all the shells she's lived in so far, hinting at more to
come, her secret hideaway inside herself, where no one can find her, only hear
the beauty of her voice, as if over the wide sea, lonely but remote
Yellow leaves cling to the tree outside my sunroom window,
the last batch before the deep freeze comes, on this day when the big balloons
make their way down Broadway in the city that never sleeps across the river,
this day when we seek reasons to be thankful, when – at this time of life –
grateful just to have survived, having had what we hand when we had it, a gift
beyond reckoning, appreciating the small things that over time have become big
things, even when they have settled down into the yellow leaves of memory,
those things that cling to us and resist the deep freeze we know must inevitably
come.
the wind rattles the
windows and I think it is you, this ghost that rises with the flash of light
and rumble of Thunder, and in the dark I wait and dream, rain peppering the
roof and walls, the way I want it on you, to sit secure, there in some cupboard
where I might tear open the buttons of your blouse and feel both, trembling
under my still chill palms, hand at the tips, perfect fit for my lips, the
rattling windows, the rain on the roof and walls, and you beneath me as if I am
a cloud and need to bequeath to you all that has pent up in me for so long, a
deluge flooding each orifice and still unable to fill you up, windows rattling,
wind blowing, me inside you for refuge, I tear at your slacks until all is
exposed, rain-like into you, all I can no longer contain, this storm
everlasting, me needing to break free, needing to be satisfied, when we both
know it can never be so, I sit here, wind rattling the windows, rain spouting
out of me but not into you
rain dots the tops of
cars as I steer down the central shopping district, too early for the stores to
open and so it feels as if I strive through a ghost town, a few early risers
getting coffee, a few street urchins selling bottled water, while the huddled
masses still rest their weary heads in the deep sleep from doorways, sleeping
off habits and their hunger until the store keeps sweeps them away with the
litter, the rain clearing up the gutter except for night the debris as we wait
for the normal life to pick up after the nightlife ceases, and I think of you,
away from all this, free as a bird
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