and have you been there?

and did the million things you thought to say
just crumble in your mouth like stones of ash?

hot coals...
i used to say the things most passionate of life. now in my hands that child of shelley weeps, ne’er to be consoled against such grief as weighs upon the head of one so damned. say then that she has wakened from illusion, now?

what do i know that is not swallowed slowly by fatigue even as my brain recounts and catalogs it? here i imagine the colors fading swiftly now. a flash and the bulb blows out: lead stained interior vacuum of a see-through skull. smoking cigarettes in a void, sipping espresso as the starlight settles (see it caught in naked branches, torn and tattered like the cobweb remains of a dead child’s paper kite). in my eyes is all eternity... but i am blinking now. in my eyes is all eternity. i shall close my eyes forever. i look across at you, and your seraphic face is like the illusion of a body-form in water. pale, ghostly, wan... you are looking at me from one hundred billion hopes away. it’s almost religious. could i extend my hand across that icy void of need, i should burn into a cinder and waft out through the cracks in time (between moments). a dream... i forget now why i am alone. in los angeles the arc-lamps and pinkish sodium streetlights scrape the trembling flesh off the hard edges and planes, leaving only the opaque, stark, all-too-real form of uncaring geometry. madness. tourettes.

i hold your picture in both my hands, cradling it... you... like a baby, a foetus wearing a mask of white china, with red enamel lips and sapphire eyes (set in egg-white)... fiber-optic eyelashes, permanent liner. i toss and i turn and i gasp and i blur out of focus. goosebumps rip like sandpaper across my skin. you are looking at me. i see out the window onto the street. someone is walking on my grave. no-one ever leaves me flowers. outside, on the street, my reflection hovers. a man pulls a gun and shoots a woman who throws her bag of groceries into the air as the slug punches into her chest and explodes her heart. it all takes place in a split second, but i see it all. i do not know why i ever thought i could live without love.

i paw the glass and scream, but i am mute. your hands gently crush mine. we watch the broken pieces fall from between your fingers, see them puff out in little clouds as they strike the floor. i start to cry. you offer me your hands. i try to screw them on, push them on, snap them on, force them on... eventually, you show me how to write by holding the pen between my wrists, and we get a special attachment so that i can type. i write about the woman who was shot, and recall how her head fit in my open mouth in my reflection in the window as i gaped in horror at the scene. then i wake up and look at my hands, flex my fingers, rub my face and run my fingers through my hair. i feel your arms around me in your sleep. fever is using me up. the room is so cold, and you are clinging to me, to my fevered body, for warmth as i turn ashen and look into the empty distance. like i once stood on a salt flat at the false sunrise in the frost-bitten moonlight. i remember thinking that blood tastes like “ochre” – even though it was only the sound of the word i meant. my lips cracked and bled in the cold desert air. you were not there. but i thought of you, wondered who you would be, wondered if i would ever meet you. and i just keep thinking that i want this fever to break, because i am lost in a maze of dreams and a creeping malaise is tainting my soul. if i reach into the morrow without trepidation, i can feel the possibility of parole. this sickness will abate. lucidity will grow in the embrace of the day, and my eyes will clear, my sweat will not smell so bad, so bitter, and my ears will not bleed anymore...

nnn... and that is how i recall the plague.

that is how i recall that i am holed up in a hotel room somewhere off the 10. my ears bleeding. my tears bloody. my gums sore and a taste of salty-lemon-copper in my throat. please don’t make me wake up to see the truth of it! please! just wait a minute! let me write a little longer... let me just write this one thing... just wait a minute! wait a minute! just stop! i just want to write this one thing more... please!!! just wait a minute!!!! just wait a minute!!!!!! just wait a minute!!!!!! no!!!!!!!!! please... i just... i just want to see her one more time... can’t you tell me this is the dream??? just wait a minute wait a minute wait a minute please just let me see her one more time please just wait a minute!!!!!