New York

There was this lighted mirror in the bathroom, 
in a hotel in New York... — it made elegant, swanky uptown, fractured reflections in ochre yellow 
- as I lay in bed between the twinkling lights of the bridge and buildings and “vibes” on the other side. 

And all the big, rude, loud city that you like 
had quieted finally...with the music playing in just the right low echo with grip. 

It was the first time I’d breathed easy, 
and strange, in too many nights. 

So maybe there’s something here after all. 
With a new you and me... but mostly the me. 
Mostly all the brand new tonight I can see and fall asleep to. It's the phrase we're always saying when all your plans are with new spirits, new souls, 
and every time you check it - there's messages waiting on your phone. 

Thought I'd closed the door and left adventures behind 
but it was just a pause -- just a subway delay 
-- just an old me that I left far behind and gone. New York, the place I never wanted to be --  
but all the times I'm here has meant something. 
The force of the noise and the dreams of strangers - hits. 
The place that filled every college "when I get there" by my friends, as I listened, and thought of other things..sometimes you wind up where you never planned. 
After all the work, 
the moves, 
the miles and the messing up. 
Really made a new version of myself that I like the most. 
Like the colors of the life back home, the textures and the other city pace of it..

By tonight I'll be home again - coming home tired and full of art made 
- when home is new and right all along. 
Looking up at the grand scale of the train station, with a laugh. 
Wonder what tonight, and next week, 
and every next strange trip will bring. 

. . .

The old burning

Let the hills keep burning cause I don’t know you anymore. Let that precious, strange, desert place where the rolling cuts off every background -- slide off. 
And so you creep, and you make, and you let the land take you over. You let yourself disappear so no one even knows. 

All that mess and mourn, I don’t yearn for it anymore. All that buzzing television on repeat; like a retro moving spin top -- playing scenes. 
Playing sounds so different here - we press mute on all the noise and turn volumes up to what we feel. 
Or so we say, and smile, and answer professionally to what we do. 

It’s metal concrete shiny ways, so it feels a world away. Worlds away and all around the changing grasses of our changing forgottens. 

. . .

The Stage.

There was a time when we were all playwrights, and all the world could shine and shineeee, on—ward into the skies of our rafters and our rooftop laughters. 

We’d stomp booted feet on old, worn, soft - beautifully beat hardwood floors - that creaked - and we… Well we danced upon ourselves and our discovery of all of that. We danced and shouted - for bloody volume of the night - the right and good of it all then. 

The world blossoming and the words following — from onto stage the next day and back again — because we were Company. We were bred and we were lead into our inner workings, our inner demons, our inner joys - whether they were fleeting, or the truest nature I’ll still never knew. 

But there I know you. 

There I know the vague wild dreams of who I could be — back when it could be a journey you’d say you’d go on, and then you’d go another way. 

In all the ways it twisted round the happiness…. and happy wasn’t it? That was it. I’ve only just remembered it. 

Remembered not the place but the who, and me, that I was right then in that place - dream up to be - it’s getting closer. The pages have sure as those flown by and - wow - look around at what we’ve seen. 

You and me inside my head, the then and now and childhood and adult - and how that decade does commit. 

The stories how they changed, the eyes and wears, and the wrinkles forming there upon your sight —  war struck and still going, and the devastating desert of awhile, but I can see. 

The world upon which we built our thoughts, and our fashion and our everything - it can be seen. 

What was once a roar, yes. is now a whisper but so it does whisper… it’s gone from haunting demon, or fickle friend - to ah, lover once again. Whisper upon our pages in our places and let us be players once again. 

. . .

Whew!

There was a spider on my bed so I didn't sleep. So let's read this fast. hey! Ran circles round the past across blue lines instead. Thought how WOW!-great this all is. Thought about the rain too, and the dumping you, and it's all just making my mind allergic and delayed. Still it's rampant and dismantic. (Not a word? ah hell) Need the music and the dance, need the frantic and the pace.
Neeed a few weeks sleep, but I'm always saying that...
Here we go - fumble down and round with me tonight and let it roll across the records' rhythm. Let everything I've said and tried to say but not, restart and let it play. Play. What fun that is, that I know again and trouble it is, I know that too all daylight long. And day it's been, day gone again. Be again! Round and round and oh, I need a drink... (I should say) and maybe true. Maybe woo and hoo and hoorah what a change....transfor-mation all it's been. So let's go! Race across the street and wake with all the jokes and thought and hoo all surmised in sleep - and revel and revive and just go with it dammit! It's not that scary. Commit, commit to the work and the work and coming change to heat and legs and sweating proof of...proof of life and liberty and me just going going - mind gone going.
sigh.
Sleep and know me better.








. . .

New England.

originally written some time ago. 



I didn't think about the sharks!
In New England on the Cape, on a sweltering night - that should've been cool and fine - I thought about the ocean. Raced to it rather. Ached for it. Got on the plane in thoughts of it!

Then it looked - like nothing Baltimore had ever been (or anywhere I'd been) -
yes, the waves could hardly be seen (though they rocked suddenly with starry near dawn fury) -
yes the fleeing it had been from where we'd been (the party still going with sounds caught suddenly around and gone again),
- but the feeling; the current's force of pushhh - then steady, - of me. But it was blinding - like a spelled, nearly purple fog-hot-night. A reach into the distance, that I need hours still more back with, to understand. It blended and sprayed and hurled itself.
And I was free.
There will never be enough words for that simple phrase just then.

Always quit and drive - or fly or dive - or simply run like hell into some landscape abyss. Cause I did. No job ahead, completely unemployed by force of choice and reason and.. we won't get into that - I'd escaped hell (knew that much) and it was beautiful to see.
To be between - like the waves, and my soaked red dress, and embrace -- between everything. Between one great emptiness to another, and there was the ocean.
Maybe I'd swim to the edge of where all our stories are - maybe I'd lie on the Cape sand for days - grow ruddy and mossy - maybe I'd go back and sign a contract.

But all I wanted was that ocean then. And some friends, and some joys, and ah! the celebrations (floating back) for the cause of course! The love after all was mighty.

But that ocean that night - and the mind it filled me with. I want always that, going forward, my direction to where and none and artistry.
I want always to reawaken there (let's plan it) - and know- we must all travel.  Milesssss into each other's tent and KNOW. Quit and leap and dive and whooooshhh - swoosh - whoosh - swooosh.
There it began.

And I the lover there, cause life just goes. 




- *Moved 1 month later. 




. . .

Another one to California

originally written oct 2016. 


You've gone longer to me I remembered.
A friend knew better the other night - it was two years instead of one.
It was more holidays, more stories, and more nights happy at that diner than I remembered.
So I thought of you and California, like I do when there's room. Thought of that strange night with the french film and the Beast. How you said goodbye to inanimate decorations, weird, and how we talked and kissed and danced in the kitchen, and thought everything atop each other all at once, it's just a blur. Like it was always.
And then I thought of Christmas; and no more.

Cause we're lovers on the fates that we don't know or give a damn. Cause I've moved twice now since and don't know your address anymore, as it goes. The Kent won't have me sitting in that booth to surprise, and planes I hear don't fly this way.

Because you never did come home.

And I never do stay on the level of reality you say. I like the passion and the poetry - and saying things we couldn't mean. I like the stories you crafted far better, and where it took us to all the lands and mess and quite dangerous - revelry.

So maybe two years will become 20. Maybe this is the last time finally. But oh, how sad that'll be to miss it all.
How we're long gone, long aged, and long lying still (what trickery!). I hardly remember anymore when exactly that all was. I hardly remember it should end - me telling secrets in code and letting it go. Letting memories just sit beside like old friends do.
Me going back to the woman I knew.







. . .

Failed.

originally written oct 2016. 



Alright I failed. Maybe I failed. As the crickets whine into another autumn, - and I get it. I should've gone so long ago, because some time ago in all the mess I lost all of myself and my pieces, and my... I don't know it was lost.
Entirely this time. Unlike all the fabricated false tortures before (for art! for youth! for anything..). Hah. Because those were the times I felt I was standing there in the middle of the Wide Open screaming poetry and it was good.
And then, this now, so bad.
Serious and lacking taste kind of terrible-bad.
The other day I picked up a pen and it trembled, it shook, all my letters looked a-mush. And that was it. That was the giving up reality. There's no new paintings, no new words, no new stories and no new love - so what the F have I done?
Sigh and breathe.
My own language, don't you see, "dear friend" (I once wrote), it's forgotten. I fear on certain afternoons (all of them) and certain shakes awake in sleep that I'll never find again - never see again - never truly create again. Cause what is that? This is the end, I well know it - curtain close on creativity.
If I could get the dream, the glittering other place we're all really writing about and so we share it - maybe. Maybe it's just the MOVING that matters. New entries and new walks home - new faces and new thoughts they've gotta muster. Escape myself if I could, so I will, cause I rattle the cage. And it aches.






. . .

The first time back.

It’s a strange night here with the wind and the frozen snow, and I’m upstairs hearing it howl - the thoughts of someone new being easily forgotten in it - and I’m not yet sure. Not sure how I feel either. Feel the gloriousss -damn- wake of nights out drinking again, in my renaissance of beginning age, and it should be catching up any minute — like the piles of the books half read at 4 points of the bed, and the record player left on just spinning-glitch-spinnnn.
Sometimes I like that sound better than any of the motown records that remind me of glory days and my old love. 

{Speaking of} - Was thinking about the stage the other night - the lights again, and the movement of it - and it all got rolled up in my mind with - shooting from the darkened seats looking in, to dancing looking out, to walking back down that street, to a blurred motion through the whole blackened year more recently past. Like a dream that begins and turnssss.....hear the spiraling music and you WAKE.

It was the darkness in all that, that I had loved then - painted myself black - and wore the cobwebs and the funeral tales; loved the violence of hearts bleeding and ravens calling and my dear Poe and Yard. The friend I had in all of that, still do, — how we marched in our woe down Howard. 

But then he really found me - that real life version of a night you can’t see through and it wasn’t magic anymore. Stole stars out from the always-night and then I stood there for so many months…

Now there’s a lamp on in the hall when I come home that I love (used to hate it), and a sharp cut of sun that comes up from the floor to the pillow in the morning at the exact spot where the floor creaks upstairs. Everywhere creaks like me hah. And it’s empty bottles filling up the big old kitchen 'sill, the metro rides, the music, and the warmth in his hard-to-please eyes when he walks out my door. That was the last look we left off on :). Yeah, theres a joke always on my lips on Friday night, plans filling up, and my name called out of offices, and the ah, life again. 

Guess I’ve just storied you into spring, while we wait for it… 

...

Write man.

1.25.16 - redone 3.28.17



Everyone had everything to say last night.
Telling you - you gotta write. Write. WRITE man. To feel it, to know your soul. It's the only bridge to happy dreams and hope. Love and nobility. Writing is pain known intimate. It's the medicine to nightmares. It's home again and it's onward from it all. It may be everything of who lived in you, but that's okkkk. Feel good again.

// So, to "hours to live" again!

Come one, come all -- a toast!
To the time when each of us met, to the beautiful lives of our dreams we chase. To these drinks we have, to the looveeee we'll make tonight (wink); and to dawn coming just a little bit slowly...





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