The bright light came in through the dusty window, and splashed a vivid spotlight on the comfortable shade of yellow of your shirt, the cotton worn thin enough to show strain in the knap which mocked the plaid pattern. There are things which are inescapably you: pearl snap buttons, worn cotton plaids, and the sense of a library still having a card catalog.
The man who makes the cards buys them in bulk from a supply store. He feeds them into a typewriter and copies in careful hammers of keys the title, the catalog number, the author. He does this in the dark, with a single lamp above him, surrounded in stacks of files which hold the names and dates issued of every library card in New Yo
"Here," you say, your voice low and shy, and press into my hand a crumpling piece of ruled paper. You are everything which I never admitted to breaking my heart. You are the harshest and most visceral scar left on the world. You are all my secrets, rolled into your torso begging back the litheness of boyhood. You make me want to die.
I open it and find a telephone number written in your archaic hand. Above it is your name, in a flurry of script.
John
"I don't understand," I falter, and meet your eyes just as they're slipping away.
There's a column in the room we're in, which you lean against, over and over, in my memory. You lean on the column, a simple wood beam painted brown, and you make a fist, your thumb extended, and you raise your thumb to your mouth, crossing it backward to chew a cuticle on the outside. Your right hand, and you turn it to point to the right, to bite down on your own skin, and you look almost embarrassed, sun surrounding your head like a halo.
"Well, I want you to call me, I should think," you suppose at me, your expression alternating from unsure, to sure again, to naked, and unafraid.
You want me to call you, which I'll have to do from a payphone, where no one else would be able to hear me. You want me to call you, call you're home, and tell them I'm a friend from school, maybe. You want me to call, and stretch out this terrible secret we've fallen into ever since you played me that song in the woods. You want... me... to fucking... call you.
There are boys inside you I've never seen, but heard tell of, like an urban legend. Boys which might be without mercy, boys which might be full of contempt for those who are unkind, boys which might fill their shoes with blood on the way back from those same woods. One such boy peers from under your hair, toward me. He asks me what I really care what they think, anyway.
"I will," I promise, before my heart breaks, and you walk away. I can tell, distantly, that someone is angry with me. That I will be punished or judged or killed or excommunicated for what I've done with you. But I stay silent, and watch you walk away, out of the door and down a set of narrow stairs.
It's Halloween, I know somehow. And it would be Halloween that you left me, or Halloween when they took you away. What were you for Halloween, Valentine? It's Halloween again, and they've come back for us, Michael.
I have thoughts of never calling you, but instead stuffing the scrap of paper into my mouth, if only to taste how you sign your name.
Tuesday, March 28, 2017
Sunday, March 26, 2017
To Jim from Mar
Jim,
The Hitchhiker
At the first sign of your awakening, the words begin. They are short at first, and unfinished. Brute words that slap the ground like heavy pelting of rain. John opens his hooded eyes and yawns, his bony fists rubbing sleep away. We grunt good mornings with the words you offer us:
"Hi."
"Hey."
It's your dissatisfaction which has woken us, and the phone rings loud in his room. I hold the white receiver between us, and your voice makes it's long passage through.
You sound sleepy as we do, as if you've just woken up as well. I can hear you rub your own eyes. John's fingers travel my thighs as you fumble to tell us you've killed a man. Your tone is hesitant and shy, matter-of-fact to cover your sense of childlike wonder.
"Just come home, Jim," I purr into the receiver, and John's fingers become tense, as if he knows what will happen next, and he might.
American Prayer
Your voice as you come through the door is warmer, and lower. You've been thinking of us as you drove the rest of the way back to the house, and you've become discontent. Your frustration wears a glassy smile, burying yourself in our sheets, pulling your sunglasses off and letting them fall to the floor. Every thrust of your cock into my mouth or John's asks the same question. Do you know how things got this way?
The three of us are prone to self-indulgence which will lead to our self-destruction if not for you, the gentle drill sergeant of our religious awakening. You run your taut palms over John's stomach getting soft and fat, and you choke back tears which would tell us that you think we've gotten lost, within somewhere. We wandered the desert for 40 years until we found our way to Israel, a temple erected every time we came for each other.
O Doce Misterio de Maria
Inside each temple, I am made into the holy Marilyn, mother of all lost souls. Prayers exist for me in every language. Holy Mary, mother of god, darn the socks of all Lost Boys, peroxide your hair white to look like an angel, save our souls with your white skin, your blue eyes, let us die in your perfect cunt blooming like a new rose.
It's embarrassing, this thing I become, just as it's embarrassing, this thing you become. The Tempter, the bringer of knowledge. Adam told me once that Eve has three letters on purpose, the V in the center for the vagina I possess which he dug into me. Perhaps EVE is a trinity of actions, or things which create this catalyst of the garden which means we are doomed there, and you and John flank me on each side, the bringers of life through the pains of blood.
Without You
Just as you are a killer, and I am that which comes to life, maybe John is what makes those things into the flat nasal resonance of poetry. The long pacing footfalls which will mean that to be born, and to die, and to cum, would never be instantaneous, but rather the result of some process.
Eden is cast with long shadows, and the Boys stalk them in the gathering dark. They are dangerous animals, looking for something they can find in our skin, some secret of creation. They want love, and memories, and death, and delight. You words get long, and you roll them through the cavern of your mouth, touching your cock as if it was a knife you will use to kill the animals we will eat for our dinner. The night-birds sing. You killed a man in the desert. You forgot how we got here. You want to bring us back. We want to help. Your souls begins to pull words from us the length of your slow smile, words like "inconstancy" and "elocution." John gets hard, his fingernails disappearing past his swollen lips.
Night is falling, and we wait to be told who we are, for the thousandth time, or the millionth.
Bells for Her
On my knees in front of you, I swallow your cum in the dark of the apartment in the Bronx without power. It's freezing, and a spider crawls along the length of the bed beside you. Our eyes meet in the cold dark, and you look away. We know something no one else knows, about sorrow.
It's the same look you give me, surreptitious and under the light of a night like the one we make in any Garden of Delights. I think it must mean you know as much of being a girl as I know of being a boy. I think it must mean you know there is a violent world, and someday we will create one in which there is no such thing as the violation of another human. It says the same thing, every time.
They're calling us, Evie. They were born knowing our names.
Ohio
I watch close for the same look you might give John. If I can see it there, I might understand better what this is I think we are. Lions, maybe. Movie stars. The one you give him is sharper, and cuts through wind and rain. It looks from here like a dare to go the furthest, and be the sharpest instrument in the universe, holding the words in your mouth like broken glass and nails and razors. It's a look of many words, rolled into a single syllable; the scream of the universe itself. You might've bitten one another, in the dark, softly with your sharp teeth, between the panting breaths, of every living thing. You might have the secret between you about those who need a Madonna at all. What tragedy creates an orphan, or a soldier.
Cruelty. It might be that.
Stairway to Heaven
You roll toward the record player beside your bed, and you ask me, your voice worn, if I want to hear a song. John tosses his cigarette out the wing window of his truck, and adjusts the volume on the radio. He asks if I've heard this before. You emerge from the dark of a stage glittering with the bulbs of flash photography, and clutch the microphone in your hands with an elegant flourish. John plucks his guitar thoughtfully at the river, his eyes losing focus into the firelight.
Boys escape in their dreams to a place where there is fire and smoke, and conjure from smoke the idea of a girl who could love them all. In silence, they do this. In recitation of the qualities of their girls back home, they do this. They offer themselves in snorts of admissions about the length of a thigh or the pitch of a moan.
Boys... might all be begging to be loved. Considering themselves all magicians and charlatans and Romeos, they beg. I can hear them praying, when the animals at the river are quiet. They all... they all think... they all think I... they all think I could love them... they all think I could love them like... they all think I could love them like I love you.
As-Sama 2.5 Coran Surat Al-Baqara 285-286
And so, in a thousand songs and with a thousand prayers, they recite my name, and try to call me to the fire.
Hour for Magic
But they would need your words, spoken over your open hand, to feel the heart there, while the night falls.
Jackie's Strength
The greatest asset of being a Madonna is that I'm still a girl. That any prayer asked of me would be answered with the truth of what is really magic: the pains of labor, the careful ballroom dances where I trip on their shoes, the stubborn refusal to see reason, the blood and the sweat and the smell of my pussy. That I could be married, too, if given half a chance. That I'm not a dancer, or an actress, but someone you could touch, and I want to be touched.
When you are telling me what we are, inside, it's the same as asking me, again and again, if I'll be married to you. And I will.
Dream Brother
I used to be in love with you. I loved you in the incarnations I saw of others who might conceivably believe in things which I also believed in, but didn't think would ever be made true in another person. I can't explain...
I've been sitting here trying to explain how I knew you were real, and never felt the need to tell you. Jim, I knew you were my brother before I knew anything else. Maybe a lot of things to a lot of people; Clyde's adversary, Bonnie's lover, Adam's religion, but you were my brother.
There's a place we went to, together, when we were... not children... it was too late for us to be children... where there were no gods. Only you and I, and the parts of us which fit together, and made all Greek statuary, and the quiet and hallowed places inside churches. The secret of what god is, and immortality, and the meaning of a soul.
I want to walk up behind you in the bright wind of the desert and whisper to you what we know. I do what you do.
My Wild Love
I track down photos of Marilyn's hands, and Jim's. I can't trust images of her face, but I look for the wide lines in the pattern of her skin, at her wrists. I look for the pulling of the fragile dermis over her knuckles, and the width of her fingers, and her nails. I breathe easier when I see they are aging the same as mine, carefully.
They are feminine hands, gentle and the same as a young mother's. They are well-kempt. With some hesitation, I look for yours, surely the hands of the only holy man I know.
Your brow is what I see first, your level stare the same you fire over the bow of your ship at unwelcomed trespassers. Your nails are flat and short, your hands logical and ungraceful. I realize where my hands are tools, yours are weapons.
I find you poised before a microphone, your hand arranged in elegance where it is missing in all other places. Your index finger looks long and delicate. I see myself there, a place you've become me. I know you to be a priest, Dragon, and here I've caught you calling me a priestess.
We clap around the fire, and I laugh, and you stare.
Bachelorette
We dance, faster and faster, until we fall into the sand, hearts beating hard enough to
I make a loud noise in protest as you push your cock inside me, and there's no room left for
Your words become shorter and shorter, and I lace my fingers behind your neck, watching your long elaborations unroll and fall to the ground.
"There are long-exempt meanderings of all men, Evie, and they personify... the fucking... rolls... of the drums... of war..."
War is the shortest word you know, and I know that. The longest word you know is justified. I know that, also. You become my blood, running it through your safely pragmatic hands. We become something together. We create a storm.
My, My, Hey, Hey
It's this storm anyone has ever chased, to be in love with us.
Sometimes I want to ask Adam... what he thinks I am. But I'm afraid of the answer. Are you?
Hej, Me I'm Light
Whatever it is, is made of the light, and something that might be fire, but is closer to the blood that runs through that which is alive. It's warm and gold like a fading afternoon. It's terrifying and hard to contain. It's animal and you are most it when you are walking, and your head suddenly drops, and you cut your eyes to the side to see me coming toward you. You are most it when you squint at something you no longer understand. You are most it when you take your hands and place them, steady, on my chest and let something in that is the same as the sun with it's weight and burning solace. You are most it when tears breach your eyes and you drag hard and indignant on your cigarette.
I am most it when I forget to think about what I am.
Shelter from the Storm
It's from this storm that the Lost Boys can find shelter. It's easy, being a Madonna. You just...
Yeah, like that.
Civilian
It took John coming home for me to see any of it, and there's simply nothing I could do.
John came home, and sharply, I looked behind me to find the road empty and you had gone. I looked back, sharply, to show you the light I'd discovered. I looked back, sharply. I looked back. I looked...
Sharp. My eyes were sharp, they were your eyes. I saw I was no longer walking in the road behind you. The road is dirt, and the light is failing, and they are calling our name, the wolves are calling, and I look back sharp, and we're the same, which means we cast no shadow but the same shadow.
Forced together by John, looking together toward one light, listening to the sound of the wolves as the moon rose, I could do nothing... I could do nothing to stop this, and had to look back to tell you...
I'm missing. I've disappeared. Oh, God. Where did we go?
The Air That I Breathe
I could never Madonna you, because I can't give you anything of myself. I wanted to, I think, but I can't because you have it all, already. Any way I might've gotten away with slight or white lies to anyone else, I couldn't with you. And I can't give you any of myself, because we're the same person, and while I knew you existed, I never tried to teach myself how to love you or even me, for that matter. Fantastically unprepared, what I found was that I could make anyone into a family, provided that I was not a part of it in the end. Being Madonna means always being apart in some way, and I couldn't bring you to be a Lost Boy with me because you kept arriving in the same place as me.
I couldn't bring you anywhere you hadn't been, or give you something you didn't have, or show you things which were hidden from you, except that you were no longer alone, as a species, but who the fuck wants that, really?
Looking in a mirror is hard for me, to see that all my worst parts are really there. But it's harder still to see all the best ones are really there, too. On the offhand chance you felt like me, your whole life, I need to tell you something.
My name is Marilyn. Jim Morrison is my brother, and he lives inside you. We're strange beings made of light and words which become the incantations of musicians. Everyone wants to be us, or fuck us, or kill us, if only to possess that for an instant. But they can't, because we're free.
Aurora Gone
This has been my favorite song for almost 4 months, and to me it's about how we're the same inside, all the way inside to a place no one else has ever seen or touched. It's DNA is the same as When the Music's Over, and it means that we live together in a place where words run out.
Love always,
Marilyn
The Hitchhiker
At the first sign of your awakening, the words begin. They are short at first, and unfinished. Brute words that slap the ground like heavy pelting of rain. John opens his hooded eyes and yawns, his bony fists rubbing sleep away. We grunt good mornings with the words you offer us:
"Hi."
"Hey."
It's your dissatisfaction which has woken us, and the phone rings loud in his room. I hold the white receiver between us, and your voice makes it's long passage through.
You sound sleepy as we do, as if you've just woken up as well. I can hear you rub your own eyes. John's fingers travel my thighs as you fumble to tell us you've killed a man. Your tone is hesitant and shy, matter-of-fact to cover your sense of childlike wonder.
"Just come home, Jim," I purr into the receiver, and John's fingers become tense, as if he knows what will happen next, and he might.
American Prayer
Your voice as you come through the door is warmer, and lower. You've been thinking of us as you drove the rest of the way back to the house, and you've become discontent. Your frustration wears a glassy smile, burying yourself in our sheets, pulling your sunglasses off and letting them fall to the floor. Every thrust of your cock into my mouth or John's asks the same question. Do you know how things got this way?
The three of us are prone to self-indulgence which will lead to our self-destruction if not for you, the gentle drill sergeant of our religious awakening. You run your taut palms over John's stomach getting soft and fat, and you choke back tears which would tell us that you think we've gotten lost, within somewhere. We wandered the desert for 40 years until we found our way to Israel, a temple erected every time we came for each other.
O Doce Misterio de Maria
Inside each temple, I am made into the holy Marilyn, mother of all lost souls. Prayers exist for me in every language. Holy Mary, mother of god, darn the socks of all Lost Boys, peroxide your hair white to look like an angel, save our souls with your white skin, your blue eyes, let us die in your perfect cunt blooming like a new rose.
It's embarrassing, this thing I become, just as it's embarrassing, this thing you become. The Tempter, the bringer of knowledge. Adam told me once that Eve has three letters on purpose, the V in the center for the vagina I possess which he dug into me. Perhaps EVE is a trinity of actions, or things which create this catalyst of the garden which means we are doomed there, and you and John flank me on each side, the bringers of life through the pains of blood.
Without You
Just as you are a killer, and I am that which comes to life, maybe John is what makes those things into the flat nasal resonance of poetry. The long pacing footfalls which will mean that to be born, and to die, and to cum, would never be instantaneous, but rather the result of some process.
Eden is cast with long shadows, and the Boys stalk them in the gathering dark. They are dangerous animals, looking for something they can find in our skin, some secret of creation. They want love, and memories, and death, and delight. You words get long, and you roll them through the cavern of your mouth, touching your cock as if it was a knife you will use to kill the animals we will eat for our dinner. The night-birds sing. You killed a man in the desert. You forgot how we got here. You want to bring us back. We want to help. Your souls begins to pull words from us the length of your slow smile, words like "inconstancy" and "elocution." John gets hard, his fingernails disappearing past his swollen lips.
Night is falling, and we wait to be told who we are, for the thousandth time, or the millionth.
Bells for Her
On my knees in front of you, I swallow your cum in the dark of the apartment in the Bronx without power. It's freezing, and a spider crawls along the length of the bed beside you. Our eyes meet in the cold dark, and you look away. We know something no one else knows, about sorrow.
It's the same look you give me, surreptitious and under the light of a night like the one we make in any Garden of Delights. I think it must mean you know as much of being a girl as I know of being a boy. I think it must mean you know there is a violent world, and someday we will create one in which there is no such thing as the violation of another human. It says the same thing, every time.
They're calling us, Evie. They were born knowing our names.
Ohio
I watch close for the same look you might give John. If I can see it there, I might understand better what this is I think we are. Lions, maybe. Movie stars. The one you give him is sharper, and cuts through wind and rain. It looks from here like a dare to go the furthest, and be the sharpest instrument in the universe, holding the words in your mouth like broken glass and nails and razors. It's a look of many words, rolled into a single syllable; the scream of the universe itself. You might've bitten one another, in the dark, softly with your sharp teeth, between the panting breaths, of every living thing. You might have the secret between you about those who need a Madonna at all. What tragedy creates an orphan, or a soldier.
Cruelty. It might be that.
Stairway to Heaven
You roll toward the record player beside your bed, and you ask me, your voice worn, if I want to hear a song. John tosses his cigarette out the wing window of his truck, and adjusts the volume on the radio. He asks if I've heard this before. You emerge from the dark of a stage glittering with the bulbs of flash photography, and clutch the microphone in your hands with an elegant flourish. John plucks his guitar thoughtfully at the river, his eyes losing focus into the firelight.
Boys escape in their dreams to a place where there is fire and smoke, and conjure from smoke the idea of a girl who could love them all. In silence, they do this. In recitation of the qualities of their girls back home, they do this. They offer themselves in snorts of admissions about the length of a thigh or the pitch of a moan.
Boys... might all be begging to be loved. Considering themselves all magicians and charlatans and Romeos, they beg. I can hear them praying, when the animals at the river are quiet. They all... they all think... they all think I... they all think I could love them... they all think I could love them like... they all think I could love them like I love you.
As-Sama 2.5 Coran Surat Al-Baqara 285-286
And so, in a thousand songs and with a thousand prayers, they recite my name, and try to call me to the fire.
Hour for Magic
But they would need your words, spoken over your open hand, to feel the heart there, while the night falls.
Jackie's Strength
The greatest asset of being a Madonna is that I'm still a girl. That any prayer asked of me would be answered with the truth of what is really magic: the pains of labor, the careful ballroom dances where I trip on their shoes, the stubborn refusal to see reason, the blood and the sweat and the smell of my pussy. That I could be married, too, if given half a chance. That I'm not a dancer, or an actress, but someone you could touch, and I want to be touched.
When you are telling me what we are, inside, it's the same as asking me, again and again, if I'll be married to you. And I will.
Dream Brother
I used to be in love with you. I loved you in the incarnations I saw of others who might conceivably believe in things which I also believed in, but didn't think would ever be made true in another person. I can't explain...
I've been sitting here trying to explain how I knew you were real, and never felt the need to tell you. Jim, I knew you were my brother before I knew anything else. Maybe a lot of things to a lot of people; Clyde's adversary, Bonnie's lover, Adam's religion, but you were my brother.
There's a place we went to, together, when we were... not children... it was too late for us to be children... where there were no gods. Only you and I, and the parts of us which fit together, and made all Greek statuary, and the quiet and hallowed places inside churches. The secret of what god is, and immortality, and the meaning of a soul.
I want to walk up behind you in the bright wind of the desert and whisper to you what we know. I do what you do.
My Wild Love
I track down photos of Marilyn's hands, and Jim's. I can't trust images of her face, but I look for the wide lines in the pattern of her skin, at her wrists. I look for the pulling of the fragile dermis over her knuckles, and the width of her fingers, and her nails. I breathe easier when I see they are aging the same as mine, carefully.
They are feminine hands, gentle and the same as a young mother's. They are well-kempt. With some hesitation, I look for yours, surely the hands of the only holy man I know.
Your brow is what I see first, your level stare the same you fire over the bow of your ship at unwelcomed trespassers. Your nails are flat and short, your hands logical and ungraceful. I realize where my hands are tools, yours are weapons.
I find you poised before a microphone, your hand arranged in elegance where it is missing in all other places. Your index finger looks long and delicate. I see myself there, a place you've become me. I know you to be a priest, Dragon, and here I've caught you calling me a priestess.
We clap around the fire, and I laugh, and you stare.
Bachelorette
We dance, faster and faster, until we fall into the sand, hearts beating hard enough to
I make a loud noise in protest as you push your cock inside me, and there's no room left for
Your words become shorter and shorter, and I lace my fingers behind your neck, watching your long elaborations unroll and fall to the ground.
"There are long-exempt meanderings of all men, Evie, and they personify... the fucking... rolls... of the drums... of war..."
War is the shortest word you know, and I know that. The longest word you know is justified. I know that, also. You become my blood, running it through your safely pragmatic hands. We become something together. We create a storm.
My, My, Hey, Hey
It's this storm anyone has ever chased, to be in love with us.
Sometimes I want to ask Adam... what he thinks I am. But I'm afraid of the answer. Are you?
Hej, Me I'm Light
Whatever it is, is made of the light, and something that might be fire, but is closer to the blood that runs through that which is alive. It's warm and gold like a fading afternoon. It's terrifying and hard to contain. It's animal and you are most it when you are walking, and your head suddenly drops, and you cut your eyes to the side to see me coming toward you. You are most it when you squint at something you no longer understand. You are most it when you take your hands and place them, steady, on my chest and let something in that is the same as the sun with it's weight and burning solace. You are most it when tears breach your eyes and you drag hard and indignant on your cigarette.
I am most it when I forget to think about what I am.
Shelter from the Storm
It's from this storm that the Lost Boys can find shelter. It's easy, being a Madonna. You just...
Yeah, like that.
Civilian
It took John coming home for me to see any of it, and there's simply nothing I could do.
John came home, and sharply, I looked behind me to find the road empty and you had gone. I looked back, sharply, to show you the light I'd discovered. I looked back, sharply. I looked back. I looked...
Sharp. My eyes were sharp, they were your eyes. I saw I was no longer walking in the road behind you. The road is dirt, and the light is failing, and they are calling our name, the wolves are calling, and I look back sharp, and we're the same, which means we cast no shadow but the same shadow.
Forced together by John, looking together toward one light, listening to the sound of the wolves as the moon rose, I could do nothing... I could do nothing to stop this, and had to look back to tell you...
I'm missing. I've disappeared. Oh, God. Where did we go?
The Air That I Breathe
I could never Madonna you, because I can't give you anything of myself. I wanted to, I think, but I can't because you have it all, already. Any way I might've gotten away with slight or white lies to anyone else, I couldn't with you. And I can't give you any of myself, because we're the same person, and while I knew you existed, I never tried to teach myself how to love you or even me, for that matter. Fantastically unprepared, what I found was that I could make anyone into a family, provided that I was not a part of it in the end. Being Madonna means always being apart in some way, and I couldn't bring you to be a Lost Boy with me because you kept arriving in the same place as me.
I couldn't bring you anywhere you hadn't been, or give you something you didn't have, or show you things which were hidden from you, except that you were no longer alone, as a species, but who the fuck wants that, really?
Looking in a mirror is hard for me, to see that all my worst parts are really there. But it's harder still to see all the best ones are really there, too. On the offhand chance you felt like me, your whole life, I need to tell you something.
My name is Marilyn. Jim Morrison is my brother, and he lives inside you. We're strange beings made of light and words which become the incantations of musicians. Everyone wants to be us, or fuck us, or kill us, if only to possess that for an instant. But they can't, because we're free.
Aurora Gone
This has been my favorite song for almost 4 months, and to me it's about how we're the same inside, all the way inside to a place no one else has ever seen or touched. It's DNA is the same as When the Music's Over, and it means that we live together in a place where words run out.
Love always,
Marilyn
Tuesday, March 21, 2017
For My Brother
The cancer was fast;
Fast enough to
Arrest all forthcoming notions
And freeze for a moment
The vitriol of us in the agar of
Selfishness and deceit.
Insisting for a suspended moment,
Like the fugue after a sneeze,
That you'd have time to do what you wanted
When you got out of here.
I am the assignation of all your moments
Made to matter.
I am the sentry at the gate of your afterlife
Testing with careful hands the weight of your heart.
I am the the hopeless cause of this
Painfully brought to your bedside.
I am what we never said,
The time lost to say it without the
Fucking grotesque insincerity a time limit introduces.
I am become death,
Destroyer of worlds.
The laze of our inconsistent contact
Meant the magic in us both would go untested,
And unpunished.
I heard you gave it away,
To those who loved you.
I heard you were almost a father,
And would've married more than once.
I heard you in the desert,
Calling old names.
I heard you at the door,
The night you...
I told the story of saving your life,
Again and again.
I sit holding...
That which I can't distinguish from memory or possibility:
There was something we were meant to become,
Something under the skin of us which
We never scratched forth.
We never shed our grub shells,
Our infant scales,
To become the greatness
Living in our blood.
We are boy kings lying murdered.
Victims of uncles and fathers
With greed and power more vast
Than the empires of imagination
We always inhabited.
You shed your gown
To bare the hole drilled in you;
Cut deep with the auger
Of that which is inevitable
And felt in the room.
You happened to me.
You happened to me,
And I balled up all your significance into a poem,
So the world could know you by the sound you made
While disappearing.
Sunday, March 12, 2017
Much Love, MLG
Dear Miss Lonelyhearts
Dove, My Darling -
By the time you read this, I'll be gone. I've tacked this to the door of my flat, and hopefully no errant junkie has stolen it to... I don't suppose it matters anymore. I don't suppose any of it does.
When we began this adventure, it was with hearts full of hope and dreams carried on the backs of all boys wishing to become men along the highways of ritual and religion. Now, all I can say is I'm exhausted by the idea of churning out one more apology with you, to those who were once not wishing for apology.
I suppose I no longer have the stomach for any of it, for them, or you, or the way your hair smells in the rain.
There's nothing within but memories, and all the holes left by our fists. You'll try to find me, but you won't be able to. Take care, my Darling.
-Mart
The Wind
Dove,
I can remember the first time I fell in love, but I cannot remember with whom it was. I was very young, standing alone in a schoolyard, all of seven. I had my arms wrapped tightly around my shoulders, and I thought to myself, this is what adults feel, when they say they want someone to touch them over and over, forever.
Perhaps it was only me, there.
I hope you're well.
-Mart
Me And A Gun
Dove,
Well, it was just one of those things, wasn't it?
-Mar
Motherless Child
I packed mostly your clothes, and they're all long through the inseam on me, and I roll them so as not to look as though I am drowning.
But it's a lie, isn't it? For I am drowning.
I lost my sunglasses that Thursday, and so I replaced them. This new pair has white frames, and are too large for my face, but you'd like them very much. I might try what you told me to do once, and eat only the things you love, until I'm quite sick of it.
One would almost think I missed you.
- Whosoever You've Been Dreaming Of
Adult
David,
Have we lost so much of the time already? I had only just begun, and suddenly, I turned round to find a stranger, there behind me, and calling him your name. What a dreadful trick. What a dreadful world, and I've grown up, and didn't know it.
-Martin
Clean
Dave,
I want to be like my brother, more than anything else. I want to find something withing me which is untouched by mark or madness, and hold tight to it for the preservation of something. I would like to have a soul, I think I'm saying. I watch him walk with his shoulders square, opening the door of his red sports car, his face stern in the afternoon light. What I'd like is to feel what he feels in that moment; a pure and thoughtless acceptance of who he will die trying to become.
-Mart
The Old Man's Back Again
Dove,
I received your cable in the early morning, as I was making coffee. Now I am driving back to you, in what I imagine is an hour of great need, but I know that the first thing I tell you will be that the need was mine, Darling.
We are servants of the devil, Dove. All we can do is run.
-M
Sweet Dreams, TN
Your apartment is a hellhole of the smell of you, smack-sick fiend which you've become. From the moment I arrive, your clammy hands clutch mine; the vomit crusting the edges of your mouth smashing into mine as we kiss, and you beg me to stay, and I stroke your hair, shivering with your whole body against mine. I've come home Darling, and I won't leave again.
-Mart
Dangerous
D-
Cumming inside you is something I enjoy having you sing about, immensely.
-M
Blue Dress
Dove,
Last night, whilst onstage together, I became the same girl I always do for you. We framed the photograph of the dress, and I have it hung beside you in my bedroom. I can for a moment stop the endless devouring of my fingernails, and tease my flop of hair into something which you'd like.
Would you show me off, somewhere downtown? You never have before, preferring instead to keep me under the lock and key of your... constant whims. And I do love them.
-Mar
Black Water
Dave,
On a stage, I feel so self-conscious. Surely they think they will be receiving some Elvis Presley, some careless crooner who knows the shine of the enamel better than I. The best I could ever hope to achieve is something sweetly comical, something where none of the notes meet to make love the way they do within you.
You're an artist, you know, despite all I've said.
-M
Lady
Dove,
I have white satin gloves, and a white orchid for my hair. I have a blue dress, and blue stilettos. There is a place I have seen and done it all, and the world holds no more joy for me. It's in this place that I am waiting for you to join me. But I would never let you.
There are some places we winnow ourselves which are close and hopeless, and it's being alone there which is the one consolation to us; that we may never be found in the places we have winnowed ourselves. That no one will know the names of the ghosts which haunt us, nor the enticements they tempt us with; the personal hells we are the constant architects of.
It's from this place I will be calling for you, always, and as certainly will run from you when you come near.
-M
I Feel Blue
Dove,
Follow me down streets of rain and gentle peril. Follow me to places where I'm beckoned by the ghosts who know my name.
-M
Jailbirds
Dove,
For surely I will die here without you.
-Mart
What Are You Doing
Dove,
Marry me, won't you?
Oh, for fuck's sake, even a glance in my direction.
-M
Chameleon Day
Dave,
Your shivering hips sway lithe across the black space of my dreams. We are taken to some nameless space craft where you are worshiped like a god.
And other strange dreams.
Good morning,
Martin
Dove, My Darling -
By the time you read this, I'll be gone. I've tacked this to the door of my flat, and hopefully no errant junkie has stolen it to... I don't suppose it matters anymore. I don't suppose any of it does.
When we began this adventure, it was with hearts full of hope and dreams carried on the backs of all boys wishing to become men along the highways of ritual and religion. Now, all I can say is I'm exhausted by the idea of churning out one more apology with you, to those who were once not wishing for apology.
I suppose I no longer have the stomach for any of it, for them, or you, or the way your hair smells in the rain.
There's nothing within but memories, and all the holes left by our fists. You'll try to find me, but you won't be able to. Take care, my Darling.
-Mart
The Wind
Dove,
I can remember the first time I fell in love, but I cannot remember with whom it was. I was very young, standing alone in a schoolyard, all of seven. I had my arms wrapped tightly around my shoulders, and I thought to myself, this is what adults feel, when they say they want someone to touch them over and over, forever.
Perhaps it was only me, there.
I hope you're well.
-Mart
Me And A Gun
Dove,
Well, it was just one of those things, wasn't it?
-Mar
Motherless Child
I packed mostly your clothes, and they're all long through the inseam on me, and I roll them so as not to look as though I am drowning.
But it's a lie, isn't it? For I am drowning.
I lost my sunglasses that Thursday, and so I replaced them. This new pair has white frames, and are too large for my face, but you'd like them very much. I might try what you told me to do once, and eat only the things you love, until I'm quite sick of it.
One would almost think I missed you.
- Whosoever You've Been Dreaming Of
Adult
David,
Have we lost so much of the time already? I had only just begun, and suddenly, I turned round to find a stranger, there behind me, and calling him your name. What a dreadful trick. What a dreadful world, and I've grown up, and didn't know it.
-Martin
Clean
Dave,
I want to be like my brother, more than anything else. I want to find something withing me which is untouched by mark or madness, and hold tight to it for the preservation of something. I would like to have a soul, I think I'm saying. I watch him walk with his shoulders square, opening the door of his red sports car, his face stern in the afternoon light. What I'd like is to feel what he feels in that moment; a pure and thoughtless acceptance of who he will die trying to become.
-Mart
The Old Man's Back Again
Dove,
I received your cable in the early morning, as I was making coffee. Now I am driving back to you, in what I imagine is an hour of great need, but I know that the first thing I tell you will be that the need was mine, Darling.
We are servants of the devil, Dove. All we can do is run.
-M
Sweet Dreams, TN
Your apartment is a hellhole of the smell of you, smack-sick fiend which you've become. From the moment I arrive, your clammy hands clutch mine; the vomit crusting the edges of your mouth smashing into mine as we kiss, and you beg me to stay, and I stroke your hair, shivering with your whole body against mine. I've come home Darling, and I won't leave again.
-Mart
Dangerous
D-
Cumming inside you is something I enjoy having you sing about, immensely.
-M
Blue Dress
Dove,
Last night, whilst onstage together, I became the same girl I always do for you. We framed the photograph of the dress, and I have it hung beside you in my bedroom. I can for a moment stop the endless devouring of my fingernails, and tease my flop of hair into something which you'd like.
Would you show me off, somewhere downtown? You never have before, preferring instead to keep me under the lock and key of your... constant whims. And I do love them.
-Mar
Black Water
Dave,
On a stage, I feel so self-conscious. Surely they think they will be receiving some Elvis Presley, some careless crooner who knows the shine of the enamel better than I. The best I could ever hope to achieve is something sweetly comical, something where none of the notes meet to make love the way they do within you.
You're an artist, you know, despite all I've said.
-M
Lady
Dove,
I have white satin gloves, and a white orchid for my hair. I have a blue dress, and blue stilettos. There is a place I have seen and done it all, and the world holds no more joy for me. It's in this place that I am waiting for you to join me. But I would never let you.
There are some places we winnow ourselves which are close and hopeless, and it's being alone there which is the one consolation to us; that we may never be found in the places we have winnowed ourselves. That no one will know the names of the ghosts which haunt us, nor the enticements they tempt us with; the personal hells we are the constant architects of.
It's from this place I will be calling for you, always, and as certainly will run from you when you come near.
-M
I Feel Blue
Dove,
Follow me down streets of rain and gentle peril. Follow me to places where I'm beckoned by the ghosts who know my name.
-M
Jailbirds
Dove,
For surely I will die here without you.
-Mart
What Are You Doing
Dove,
Marry me, won't you?
Oh, for fuck's sake, even a glance in my direction.
-M
Chameleon Day
Dave,
Your shivering hips sway lithe across the black space of my dreams. We are taken to some nameless space craft where you are worshiped like a god.
And other strange dreams.
Good morning,
Martin
Thursday, March 9, 2017
Dear Matthew,
You're asleep now.
Following my orders, you fled downward to the lab and locked it behind you in your descent, Clyde on your heels to administer some certain poison to you. I had an instinct to tell you to run, but not too far. Because we can protect you.
Thin, your eyelids flutter over the shadows on your face beckoning further shadows to kneel along the ridges of your cheekbones. You were thin when you came home, and your hair was long. Somewhere on this wretched planet, we laugh delighted and reminisce. Oh, has it been more than a year already? Oh, my, oh, goodness, oh, perish.
I cut my wrist, and bleed a line across the floor of the doorway to the lab. There, and in my demon's blood. Have your syphilis, have your damnation and your sores. I will boil the bile in you as you cross this threshold, I will cut out the love festering in your heart, world. Do you hear me? Do you hear me, arrogant world, cacophony of ugliness, legion of cockroach emptiness needing? I'll kill you, I'll do it myself.
But this was always what I was made to do.
You see, Matthew, there's a buoyancy in humans. It's a strange thing, to watch them struggle, drown, and float again. I watch these buoyant things with curiosity; things which people might find shallow or meaningless. Humor, apathy, cynicism, rage, and flirtation all as that which sticks to us, when we find a passage finally from the water. At the bottom where buoyancy doesn't matter, might just be... Clyde.
When you wake up, you will be your sweetest self, clung with the lightness of a depth avoided narrowly. You will joke, and maybe even pick a fight. Film will roll from you with every flat articulation of your knuckle bones, and I'll watch.
What we can't stand for, as buoyant as we are, are those who play there always in the shallows, and gather around the pier legs like garbage bags and fitful driftwood.
What
have you ever
known
about
drowning?
every wave demands.
In the dark, you look like the intestines of a shell, split apart to display ridge and curvature, your white crescent shadows moving slowly as you turn in your sleep.
You housed animals, once, who have now vacated the white spaces of you. I can trace their passage along the ridge of your spine, where you found them to be friend, or foe. They made you into their secret.
Love always,
Evelyn
Following my orders, you fled downward to the lab and locked it behind you in your descent, Clyde on your heels to administer some certain poison to you. I had an instinct to tell you to run, but not too far. Because we can protect you.
Thin, your eyelids flutter over the shadows on your face beckoning further shadows to kneel along the ridges of your cheekbones. You were thin when you came home, and your hair was long. Somewhere on this wretched planet, we laugh delighted and reminisce. Oh, has it been more than a year already? Oh, my, oh, goodness, oh, perish.
I cut my wrist, and bleed a line across the floor of the doorway to the lab. There, and in my demon's blood. Have your syphilis, have your damnation and your sores. I will boil the bile in you as you cross this threshold, I will cut out the love festering in your heart, world. Do you hear me? Do you hear me, arrogant world, cacophony of ugliness, legion of cockroach emptiness needing? I'll kill you, I'll do it myself.
But this was always what I was made to do.
You see, Matthew, there's a buoyancy in humans. It's a strange thing, to watch them struggle, drown, and float again. I watch these buoyant things with curiosity; things which people might find shallow or meaningless. Humor, apathy, cynicism, rage, and flirtation all as that which sticks to us, when we find a passage finally from the water. At the bottom where buoyancy doesn't matter, might just be... Clyde.
When you wake up, you will be your sweetest self, clung with the lightness of a depth avoided narrowly. You will joke, and maybe even pick a fight. Film will roll from you with every flat articulation of your knuckle bones, and I'll watch.
What we can't stand for, as buoyant as we are, are those who play there always in the shallows, and gather around the pier legs like garbage bags and fitful driftwood.
What
have you ever
known
about
drowning?
every wave demands.
In the dark, you look like the intestines of a shell, split apart to display ridge and curvature, your white crescent shadows moving slowly as you turn in your sleep.
You housed animals, once, who have now vacated the white spaces of you. I can trace their passage along the ridge of your spine, where you found them to be friend, or foe. They made you into their secret.
Love always,
Evelyn
Wednesday, March 1, 2017
M1 Combat Helmet
Clyde,
The inside of my M1 combat helmet is scratched with the name of someone I don't know. I can tell the object used to carve the name was a regulation Ka-bar, by the sharpness of the letters, and the many attempts it took to scratch the surface with even a superficial stroke.
BOY
When I showed it to Adam, he ran his finger over the inside of the helmet - the index finger - and then put it in his mouth thoughtfully.
"I suppose it could be heroin," he said, his voice dreamlike. "Although that particular vernacular might post-date this beauty."
"Mine would say Baby," I told him, and he choked on a laugh tight in his throat while he cleared it of a longing he never specified.
"Ah. No, Evelyn, I think not. In fact, it's highly likely yours would still read 'Boy.' But then, I suppose in your case, the two are nearly the same word."
"Bonnie says the song called Boy is about you," I remind him, and his cheeks redden slightly, and he flusters.
"Mhm. Well. Ahem. As to that. Yes. But in that respect, it is referencing heroin."
"Well, mine would say Baby," I tell him, and he sets the helmet on the bed, where it makes a depression in the floral sheet. He stretches his body out beside it, and tucks his hands behind his head.
"And why is that?"
"Because I'm a girl," I remind him, my eyebrow arching high and singular. "When I'm a soldier especially. I'm not a boy until I quit and go AWOL."
He smiles with his eyes closed.
"And this girl, what is her name?"
"Baby," I remind him. "But it's when my hair is green. Or I'm wearing this all the time, I can't tell."
"She's beautiful, your green-haired dragon," he reminds me. "I don't imagine your unit minds calling you that."
I wrap my arms around myself, suddenly alone in a corner at a dance where no one expected me to be, or even know to show my face.
"You don't know how weird it is to be never looked at like that, and then all of a sudden looked at like that all the time by you."
Adam's smile opens to a laugh, and I scowl at him and retreat to the other side of the bed, the helmet squarely between us like the condoms he would've always tossed aside with disdain if I ever dared to bring him one.
"Oh, don't I?" he asks. He approaches me at our imaginary dance. My dress doesn't fit the right way, and my shoes are white and somehow juvenile. I consider for a quick moment biting him on the hand he extends to make him go away, but I don't.
"There's just things you can't say," I tell him in a whisper. "Not when you look that...ridiculous."
The inside of my M1 combat helmet is scratched with the name of someone I don't know. I can tell the object used to carve the name was a regulation Ka-bar, by the sharpness of the letters, and the many attempts it took to scratch the surface with even a superficial stroke.
BOY
When I showed it to Adam, he ran his finger over the inside of the helmet - the index finger - and then put it in his mouth thoughtfully.
"I suppose it could be heroin," he said, his voice dreamlike. "Although that particular vernacular might post-date this beauty."
"Mine would say Baby," I told him, and he choked on a laugh tight in his throat while he cleared it of a longing he never specified.
"Ah. No, Evelyn, I think not. In fact, it's highly likely yours would still read 'Boy.' But then, I suppose in your case, the two are nearly the same word."
"Bonnie says the song called Boy is about you," I remind him, and his cheeks redden slightly, and he flusters.
"Mhm. Well. Ahem. As to that. Yes. But in that respect, it is referencing heroin."
"Well, mine would say Baby," I tell him, and he sets the helmet on the bed, where it makes a depression in the floral sheet. He stretches his body out beside it, and tucks his hands behind his head.
"And why is that?"
"Because I'm a girl," I remind him, my eyebrow arching high and singular. "When I'm a soldier especially. I'm not a boy until I quit and go AWOL."
He smiles with his eyes closed.
"And this girl, what is her name?"
"Baby," I remind him. "But it's when my hair is green. Or I'm wearing this all the time, I can't tell."
"She's beautiful, your green-haired dragon," he reminds me. "I don't imagine your unit minds calling you that."
I wrap my arms around myself, suddenly alone in a corner at a dance where no one expected me to be, or even know to show my face.
"You don't know how weird it is to be never looked at like that, and then all of a sudden looked at like that all the time by you."
Adam's smile opens to a laugh, and I scowl at him and retreat to the other side of the bed, the helmet squarely between us like the condoms he would've always tossed aside with disdain if I ever dared to bring him one.
"Oh, don't I?" he asks. He approaches me at our imaginary dance. My dress doesn't fit the right way, and my shoes are white and somehow juvenile. I consider for a quick moment biting him on the hand he extends to make him go away, but I don't.
"There's just things you can't say," I tell him in a whisper. "Not when you look that...ridiculous."
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