Harlow In Chains

may i remind you, when i find you…

I have this spiral-bound notebook…
I don’t discriminate against thoughts here.
It just is.
It’s my heart’s landfill, my own “some of the dharma”, like Kerouac’s… 
only less wise & more like a thing that catches the blood that escapes while I’m trying to hold my wound together, 
trying to keep myself together…


……………………………………

Now her path was solitary and she hated loving that hole in her life. She hated feeling as if the world had moved on while she scratched and clawed to stay in the past—her fingernails scraped the walls.

Sometimes this place feels like an expensive tomb;

      feels like currency used only to buy itself, blending in with this watery sky
here were the words i was waiting for, without the part i wanted


( & )

“be still, sad heart,
and cease repining.
behind the cloud
is the sun, still shining.”
says, Longfellow, in that book of poetry where she dropped her cigarette 
& burned a hole through the page. “FUCK”. 
- like sitting on a fire escape in the cold… the bars burn cold stripes on your ass & something falls out of yr back pocket; a brief pause & a _klunk! a hundred feet below
- like a sky that tried sunny, turned back to gray; not worth the effort. Resigned, tired, defeated.
- like the first cold ghost of rain.
- like…

——————————-Where were you that Saturday when it rained?

I waited for you under the big tree
laying on the ground
hiding in the grass
sinking into the dirt
while rocks dug into my shoulders

where were you that Saturday when it rained?
you never brought me a raincoat
no roof for my head
you promised shelter
but you left me laying in rocks

I watched the clouds 
billowing and rolling around in the sky
they looked like broken promises
fences. curtains. wicker furniture.
they looked like you

where were you that Saturday when it rained?
you told me you’d take me away
how forgetful of you
to take my spirit
but leave my head

the sky cried the tears
I never cried
it moistened the dirt
and buried me where I waited
that Saturday when it rained…

_{[salty taste of blue things]
in my dream I
popped the Earth like a jawbreaker
into my mouth
the crunchy saltedness of the outside
cracking hotly into a warm honey center
so sweet and warm I
didn’t even hear their screams
[well, 
they were pretty tiny ]}

& right here in the knotted tension of my tired stomach is all of today, all of yesterday, and it is curled into a tight ball. You do not want to know where it comes from, but I can point to it, can point to old (leftover) disappointed trembling lips and defeated slow exhalations.

///“a journey of a thousand miles begins with something unspeakably unpleasant”\\


I wanted to fly… 
a puff of longing in your direction… 

fly away from this place of cement and strangers 


to Cherry Point, 

to be around you… to surround you… to touch you totally, all at once and softly… so gently you wouldn’t know that I’m even there… but still you will.

I want to ease gently in hallways and in unknown tongues… to speak drafts of calm to warm your hands and cheeks… to hover above and about and be breathed by you as you sleep…

I want to be the air around you.


     People are constant works in progress, layering new atop old and depths and
   dimensions and splintering. Comprised of memories and pictures we could
never guess at, no matter how long and hard and deep we probed. 




₁Your handprints ₂here, at the base.

——————————————————-

₁A “Doppelg�nger”: a ghost of someone who has not yet died

₂“Walking Spanish”: refers to the method of forcing another person along by grabbing them by the collar or scruff of the neck and the seat of the pants, and propelling them forward on tiptoe; synonymous with “bum’s rush”. 
It is thought to come from the way Spanish pirates encouraged their captives to walk the plank. 

——————————————————-

sighmoan. kicking up dust in the ruins of each other’s souls. odi et amo. love letters, snuck guerrilla-style. hormone-dripping tripe.

A Perfect Circle - Orestes. [pain-chord]
sense field - save yourself [emo-core]

_{|Secretly she wished she could trade places with the fetus and kill herself instead.|}

.
.
.
.

In her mind his voice was always telling her “soon.” It reminded her that she always had that escape hatch, even though she was incapable of ever using it. Passion can drive one mad, especially when passion turns to anger and anger turns to hate. There is no cap on the amount of hate one can feel for the ones they love. 

    [it is really only a protective wall.

“In those years formalism was part of the strategy—like asbestos gloves, it allowed me to handle materials I couldn’t pick up bare-handed.”—Adrienne Rich, from On Lies, Secrets, and Silence, Selected Prose 1966 - 1978]

So I…

…drove around back of your boarded-up heart,
by the tall weeds and packing-case caves,
where your dogs bark at anyone carrying flowers
while they struggle and pull at their chains.

…took a collection of busted-up bottles
I needed to fill in your grave—
why don’t you initial one stone, in this shower
of hail-and-farewell in the rain?

Not once, 
but once- 
times-often 



“Goodbye”
—rhyming 
to soften 

I’ve said
too far
from your ear,

the blow—
like this:
__ __ ____?

and he said

“Cold
I’m colder than ice that melts the tips
of the only question
that really exists
(to you)”


……………………………………

_{//teleprompt to listener: cry your crocodile tears.}