you are.

you listen
to the scribble of my pen on paper:
ardent, desperate, hot:
bird caged in barbed wire and wool,
fed ground coffee and coca leaves.

you listen
of my other loves:
none as big
none as beautiful, but just as real

and flitter
between me and sadness,
so that i don’t have to do it myself:
a mediator, a true constant.

you are the paper i write on,
carving words into the thick muscle of heart:
water is thinner than blood.

you are the dream I must have had
before you held me in the night.

you are. you are. you are.

110. all world needs a muse

i’m more a reader than a writer, a passive comma in the midst of life. born to incite something or other, born to launch without ever going anywhere oneself. but there is time. time changes all, time smooths out the edges.

last night, T let me read the first two chapters of his working book. he started writing because he was inspired when we went out and about London for a bit. he started writing because he’s in love with me, but never mind that since he never put it into words. he’s a friend of ours and if dreams fill up the length of lonely days, who are we to begrudge him? in any case, the writing’s good, the writing’s solid and if i push someone to something more than they were, that is achievement in itself. it makes me happy.

it’s strange, this writing, when all i’ve written the last year were essays. creativity has a propensity to seep out when you no longer use it and it takes all the will you have to take it back. all world needs a muse. for burroughs (“naked lunch”, “junkie”) it was joan vollmer, whom he killed by accident and who poured out the guilt in words, whose loss left him to seek a way to replace the void; for nin (“delta of venus”, “spy in the house of love”) it was miller, who interrupted her life and frenzied her with his roguish charm and bohemian life; for me it is you. for i can read all i want but unless i have you near me, unless the warmth of your lips touches mine, ideas cannot solidify into something more than a wispy dream. when you were gone (four weeks and three days, for i was counting) interminable minutes seemed to stretch into infinity. no matter where i was or who with, the thought of you made me ache all over, made me hungry for the staunch presence of you.

now you are back, your touch is fresh and i’m learning to write again.

104. they are the answer

the words stand on the page. they sing, jabber, holler; they are the answer.

i’ve often wondered how one finds themselves. last night i promised you that i would look further, deeper; that i would be stronger freer. and yet, i do not know into which chamber, nook or cranny one ought to look.

it’s always been art. and writing.
it’s always been the sashaying silk of kimonos and the pungency of opium-filled dens that jumped out at me from the pages. it was the sexual odour of it, i guess. the implied liberation.
liberté. more often than not, français. how lucky then that you should have french blood coursing through you.

i read so much of writers with insistence upon their refuge in books. it’s been the same for me, albeit i am no writer. i scribble on a page like a child holding the pen for the very first time.

i remember learning to draw. properly. my sunday lessons with an art restorator. i was the youngest there; and the worst. but i’ve always believed it was art that would save me.
i never did learn to hold the pencil properly so that it would fall on the page unrestricted. i promised to myself that i would one day. and that was all. i promised.

86. i think she knew

through my paperround last year i met a wonderful man. he used to walk his dog as i’d deliver papers and we started talking around the time i started writing this blog. i think he’s 82: he must have mentioned it a while back. and i’m afraid there’s nothing literary about him: his existence is one of uncouth coutesy.

i quit the paperround a while back now but i still see him every sunday. nine o’clock in the morning, like church. he’s my little christian connection: even S is nowhere near taking his place. he gave me a bible with a picture of him in his youth stuck at the back, so that i remember him. secretly, i think, he believes that it will help me find him in heaven: he believes i will go there after all. 

to my friends, this man is “the old man”. to me, he is much more than that. it may be true that i meet him every sunday partly because i feel like it’s my obligation, but also because somewhere beneath my skin there’s a tendon that connects me to him.

his wife died last night. or the night before that. and there’s no more words because i’m hurting for him. because how can one even begin to describe his pain?

i had made them a card only this march: they celebrated their 60th wedding annivesary.

sometimes he told me he wondered if she ever loved him but i know that was only because he loved her more than anything else. ever.
and it’s a little late for him to tell her, but i hope she knew. i think she knew.

this field

you can have the whole of me in this field:
i pressed my soul into its loins
and beads of sweat still glisten
on the body learning to tango
in the outpour of rain.

i will surrender only here
so take care not to move even a strand of hair
from beneath the tree where i will lay through my whole life,
as if dying prematurely,
for this is home and i forbid you.

a day will come when spring will open me enough
for sun to shine
into the roots of the old cambridge tree
and open up
the rest of me.

—————————————————————-

i’ve been writing this poem for a while now and it feels forever unfinished. maybe that’s just me, always a word out, a syllable in. and then i give up and start something else. at the end of the day, however, i always come back to this. and the oldest tree in cambridge.