Breathing in Rhythm

The night had resolved into the subtle sounds that only rise above the threshold of audible awareness when the insistent chatter of day has finally exhausted itself.

He lay in relaxed anticipation of the sleep that no longer held the heightened necessity it once demanded, lay beside her listening to the measured rhythm of her breathing.

It was melody and touch in its cadence, much like the gentle sound of unhurried oars caressing the waters of a summer lake, much like the breeze that shimmers late afternoon leaves into a hush and buzz.

It was melody and touch, much like waking in the dark from an extended sleep and knowing by its sound you are right in your placement in the universe, that all things are balanced.

It was melody and touch in its most natural essence.

It was melody and touch moving past the confines of time as if he had known her from the beginning, would hold her forever in this moment, the rhythm of her breathing drawing life in around them.

Strange Fates (Forest Fire Hair)

Where was daylight when the drifting snow settled like the smoke of ethereal ancient ghosts? Where was this world in the geographic mapquest of intersecting lines? Where was the lake whose waters misted into angel tears?

He frequently let the concept of fate interfere with the cool fluid motions of music that defined his existence, let the roadblock sensations appear like the hazards of ennui, let the philosophical arguments of subconscious motivation dominate the movement of the seasons.

He first sensed her in his childhood, the fragrance of pure woman he inhaled while passing his face past the neck of innocent female presence, becoming the scent he pursued across decades.

He first sensed her in his childhood, the touch of delicate skin accidently brushed in brief random encounter.

He first sensed her in his childhood, the flow and ebb of dance that was the primal activity, the essence of the waved hand, the fingers that passed lightly over his cheek.

To him she was the archetype of sensuality, a precious life force that defied the decay and renewal that dominated the elements rippling like stone circles in the calm waters.

They had met again after many years, a cycle and a time. Met in the déjà vu of café life. Met at the beginning.

He leaned across to breathe in her scent memory, to feel his mind rush with the overindulgence of images.

Her beauty hadn’t seen a passing day, as if the clock hands had ticked in opposite directions, as if she had found rejuvenation in the lost years, as if she had paused during his barren desolate search for words only to fulfill him with this wordless smile.

The lyrical wonder of her laughter cleansed the air around them, as if the basics of chemistry and physics were altered in order to create an organic silence.

They sipped dark coffee for an indefinite evening, spoke of wonders and the lay lines that circled the globe only to find their way back to the neighborhoods that surrounded the names they could enumerate.

They sipped dark coffee holding the scenes of crowded banality at a distance, holding the interruptions at the intersections where the signals turned red.

They sipped dark coffee and felt the presence, the present, the immediacy, the balance.

As they exited into the dark city pavement of idled cars and litter he drew her to himself, kissed her with unadulterated intensity, the consummate point of his lifetime’s desire.

He wanted her to wrap her arms around his neck like Renaissance marble.

He wanted her tears to disperse like mist rising above a lake.

He wanted her body to tremble at his touch.

He wanted to hear her call his name.

Notes on His Imminent Death

He found himself driving down deserted tree-lined roads running from suburb to sleeping suburb, night riding with the long distance radio playing songs that wouldn’t stand the light of day.

He had taken to sleeping in shifting patterns as if the vigilance would grant him a stay of execution, as if forcing his dreams out into the open would reveal a new meaning, a new world.

He lived on mineral water and rice like some Third World herder in the desolate regions bordering the Gobi Desert, sand swirling around his feet, scarf of Himalayan goat’s wool sheltering his face.

He painted the walls of abandoned factories with the obituaries of tattoo stamina.

Who did they think spoke and sang in this last ditch effort?

He would savor the walls. He would savor the faces. He would savor the toys. He would savor the laughter. He would savor the urine stained dumpsters.

He would savor the vagrant vegetation of the broken tarmac, ever more insistent, трава и засорители, this force of forward existence, this ever mutating desperation, this… competition.

The crescent moon with its polluted sepia tones faded to the wooden arena of deconstructing tenement hallways.

The freight trains of archaic desire sent the last metal sparks into the greasy gravel lining the pathway to the terminal point of geographic imagination.

This… competition.

He would draw to an inside straight. He would hold the words. It was him and his God and piss on the rest.

Car ++Ö++ et parce que LumiËre

“mon corps est une histoire extraordinaire”
-- ++O++


It was never the reflective surfaces, broken, reduced to their integral parts, a sandy beach where the sun on water only wished to blind. It was never that harsh.

Automatic muse, dream machine whose rotations light to shadow to light were in sympathetic rhythm to the appearances of her image. Light to shadow to light.

It was never the ornaments, never the red drapes thrown in convulsive airs, never the sanguineous cello. It was never that harsh.

Dancing in surrealistic rain, imaginary rain, rain of the parched and barren desert shores, sandy beach where the sun on water only wished to blind. Dusty sidewalks where old women spray water and sweep away forgotten emotions.

It was never the unintended contrasts, never the search for contorted angles to expose ever more ecstatic meditations, never the forest fire hair across the blank distances. It was never that harsh.

It was the written word, without shame, without obscurity. It was the stone niche of the statuesque, the garden trellis umbrellas, ever reaching, ever turning, ever illuminating the pale skin in the extraordinary present.

The Word That Cannot be Spoken

His heart faded, withdrawing from the burden of the conflict, panning the night sky, holding off the knowledge the slightest of winds could still the stars in their orbit.

Firefly flickers sparked hallucinogenic across his line of sight in the unlit rented room where he had come to rest, come to some static pause between bouts with the pain that weakened him, robbed him of his breath. He stared, searching for the ceiling in the darkness.

Looking up from the stretcher into the neon structures was becoming a familiar scenario. The thought that he could gasp his last breath in the antiseptic light had an ironic appropriateness.

Once again his love of flowers flitted between poppy and lily like some honey bee in search of the rarest of nectars.

How rich it made his words.

How desolate it made his life.

The Grim Reality

By Way of Introduction

He was born near deaf, with only a rudimentary concept of sound, deaf to the dripping tears, deaf to fluid motion, struggling through the rain that weighted his clothes, struggling through the frost and fervor that caused him to shiver with genetic defects.

Struggling against all the hands that would plunge him screaming beneath the water.

To breathe and speak in fluid terms became an acquired taste, much like the honey of ancient Egypt, much like the curing of weathered leather, much like struggling until the gaunt porcelain cracked like hard boots on salt crust. And they thought it was an affectation…

He was aware it was hard silence. Especially for one so young to bear.

Life of a Doppleganger

(for ToriBell)

The demi-tasse had taken on Wonderland qualities, balanced between her thumb and finger, this essence of coffee, this “drink me” potion. She felt she should make a statement in best literary mode, an observation, a bon mot in-joke that would make the waiter blush at the sight of her dimpled smile.

She waved him to her table with a discreet finger motion, dabbed at the crumbs of cheesecake and giggled, “Clean plate! Clean plate!” in her best twelve-year-old voice.

The crimson reward of his awkward desire was brief amusement on this quiet Autumn afternoon. But Alice had plots to plot, scenarios to paint, tea parties to attend.

The crisp indirect sunlight was postcard perfect in its illumination of the banalities occurring on the far side of the storefront glass, clusters of dead leaves stirring lightly in brief pirouettes of wind.

She was fond of Autumn, a season where whole forests accessorized the random curls framing her face with complimentary reds, oranges, yellows.

It was as if the physics of her immediate surroundings harmonized with her refined sense of style, magnetic lines ordering the aesthetic placement of objects at the molecular level, mise-en-place.

It was from this center of silence the words metabolized, the images found their descriptions, she spoke the poetry that, ultimately, brought her amusement.

A Symphony of Sadness, a Melody of Time

(for Velocity)

She was running now, faster than she thought possible. Outrunning the rush hour traffic that pulsed with indignation and distraction. Outrunning the flashing and freezing fits and starts that posed with momentary acknowledgement. Outrunning her own ability to breathe.

It was a force of will that created this necessity, this insistence, this “convulsive beauty” that stirred such jealousy in those that fed their egos on the transient fruits.

It was a force of will that drove her to travel any distance to achieve what she felt was, ultimately, the ability to fly.

It was a force of will that mocked her talent for watching the sun rise and set on opposite oceans.

It was a force of will that broadcast to the world the portraits of her dreams, through wire and wind and pixilated canvas, to rest like new fallen snow on the histories of Montparnasse.

And when she had outrun the sound of her own voice, past the barriers where light and time were condensed into theories, past the compensated days, past her plans and calendar notes, past where she ordered her thoughts into the tight bundles of concepts, she heard the silence of her heart and wondered if anyone was listening.

Murky Mirrors (Chicago Motel)

“I am cleansed in dilapidation”
-- Velocity


The ash trailed across the bureau top leading to the spot where the cigarette had spent the last of its kinetic energies and burned its death mark into the cheap veneer.

How she ended up in this motel was the mere whims of transit and economy. Why she stayed… That was more difficult to explain.

The Red Line south provided the outskirts of a muted bass line to her thoughts, comforting in its regularity. Life had been constant movement lately, a state of opportunistic flux, from shoot to shoot, from dream to dream, from paycheck to paycheck. It whirred like a pinball machine as she paddled for a higher and higher score.

And then she found herself in this static room with its dim lights and murky mirrors, with its silence, it absence. Not sure why she was staying. It was difficult to explain.

Perhaps it was the sound of purposeful round-the-clock traffic contrasting to the intentional ennui of her lying on the sofa.

Perhaps it was the calculated appearances of morning business traffic that she slept through after a night of dull buzzing insomnia.

When she awoke to the early afternoon light bullying its way past the weakly resistant curtains it was with a certain sense of sadness, as if she had missed those few useless vacant moments when the dust floated through the rays of coffee break sunlight.

She stared into the mirror at her smeared make-up and savored its absolute anarchy. As if she could afford to give away personal beauty due to its abundance.

What in this context held her beyond the uncomplicated air?

What in this context held her beyond the thought she had fallen below the radar?

What in this context held her beyond the ability to transcend the limits imposed by its implications?

She was cleansed by the dilapidation, freed from any consistency, freed from phone calls home, freed to define words with whatever personal meaning she invested.

The Reincarnation of Shirley MacLaine (Ritz #1)

(for Velocity)

The Vegas lights edged the landing strip of foreign invaders, the undulating forgotten origin that forged desert sand into monuments of clear silica pillars. She had arrived from the post of all “posts”, the mismatched oasis whose creativity was so spontaneous it, by necessity, combusted.

The heat contrasted oddly with the cool neon that sought to eliminate all vestiges of absence. And yet absence was all pervading.

She had come to this town to taste the legendary fashion that was rumored to explode metastatic into rains of rein stones. She toyed with fashion like autumn trees fired their leaves to stand naked with audacity. She toyed with fashion like a collection of 1960’s Playboys revealed in the corner of a used bookstore.

It amused her to assume magazine personas of eras whose meteorites had lost their trails through the night sky. Not that one could see the past through the glare of the ever present signage.

Even as the lush and beautiful woman she had become she still clung to the little girl dress-up fantasies, their meaning mutated from frustrated want to coy in-joke. She would paint her body in mode after mode only to reveal, surprise of all surprises, there was a real person at the core and the joke is on you.

It amused her to assume magazine personas, the bright primary colors that enticed travelers to lighten their wallets on their way to three shows nightly.

It amused her to assume magazine personas from a time that appeared to have a cultural clarity, a simplistic view of a world that no longer existed.

It amused her to assume magazine personas for this present season, this present phase of her life.

She knew in the end history would find her, she would move from deserts to lands with deep slow flowing rivers. Move from magazine to literature.

Perhaps Paris. Perhaps Milano. Perhaps somewhere with a memory.

The Concentric Circles of Time

“I don’t exist when you don’t see me.”
-- Andrew Eldritch

He had formed in a moment, on a winter’s night, when the ice was thick and the world was asleep. Formed in a world of poppy flowers and brick dust, of frozen drain pipes and near empty coal bins. But that was hardly a memory now -- a past city whose endless sidewalks filled with crowds of holiday shoppers, their meaningless laughter a baffling social ritual of recent invention.

He brought the compressed images into the present, as if they had all just happened, as if outside the door was a cast of disparate characters exchanging introductions.

They chattered in languages of banal origin of how the weather was reinvented day by day, how different modes of transportation didn’t travel down similar streets.

Their words were an elliptical orbit around his head forming concentric circles of time until, hands drawn to his ears, the world went mute.

And in the silence of the settled dust, when the hours had resolved in the abandoned alleys, a sweet distant song resonated siren-like among the shadows he wore as camouflage.

And in the silence a woman with forest fire hair sang from an upper floor window, sang to the sealess shore he had remembered as azure waters.

Sang of what was once the theory of pale skin and was now the sensation of silk.

Sang of what was once the rumor of poetry and laughter and was now the fragrant lips that whispered the dream states of ecstatic expression.

Sang of what was once the choreography of seduction and was now the wordless cry of release.

Whose song fastened the hopeless fire escape ladders to their ever present rusting brackets?

Whose song echoed along the facades of 19th century tenements?

Whose song settled like late Spring mist unto freshly laundered sheets undulating mildly in a barely noticeable wind?

She sang from an upper floor window, a siren-like song, in a city of endless sidewalks, in a world that long ago had gone mute.

And in the silence a woman with forest fire hair sipped morning coffee in the breeze of first light.

And in the silence a woman with forest fire hair caressed the thought of flight.

And in the silence a woman with forest fire hair lived a life more precious for the memory that, of all that she knew, all that she would ever meet, she had been loved to a depth they would never achieve.

The Last Subway Station

He learned early not to answer the phone, that the voice of violence would hiss and burn through the wire. Every breath was hidden and obscured. Every step was swept for unsettled dust.

He would listen late at night at the rooming house door, listen for footsteps in the still white-washed corridors, always aware of the second exit, always ready to break out a dead run.

If he let his guard down there was the chance the dark would lunge screaming at him like a horror movie slash scene, splintering wood and guttural profanities, shards of glass dangling overhead, sparkling with razor accuracy before littering the barefoot floor.

Through the doorway this disheveled and deranged old man, empowered by his demons, seeking revenge for the self-hatred that consumed his life, hunting from room to room. And he would have to be faced, last one out, leather belt distance from safety.

It was a great relief to be sitting alone in what some would call the abandoned hollows of the city. It was a great relief to find that place where no one desired to stop. They thought he had been left behind when what had really transpired was he had stepped outside.

Even now when he closes his eyes he can see the train tracks, his great wall of industrial defense, jumping from crushed stone to wooden tie, the trestles of antiquity his balustrades.

How ironic that the Boston Strangler had just been captured.

How ironic that the wolves of childhood would slide past him in the last subway station, staggering broken and abandoned by life.

He had learned and succeeded. Nothing stood now between him and the train entering the station waiting to take him to the center of the city.

Ballet of the Maid Hatter (The Magic Hat #4)

(for Kess)

It was a dance of reinvention, where the forced and angular movements were meant to give gestation to a mirror image of her hopes, a dance of engagement and retreat alternating between soul baring pale skin and the comic withdrawal of hat in hand.

Dance was important to her, the metamorphosis of banal walk to conscripted maneuver to graced flutter. It transformed her to the hummingbird that hovered above the crowded and littered streets.

Dance was important to her, from the time of Sesame Street gyrations that warmed her giggles to the desires for the entranceway to pop pantheon.

Dance was important to her, top hat Fred Astaire, the black and white tuxedoed films where fantasy blended into club life.

Dance was important to her, its sad and sweet afterglow, its fulfillment and fleeting energies, its coda of anticipated applause. How she waits, poised, posed, perfect in the passion.

Before the Invention of Photography

What time held that clarity, standing outside the door, waiting with a smile because there was no other reason? What time, indiscriminate in its abuse of the possible, where perception and meaning were in conflict and resolution, where his lack of distance, his distorted experience, were all still forgiven?

He walked into the dimly lit room, aroma of old Boston where the dusty rose light of decades shadowed the unread leather-bound books. Walked into the room where those on leave from confinement spoke in the poetic alliterations swept up and passed from handshake to poolroom handshake.

Who had he talked with, Bickfords mirrored walls of safety? Who had his back when all he wanted was a moment’s relief, winter cold to summer heat and a return?

He walked into the dimly lit room, aroma of old Boston where an old man of unknown origin slowly melted from the feet up, as if the hardened sugar of his life had turned to blood and betrayed him, all kissing him on the head in homage to a genetic tradition.

What time held that clarity, waiting for late night trains and hearing the squeal of wheels entering Harvard station? Did anyone read his graffiti, subway philosophy in the crude graphic of a disordered mind? If only he could write in English.

He walked into the dimly lit room, aroma of old Boston where dark haired girls he would have loved fixed there lipstick, where “A Love Supreme” set his aesthetic, where a pocket poet be-bop wordsmith formed the rhythm and cadence of his stutter.

He walked into the dimly lit room, sometime before the invention of photography, sometime when a subtle guitar’s melody captured the tones and textures to be forgotten later in a time when clarity was a permanent present.

Photographie Noire (Retrocity #24)

(for Velocity)

The black lace curtains barely filtered the intrusion of hard blue light from the indifferent wintry afternoon. It was a forgotten neighborhood, an embarrassment only romanticized in post-modern, suburban graphic novels. To look but not live.

She had come, not to celebrate in its death, but to embrace its timeless beauty.

The mechanical elevator whirring on its cables while aged sleeping security guards were grateful not to be disturbed. Whirring as it sweat grease in a proud display of almost perfect arrival.

She waited for the dust to drift through the last tangents of sunlight, waited for the moment, waited for the shot.

Little girl, Veronika Lake dress up in the cross currents of a culture adrift in the abundance of the pixilated points of its compass. So many adventures to follow and no where to go.

But she was here, now, centered in the lens, digitally defining her piece of the portrait.

She casually picked at the flaking paint chips as the spectrums of artificial luminosity adjusted the angles of shadow, wondered where the sclerotic grey pipes emptied their buried exhaustion, wondered at what depth they travelled “under the floorboards”.

Clicks and encouragement and her pale skin continued in its transformation of the space between chaotic lace and hard and ordered metal, the lushness of her movements lending a palpable and scented reality to the static and unforgiving functionality that framed her art.

But she was here, now, centered in the lens, digitally defining her piece of the portrait.

Her gloved hands unconsciously rose to her throat in a subtle and protective gesture reminiscent of the best noir divas, her eyes a blend of personal joke and femme fatale suspicion.

Her gloved hands covered her faced in perfumed lace, inhaling the vague memories of an outdoor market and the impulse purchase of an extravagant, luxurious and extraneous accessory. An accessory that had now found perfection in time and place as it caressed her powdered skin.

Here, now, centered in the lens, digitally defining her piece of the portrait.

White Cubes (Photo #13)

(for Velocity)

Was it the comfortable geometry of angled artwork or the way her knowing hands caressed the stone birthday present of modern architecture?

Was it the diffuse light of cubicle humor or the incandescent color of her hair that refracted like the sun’s harsh revelation of oil on water?

Was it the way her pallor radiated in defiant contrast or the manner in which her shoes braced against an inner tension?

Was it the arch of her back or the delicate curve of shadowed calf whose liaison with spiked heel defined elegant posture and position?

Was it the confidence of her cheek bones? The conical essence of her aureole? The pale perfection of her skin?

Or the cat-like method with which she regarded her possibilities?

J'etais Libre Parmi les Esclaves Masques

It began as a fascination with barbed wire, the barbed wire that marks borders, the barbed wire that keeps out the poverty of life.

A fascination that translated into the barbed wire he wrapped around his arms like the penance of enlightenment, like the corona of a sun, black sun of ancient sailors in a starless sky, drops of blood forming on his skin to be dabbed away like the tears of a troubled child.

A barbed wire sonata, basso continuo humming like a swarm of bees dripping with the sweet honey of endorphin relief.

Barbed wire that spider webs the windows along the street he traveled in the diffuse light of a sunless day.

Barbed wire strung along the shore to repel the unwanted, the unattended eyes.

Barbed wire that rose like an exorcism over the demons of everyday life.

If he had a flag it would be the black barbed wire that proclaimed an iconic and ironic liberation, an indelible revolution.