And just when I think that this struggle is too hard,
When I think that my Lover could not possibly want me back;
Just when you've spoken enough of your old familiar lies,
And JUST when you thought you'd won me over…
T H E R E. H E. I S. …my True Love.
"Finally!" I say. I am out of breath due to you smothering and stifling sentences. "Some Air! I can breathe," and I breathe You in deep.
4:11 am - The nighthawks are starting to resemble pigeons.
Train station is deserted.
An employee checks the bins as the tunnel fills with the ringing of a distant bell, heralding the arrival of the morning train.
42 minutes till my train.
I can smell the acrid fumes of the Ferny Grove train.
The behemoth pulls away-
empty.
At least I'm not existential anymore.
There is an installation of a coffin made from old bits of railroad,
"Not everyone makes it across the tracks"
This reminder of mortality is strangely fitting in a place of transit.
The true face of memento mori is shown.
Remember that you too will die, and everything will come to pass.
It's times like this that make me wish 'The Sound of Silence" was never written.
For its perfection in this moment comes as a burst of pure divine bliss.
The kind you wish would never fade away. But inevitably does.
And all we are left with is a memory of that bliss,
everytime we hear the song (after the first time).
As if we are recalling the curves of an old lover from the shadow of yesterdays gone.
Dancing beneath our fingertips, always out of reach.
Memory is never as divine as the moment that burnt it in.
----
4:29 am - It was ephemeral.
The trainyard announcer has a cultured voice.
----
4:41 am - I fear the muse has left me, beauty fled.
DEAR GOD - PLEASE LET THERE BE A CAB AT THE STATION FOR ME.
Selection 11 gave me the water i desired.
11 minutes till the train.
D.O.B. 11/2
Aquarius, 11th sign of the Zodiac.
Will I see the dawn rise from the train?
There is no light at the end of the tunnel from where I sit.
Inexplicably: I recall the cool river air that bathed us as we lay naked in your apartment,
the smell of cigarettes on our skin, the evening peppered with
scurrying, fighting possums
that danced upon your balcony.
I recall being inside you.
(Then I imagined you being eaten out
by a woman
her lips inside yours,
her curled tongue
inside your hot, bald
golden cunt.)
And I came.
Warm and glorious
my children of pleasure
caught in a latex coffin.
Your heaves of pleasure pushing against my chest
with the rhythm of waves.
----
4:46 am - On the train.
Fluorescent lighting is the devil.
Everything is garish yellow.
We pull up to the station near where you lived.
Your blue rose lives in a Chinese vase
and no longer smells
of Marlene Dietrich.
Part 1: http://hellopoetry.com/poem/brisbane-street-sketch-1/
Part 2: http://hellopoetry.com/poem/brisbane-street-sketch-2/
Part 3: http://hellopoetry.com/poem/brisbane-street-sketch-3/
Part 5: http://hellopoetry.com/poem/brisbane-street-sketch-5/
without you in my life,
the world becomes nothing,
a colorless place where life ceases to be happy.
the sky goes gray,
clouds shift over.
all the colors of the world leak out,
away from everything.
the most beautiful flowers loose their brightest hues.
air grows thicker as it gets harder to breathe,
almost like loosing a lung,
though assured my body is whole.
trees leaves look dead in spring,
brown and dry.
the sun beams down hotter than ever,
the moon brings the coldest weather.
the stars dim in the sky,
like they have lost their inner fire,
so the darkest clouds cover them,
as a thick woolen blanket.
all beauty dies or despairs,
hidden away for better times.
when you are around.
....
The silent street erupted around me the moment I sat down,
a thunder rumbles in the distance
but only reveals a passing truck.
The white swan drifts past
without elegance.
I watch the youths drive by on fish lane
as the silent score of stoplights
play to an impersonal audience-
tonight the pizzicato is on time.
----
The air is dense with quiet conversation
of nighthawks
and the splash of luck
on a steel tray.
Elegant servants of style remove the unwanted things.
12:30
The air has cleared,
alone again
with two fat asians.
When did boring become stylish?
GET ME OUT OF HERE!!
"It is truly a free nation that offers pancakes 24/7"
----
Normally, the solitude of wandering a sleeping city would elicit poetry.
Tonight only nothing comes out.
Not the people nor the smells or secret music. Only the flicker of a dying neon sun assuring me,
that the parking is open.
----
1:00 am.
A woman in a pink burkha enters a white car, only to be driven off into the night, followed by two taxis.
There are ancient trees twisting their tops through the modern facade. For eras, much like fashion are discarded by finicky time.
They have stood as silent sentinels for longer than I have breathed, and with any hope, they will stand as soldiers long after I come to pass. These reminders of the ravages of time.
I loved a girl who lived here once.
She lived in an apartment that overlooked the city
and had breasts like two soft moons
that tasted like honey.
1:40 am.
Other nighthawks wander as wastrels through the quiet Autumn night,
with a slow, soft gait one never see's in the rush of day.
If all evenings carried a beat, it would be thus:
a slow jazz drum.
"...psssssh-bop! pssssh-bop! pssssh-bop!...."
would sound the echo of every evening heart
throbbing slow with power.
"...psssssh-bop! pssssh-bop!..."
The car's carry white blood cells to the suburban arteries.
Taxi's are cancer.
I walk
northbound.
----
Cold beer at 2am.
Faintly lit menagerie
an open cage containing
nighthawks.
Well spoken Eastern girls
corporate white boys
two old tradesmen,
one on a smartphone with a rosary around his soft large neck.
The antique street curves away toward the river,
sloping up
then down
I follow it with my eyes.
And run them back
to the fairylights.
They hang like glowworms
or constellations.
Glowworms hang like constellations, the inside of their cave is the same fleeting feeling of being alone with the universe, it being caressed by your eyes.
For you are its lover and its mirror.
Inside the glowworm cave, I felt like the universe and everything reflected itself in miniature. That to look upon their hanging, blue stars you saw everything else.
Part 2: http://hellopoetry.com/poem/brisbane-street-sketch-2/
Part 3: http://hellopoetry.com/poem/brisbane-street-sketch-3/
Part 4: http://hellopoetry.com/poem/brisbane-street-sketch-4/
Part 5: http://hellopoetry.com/poem/brisbane-street-sketch-5/
A whiff of smell
You left in the air
Keeps aloft my sail
In the rough weather.
A hint of smile
You left in my eye
Drives me miles,
Keeps my spirit high.
A hope for warmth
You left in my heart
Still fires my hearth,
Refuses to depart.
A seed of romance
You sowed in me
Gave love a chance
To grow as a tree.
I breathe you in like dry air,
exhale your memory,
so soft, so light,
it glides off my lips like last summers
flavored tobacco,
I miss the way things used to be.
I have a sadness in my heart,
rotting away all traces of
what I once was,
I am erasing myself,
I believe.
living beneath the shadow,
of stale promises,
and old secrets
Regret pulls me deeper under these waves
every fucking day.
Sliding under barbed wire fences,
and looking out at
space,
I could of sworn,
I was invincible,
but I will have to find
new armor,
that will never smell as good,
as your cotton t-shirts,
and faded blue jeans.
I am sorry if I hurt you,
but you will never know
how much you have hurt me
All the pattern pieces were made with individual care,
Woven together, the journey through life women share,
But there remained some loose ends, unused threads.
They were the ones that did not get used,
Not part of the pattern, not fused, they refused,
To be set aside, they bided their time, knowing...
Just as the women had been brought together over a dire need,
With prayer, they assembled the quilt pieces knitted without greed,
No gossip filled the air, a sense of urgency to complete the work.
Each piece was attached to another, using the left-over threads,
The many became one community, tied together with the short threads,
The rejects now held the whole quilt together, instead,
Of being discarded.
It takes all in a community, to make one quilt, one banner, one voice,
One future, from patterned pieces to a hand full of loose threads.
You'll never see the Eiffel Tower
or the elephants in
India
or
that painting place in
Portland
that you saw in
the paper
last week.
Last week.
a week when you were you
again
(and I was all of me again)
and you were breathing air
again and
everything
was
right
again
[again
again]
You'll never see the the moon shine
and
I'll never see your smile
again
or hear your laugh
and hug
and 90's tshirt
(the camel on the front)
or see you walking up
the gravel
a hand over your eyes
to see the way.
To see the way again.
I need to see the way
again.
My home is like no other.
It is where the air greets you with a warm, welcoming hug
That caresses every bit of skin.
Massive oaks form wide tunnels
With branches that bend and stretch to reach the ground.
Tall cypress trees shoot into the sky,
While the Spanish moss hangs down
In curly gray masses.
Emerald green swamp stretches for miles on end.
The elegant egret balances on water, watching
As the gators sunbathe alongside tiny turtles.
My home is beautiful.
Here is where a fading culture still manages
To quietly thrive.
Grandparents whisper old Cajun phrases,
Not quite French but almost so.
Pronunciations differ from spellings,
Yet the harsh consonants in words
Are still spoken with voices smooth as honey
And sweeter than sugar.
Accents exist where they cannot be heard.
And even with the old French influence,
A southern belle feel lives
In the beautifully historic plantations and sugarcane fields.
My home is cultural.
A type of energy exists in the city.
Artists diligently paint
Delicate magnolias and the symbolic fleur-de-lis.
Soulful jazz music fills the streets
Above the clatter of horse drawn carriages.
Families gather in delight to share the mouthwatering taste
Of freshly boiled crawfish or a pot of steaming gumbo.
The energy expands even further during Mardi Gras parades,
When excited crowds become one inseparable body as they surround each float.
Hands go up and colorful beads rain down.
My home is alive.
It’s true that schools are bad and crime is worse.
Storms ravage our towns,
Fierce floods stealing away all we’ve ever known.
Stealing away entire lives.
But there is a reason we always come back.
Louisiana is Beautiful,
Cultural,
Alive.
It will always be our home.
There wasn't a dry eye in the house,
It wasn't laughter,
It was tears,
There were no longer any houses.
The sadness so heavy and the shock so complete,
That silence filled the void,
Harshly hung in the air,
And was unmoved in the windy aftermath,
But the houses had everything exposed,
In pieces,
The houses fell apart,
no, they were blown apart,
Yet the community stuck together,
absorbing the losses.
The tragedies.
Out of the rubble some memories are found.
And out of the rubble come the survivors.
Out of the rubble a dog.
And out of the rubble a rocking chair.
And courage, and many examples,
of strength.
Out of the rubble,
teachers,
leading.
You helped, each other out
of the rubble.
Such strength in a community.
Out of the rubble.
You will find loss and the lost.
May all of you, out of the rubble,
find a love for one another,
please.
There is much that has been lost and may
never be found. You may also be at a loss for an answer.
Out of the rubble, in time,
you will see...
