lupanar

midaugust @ 2003-11-13T03:09:00

2003-11-13T08:13:52Z

There is a lack of sleep, you understand. Against his ears, the hair brushes in and he lets his body jump each time. Under his back, the dust pushes center and he wont notice until morning when the cluster falls and tickles his ankle. He is sleepless, thinking of profound entrance ways, of the unlit rooms where people fantasize and scurry and drink themselves to death. Wherever this is, it is not where he was hours ago or where he will ever be again. In his nerve channels he hears the blood slowing. He makes out the darkest parts of the space and in this he imagines the belly of a whale. Where in the room one would see nothing, it appears to him as the wiring of intestines. There are birds chattering in the teeth and gushes of water from the other side of the stomach lining. And he would like to fumble within the liver and feel the comforting warmth of such a large animal which he has never truly seen. In this he decides to believe that no such monstrous creature could exist without his eyes having seen it's flesh. No longer is he within the corridor of a whale's architectural masterpiece. But instead soundlessly cupped within a boat in a vast, laid out sea. Perhaps filled with pineapples or mangoes. The smell of the salt and fruit being an encouraging reminder of nonexistence.

midaugust @ 2003-11-10T00:45:00

2003-11-10T05:49:20Z

There was a time neither of us could read the papers in the morning. We disagreed so loudly the small human dignity, we think, of knowing of the 33-year old woman who was shot and killed by the man leaving this house with her toddler is left to question itself, lying on the table, ashamed of soaking up so much rain before anyone could pick it off the lawn. And I'm watching you cry over the things I spit at you within our comfortable walls and knowing my fear of becoming the story the neighbors read, I'll apologize. I'm too private a person that I hold real fear over someone knowing my name and that one time I was truly angry over nothing more than unclean kitchen tiles and neither of us survived. But it's not true and I'm dragging you to the floor and trying to stop your choking sobs before we wake up your parents, who have come to make sure I am no idiot.

I would rather apologize because I know I sometimes only stop your tears when the cries pang inside my head with hollow sounds. There are times I would rather see you continue and wipe your eyes with your shirt and and issue that as an apology to me for anything displeasing. Which is only the small stains around us and I'm wishing they didn't aggravate me but I'm wanting to watch you love me so much that my headaches cause an outburst in you. Those times I conduct myself like a child and you're willing to cage all the blame in you and smile at me with your swollen eyes and offer your arms to prove it's okay that I, at times, have no idea where to store myself.

On the floor I reach for the paper and read to you the story that everyone is reading today. You understand why and tell me you're glad we'll never go through that. I nod, knowing the possibility of men climbing through the window and that I could never protect us from them. But today we are exhausted and untouchable; perhaps only for the moment.

happy events that wont matter in a week but that make it nice for the half hour subway ride home

2003-11-08T04:10:31Z

today after work was closed and we were all climbing to the door, a boy who i have never really spoken to said, "happy birthday." i was so shocked that anyone would say happy birthday to me, or know that it was coming up, that i mumbled a thank you and left rather than point out to him that my birthday is not until next sunday.

midaugust @ 2003-11-02T12:16:00

2003-11-02T17:19:38Z

During the night he'd woken with sweat collecting together, forcing ripples against his eyebrows. They fell back and dripped slowly along his scalp, through the forest of hair. He pulled his hand through and cleared himself of the feeling that his body was being ditched in the Atlantic. His eyes remained glazed over and heavy. He imagined seeing them purple and blue, or it was the light cast in the room from somewhere outside that made them appear to be.

The frost had set on the window over hours and trying to look through he knew it was no match for how milky his eyes still were from sleep. Outside was still night, the car headlights had been left on and in any other moment he'd rush to turn them off. Tonight he told himself that the battery could die before he'd find a desire to get up. Inside the cold gave him excuses for a lack of company, of involvement in the work he once wished to complete over the winter and of the endlessness of existence to which he had written about in letters to his sister. He'd been restless, carrying aching pains in his limbs, thinking the house lights were too bright and had turned off the power last week. Assured by the lack of color in his room at this time of night, he often drifted out of sleep to write things in his head but never put them down. He looked forward to the mornings when he wouldn't remember ever waking hours before. His temples throbbed with the hour, begging for his return to sleep. He pushed the ball of his hands against his eyes and forced them upward, pausing to hold them open until air could dry away the glaze and let him see rough edges as opposed to the dream-like ones you see when you're still half-asleep.

Looking out at the room he thought, "If a human mind is truly a wasteland, sleep isn't justifiable." He tilted his head to the window and through the frost could trace the outline of trees that were gathered around his house, far from the civilized town in the North. In the trees he imagines spaces to hide, grizzly bears, deformed faces sheltering from the eyes of those laughing from their cranberry-colored homes in the distant. Touching his own dried and wrinkled skin, he talks to himself about befriending their gaps, eyes with hooks and one-legged bodies that have been dragged from birth to now. This was the thought he loved most. The shadows of trees, the space between snowflakes, the pure drops of water on a leaf that blows from this forest as far out as the sea. Returning to his dreams, he is on a ship with Edgar - the man who lives in the first tree to the left of the porch, who has no arms and cannot speak - and he rows them both to the bottom of the ocean, where there is no light or sound.

midaugust @ 2003-10-27T14:28:00

2003-10-27T19:53:47Z

We apologize for all the things we cannot accomplish. On the phone yesterday I told a friend how things are not always possible and you cannot jump off the roof and not hit the pavement and you cannot put your torso on backward and you cannot be forgiven for a petty mistake you made months ago because most people don't care what you have to say about pain. My body is defined by the spaces where I most feel that pain - my back, my sides, my abdomen - and this is pointless to have explained when she was no longer listening.

She said the world is defined by the night of the electrical storm and we sat in the center of the road, more drunk than either of us had ever been, and a lightening bolt struck the house we were facing and we watched as flames ripped it apart. Two elderly people stood on the roof and a dog barked from just behind the front door and your roommate called for help. While we waited for the firetrucks to come help the people down we couldn't find our way to our feet and we saw the shadow crossing the windows and we heard the dog go silent and we watched the woman sob uncontrollably while her husband looked confused. This was you and I, and we finally could have done something with the lives we wish we didn't have and all we did was listen to a dog die in a burning house. I wondered why I don't always brake at stop signs and you wondered why we swallowed pills in high school and when the news reporters asked what happened, the owners cried for their house that collapsed into what looked like nothing more than a landfill.

You and I were glazed over teenagers asking if Christ can save a dead dog.

midaugust @ 2003-10-05T13:02:00

2003-10-05T17:09:30Z

he sees the horse dying. the fingers in his pant pocket push against him. as if to pinch, as if to yank the skin from his thigh. with his other hand loosely around his mouth, he slides his fingers in-between his bottom lip and his teeth. he thinks of peeling an orange.

behind the barrel of water, his friend drops the shotgun and the other boy jolts. his friend never moving an eye from the wounded. he stands slowly while mumbling something about pride, turns and runs back to the fence, over and disappears through the fog blanketing the trees. the boy left alone removes his blazer and sweater. carefully, he moves through the grass patches and up to the horse. lying his sweater on its belly, he stands back and mumbles something about hope to the now dead animal. he puts his jacket back on and walks slowly the same path his friend has taken. reaching the woods, he puts his fingers behind his lip again, one at a time, and peels it down like an orange until he finally lets out a cry.

midaugust @ 2003-09-14T11:48:00

2003-09-14T16:57:41Z

colorful sweater, how you looked exhausted but were not, marvin gaye alongside a carousel, that i counted taxis to myself, incredible hulk balloon,

midaugust @ 2003-08-25T22:51:00

2003-08-26T05:51:44Z

i rest so many hours of a day. where you left, i kept your things. the chair across the entrance way, alongside the window, is where i folded your shirts to a stack. when a shot of light comes through, it all turns gold. i once found you gazing out to the street as you washed; and where you stood i hid my loneliness. here, waiting for the light to come through, i lay near the curve window and listen for the airplanes to pass over.

midaugust @ 2003-08-11T08:38:00

2003-08-11T12:38:46Z

Early October, you and I wander past the downtown shops while you flash your smile at the passersby. The air is thick enough to carve sculpture from. At a dress store, you stop me and point in to the window at a pair of white driving gloves. I watch a man in a derby hat buying a scarf with a brightly colored pattern and an off white trim that, with a different angle, would seem to fade in to his hair. You tug gently at my hand and ask if I would like to stop at our favorite restaurant for lunch.

Always a gentleman, you pull out a chair for me and before taking your seat, whistle and motion your hand for the waiter to come over. We've sat by the front window because you know how I enjoy to stare outdoors at the motion on the sidewalks. I see Mother's walk with their children, who stomp and pull on their skirts, all the while the groaning adult keeps a light face and digs through her purse as well as keeping her steady and eager walking pace. Across the way, I see a derby bouncing from among a crowd of people, so closely together that I cannot see the man who wears it. I hear you telling the waiter what drinks to bring us and the boy rushes off. When the hat is out of the sight of my window, I turn to see the young man returning with what you asked. You pick up your glass of whiskey and drink it down quickly, the way you've always done with your first glass, and as you place it back on the table you smile at me and ask what I've seen so far.

A day after, I lay at home, a sudden sickness from the heavy air we've been breathing all the week before. In the evening, you return home from work with box held to your body with the weight of your arm. A surprise, you tell me, taking off your suit jacket and laying it on the bed. You remove the lid and tilt it to me and show a brown derby, circled by tissue paper. Quietly, you smirk as you ask if you should wear it, or hold it as a Christmas gift for me.

midaugust @ 2003-08-02T02:04:00

2003-08-02T09:04:34Z

we're the stillness that we see on the ceiling. we lay looking to the top and feeling no farther from it than if it were to be a thousand miles up. you touch your forehead to my shoulder and whisper about sadness. we list the words that make us feel so alone. light bulb, speak, option. i ask you, what is the happiest word? 'tooth,' you say. we go silent, again, and you look back up. an hour passes and i ask you, what kind of teeth? 'even the most crooked, hideous, and chipped teeth.'

when i wake, i can hear you coughing in to the sink basin. i see your arms resting on the top and your body tightened from the pain. i want to make it go away with something other than words that still feel useless from me. if you slept with your back to me, i'd want to force it out of you. you'd wake up, head to the ceiling, and we'd resume the way we always were.

the morning it snows, you wake me to drag me by the ankles from bed. you're bundled in my coat and yours, a scarf, your cousin's hat, and my roommate's sunglasses. you look as comfortable as you are when sleeping.

midaugust @ 2003-07-15T02:00:00

2003-07-15T09:00:59Z

when i sleep with the windows open, i burn from my chest to my nose in the morning. i live in a quiet home, with unpolished floors. the linoleum is cracking at the edges. everything is worn with age. the paint is peeling from the walls and i let it pile in the corners rather than clean it up. i made it that way. i let all the wires tangle together from the television, the computer, the table lamps. the complication of it drives me mad but i don't care for fixing it.

most mornings i forget what's outside of my room, but you come over and tell me about how you see everything in purple, gold, and sometimes in blue. you show me the newspaper and explain that people look at things wrong and you are not a person, but like everything else, a creature i imagined to make me feel less lonely. the world is in color and the world is still and alone.

you always put your feet up on my chair and ask if i think i will go to heaven when i die. i tell you, no, but i'll think more about the possibility of a good life in me.

midaugust @ 2003-07-02T19:15:00

2003-07-03T02:15:40Z

you sat on the steps and waited. when i was walking through downtown streets i tried to think you'd made yourself busy. i prayed to come home and find you sleeping. when i ascended the driveway you were turning your head. i was already wondering what to tell you. i brought the snow inside, you were brushing it from your hair.

this has always been our pattern. we fight without ever speaking. the conversations seem so dull, but i still wonder how we got here.

sitting on the shower floor, hot water streaming down my face, i'm thinking of those early mornings. waking next to you and not worrying about the feeling. pleasure just with silence and we still act all the same ways. the water is getting cold but i'm still wondering what to tell you.

midaugust @ 2003-06-27T02:36:00

2003-06-27T09:36:21Z

i caught you easing yourself in the corner of a windowsill having built a complicated web to perch on. outside is vibrant, though cold. i'm unbuttoned but too numb to change that. you're a cold sore. i touch my finger inside my lip knowing that it already hurts, that you frighten me. a friend had told me before to think of you as myself. but i am shy, unquestionably trapped by fear, and have only two legs. no, i'm certain you're an ambitious sore that can taunt me from where you position yourself.

drafts clump dust together and push it across the floor. i caught you trying to fool me.
we'll just see which of us is left at the end of this winter.

six through eleven

2003-05-30T05:38:05Z

vii.

Outside, Bent builds himself over again. There are roses embedded in his skull and leaves to give him hair. He replaces his arms with tree branches. Else walks the halls inside wondering where her eyes have gone. She places a chair against the wall, climbs to stand on it, and feels the ceiling for eyes. She finds bulbs that turn on when placed inside her.

viii.

A flood passes through the cracks of the doors. Else and Bent lay on the floor, playing dead to pass time, waiting for anything to come. The rising water covers the top of their hands, laid flat. They're on opposite ends of the room; Bent has one eye under the surface of the water, his head tilted just enough to see Else, whose damp shirt becomes invisible. An hour later, all that touches the floor are their fingers.

ix.

The carpet had turned to mold the months before. Bent slept in the ventilation all through the mornings. Else looked for him under cushions, in drains, between the shafts of light.

x.

A murder of crows just outside of everything.

xi.

Leaves bury children and Else remain leaning against her lies. Bent watches the fall building a slow sea for winter. Being alone is the human condition he keeps in secret. Else forgets the existance of time.

Bent hears the noise of an airplane but knows that Else can't hear past the cold air.

one through six

2003-05-26T08:28:22Z

He imagines that she's left the room for only a second. There is only a pause in his life. There is little room for time. Else saw him when she was gathering her things to leave. When she was there, he came to sit, to stare, to twist his body as only a skilled contortionist can because he knows it will only hurt her. Considering his name Bent, she formed his life around the parlor. This sad story about a grotesque figure, a misshapen human function. He was the ability to be still. A lack of life.

i.

Else thinks of her life as an unsuccessful death.

ii.

From the way he would curl himself backwards to close around her body when she was drunk, Else thought of him as the inner coil of her thoughts. As the figure of a collapsed ribcage. A reaching of something outside of herself. Bent turns his eyes in to film strips; a wall in which he feels his hands to wipe the sleep from her eyes, again.

He's a pattern that changes from present to past. A symbol for the identity we lose through age.

iii.

Bent holds still enough to forget himself. He is Else, laid up against the bed, white and purple. She's holding steady, afraid that if she were to touch the floor, only her hipbones would feel it. She's rubbing her hands over the places of her that rise above her skin. Bent is touching his back and his hand goes through him.

iv.

There are frames surrounding stillness. Shoes left under a table are covered by glass, reflecting, hiding the flaws that get printed on them. The indent of toes, soles, a lack of an arch in the center. Her feet are always hurting and he watches the way she tips as she walks. Clinging to her dress to make it seem as though it's only a way to stand more straight. This is a trial and error. Sundays are always filled with mistakes. A man who thinks of himself higher than a seat of any throne, a man who is an emperor, is still getting dressed in her room. Else's eyes turn red and puffed. Tears are no longer worth the effort.

v.

Under her dress, she's written the names of all the men that were there. The emperor is written in gold yet smudged from the way she walks. It is a sign, she tells herself, that he means as much as she does. Tissues remove his crowned name.

vi.

Dry eyes lose their vision. Else stops looking.

midaugust @ 2003-05-16T16:33:00

2003-05-16T23:33:35Z

parking is slim in the largest of cities. there are empty freeways and jammed lots of cars. sleepless drivers on backroads close their eyes as cars go past them. when they open their eyes again, they say hello to a 4-wheel truck that's crashing in to the driver's side. a distant ambulance waves slowly and passes up a dying driver for a strange ghost that haunts the electricity in a house full of tides. an ocean in the clawfoot tub where the insects get buried. there is no single person to write to, or about. no sole individual who met the parking structures head on for fear of never getting out. those who want to crash themselves in to the barrier, the roadblock, in to the railing of a bridge that is common to drive over- no one's death will be so interesting.

a girl disappears to die under a joshua tree with a piece of rope in her hands but she was not murdered. a man takes a hot air balloon as high as it can go and shoots his gun at a gallon of gasoline; yet he did not commit suicide. the television reporter gives news about a robbery that left six innocent people dead and tells us in an informative voice that no one is innocent. a man gets raped after leaving his daughter with her friend and finds a weapon to the curve his back when struggling to remember the lock code that opens his door. a man is not a victim. a man is always strong. a woman who is the victim of a useless hospital and no health care receives sympathy and laughter as she walks her imaginary dog down the street but continues to smile because of a canine's company.

in quiet country homes, children dream of driving cattle, farm to farm. parents dream of driving cars as no one's who find little escape from a boring daily life. in everything, there is whispers of sound. the laughter is hushed, the car crashes fall short, more as slamming screen doors. a boy breaks up with a girl behind his parent's home because he fears he'll be the only one in the world to scream.

recognize?

2003-05-11T06:58:44Z

there was a way my hair would come undone after being put up for me. my brother noticed that most when i would climb in to the attic and tear things apart. he would watch me lay flat a family album, put my legs to either side, and pull them out of the plastic pages and scream. i thought of my life as a late night rerun of a show no one could stand to watch. they cancelled it after four episodes but the plot kept dragging. i would hide in closets and come out minutes later wearing things that didn't fit me, that tripped me when i walked. a long jacket that would rip on carpet nails and zippers that cut our pets when i'd swing around.

i could sleep half-naked on dirty fabric and imagine who was relaxing in those spots, what they were thinking about. it was sex in that house, that couch sitting on the porch. it was so easy to say that nothing would change or that it was logically out of bounds for me to consider getting rid of the few things i had steady in my life. that furniture, fabric, masked with ridiculous memories of walking in on my brother making out with his girlfriend, when he'd call me a bitch and tell me to find a new fucking game. i, half-naked, would run and tumble on to the floor beneath the television set and hold the rabbit ear antenna to make my reception clear.

midaugust @ 2003-05-04T20:45:00

2003-05-05T03:45:54Z

This man used to speak to an audience. My Father sits in a leather chair near enough to the window to have light but not touch it. He sees the floor as a river and wont get up for fear of drowning in it. There is a mirror on the wall across from him and he inspects the glass in his hand this way; so that denial is made simple. In this mirror, he can see the dying of other people and ignores his own. In his writing there is an audience. There is me in every 'I' and his own father in 'm.' I have never heard my Father speak yet I know in the things he writes he's trying to give me more to bury than a shot man with a glass. I am a costume of my Father, striking a loneliness with a belly full of vodka.

midaugust @ 2003-04-13T18:15:00

2003-04-14T01:15:49Z

vancouver, two weeks.

midaugust @ 2003-04-04T15:21:00

2003-04-04T23:21:15Z

this used to be about talking in a short form and having you answer with things that never related to what i said. or became the one word sum up of everything i wrote down.

i liked that you didn't really pay attention to any underlying tones in the things i did. you liked specific words in it and could hardly remember anything more. i always wanted to ask you if it mattered at all but i hoped it wouldn't. you forgot about photos, the sounds a faucet makes when it leaks, how your dog would shed on your good dress pants. that's all i wanted to hear about. chasing small ghosts in your dreams and losing it behind a jacket on the coat rack. you would tell me how it was more fun to follow it behind the refrigerator. rarely a serious talk; most always half-chilled ghosts on ice.

we asked someone else about the last day. how it would be nothing too remarkable. one quick exit, like every other day. no train whistle blowing, no waving to make one of us stay. it was a complete shadow of each one before. always quiet, short, and a bit disappointing.

midaugust @ 2003-03-21T22:21:00

2003-03-22T06:21:46Z

she explains to him that excitement is to turn to your back just as your jumping off a building; your body stretching for a block, grounded. to love him from half way around the room.

midaugust @ 2003-03-19T12:09:00

2003-03-19T20:09:57Z

we were lying around buckets. water dripping down to them and in return, hitting our faces. i really don't see you there but i tell myself that you must be. i can vaguely see feet tracing the floor and pulling back when it gets warm. because our bodies are opposites. the rust around the bucket makes patterns. a cityscape. it forms the shape of your hand when it grabs the square-sided table to keep you from tripping over.

i see your arm reaching from the other side of these buckets and you push them away. but i can see through your hand as much as i can see through myself. in my imagination of this, you're telling me to see that the roof has no holes in it. you tell me to find a better dream that is less sad and emotional. you disappear, the buckets. i turn over and dream that my body has turned canary yellow.

midaugust @ 2003-03-06T07:35:00

2003-03-06T15:34:57Z

crimescenes.org

midaugust @ 2003-02-28T15:33:00

2003-02-28T23:34:33Z

we pretend love means nothing to us. we pretend we're a joke to everyone but ourselves and look in the mirror with a profound hatred. oh, let's call it a poem. don't look back at me don't look back at me. we ask people questions we can answer with drugs and then feel hurt when someone answers. we're empty capsules and we would rather fill it with violence. we take medication to save ourselves. we take religion to give us a reason that we failed. we failed.

a bruise is a biography. your addiction to life is your way to not imagine your death. drowning is only sleep. we teach ourselves that vodka will outweigh staying up all night with sharp pains in your abdomen and that's the only lesson you're going to need in your life. hope is burned and inhaled. we'll break what we buy.

we've memorized ourselves and never found the escape route. our tongues are the best method of feeling. the best decisions we make are the ones to have sex in places other than beds. speed is more than driving too fast.

we can detail the way in which we would kill ourselves. some of us know we would never do it. we worry about the money we owe, the money we don't have, the money we'll never see.

a promise shares the sound of a collision.

midaugust @ 2003-02-10T09:07:00

2003-02-10T17:09:46Z

you drifted to the side of the road and turned to the back seat to ask her how long she could possibly stay resting after so many miles. she didn't answer but you stayed parked with your hands on the wheel- which is how you've always felt. she mumbled in her sleep and you tried hard to listen closely enough so that you might have one answer to a billion questions. when she stopped and you had yet to make out her words, you flung the car door open and jack-knifed your fists in the air after you got out.

we watch you fall apart drunk as much as we can see you breathe. but it's not cold and the air isn't turning to ice every time you exhale. her hands are over her head, resting on the driver-side window. you see her twitch and it comes quick to you that it's the most beautiful thing you've seen.

you stop caring how many times she speaks.