Songs

 

Part I

 

"I wanted you to know...I love the way you laugh...I want to hold you high and steal your pain...away...

I keep your photograph...and I know it serves me well... I want to hold you high and steal your pain...

Cause I'm broken...when I lonesome...and I don't feel right when you're gone away

You've gone away...you don't feel me...here...anymore"

-Seether, "Broken"

 

 

 

Sometimes I believe the thing I build for you is beautiful....exactly as I wanted your brain to absorb it and see it...like a new sense discovered or a new taste on the palette.  I want to sting memory-strings and pluck parts of you from comfortable places and throw them into fires to make a discomfort but then again create an almost exhilarating new nerve ending.  I want disruption.  I want that.  But in many ways, I do want to steal your pain away.  But when you're gone, you are away and don't feel me anymore.


Part II:  I found a picture of you, oh oh oh oh
Those were the happiest days of my life
Like a break in the battle was your part, oh oh oh oh
In the wretched life of a lonely heart--The Pretenders, "Back on the Chain Gang"

I think the snapshots of my time with you were delicate and glassy...like dream fragments.  Like magnetic pulses felt if a surgeon tips a needle into a brain part and behind your eyes a photo emerges.  My memory is a quilt of images...woven together over time...older ones frayed at the edges, recent ones clear and distinct.  Not sure what it means other than if a song plays I hear and feel it like water on my skin...sometimes warming, sometimes cooling depending on the mood.  It's amazing the effect of lyrics.  Amazing.

Part III: 

Cold and frosty morning - there's not a lot to say
About the things caught in my mind.
And as the day was dawning my plane flew away
With all the things caught in my mind.

And I wanna be there when you're coming down
And I wanna be there when you hit the ground

So don't go away,
Say what you say
Say that you'll stay
Forever and a day
In the time of my life
'cause I need more time,
Yes, I need more time
Just to make things right---Oasis, "Don't Go Away"

 

I travel too much...I travel too far.  In the distance and junctions I am alone with just strangers and I fight the urge to cave to just randomness and fleeting bits of the moments I am in.  Rather, I would much prefer to dwell on the past pieces and cling to a pier as the tide pulls out...and have it stay as all chaos and low waves crash against me yet stay holding onto something that doesn't change.  I think the issue is I'm the one departing, yet I'm the one asking you to stay.

 

Part IV:  I tried to go on like I never knew you
I'm awake but my world is half asleep
I pray for this heart to be unbroken
But without you, all I'm going to be is incomplete--Backstreet Boys, "Incomplete"

 

This one is embarrassingly cliché.  Not going to say anything more on this one.

 

Part V:  Oh simple thing, where have you gone?
I'm getting old and I need something to rely on
So tell me when you're gonna let me in
I'm getting tired and I need somewhere to begin--Keane, "Somewhere only we Know"

 

It is simple...it started simply.  A glance, a pass-by...a call, a text.  A minute, a moment. Fresh, crisp.  New. Strange.  Soon ebbing into familiarity and comfort.  But still simple.  And like the most powerful cleansing and purifying feeling in the world.  You breathed into me, your sweet moist kiss and your scent of you...an essence that my body and my brain absorbed in electrical pandemonium and exhilaration.  It was simple...but the impact on me was terrifyingly beautiful.

 

Part VI:  You let me into a conversation
A conversation only we could make
You're breaking into my imagination
Whatever's in there is yours to take--U2 "Song for Someone"

 

I allow you the penetration into me with complete disregard...a wanton violent act that you can create and indulge...I want you to carve and cut, dissect and cleave, pull and tear and have freedom to explode into my vast spaces that you own...you own parts of me, wholesale caverns of my insides...free to scream, echo and light fires and burn pages.  It is all for you to take.  Pile up, consume.  It is not on a platter but in my own willing hands, to scoop up and hold to you and offer up.  It is servitude.

 

 

Part VII:  I have died everyday, waiting for you
Darling, don't be afraid, I have loved you for a thousand years
I'll love you for a thousand more--Christina Perri, "A Thousand Years"

I just love this fucking song.  I love her tattoos.  I love these simple lyrics and spoken almost way of singing.  It's a teenagers song.  It's a song you'd never play at the gym. It's a song that when I hear it on the radio I swing fucking pendulum swings of emotions into a piñata of you.  I just single thread my brain and it is filled with just a soundtrack of us and it is over-wrought and over-born.  But I like soundtracks to movies and if we made a movie of us this would play in the credits in the end.  Listen to the way the song ends...the violins and piano...and the way it closes...with the quieting.

Part VIII:  Midnight,
You come and pick me up, no headlights
A long drive,
Could end in burning flames or paradise
Fade into view, oh, it's been a while since I have even heard from you (heard from you)--T. Swift, "Style"

Dear Lord...a Taylor song.  But I'll be goddamned if this doesn't remind me of us.  Not the characters per se as my hair isn't as described but the fact that the time erases quickly and wild eyes consume our interactions despite the long blocks of hours that separate our interactions.  It's just a nice way to reminisce without worrying about what happens when months spool and then there we are.

So these are the snippets...bits and pieces of my playlist...not a Spotify thing because apparently that's too revealing but in the grand scheme of musical influences I find these a bit enchanting and even more so appealing. 

I just thought that maybe you should know.



Pillow Distance

 

 

 

 

 

It never waned.

True, there were evenings that it was a lead weight.  It was a blackened scrap of paper hissing in a rain after being caught by flame.  A remainder.  A left-behind.

It was a pilot-flame in a darkened garage…if you knelt down in the darkness you could see its blue tiny fire….remaining.  It was persistent. 

He tried to tell her that…sat awkwardly on the porch with the bent nails and wood splintering off into him if you rubbed against the grain.

I’m not so sure why I think of you like a season…like a fifth season…definitely not winter.  Pretty close to a fall…maybe an end of summer.

She stayed in her side of the place, a glass of bourbon melting ice into liquid in her hand.

That’s called an Indian Summer then…when you have a nice day in the usually cool fall.

He glanced at her a bit.  You’re more than a day…it’s like recurring.  Not random. 

Well there are only four recognized seasons so I think you’re out of luck.

At times he chafed at her distance…he knew

(thought he knew)

How she felt…she had even told him for fuck’s sake…

But the actions were imprisoned.  She held storms inside of her that rivaled those on Mars, great tempests seen from space…but from her slight distance he couldn’t see a hint of them.  She wore a placid face…that rarely fell.

Did you know Phobos is failing?

He asked the question completely out of the blue so he could re-boot her line of thinking…the negative angles of his seasonal discussion.  He was frustrated, but couldn’t just say that.  She was too much in a struggle and she wasn’t offering up much.  In these moments she could be almost unkind…it was in the pillow-distance moments that she revealed. 

There were no pillows on the porch.  He had already checked.

What?

Phobos.  The moon of mars, well at least the largest and innermost one.

She didn’t say anything…he lifted himself up off the step and took the two down to stand on the lawn.  He looked up but saw nothing…some light fog had peeled in as it did this time of year.  No sound of the ferries…they had stopped their runs hours ago.

He may have been on another planet…in another season.

So yeah, he began…gravity is slowing pulling it apart…this object that for years has been circling Mars, drawn by its pull, constant in its returning, constant in its distance….if you were standing on the surface you could see it rise and fall each day.

He walked a bit further out on the lawn but the sky remained blank…unblinking.  He saw her shape on the porch.  It remained blank…he couldn’t see if she was blinking or not.

Anyways, the way Phobos is made up with materials is that an interior like this can distort easily because it has very little strength and forces the outer layer to readjust.  Researchers think the outer layer of Phobos behaves elastically and builds stress, but it’s weak enough that these stresses can cause it to fail.

Why are you telling me this?

He started walking back towards her.  As he got closer the porch lighting draped itself around her, softening her shape.  But he could sense the burn of the stare and he suddenly knew how Phobos felt.

His steps brought him back into her orbit.  He could feel her pull against him, the usual sensation whenever he happened to drift into her atmosphere.  The familiar.  The tug of energy.  If he were to turn and walk away he would feel it on his back for awhile before fading. 

He hated that fade.

I guess I’m telling you that sometimes I need something beyond orbiting you.  Something beyond a distance.

I know…it came out as a whisper.  I’m sorry.

I don’t want sorry.  I just want maybe tiny things.  Whatever you can give…but maybe…just more frequent?

In the yellow light of the porch her head shook slightly…once again the storms she kept away from him were in full strength…but even in this close distance he couldn’t see them clearly.  He just knew they were there.

I can try…but you know it is hard.

I know…but something bottled up eventually dies.  It eventually grows stale.  And that frightens me.

She looked up at him when he said that.  How much time does Phobos have before it fails?

He smiled.  Well, they think 30-50 million years.

She reached out to him and pulled her down to him, holding his head and kissing him.

I’ve still got some time then she said.

Cleave

It's normally around this time, this waste-land hour when the world is semi asleep and the cities are darkened between us.

It narrows to mere rudimentary items...breathing, heart beat. Simple stuff.

The transition from winter to spring can be desolate. Cold, barren trees unbecoming and bereft of even the tiniest of leaves. Brake lights and knobs turned to heat and car rides in quiet silence. Golds of a morning, pinks of a sunset. These all remain the same.

An afternoon drags its heels in and lumbers toward an end of day.

I feel you.

I feel the way nylon envelopes me and contorts against me. That is you. It is the clench of you against me that leaves grooves and indents.

I settle in and the feeling vanishes. As you are not really here at all. I succumb and start to haltingly fall asleep.

When a sudden fractional bit of you cleaves into me and I awake and realize against the backdrop of night that I am exceedingly alone.

Small Pours

No image for this one.
Just some words barely scripted but still bee-sting stung from a clench or a craving.

Just pouring out the remnants of your leftover drink into mine.
Just so I can have a bit of something that glanced your lips be poured into something that I can now consume.

It's a small pour. A measure. A treasure.

But it's now gone and apparently so are you. Except for that small pour that is now resident inside of me.

The Rarities

In the departure all that remained were the remnants of the drinks they had shared, slightly broken circles of watermarks left on the table, his glass still slightly filled and slowly melting like the rest of the evening.

He listened to the high piano keys of ice against itself in his glass and wondered if he should pour himself some more.  The lights were just coming on in the city. 

It was a vacancy...a void.  For every amount of times she had gone away he remembered them like they were natural...they were fluid, expected.  Just another sweep of hour hands and a moment when she had to go.  But in the meantime he had sweetened the minutes together.

But this time was different.  It was rarer.  Rather, the plucked away feeling was stronger...interrupted.  She had slipped from his hands like in a torrent...and her absence was a toxin.  It was cloying.

It was probably because the room had matched the perfect hue of her evening eyes and now there was just a broad darkening.

A starless event.  A twilight with a blankness.

He was struck by the rarity of that impact...the ache that had just been caught as a craving.  He supposed it shouldn't have surprised him but it did. 

The moments had been brief, just a bit longer than a dance, but the slight angles and familiar scents were reminders...they were markers.  Not muscle memory but rather perhaps antiques...that were finally dusted off, wires still intact and suddenly plugged into an outlet and sprung into white bright light.

It was a rarity.  It was exceedingly different.
But there was enough of the familiar for him to remember some times when she returned...and he clung to that with white bright hopes in an evening dimming and dying altogether.

sikuaq

sikuaq:  from the Inuit meaning "small ice", referring to the the first layer of thin ice that forms on puddles.


I feel like when I talk to you that it's like yesterday when we last spoke...like we can pick up a conversation even if we haven't spoken in weeks...she started...

or months he added

or months she slightly murmured, her voice trailing as she pulled the glass to her lips, the ice and the bourbon making a slight disturbance against the crystal.

The evening was in the first full days after Daylight Savings kicked in, adding its brief jet-lag feel to each day, but allowing for the sky to grow lighter despite it growing later.

Well anyways...I do enjoy just the lightness of our conversations...they're easy to have.

He walked away from the edge of the pick up, he had turned it around on the hill so the bed was towards the west...he pulled the latch down and the drinks were poured on the tailgate.  A bottle of Woodford and a bag of 7-11 ice...a small bag.  But he had brought two heavy crystal glasses, mottled almost a clear but slightly blue.  She had asked for more ice than bourbon.  He had a small cube that was losing its battle against the liquor.

I think it's because we are just staying on the polite skim he said.  He was away from her, so he had to turn his head to throw his comment.  She was leaning against the truck.  Behind her was darkening...but she still was a bit of a glow.

Polite skin?  What is that?

Not skin...skim.  A thin sheet of ice.  

Ice?

Ice.  The build up of ice between us.

He finished his current drink...drinks are either current, past or future.  His was gone now so he ambled back towards her...he put a few cubes out of the plastic bag into his glass and poured enough to cover all of them.

What ice between us?  It was like hearing her whisper.  It was a question, for sure.  But she knew the answer.  She had been a part in its creation.

He looked at her, over the rim of his glass.  He walked closer to her and gently clanked his crystal against hers.  The reason the conversations are so easy is because we are not discussing the hard.

She looked at him, then down.

Why do they have to be hard...she said it in the declarative...not a question, a statement.

They don't have to be...actually they could be fairly opposite.  But...well...he walked around, his arm extended as his glass waved across the horizon...perhaps the ice that has grown between us isn't quite thick enough to shield it from breaking easily.

She took her own glass and finished it.  She set it down on the tailgate where it made a slight tinkle with the ice still inside.

I am not a fan of those things, those comparisons.  

You never were.

I don't like the ice reference.

You never should.

So what should I do?

He walked back over towards her...setting his glass down he put a few cubes in her glass and held up the bottle with a "should I" look as he held it over hers.  She nodded slightly.  He poured a small amount...more ice, less bourbon.

Behind her the west was quieting...the tiniest hints of daylight were being slowly packed into a growing big box of blacks and grays.  Her hair, freshly cut into a new slight style was skirting around her.  But her eyes...his most favorite,..were smoldering.  She, unlike the Inuits and their million words weren't even comparable as she could say an infinite amount of things to him with just a brief glance.

He just rarely saw it anymore.  And it was a slight pierce when it alighted on him.

Forget what I said he started.

About?

About the ice.  It's not real.

Yes.  You said it.

True.  I cannot take it back.  But he held the glass up.  There was a ton of ice in here and it's gone.  

So I'm now a liquor?

He regarded her for a second.  He took a sip and swallowed and closed the slight distance between them.  He pushed onto her slightly and put his lips on her mouth.  He lingered for just a moment, just barely until he felt her relax and draw hers together and kissed him back.

No he said.  But I will always find you intoxicating.  And you can erase every bit of time, every skim of snow and ice with just allowing me to be able to do that so I can never let such things get into the way again.

I cannot help it.  

I know.  You'll just have to let me find you when the cold sets in.

It was almost shadow dark at that point, and he pulled her towards him, a move she remembered and gathered into him, her one arm around him, both of his around her waist.  He whispered about loving her new hair cut, about dreaming of her in evenings and she smiled slightly as she watched the moon come up behind them and she wondered if there was a time when the daylight literally stood still.  She wondered as it collapsed around them.

The Scrape of Airports

The names of cities remind me of places that I have seen and places I have yet to see. 

I look for the one that I'm currently in...and it feels like an ache.

It isn't a distance or a latitude.  It's not a time zone.  I think sadness is measured in depths, like how we measure the ocean in atmospheres.  It is a plunging weighted feeling that seems like the lure of gravity and it just gets tiring.

It's not missing something, or misplacing something.  It is something sawed off...tin-snip cutting into skin and bone and roughly removing and placing in a metal tray. 

Like snapping a green twig in half, but it doesn't snap in two...you're left with sinew and stringy matter and you twist and you pull until it breaks apart....it is a reluctance. 

It is not a departure, nor an arrival.  It is a removal.  It is a deletion. 

A name in pencil vigorously rubbed with an eraser, leaving bits of paper and dust in its wake.

I sit in the airport and feel like I am not really coming back.  I'm not returning to a time.  I am away. 

The airport scrapes against me as I watch the trudge of others perhaps returning to a place they cannot wait to return to. 

I await the cold emptiness of a place not even still lukewarm from your shadow.  A place you might have been...a place we were once.

I board the plane knowing that for a brief time I am no longer on the earth and therefore I am as far away from you as I can be.

And when I land I will be where you are and I will return to the place that I still recall with pain.