Sunday, May 22, 2011

I added to an earlier poem

still about the same person.

Speak to me
I see
i see the grass and the herb
I see the ink and sun on the page
I feel the black naked trees sleeping
I hear the creek laughing below me and my friends
I hear you singing thru the white walls covered in obscenities
I hear my nails scratching at your door
I feel the bars of iron growing cold
I saw a stray cat and I thought of me
I saw the ring around the moon and I thought of my longing for you
I see the rocks where we stood open in just our skin
I felt chest pains and hunger pangs and I wanted to climb up your hair
I saw me break before you
I heard you whisper
I heard you suffer
I heard your footsteps drifting up the stairs the night you walked away
I felt the dry skin of your open palm
and the chambers and the bones in your chest
I saw you sititng breathing still with your back straight against the frigid bark
I fel thte wet earth under me when I fell and bruised my legs and arms
I saw you staring into me
I saw the hair on your shoulders
I heard the tears in your throat
you never heard me pray
but I prayed for your touch and I'm still waiting

I've watched you dissapear
I've watched you undrape
I've bowed my head and I've cursed your name
I've staye dup all night listening to Janis and wailing 'you don't know, no you don't know what it's like to love anybody the way I love you babe'
I was cruel to you because you made me feel like being cruel to you then I begged to come inside
I told you a lie
you didn't tell me everything you knew

I embraced the pounding of the desolate sea where martyrs are drowned until I needed a home
I sat at your feet but you still felt alone
I've watche dyou walk down the same streets I did and the same streets I didn't
I saw arms of light through the fiery trees before the smoke and the air took them away
I tried to leave you and I saw the cracks in the sidewalk and the faces in the cars
and the weeds and the wood and the dust on the street signs
I spat and lit another cigarette and ran
til I purged by a white picket fence
I kicked at the broken glass
when I came back you were gone
it was dawn
you were tired, I was burning
I was burning
I was burning

but I know I was dancing in that small cafe
and your shirt was open as the band played a rhythm I'd never known before
were we drowning, I don't know
sometimes I was flying
sometimes I wonder if you can feel me trying

I felt the bricks of the columns
I felt the heat and the winds from last summer's storm
I felt the thorns and saw the blood of 98 wounds running from our veins
I felt a goodbye that never really came
I felt the night and I watned to share it with you but only if you wanted to
I wanna hold you if you want me to, only if you want me to
please say you want me to
I'd do anything, but I don't wanna do just anything
Why do I follow you?

II
Why did I follow you west in a machine filled with six unfinished souls
where I got sick in the snow of carson city and you couldn’t even hold me up much less let me lie down next to you
where you roamed while I trembled under sweat stained once white cotton sheets in a overcast afternoon cheap hotel room
why did I follow you
all the way to a bus station in Reno where you and all the rest left me with 40 bucks and a thousand tears and went on to your own california I would never see
as i was kicked onto the street jilted and at the point of dehumanization
sneeking into the Sands with strangers then standing at the window staring at the Circus Circus, this time the lights of the city did nothing for me and will never do anything for you
One night on the cold carpet and then a bus alone alone alone back to Boulder where I met you
and in Boulder I was angry
and in Boulder I was unbearably unstable and internally paralyzed
in Boulder my insides shattered and the glass I hurled shattered and my spirit shattered and tenderness for you shattered
so in Boulder I wept
and in Boulder I forced my hand in the fire
and in Boulder I crossed sentences with flesh and shadows of revelations never found
in Boulder where you once saw me cry in a summer soft lamplight hallway of death and brilliant life and goodbye
in Boulder where you once placed your hand on my stomach and told me to breathe when suffocation or hyperventilation seemed to make so much more sense
in Boulder you held me to the sun after a night of stolen whiskey and a seed that made me see fireflies that illuminated the path to you and your silence
in Boulder you pressed my tangled head to your chest and i could exist with you and feel with you the heart in me that in the end only scared you and scarred you and left me sighing into my bended bare knees in my lonely hangover sunrise bathtub
in Boulder you mourned your disposition and neurosis and loss of the want of love while my insides twisted with emptiness and begged for warm milk and a one night surrender
in Boulder I held your hand to no avail
in Boulder I swallowed more visions than you could take
in Boulder and everywhere else I recalled when you were angelic and didn’t mind if I got weary or shakey sometimes
in Boulder oh God I fell for you and yearned for your German torso and shy young hips and your cerulian patient eyes that had seen the cruelty of New York and the openness of me standing naked in the middle of so-and-so’s apartment amongst bootlegged jugs of Carlo Rosi and smoke where I performed a drama that continues to this day
but all I really want is for us to finally have eachother completely
finally earthly beings completely in a field of lightning and rain
in Boulder I ached for the light of your bed while I bled behind dumpsters and woke to find streaks of red across the heart of Dawn that never promised anything but another prophecy of Day
in Boulder I gave you a daisy
in Boulder your smell made me so painfully human
in Boulder I showed you my soul
and in Boulder I wanted you to tear my skin to pieces so I could weep your dreams and see us rise over cities of stone and ruin and dance like madness and make love like madness and fall asleep in eternity by the river where we died
and where I will die once again

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