They are all going somewhere on this train; I just don't
know where, or why
the man clutching his
cardboard cup of coffee; the woman reading the latest edition of the New Yorker;
a man with a cell phone shouting in it in a language I do not understand, not
Spanish or French, almost alien, save for the intensity and the volume, he
pleading his case to some other invisible party, saying how much he loves her
maybe; mothers maybe, teachers maybe, all the others in the car among us,
trying not to notice, trying not to look annoyed while I think how little I
know of what is not said or all others who keep mum about it, the lovers they
miss, the kisses they miss, the tenderness in the same way I miss her, wishing
I could do it all over again
This would be the day I would hold out for when it would be
okay to turn on the head, when I still lived in a cold water flat with a gas
heater in the kitchen, as old fashioned as anything my grandmother might have
known growing up, although even then, in the depths of my poverty I knew the
best way to keep warm was to rub two bodies together, though lacking that these
days, I rub two sticks together in my head and dream of warmer climes, warmer
times, knowing that at this late date, even that won’t do, too far away to resort
to old habits, though I still think of how it might feel if I did, too distant
geographically to connect. One does not find the same comfort via zoom as one
does wrapped up in the bedroom. So I leave the heat off for at least one more
day, holding out, hoping my imagination can warm me, when nothing else does
She says she can let me feel what it feels like, but won’t do
it for real, we both 14, she the girl of a freshman line baker who thinks I’m
trying to steal his girl, and I am, underneath the grand stands while he’s in
practice, making me undo my jeans so she can ut her mouth around, she telling
me this is how it feels for real when and if I’m lucky enough to find the right
girl to let me do it, her moth so tight around it I almost faint, an d she says
she needs to do it quick so she can get back to doing it for real with him,
wiping her mouth afterwards, reapplying her lipstick so there’s no way to tell she
did what she die with me, though later, when I see them together after practices,
I can tell what’ she’s done, smudged lips, face so flushed I know she did it
for real, with him.
The youngbrother of
the boy I graduated grammar school with invited me to his parents' house for a
sleep over, asking me to rub it against him, not in, not yet, he said, just
against the crack like a hotdog in a bus, her purring at me in the dark of
night when we alone remained awake, he, 13, had done it before, I, 14, never had,
He wanted to teach me how, there with the collection of his family within ear
shot, telling me how much I would come to like it when we finally did it, not
in, not yet, just rubbing against him until he purred, he telling me later how
much more we could do, with hands and mouths, though for now, all he needed was
for me to press against him, my bare chest against his bare back, my hotdog
rubbing the sides of his bun, not in, not yet, he said, but soon and often,
something he said I would come to love, just as he had, rubbing until I wanted
it as much as he did.
I see the reflection in the glass of windows I pass on the
street, do not recognize him, just the shadow of what I remember seeing on this
almost anniversary of a time when I better recognized who it is I see as I
pass, beyond those now hopeful moments when I could still take the high road
when I always knew I could not, did not wean to, perhaps merely pretended it
was possible, left now with only the mirror image of what once was or might
have been, the end of innocence that was not as innocent as I believed, time firmly
confirming what Blake claim, untested innocence is not innocent, but folly.
I stroll along streets all now familiar from those days when
I was deaf and dumb and blind, and like a superstitious kid, I tried my best to
avoid stepping on the cracks that would break my moter’s back, the innocence that
is not innocence, the phony reflection of her, of me, of things not possible
even then, the face of a strange in each window that I pass
I stroll along the rock wall that borders the park, the tips of trees rising
from the foot of the Palisades like fingers reaching for a sky too high to
reach, just as I reach for something I know will remain beyond me, yearning for
a touch I can no longer feel, or the press of flesh I can only remember vaguely,
like a sweet taste I can no longer taste, yet recall it's flavor, as I wish to
taste it again.
I cup a cup of coffee
in the palms my hands as I walk, warm against me, stirring up warmth from other
even sweeter things I can no longer reach, my limbs like tree limbs too inadequate
to get again what I briefly possessed, from way back when,
the cup releasing its
steam into the air as if released from inside of me, my sips recalling kisses I
actually miss, this landscape strewn with fallen leaves of last fall, and of
her, knowing as I know her steps must have stirred them when she walked here as
well
This is the anniversary of a wedding that should never have
taken place, with a girl I fell head over heals with when 17, Sledge Hammer
Harry my boss at the print plant, warning me against it, telling me she was no
good after she took up with his married son in law, after Harry discovered me necking
with her in a phone booth during lunch, and heard about my trying to cop a feel
when we both waited for buses to go home after work, she heading to her rich
family in Wayne, while I went back to my blue collar life in Paterson.
I had no Foreign Legion to help me get over her when she
fled to the west and so joined the Army instead, falling all the more in love
with her with each letter she sent, robbing a local business for the cash to
follow her when I got out, learning later how she’d been abducted by a motorcycle
gang near Denver, who all but raped her (can it be rape when she said she
rather liked it?), rescued by a rich guy from Boston, whose mother dragged him
back when he heard about her, and I arriving just in time for her heart break,
she still yearning for him when we fled to the depravity of LA, that census
worker bringing his male friends and drugs to our apartment so we could all
have a good time, me not yet congnizent of the unspoken invitation she had
extended him (and her desire to relive the gang bang she still missed) and
enraged at me when I stood in their way, perhaps explained by her obsession to
become a porn star, her fellow female workers feeling sorry for me as to offer
me sex which I refused because I still wanted to be loyal.
She encouraging me to invite strange me to sleep over in our
spare room into which she would sneak at night while I was asleep, first Dan, then
Billy, then a sniveling worm she took off with when the money ran out, our trip
back to Denver couched as “a new start” when all she wanted was to find that
rich guy again, and the host of pit stops along the way I only learned about
later, going back to LA where she hooked up with a big black biker who paraded
her around under his arm while I worked at a restaurant part time washing
dishes, leaving me to wonder how I managed to catch VD – like the black biker
had, and my then best friend and maybe all those others who came and went from our
spare room, my friend’s girl taking pity on me, offering me her bed, which I refused,
since I wanted to ramin “loyal,” even when we made our way up the coast to San
Francisco, later Portland, our spare room occupied by a host of men from soldier
to drug dealers, and how when I convinced her to come east with me with our new
born baby, my family decide to make an honest man of me by giving us a shotgun
wedding.
We all knew it wouldn’t work, a fabrication for the judge to
show I was on the straight and narrow, married with a child and a back breaking
job, although she still rented out our spare room to men she met on her night
out with the girls, while me and my best friend went to rock clubs, where I
fended off the charms of younger women because I still wanted to remain “loyal,”
and sometimes woke to find my bed empty to moans emanating from the spare room,
and finally, she taking off with one of those men for another trip west
without, and her one time high school girlfriend coming to my side to cheer me
up with an invitation to share my bed, which I refused, seeking to remain
loyal, long after there was any reason to, living with the fantasy for years
that time might change things, when I knew it wouldn’t change, and didn’t,
learning she never stopped renting that spare room, although later for money.
I’m always in awe when I reach this point where the curve of
them reaches the peak and I must squeeze the juice out of them, my palms around
each, my mouth watering for the taste of this forbidden fruit, they always the
greatest mystery to me, even young, the swell of them visible between the second
and third buttons of my teacher’s blouse in high school conveniently left undone
and I, holding my science book in front of my zipper like a shield. I still get
like that, seating in the seat next hers even though she keeps her blouse
locked tight, forcing me to imagine what that locked box contains, and how each
might feel, taste or smell like, her perfume lingering in the air between us, even
enticing, and I think of what I might do if allowed. Can I undo the buttons?
Can I reach in? Can I take a bite of each, juice dripping down my chin, always hungry.
She never cleaned it after the last guy used it, going back
and forth between us all, leaving
me to guess who was the last guy before me and who would inherit
it when I was done
Maybe she thought it got better with age, like wine from rare
grapes so we might all like it all the better when our turn came. She didn’t
warn me, letting me find out by accident when she rushed over from another man’s
house and I found it still dripping. I never minded using it, ever had a better
time when I did, only afterward, I got to wonder why and if she wanted tu all
to leave our deposit on the off change if she got late, we could all share the
credit, and when I used my fingers, I washed them before and after, somehow
feeling particularly dirty if I didn’t, washing my other part time, maybe even
twice as often.
Is the day after the day when lovers meet, greeting cards
and candy and bundles of roses, none of which she needs, and I wonder how
someone can tell her of love when none of these are enough, or has she put
distance between all, that and what she is now, unable to reconcile desire with
what she needs most, is there someone somewhere brave enough to bridge the gap,
to brave the distance between this cliff and that, to express his or her
deepest affection when it must go unrequited, even on a day when Love is Love
and or is it enough, flowers full of thorns, candy, wasted cards that can't
possibly convey what she needs to hear most and on this day after the day when
most lovers meet. is there someone who meets her heart to heart
Frozen in the front sat of my uncles 57 Chevy with the
sister of the girl my uncle snuggled with in the back seat at a drive-in for a film
none of us cared to watch, my uncle already getting to third base, while I
still struggle to get to first, frozen, he and his girlfriend figuring that at
13 I ought to get a taste of it, and I wanted it too, imaging what this girl –
thirteen too—might taste like if we kissed and how soft or hard her breasts might
be if I could muster courage to slip my fingers between the buttons of her blouse,
and, my uncle and his girl, thinking I’m too embarrassed to do it in front them
– skip off to the concession stand to give me time to do it, while I’m still frozen,
perfectly aware of this girl’s pretty pink painted lips and how pointed her breasts
are, all an open invitation if only I could make myself move, aching in my
frozen shape when I can’t.
The skyline I see today is not the skyline and remember
seeing, that city across the water I ached to live in when young now like ragged
teeth biting into the sunrise and sunset orange glinting on the glass and
streets, this isn't even the same city I saw when she still lived here, new
towers rising up out of nowhere, hiding those towers that defined the city for
me as a kid, all of it changing change by some unrecognizable force of nature I
can't reconcile with, a city a landscape with skyline where people like myself
have no place, merely to a admire its beauty from a distance and appreciate
what once was, by memory alone, the new city devouring The Old City until one
vanishes completely and as hard as I try to find it from this side, it is gone
A new day a new, month, nothing changes, not even yet the
leaves, the Tuesday ritual and the big brown eyes, or the boss who wants to
know what I am up to, the girl who sits across the table for me but avoids my
gaze, I keep hoping change will come with a change of day or week or month or
year; it never does; I keep looking for the pot of gold at the end of the
rainbow when I can't even find the rainbow, she with her slanted mouth and slim
structure, making it impossible to find peace even after these few months of
truce; it is like a cold war, the absence of conflict does not guarantee peace,
only suspension of hostility, which must break out again at any moment with the
least provocation, all sides armed to the teeth in case it does, too soon for
the ghost to appear and still I feel haunted, too late to take back things I
said or did, merely too live with them
I have not walked this way for years, through the guts of a
city I love but rarely return to, though each time I do I feel the throb of its
heartbeat, beating inside my chest, its breath my breath, it's blood surging
through my veins, the city with its grand towers, its bustling traffic, its
rude pedestrians and tourists, not the city I remember for my youth when then I
thought it too big to be contained in a small town brain like mine, grown since
beyond anything my mind can comprehend, it with the legends of newness I can't
find common ground with, lighting to bright, sounds too loud, a stench of car
fumes and body odor beyond my senses to sense, yet I have come here now, walking
through these streets I believe I still know but do not, cannot know more than
my ancestors with their horse and buggy brains could retain the concept of
buggy without steeds or streets with cobblestones paved over for smoother rides
to ride, streets, a city, a frame of mind I am in awe of, always
I miss it most in Winter, feeling it, although in truth I
only knew you in spring, the lonely night, brittle as ice, nothing to cling to
accept my imagination, when I cling to you, the early dark this time of year
makes it worse, the need to feel you close up, to keep warm, not just against
the threat of polar vortex, to not face the dark alone, I miss most in Winter
what I never had with you except in dreams, when I ponder how warm we could get
if given the chance, how we might defy the deep freeze, the isolation of this
thing we lived through, a companion to rub against-- against the worst ravages
of the season, to once again spring up in you again in spring
I always really wanted to surrender, to get lost in you,
even though I resisted, scared I might lose myself totally if I did, like the
beam of a flashlight that gets extinguished by the brightness of her noon or
drips of rain that falls into the flowing river, all identity vanquished to the
greater flow, I being part of you with nothing left to distinguish me from you,
my light sputtering out against your overwhelming brightness, my soul drowning
in the overwhelming flow of you
