I've brought things back,
mementos of an ill-gotten
holiday:
a calloused thumb
from a cheap lighter
I bought it for the
color, another
€1 spent
wads of tissue in my
coat pocket from
streetcorner grief
lipstick-smudged
filthy in the culmination
of all my emotions
Sofitel slippers which
I paid for in cash
but fit comfy on my
feet - perfume, a scarf, shoes
new skin, hair and nails
a million words written
some tossed in my own
denial.
I gave my train card
to a kid on the street
he kissed my hand and
said in clumsy English
"now I can buy cigarettes
instead of spending my
cash on transport"
Left the remains of
my journal on a bench
with a note inside:
do not look for me.
Left behind all traces
of hate and regret
the things I was never
wired to carry anyway
A passport stamp
a series of thoughts
which play out still
burning my cheeks
in formule extra-efficace
Newspaper headlines reek
of bad news, but I won't
be there now to read
it further
the Euro slant makes
it laughable still
I found somewhere within me
that poem he liked
"nothing but bricks and
streets between us
moving boxes, I'm sorry..."
And I will miss morning
coffee
a solarized Paris
the lights, the clouds
and the stench of my
own aubergine vomit
stained in red wine
in that lonely hotel
grass of cemeteries that
my soles clung to in
pity, in rich, loamy
surfaces
distant headstones with
names that forever earn
their place in my own epitaph
engraving and tunneling
a way into my life -
to singe a bearable scar:
one I cannot live without
The way I found both
him and me lost again
separate, apart, diffused
a scatter of anger
will remind the world-
of another's verse
repeatedly:
the message sent is
loud. It's clear.
I get it.
The clothing I wore to
only disguise simple fear-
inadequacies I felt on
my own, and it makes me
feel no better to
admit
This expansion of arms now
serves only to enclose me
again, opened in silence
in my own faltering sense
of haves and have-nots
A reach deep down to quell
what screams its goodbyes, to
massage my heart back to
its beating, alive state-
or lessen its hollow,
sporadic thump-
the sound is a low tidal
murmur, once crashed,
clanging roundly
at the thought of one
A simple cadence, lacking in
ego what love could never-
the differences only measured
against personal opinion:
mine and yours
Could've woven together,
producing a larger tapestry
an offspring, a purpose
for pure joy, and now
that's lost to the negativity
we seemed to gush forth
Home now, and everything seems
so far away
so scentedly American
that my nose twitches,
it's foreign
another sense to acclimate
or as in Paris, succumb to
the will of
It spirals around, it
leeches and it penetrates
my skin, now sleepy and dry-
the soft invitation of
sheets I have missed
though my head calls for
this. Now. Not later.
Left only with the thought
that I am truly cleaved
cemented in half-notes
by the acknowledgement
of my words: but somehow
it doesn't make things any
less vicious.
11 now-empty packs of Gauloises
at the bottom of my bag
evidence of my writing
a soul's last wishes:
A rite. A ceremony of
an affirmation of what I
shall never write again.
12 November, 2004
