Tuesday, September 25, 2007

All I have to do is Dream

Shadow in Dust


I no longer dream. Sometimes too, I garble my words. My teeth are skewered. I grow self-conscious whenever I have to speak. When I type, I sometimes finish only half a word or add an extra letter, like an extra “c” in the word accident. At night, when it comes time to turn down the sheets, I am reminded of the accident. I fluff the pillow and I lose strength, suddenly blighted. I lie down and close my eyes. It’s the same as when they’re open, only darker, degrees of transition that never find an end.

I used to dream—of tigers on the moon, and rabbits that know things without being told. Of being outside in my underwear. Preparing to sleep, expectantly (expecting what I did not know)—I miss that feeling. Once I dreamed I’d won the lottery and this man in a suit and I were posing with an enormous cardboard check. Lot's of zeroes. I’d wake refreshed, eager to meet another day. Now waking life and sleeping life are the same crossed mish-mash of moribund nothings, a day-time / night-time dreamlessness.

And I’m always tired. I’ll sleep two days straight and still be dragging all the time. I raise my head sluggishly. It’s heavy as a sack of sand. My body is a bag of pains. I sag where I should hold tight, and I’m stiff where I am meant to bend. It was a bad accident. There were days I wish I’d up and . . . those days are mostly over.

Not only don’t I dream. I can’t read the way I used to, or write as well either. They had to put my left eye back in place. There’s a little silicon sheath inside my skull that holds it up because the socket’s gone. I drag my eye around, rolling it along this Saran Wrap hammock in my head. The eye grows tired and then my right eye strains to compensate. There are scars inside my face, more taut and knarled than the ones on its outside. I forget quickly so I now keep lists and hang them on the refrigerator. I hang them there because I kept forgetting where I had put them. Now I have one place for lists: food to buy, things to do, bills to pay, doctor’s appointments.

My first book made enough that I put a down payment on this house. Now the banks are looking to take it back. I’ve sent the cleaning girl away for good. I keep the curtains drawn. It’s dark in here most of the time. A friend who’d visited when I was convalescing brought me a gift, a plaque to hang on the wall. He laughed and I pretended it did not sting. “Dust is a Protective Coating.”

A thin layer covers my shelves and all their bric-a-brac, little shells and figurines. My favorite is a skeleton in a priest’s frock—a Day of the Dead statuette from Mexico. I can’t bother myself about dust. When the phone rings panic spikes in my chest. I typically will not answer. I’m afraid most of the time. It seems my agent, the one person I’d welcome a call from, forgets things too. She no longer remembers my name. I am told I have grown overly sensitive. Memory and language ebb and flow. I am shadow mantled in dust. Worst of all, the blow to my head knocked the dreams right out of it.

Sunday, September 09, 2007

Baby I'm Amazed

I Thought She'd Be Amazing


I thought she'd be amazing and she was.

A lingering sense of unreality clung to our initial moments together, probably because I had doted over pictures of her and flirted with the idea of meeting her a thousand times before. Meeting her scared me so that I determined to enter fearlessly. That fear factor may have, in all likelihood, been part of the attraction.

Sitting in front of her then, face to face, held a thousand trembling pleasures. This went far beyond the safe distance provided by a photograph. Desire, uncertainty, even a sense of dangerous risk. Awe. Competing flourishes of sense and senselessness. All these skirted the short breaths of yearning, yearning that found its source in her. And she wasn't even trying.

There was "presence" in the room with us. Her smile disarmed me. Her genuineness engaged me. Intelligence danced in her eyes and made me, made me want to give to her nearly anything she asked. She thought "nearly" a healthy witholding. As a result I wanted to give her even more.

I don't want to overdo it. But I will say I let my guard down. I emptied myself of as much resistance as I could and handed it to her. She was stern, but nurturing too. I wanted to be what she told me to be. "Strip," she said, and I did, willingly, gratefully, devotedly.

I thought she'd be amazing and she was.

Saturday, September 08, 2007

You Know and I Know

Unspeakable

No one says what’s real.

When they do,
we run for cover.

No one says what’s true.

Double-truth-lies:
These are told
exclusively by lovers.

Fact: there ain’t enough self’s in the world
willing to forego the you’s,
and all the you’s fall in line, loveless casualties
that never win self's with which a life gets lived.
—No one suspects anything is wrong
with lithium and tears.