She Asked For It....

June 24, 2014 4:58 pm

"Such radiance hath fashioned itself upon thine face,"

dreamt when waking to a sunrise nice, but paled. And paced.

You, the true silksoft bud grew and bloomed,

As my fingers and words pored, pulled, prodded truths assumed.

"Explore, young petals, explore wider--wider yet, good girl!"

With legs and grins spread darkly wide, exploring toes and tongues curled.

Makeup smeared, bruises endured, we chortled solemn and profound,

Young and tight and smart and naive and happy and naive and lost and found.

"Until when?!," I panic. Until your petalcaresses are out and down?

Until your mmm aroma wears into the sickly sweet scent of sex sweat now?

Until helloes are sighed, goodbyes are nodded, yeses and no's ignored?

Until our Brooklyn routine collects our settled dust, quickly tamed then and bored?

"To Virgins, to Make Much of Time," we'd read;

I did not want you to discover, horribly, (with caution, with care, with yield, with heed) the end.

My flatmate is a pyschopath

Tonight I heard repeated thuds, as of a head tapped in a doorway. Dunk! Dunk! Dunk! These sounds caused my door to open, even, and increased in volume. DUNK! DUNK! DUNK-DUNK! Not a head, in fact. Instead, it was my flatmate trying to close the door in the dark of our hallway, frustrated, saying "I can't get this damn door to close! I don't know what it is!" I turned on the light and immediately saw two problems. One, their was a chain on the door, preventing him from pulling back. Two, the dead bolt was jutting out. And now it was bent, and had busted the door frame. When he, too, acknowledged the problem, he said, "Wait--I've got an idea! Hammer..." His hammer was a micropenis. I said "Let me get my pliers, or a wrench: something to torque the bolt back instead of knocking it," but not before he smacked the bolt precariously towards him, chipping the paint off the door in the process. I took the hammer from him. With a look of manic concentration in his eyes, and his socked-and-sandaled foot stabilizing his Hulk grip of the door, I pulled the bolt back with a wrench. Clicked in. Clicked out. Door Shut and Locked. He extended his hand for a "good job!" handshake. I didn't want to touch him. I dangled my hand over his for a moment then pulled back gracefully. I hate drugs.

Our ceiling is leaking. What was once an ugly red waterstain channeling the lines of our ceiling's gridded makeup has since become a car door dangling off a cliff. With each film of precipitation on the roof--and a crackpot landlord--our hallway becomes increasingly dangerous. Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip. All its taken for several months to tear it down. He let it puddle and wrinkle our woodfloors. Piss off our downstairs neighbors (which, to be honest, I don't mind; they blast their bachata too loud and too often for me to give a fuck about them) and start a chain of misery headed south. I put a carpet down to absorb. Stupid, I know, but I didn't know what else to do while waiting for the landlord to fix it. Eventually I decided to put a bucket underneath this concentrated drip in our unlit hallway. He hasn't tripped over it yet, but he has pushed it out of the way to walk to the door and back. And not returned it. And let it puddle and wrinkle our woodfloors and piss off our downstairs neighbors who listen to Bachata too loud and too often for me to give a fuck about them.

EchoNYC.com Post on N.F. & Our Chance encounter at Bedford

At the corner of North 7th Street and Bedford Avenue, there is a glowing green globe under which  the L train arrives (wherein spectacular people-watching occurs of all these whose only commonality is knowledge that CBGB's once reigned supreme). And there:

a graveyard of sorts. You can tell by the rust, the inkblot grit, the beausage. Free elements fly and fall and soar and swirl while Free Agents abandon. Abandon. abandon. Where Fixies and Roadsters and Mountaineers and Hybrids and Customs and Frames Catatonic or Split were last chained--and have since retired into air and iron--into the great decay of an ephemeral Williamsburg.

It was next to this tangled pile of metallic bodies dying slowly on each other that

in a beat we saw one another then walked on.

And in that beat, I saw the suspicions she had of me, the distressing revelations, the aching confirmation conversations, and the penultimate decision. To leave me. A week earlier far and away.

Her eyes stared for the eons in a startled second. Her body came up and out of the fluorescent L exit and into the brisk crisp of February Brooklyn.

And in that beat, it were only her eyes turned toward me. Her body knew better, and continued to Bedford.

Though the dark and cool haunted my periphery, I could still make out why I adored her in the contours of her face, a doe. She liked to poke me awake, which I thought I hated. She laughed at everything I said yet nothing she said ever made me laugh, which I thought I hated. She insisted I try Vietnamese, which I thought I hated. She danced fine but never celebrated music, which I thought I hated. She was never sure of us and cried like clockwork late into fortnights over the static burbles of attempted language through a phone. Which I thought I hated.

And in that beat, her rigid lips stoic told me to enter the misery of true, deep remorse. And I knew I could not unravel the skyscraping wall I had sewn while asleep in my own flitty dreams.

Walking, as I was, in that beat, on Fish Beach. Then she waded into Bedford, and I waited for her to clear the horizon.

*Surprised, Confused, Part of me wanted to run up and hug you, a part of me wanted to hit you, just walk away,  felt like "finally" walked away, I said Hi, I was biking-helmet and blue rainjacket, light Barbour Coat, Heels,  I said, or mouthed, "Hi", she walked away from it,

Tea

I wasn't into it
until I started to
intuit its small tastes.

Originally disgusted,
until I discussed it
with my China girl,
who helped my palette
tumble, whet, blossom
to          a smooth curl.

Now I foresee four
seasons of tea: spiced,
iced, steaming aside rice.

Set Your Watches

-->

Set Your Watches

Inspired by Maira Kalman’s painting, “The Sun Will Explode.”

Set Your Watches.

Unless you are Jesus, your father makes love to your mother

So that his infinite spermatozoa penetrates her

                    finite ovum.

You are a zygote.

You are a fetus.

You are an infant             unborn.

She requestsDEMANDS pineapple AWHOLEPINEAPPLERINDLEAFANDALL IDON’TCAREIF IT IS 11PM TOHELLWITHYOURBOWLINGGAMERUSSELL!

PINEAPPLE!                                                                                                            NOW!

You are born one sticky greengold hour, hospital windows glaring “Glory Hallelujah” on a secular child.

Set Your Watches.

Your father and mother Kodachrome, Kodak, and Polaroid your

plush chubs; cartoon boom boone on pots, pans, boxes

you find more pleasurable than the toys once housed within. 

You play for hours in quiet steel dark.

You and your sibling get along well. ENOUGH! Well enough for

pillowforts, tears, giggles, backtickles, picturekisses, warnings

            and punches.

Your first death began your rites of passage

Your                                                 rites of spring ing            into A-Ha Youth.

He is a good boy.

He is a mutt whose make you cannot now quite recall. Lab? Terrier?

You weep in your father’s lap, holding as tears tear out. Finally:

almost a man.

Set Your Watches.

Your first kiss is a summertime monument of naïveté and hormones. She likes your Barney The Purple Dinosaur tshirt. Where he is eating children surrounding.

You ask politely. She nods. You taste

Lust, love, butterfly tummy flutters, and her Capri-Sun tongue discovered.

You say the words “I love you” in the dining hall after 2 days.

Your miscellaneous memory making moments memorialize the truth and beauty of your First You, the You you Now Know and call your Own.

“To Be Alive” and glowinthedarkstars pinned on your hoodie’s arm mean something to you.

You experience experiences stretched between stupid youth and graceful independence, riding your bike in the middle of midnight, middle of the street.

You sneak out over wet leaves like plopdown stars and nod a solace that you did You right.

Your first depression. Sadness. Blue. Heartache. Malaise. Ennui….

Whatever.

Whatever you call it, y-you do not care. The only peace you find is in playing one song you play one. two. three. four. five. six. seven. eight. nine. ten. eleven. twelve. thirteen. times in a row, then sleep.

                                                sleeep.

                                                                                    sleeeee.

Set Your Watches.

Still feeling 17, feeling print not script, feeling bumblebee dance and swerve, feeling alone and facing a wrong way, maybe; it may be that you are eventually, finally, unfortunately, gleefully                                                                                    an adult.

You are not yet ready to just call them once a week from a tattoo without tasting their cooking. Nor now yet ready to see friends rare, rarely, rarer.

See friends now not.

Friends now not see.

Now see friends not.

Not now see friends.

Never.

And you do not know any answers to every question

about legacy and taxes and selfishness and smiles and smiling and the death of you

and the death of Earth and the death of Sun and the death of the depth of your sadness, while you shuffle—off.

You instead take pieces of peace parsed by stars unseen and omnipresent illumine.

You know that you live each fivebillionth of each second with breath refreshing and

grins galoring before                        setting your watch.

Set Your Watches, mindful of the now no more time.

Set Your Watches.