Falling
falling apart
and not knowing
never knowing
how to help your heart
Or how to heal
heal your mind
not even trying
never trying
for fear of what you'll find
Those shadows dance
behind your eyes
frighteningly similar
oh so similar
to those of thunderous skies
So you listen
And you can hear your pain
prick your skin
your delicate skin
like cold acid rain
Caught in your own tears
lost
so lost
in your hurricane of fears
It's time
to go inside.
She was in Mexico visiting her father
whom she hadn't seen in eleven years.
I was at home,
falling in love with her
about three weeks after we had begun to know one another.
She called me before she left.
Scared.
Uncertain.
I could see her on the other end of the phone,
sitting on the corner of her bed
in her half-lit room,
pondering over an open suitcase.
I spoke to her every truth I knew,
every caring thought I could think,
as fast as they could be born.
By the time she got back,
I knew I was in love,
even if I couldn't quite find the words to explain it
to her.
We had spoken once about our obsession with birds
when we were younger.
So I prowled around the day before she got back,
in the woods behind my house,
through thickets, brambles,
up the sides of leant trees,
in the remnants of abandoned nests,
for a feather
or two.
She got back from her trip,
and we sat in my car,
before the modern saloon where
I told her I love you
She said wait,
I have something for you
And she pulled out a long, brown quill.
Her cheeks florid,
beneath the thin light of the street lamps
that leaked in through the window.
I laughed,
and she grew redder.
Then I too produced a feather
and I saw in those eyes
something I could not possibly explain.
And even if I could,
I'm not sure I'd want to.
old makeup spilled on my floor
dirty clothes strewn on my floor
You can hardly see the carpet for all the clothes carelessly being trodden on.
Blue holiday lights are strung around the mirror.
I am watching Andy Warhol eating a hamburger
I am watching Andy Warhol eating a hamburger
on a new, thousand dollar laptop, slick-as-a-whistle, paid with a magnetic swipe.
For the past six months,
I have had less than four hundred $
combined in checking and savings,
and that number dwindles by the day.
I have no groceries,
but I've got fistfuls of orange prescription bottles,
and I was handing pills out like treats and candy.
(but they are needed, much and every day)
Where did all these bills come from?
Money is paper, but it means things.
Suddenly, it costs money to breathe.
Eating? Oh pshaw, that costs money, time, and the store's six blocks away.
We can subside on government cheese, beans, and the fiery licks of whiskey.
I pout on my throne of dirty cotton, thinking
"I get what I ask for, when I ask, and it always comes--at a price!" I sigh.
It's always over a hundred dollars more than I could spare
and brings bad luck, moreso than a couple broken mirrors would,
smashed over a the front of your mother's blackest cat.
"Quick! Let's do designer drugs with the paltry change given by our parents, given as allowance!
I wouldn't feel like I wasn't nothing, nothing at all," I say, batting my eyelashes, "Wouldn't they feel proud of our feelings of entitlement to the greater things in life and consciously responsible adult-like decisions?"
I crack open my father's checking account with that swipe of a magnetic strip,
it makes me seem responsible when he sees I just use it for pills and foodstuff.
(I prove I love him, and he loves me in this way)
Now, together, we will buy strawberries with his money, until our lips are pink.
They must be four dollars, at the very least, then we eat like the bourgeoisie (!)
I kiss the cheeks of my reflection in the bathroom
"Como ca va, darling? Comme si comme sa. . ."
I lick my lips, put on red lipstick and then blot,
tousling my hair, tipsy, as I touch up my face by
licking the tips of eyeliner up like a cat's little tail,
the ends of eyes, coated with eyeliner as black as
my tightest velvet pants and dark, dark heart.
We go together. You and me.
Lying on the floor, holding hands, in vinyl bliss
listening to the crooning of sweet Francoise Hardy,
and the addictions of the near-dead soul of Lou Reed
You should move to a big city
and I'll come call, prepaid, with
a voice that is thick and ripped,
from expensive French cigarettes
chattering of sugar-white beaches
as I cross the seas all on a plane,
burning money all along the way
all the while drunk on red wine,
twirling my fingers around, with
bags under eyes, a little anemic
(I think it adds to the glamour)
We will go out to a dimly lit place
We will go out dancing then after
I will put on dab perfume under my ears and on my wrists,
I will wear black tights for pants, but first, do a little cocaine
and you will fasten the clasp on my silver necklace tonight,
while I smoke, before helping me put on my favorite fur
And we will go see Andy, at the factory
I hear he's doing something
with that Basquiat fellow (!)
I will go follow false luxuries, come with me.
I will gamble with you in Monte Carlo or Las Vegas,
just as long as you pay my rent at $695 per month,
and keep pretending,
until I die, or overdose, or something.
it was night time and you came by to say hello
we went to Taco Bell and i offered my 20 dollar bill, but you declined
on the way back to my house, you wouldn't stop making cold remarks and i did my best to disregard them
i waited for you to grab my face like you always did and kiss me
but you never did
you didn't even touch me
you turned the car on as a signal to leave and i panicked
i got out of the car and started walking away
then, on impulse, turned around and asked you to hug me
you got out of the car reluctantly and i came over to you
i hugged you for no less than 5 minutes straight and didn't want to let you go for anything in the world
you made a comment on how much i was shaking and i made the excuse that i didn't want the mosquitoes to bite me
when in reality, i was terrified
i was terrified of you leaving me again
i was terrified that once i stopped hugging you that it would be the absolute end
your "self-set" curfew was creeping up and i didn't care
the excuse to leave wasn't self-sufficient
but i finally let go
Today, I was a foal
in a room of sea monsters.
I waited for time, but she did not come.
I ran water
over dishes
I do not own.
Cars flew past on grand avenue
and the rain fell in wrinkles
like skin, into gravel.
I started to forget simple things, like my name.
I started to forget what it felt like to hear it.
So much of me
liquefied
into the posture
of preoccupied charm
that I glazed,
and succumbed.
Treasury Casino, 3:03 am. Monday morning.
Casino bars shut at 3:00 am in QLD.
I missed a place to sleep by 9 minutes.
My timing is impeccable.
2 hours to kill until the last train home.
An older man in a slate suit enters stage right.
Crosses.
Disappears.
Reenters stage left with brass buttons
lit up like embers.
The 9 network wants me to buy
stonedine frying pans.
And warns me about harmful gasses that have killed household budgies.
I wish I was more interesting.
You havent lived
until you've seen a man blow a pancake
off a frying pan.
Onto a plate.
----
3:12 am.
Late night bar personnel work in silence
cleaning beer nozzles and coffee machines.
They wander in and out of the scene under sophisticated lighting.
I wonder what to do about you, and what I'm feeling.
What our hold on each other is and when (if) the sword of Damocles will fall.
Is this truly tragedy to which we are destined?
I shudder to think.
And for this am I classed by the title
"coward"
or
"lover"?
----
3:20 am - Existentialism strikes a vicious blow. No coup de grace.
The blackjack dealer on the $15 table has a gorgeous face that makes me wonder how her body feels on a post coital morning. Satisfied and relaxed, taut through anticipation of further pleasure?
Straight raven tresses frame a heart shaped face that peers over the ridge of a white collared shirt, sprouting from beneath a black vest, tight at the elbows.
She deals with deft machine-gun efficiency. Not all bullets hit their mark here.
Her back curves with natural elegance down to a tight, young ass. The shape of it magnified by the black business pants writes itself as a factory on my mind. Light hands would fit well there, one on each cheek, her mouth open seductively, trading tastes and sensations.
There is a dying rose in my lapel.
It's sad.
I contemplate leaving it somewhere poetic but cant think of a place.
The thorns are still sharp.
----
3:45 am
The only place where time is invincible
is a place where it is hidden.
Casino's are such a place.
Here time cannot be killed.
Yet I have smuggled it in.
I dream of a day when I wake up next to you
sipping our coffee next to the morning dew
talking about life
just like we used to
and then the moon rises
while you're eyes drift with time
right in front of mine
and I no longer have to worry
about what would be so divine
Can I tell you how I truly feel?
Sorry miss I would like to tell you.
That's the one thing in life I can't let you, the world know.
My eyes strain to keep my secrets,
and my body begins to tense.
Your eyes seem so bright so glossy and true blue;
your body seems so smooth that the wrinkles of life come undone.
Perfection is the example used to show what others need to do.
While someone goes to after hours on how to improve.
Taking up the time of the universe,
slowly suffocating the world of it's own oxygen,
striking down each tree with their simplicity.
Take an idea and run with it.
My eyes strain to keep my secrets;
I tell them to shush, and praise them to keep them quiet.
My body begins to tense and I squeeze it to keep it together.
Your eyes, I don't want to waste your time.
Your body should belong somewhere else.
you're the example I praise,
while I try to hang my own hat.
Another Marvin O'Hannigan Fillimigroo Write
.............................
Marvin O'Hannigan Fillimigroo
Did not like the color blue.
It was far too blue,
To suit his taste.
He would have preferred
To unblue blue
Post-haste.
He did not care for the color red,
Or the shade it made
Inside his head.
For it was far too red
To suit him, so
The red, he said,
Would have to go.
Every subtle hue of purple he
Disliked with such intensity
Both his eyebrows would curl tight
And he'd grit his teeth with all
His might,
Insisting, as young
Marvin would,
That the color purple
Was of no good.
And in his own clever
Point of view,
Marvin O'Hannigan Fillimigroo
Believed that orange filled no purpose.
And that pink was nothing but a circus.
Both dreadful colors,
With shades and hues
No eight year old
Would ever choose.
He was, of course,
So very clear
He did not want a yellow near.
That color racked inside his head
Of things his Uncle Phil had said,
That yellow comes from garden slugs,
And oozes from the ears of bugs,
That yellow is what's left behind
When a katydid sneezes on the window blind.
It is the shade of yuck, as Marvin would say,
And he planned to keep that yuck away.
But on Sunday, May the twenty-third,
Marvin was certain he had heard
A greenish sound from way outside,
Beyond the neighbors subdivide.
He took the stair steps three by three
And ran out back under the tree
And looked as high as he could see,
When he noticed first a honey bee.
It buzzled up and through the dew
That glistened off the young bamboo.
Then disappeared into the light
That made the morning seem so bright.
He closed his eyes and listened more,
Which gave him ample reason to explore
The ups, the downs, the highs, the lows,
And wherever the greenest green-thing grows.
The sound he heard within the breeze
Made its way through the sycamore trees,
And he hunted low, then hunted high
This green-green sound that whispered by.
It harbored near the kettledrum,
Which was now the haunt of old chewing gum,
And he crept upon it from the side,
Without a sound, his brown eyes wide.
There was a charribbit, then a snizz,
Followed by a brumping, breathing whizz,
And he followed that collumping sound
To the kettledrum, and looked around.
There it was,
His green-green thing.
'Twas the greenest green
He'd ever seen.
With eyes that watched him watch it back,
As clever as a yellow jack.
It had four green slimy feet
Hidden in the loaming peat,
And plops for toes that plopped to here,
Nothing an eight year old should ever fear.
Marvin O'Hannigan Fillimigroo
Nodded primly deep inside,
Stared down at the green-green thing
With an inkling of real pride.
"Now that's a color," he said at last,
"The very best I've ever seen!"
And from then on the only color he liked
Was the green-green-green of green.
..................................................
Copyright © 2010 Richard D. Remler
......................................
“It always looks darkest just
before it gets totally black.”
-Charlie Brown
.......................................
If you like a poem, like it. If you hate it, hate it.
It's ok.
Takes like a moment to press that button.
I'm sure no rifts in time will spawn the apocalypse.
for the friends i have loved and lost...i am not afraid to say the last thing i have to say to a long time companion...for i know that they have and will hear me...that it is the right and perfect thing to say, because it is me and all of my heart...singing as i go along so that i do not break...
she raised me, as much as my mom and sister did, and i thought i was different...that i wouldn't crack and divide...but i suppose sometimes i am that girl...who falls apart into a ball of tears...because my nanny is like the nervous system for my family, she's just too interconnected, just too big to fail...to fall...
and we always want the fall of our heroines to be graceful and gorgeous...but sometimes it's just bleak and plain...sometimes you watch your mentor, grandmother, caretaker, great friend, nanny die slowly...though it kills you and you fight for her with all this nervous frightened energy, this what will i do without her...
so i let my heart sing...because it hears her, it knows her, it is as much in tune with her as anyone else it loves...i let it be happy to honor what she wants...it's the closest i can come to praying...letting my heart sing and joy and bounce...letting it loose to the terror of my own embarrassment...
i will miss this, i will miss you...you kept the light on in the last homely house...i know that this will break my heart into so many pieces i will never find them all...there will always be holes the size and shape of you...
