Photographer’s girlfriend leads him around the world.
oh my fucking god
holy fuck
The Waltz
Rush, getting home
Grinding gears
Grinding teeth
All this traffic
This winter heat
Your words repeating
Circling my head
Circling my faults
All these half-truths
Our tender waltz
Asymmetrical breaks
Delicately, his calloused fingers traced slow, haphazard patterns across my collarbones,
Lamenting how his have never looked the same since his fall,
And true, how when you even scarcely glanced at his bare chest, you saw that
The bones on the left never mended and the scars from his surgery barely faded.
His was broken and mine was whole.
My skin, he called soft and freckled and fair,
While his was tanned and rough and scarred,
But the similarity was in our untamable souls and the untamable curls of our hair,
Still, I loved the contrast, the contests, the context, the connection,
We were two pieces, together a whole.
Last night, I lay tracing haphazard patterns across my chest with calloused fingertips,
My skin felt just as soft, though perhaps wan from winter’s unceasing embrace,
I noted that my collarbones, symmetrical, still held their shape,
But other parts of me have never been the same since my fall,
My heart was broken, still beating, a hole.
Lucky Strike
We stumbled outside, tiptoeing through gleaming green glass Heineken shards that lay sinisterly strewn across our path, thirsting for a taste of blood from my sandaled feet. The whole city was alight - teeming with music, romance and sin. I slipped my jacket on, though the night air was a warm caress on my bare shoulders and back…
I don’t remember if the stars were out. The city shone bright enough to eclipse lust, mistakes, bruises and the coke deals being settled in the back of the grungy funk bar where I left one of my best friends after a triple vodka-water or two too many. I guess… it made little difference if the stars were out.
His pace slowed and he lit up another Lucky Strike, then encircled my shoulders with a lanky arm and with an exhale, encircled me yet again with a cloud of purple-grey fog.
A skinny Australian James Dean… only softer… sweeter.
“So, this is Vienna?” I mused. I was so overcome by its charm, by his charm, that I was shrouded from reality. I do believe that I walked into a dream, or at least a stupor, and my actions were free from consequences until I woke up on a train out of there with the wrong ticket in my pocket and a euro deficit rivaling that of the equally doomed institution issuing that currency.
We arrived at the hostel… and part of me wishes that the story ended there… or that the vodka would let me forget. He snored all night, but woke up chipper, his eyes mischievously green with a look telling me that I had ensnared him. He was addicted. My eyes will do that. At least… so I’m told. All was hazy and comfortable until he woke up to his most serious addiction. Just cussing.
Sundays are not a good day to wake up to an empty pack of cigarettes. At least… not a Sunday in Vienna.
After all, Sunday is the holy day. Repent. Repent. Repent. Rinse & Repeat.
Digression in Prose
There really are only 3 certainties in life. These are as follows: there was a day upon which you were conceived as a result of your parents fucking… whether that man and woman are the people you call mom and dad is another story. If we get nitty-gritty, that may not even be certain because there are so many advances in technology nowadays. Perhaps your conception brought no pleasure to either party, but I digress. It occurred. Second, there was a day upon which you were born. And finally, there will be a day upon which you die.
Everything that happens in between or afterwards cannot be a given. Freewill may or may not be a fallacy. I guess it is comforting to think that you can exert any sort of control over any of this thing you call your life. In the end, we may just be all living to die.
I’m dying. Right now. When everything is over, I’ll remember how I sat – spending my youth typing, reading, absorbing plentitudes of information and subsequently regurgitating it onto paper to eventually receive another piece of paper that says that I’m worth something.
Or maybe I won’t remember. Maybe the essence of me, that identity I painstakingly forged throughout the years, may decay and decompose and eventually turn to dust with my rotting corpse at the end of this lifetime. Maybe others will remember, until my memory rots with them in their graves. Unless I manage to do something exceptional, in which case my legend will be defiled and twisted to my benefit or detriment. It’s really hard to say. I guess it doesn’t matter.
One paradox of humanity is that we spend our lifetimes trying to understand what is beyond our grasp while that which is within our grasp slips away.
Happiness? Love? Dancing underneath the moon on starlit beaches. Drinking red wine to the sweet tunes of romance, folly and revolutionary ideals. Allowing that contralto voice to resonate through your being filling your world with song. Freedom? No, we are not free… A feeling of belonging maybe?
It seems that those who reflect less find those things. If only I could go back to when I was a child – the sweet fond ignorance and patience of childhood that I left behind when I had forsaken my beloved storybooks and picked up a textbook for the first time. Its weight crushed my heart, my imagination like an anvil. Learning became my vocation, my one true love, my only talent.
Want to know what I learned? The only way to be happy is to buy into this system. Accept a paycheck for your labour or thoughts or mind and exchange this for goods and services. Of course, do not forget to invest. Bonds, stocks, tax-free savings accounts – I hear real estate is a reasonably safe venture, less volatile than the financial markets. RRSPs and the like for when you reach retirement age. (It’s important to be prepared after all.) Find a lover that your family approves of and settle down the proper way. Produce. Lie. Steal legally. Bring honour. Make children… or adopt if it suits your fancy. But for God’s sake, don’t think so much.
Let’s not even get into the whole God thing.
What should we do if we cannot help but think? Is it a matter of a few doses of soma to calm the mind and induce contentment? Do we try to revolt? Try to change what is entrenched in our global system and die in the process, in the protection of some vaguely defined, hopeless ideal? It has already been established that we’re going to die anyways. But, you know, we could alternatively accept how powerless and vulnerable we really are and just drink and fuck and dance and sing without causing any trouble to anybody else. Or is that just what they want us to do?
Red Light
Heart flutters
Brakes squeal
Here I gasp
Behind the wheel
Floor the gas
Swerve right
I guess he must
Have missed the light
“Motivation”
#2 of this spoken word segment - slightly less of myself (and less profanity) in this one, but I started scratching this out because I needed something to get through final exams and the month long essay writing that will follow them.
Reply to comment
curtismutter replied to your audio post: First attempt at legitimate spoken word. The…
Hey, you’ve got guts, kid. All great pieces of emotion require guts, and this is great. You paint a vivid portrait of a bitter-sweet romance gone bitter, and tell the story in an articulate and interesting way. Kudos! P.S -Is that an echo I hear!?
Thanks Curt. I’m very new to this manifestation of the poetic art and feel like I have a ways to go yet. Appreciate the positive feedback :)
And yes… it is indeed. I think of you every time I attempt any effects on my vocals! Funny thing is that it is actually the default female vocal track setting on Garageband haha. I had an even more prominent echo before, which sounded cool, but made the words difficult to follow. Figured this was a happy medium. I knew you’d notice.
First attempt at legitimate spoken word. The singing parts are my vocal interpretation of Keb’ Mo’s Closer off of the album Keep it Simple. So maybe I don’t have permission to do that, but it seemed like the right thing to do.
Ode to Grief
I remember the rustle of your smile,
I can still hear the smoothness of your hair
As you laughed that generosity.
I feel your beauty that sang
I can still hum your SLR mask
Whose products wore your perspective.
I see your trembling mezzo-soprano
Your eyes still strolling through my atmosphere
As your footsteps along the sea close.
In all honesty, over time your memory fades.
My senses confounded by grief.
The memories fade.
The Grief is insatiable.
It strangles my psyche with spiraling thoughts of
How I could have
Helped you,
Stopped you,
Supported you,
Like you did for me.
Now all I can feel is your absence.
Because that’s all that’s left.
