And I Fell into Feelings of Despair

And I have no clue where the deluge of syrup possibly came from, and I have no idea what made the winds rage, and I could barely see ahead of myself or what was lurking in those black waters, and couldn't wrap my head around why I had put myself in the magnetic ocean of the violent storm, and a real sense of urgency took over me as I walked through the gates. In the mouth of a snake. Surfer under the waves. There's no meat on the bone when someone you know becomes a stranger, and you get the money shot like honey from a buttercup. Apricot in a moth-eaten garden. Page-turning books in my nervous hands when the intense winds of curiosity come howling in. Careworn in a summery land of definite hedonism. I have intent, when you were peer-pressured by friends, and you wanted to drink your green tea and read the Washington Post with a seaview, but things never turned out how they were planned, and they never do.

My life is an unbroken sequence of butterfly showers. Echoes of troubadours. Singing my songs about transient pleasure, I never learn. My laugh was missing in the husks on farms, and I have to get rid of this dead weight. Some things I can't explain. Some things never change. Flood basalt eruptions along rift zones. I am vertical in maritime towns, watching the stars glaring in colours, the trimmings hooded by the mountains of love veiled by the palm trees of the beach of love. The thought of tomorrow hangs in the tract in my head like an invitation, tempting me to make the jump. With each new blinding skyline of happiness on the mirrored horizon jaded horses gallop through mellow dreams, narrowly missing each other by fingertips, balancing on tightropes, over tree-sized fissures, riding off into pink sunsets.

Watersheds of countries bleed into seas, further into outer space like space probes designed to gather and soak in information, waiting for peachy clouds to break from the sky through the sun like candle flames or autumn foliage, waiting for the train to come, going again, and when the pleasure comes to an end there's a nightmare in the stomach, a Paleo Tethys pulling at icedrifts and grassmilk. When all I want is some sense, and all I feel is torment, and I'm trying my damn hardest to be a better person, glued in position, forwards with the compass, glades drift and everything falls out of place. It happens when I am mending and wearing the moon as a glow, when I've put my money where my mouth is, and I'm a cog in the machine. Broken. Broken with every selfish decision I've made, at gas stations, on escapades. Carrying a gun. Got apple stitches in my brain. I ain't jerking your chain. I can't assure you the sky is purple when it's white. I see the ever slowing traffic, remember memories of loved ones lost to time, stuck in those golden moments we can't get back. At the red lights we have to stop for, the sombre realisation of getting old grips at my throat, and I'm looped tape. There's no light at the end of the tunnel, it's a bubblegum charade. Closing in. The last hours of my breath grow like fruit and die like flowers, words on a page. The longest year has passed, what's next?

Lies, lies, lies. A chequered history glitters in teary eyes. My hands are sore from writing and droning on. The water is distilled in my bones. Suicide in an empty home. In a room of paintings of the past, on a rooftop in Brooklyn, when those hijacked planes went crashing into those Twin Towers, and they fell to their young demise like ferrite. Glitches in an aerial. In loving arms. The sunshine is in the water children, in the flash of the camera. Back where I used to live, the beauty has faded and left a bitter taste. I wept by the trees and the browns and the greenery. Where everything is rich I am free to live, free to reminisce and punch holes into fly creeks and hillsides.

Thinking quickly on my feet. Brain freeze. I am eating my words. Feels like I've been punched in the gut every time I wake up with my iron lungs and stubborn point of view. Wandering away from the point of focus. Pig of the sadist. Six on the Kinsey scale. At the parapet of the Overtoun Bridge, I've packed my things into a heavy suitcase. Distracted by dying. Always guessing and never knowing. The truth emerges fractious like lust. Blood worms or cries in an artery. In the gutter, there at the precinct, on the flipside of things. There were fruits all of a sudden, boys all of a sudden. With faces in poems by Orhan Veli. Faces in poems. Cycles of regrets. I have far too much hubris to quit. Can't cut through the cartilage, when I've got a brush in my hand. The tighter the feeling gets. The tighter the feeling gets.

My mother gave birth to a poet. A Venus flytap. Who am I? Am I the boy in the mirror staring back with nothing to give? Useless? Twenty two years into life. Reflecting in the river. Between my index finger and my thumb the squat pen rests and I'll dig with it. Gallivanting on an epic voyage. I don't want it to end. Thinking it never happens. No matter how many times I tell myself it will I'm a fool for thinking I'll succeed when I'm drowning in a pool of dreams.

Struggling to breathe. Gasping for air. News anchor at the teleprompter. I have no patience for the rolling stone. Deep in flight like an albatross. I'm the ocean gathering the backwash. Clasping hydrogen in my palms. El Greco's advice. Poison seeps through me, through my veins, my bloodstream. It makes me irked, on the battlefront. Every time there's a dilemma I won't hasten the process. The sine qua non is a beating heart. Goods in the depot. Sage tree, rosewood, made of love. I zipped up my jacket. Watched the stars from the precipice, the snow falling. Without a shepherd, listening to the jukebox. Forgot I am bashful for a second, in that moment, I never wanted the song to end. 

Alone in a dark space deep in the A.M. with my Cuban rum and sugar. Thinking I'm going to come unstuck. Grinding molars. A year after the winter ailment, bone mending. Hitting metal bars with hammers. I know exactly how it feels when you tail off. Eleven hours have passed black waters when the moon shines. Hours into the graveyard shift you can hear a pin drop. A glimmer of hope. The breaking of a branch on the footpath, wistfully eased on down the bank.