One of those

Soon enough,
the quarter mark will pass.
Until then, the seasons continue
their relentless passage, paid on orbital time.
Like ministrels, bent and crooked from their
travels down dusty, unpaved paths,
the soft blue tassels of their cherry lutes
singing, still, their slow sad songs,
their make and matter never-changing.

So long the sentience of slumbering plains,
their impermanence steadfast as the turn
of salted, faded sails,
blown and turned back by unweary winds.
It is easy to forget
the gentile slants of sloping hillocks
the stinging slap of well-worn words,
or the subtle flats of your soft, rounded bones.
It is easy to forget
the principal beauty behind your perfidious smile,
the principal that lies beneath your slender-hearted breath.

It is easy to forget,
It is easier to forget
and run, gliding on the rise of rend’ring waves,
away from pan-fluted memories, swelling and falling.
Oh, how have you stained this world,
sown seeds of fearing ‘neath rock, moss and stone.
Maslow, his law long deceiving before his time,
the cunning old fool;
Upon his sly pyramid I weave
over devious sheens of your sacrificial skin:
the deluge of his blue, secretive scheme.

I miss –

The Secret Handshake

FADE IN:

EXT: LOBBY — MORNING

PEI’s waiting for K to join her. She encounters ACQUAINTANCE X, who works upstairs.

ACQUAINTANCE X
Hey, Happy New Year!

PEI
Right back atcha.

ACQUAINTANCE X.
Say, how old are you arh?

PEI
24. Why?

ACQUAINTANCE X
Good. Very good!

PEI
(quizically)
Um… ok.

ACQUAINTANCE X
(eagerly)
Are you single? Are you dating? Single?

PEI
(beat)
Ya… I guess. Why?

ACQUAINTANCE X
You know, we should hang out sometime.
(grins)

ACQUAINTANCE X (CONT’D)
I’ve lots of single and VERY available friends. Ok?
(smacks PEI’s shoulder heartily)

PEI
(blinks)
Um, sure. Anything. Let me know.

                                       Cut to:

EXT: OFFICE, 10 MINUTES LATER

PEI finishes the last of her copy. Her mind begins to wander. Suddenly, she jolts.

PEI
(smacks forehead)
What the hell just happened?

# # #

So apparently someone intends to admit yours truly into a Skulls and Bones’ style ladies’ club. Why do I feel like I’m about to be hung up and inspected like a prized steer at the local meat market? Eeep.

Feeding the soul

With everything’s that happened, I took the week off — in spirit, of course, for the rigour of work never lets up in advertising — and indulged in the pleasures of excess.

First, alchohol. The cold, blistering rush of crisp, amber beer downed in two or three magnificent gulps, searing the gullet as blood and chill combust in paradoxical bliss, who-o-o-o-sh! Then another. Three more. Just enough to effect the following changes: the mind — distracted by the mellow taste of hops, throws the switch, becoming one with the body; a synergy of comfortable insentience, fluid numbness.

Next, soul food for a suddenly ravenous mind. 12 novels over seven days in quick succession — thrillers, editorial exposes, essays, memoirs — some devoured back-to-back, some intersected just to break the monotony of authorial prose. And the two books that made the most visceral impact were Anthony Bourdain’s A Cook’s Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines, and Bill Buford’s Heat: An Amateur’s Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany.

Having read and adored Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential, it’s heartening to find that A Cook’s Tour has retained much of Boudain’s swaggering machismo and superlicious wit as the reluctant celebrity chef globe-trots — with a tv crew in tow — in search of fabled cuisines and occasional alchohol-fuelled bouts of epiphany. Ordinarily I don’t care for epistolary accounts, but Bourdain’s larger-than-life personality leaps out of every page, lending a sparkle to even the most droll situations that proved genuinely offensive or ethically-challenged, depending on one’s perspective.

Buford’s Heat, on the other hand, was a true gem. A writer by training and trade, this guy actually marched up to one of America’s 3-star chefs, Mario Batali, and offered to intern. “Intern”, as with most industries, is a euphemism for “sucker: works for free”. I did my time as an intern before, so it was especially heartwarming to see this 40 year-old man shedding the last vestiges of his orderly, established world to plunge headlong into the gristly, unpredictable world of the professional kitchen.

What truly made an impression was the exuberence and passion these two gentlemen displayed for food. The level of devotion and discipline displayed as they ploughed manfully in search of that elusive, evolutionary nirvana that one only experiences when the senses were truly stretched and attuned beyond prior limits. And to be able to distill such epiphany into parsimonious prose that crackles and pops with every inflection… now that’s greatness.

Thomas Keller of the French Laundry said it best (I’m paraphrasing here): the surest indicator of any professional’s craft is his ability to evoke, in others, cherished memories from a well-loved past. If that’s the case, I’d have to accord my fondest praise to Bourdain and Buford.

Reading Bourdain and Buford brought to mind vivid memories of the moments I’d felt most alive — the first time I enjoyed a rare steak, masterfually seared on both sides and propped on a bed of sweet onions so as to halt the cooking process while it was served to me on a spitting hot plate; it was also my first time using a steak knife in place of the standard issue silverware. I remembered blinking in surprise as the serrated edge of the knife easily glided through the meat to reveal a beautifically pink, moist centre — a cutting contrast to the browned criss-cross marks on the surface.

You don’t forget moments like this. Not when they remind you of a time when innocence and wonderment are in full abundance, not when they remind you that future experiences – however serendipitous – will certainly equal or surpass these delightful, exhilarating moments in time to come, pumping every iota of your being with the grit of purpose and anticipation, restoring clarity in a million, diamond ways.

Dreaming

each tattered page of a picture book,
a symbol in fragments, disarticulated

as if a Y-incision stormily ripped apart
from greying flesh, stitches raw and frayed.

embroidered cloths from heaven’s weave
cast into Lethe’s parched waters; payment:

a dying man’s coin, imbursed by the living.
Charon’s raft groans under its debtless weight,

such is the blood memory of his quarry,
the indelible massacre of hopes and dreams.

Tender mercies

She’s alright. She’s okay. She’s… gonna be fine.

Thank god.

This time last year, the kissing bandit was happily intoxicated, kissing 60-odd people in wild abandon.

Today, I toasted my friend, and kicked back to sweet music. I’m getting older.

But hope exists. And knowing it does warms my heart.

Impossible to compartmentalise

Too many tragedies. Too much. Too much. And I have but one dance left.

George Michael – Heal The Pain. His lyrics say everything.

———————-

You get what you give.

The nightmares won’t break. So in them I break.

The chilly weather may have a hand in this overwhelming bleakness. Or perhaps, ’tis everything to do with my own wintry landscape, vast and blistering. I don’t know.

I dreamt I was locked in a crystal prison — gargantuan, insolent, as infinitely unyielding as the universe. A coffin with too many angles, too many sham escape routes.

And you were there, your face multiplied million-fold against the myriad lattices, prismatic against its impure planes. You laughed. Then you mouthed, “Break free if you can, sucker.”

I tried. A futile effort, naturally, but I tried anyway. Nails tore as I tried to grasp the slick points, blood streamed freely, painting the walls a hap-hazard crimson. Just as swiftly, this gruesome splatter transformed into butterflies, black and gold, engulfing me in a frenzy. Where their wings smote the skin, gashes appeared. More butterflies.

You merely laughed.

Then they dissipated into ash, blanketing the ground like fine snow.

The body, the soul — converging into a symphony of pain. Always cresting, never subsiding.

I finally made it out. But you weren’t there.

——————–

Irony’s kinda ironic that way.

Just before I received the awful news, before I made the painful trip to the hospital, I’d spent the last few days reading Paul Levinson’s The Consciouusness Plague, a book that explored the ramfications of altering brain chemistry should antibiotics fufill their role too well.

And here I am, stricken with bone-crushing worry, hoping you’d be okay. That you wouldn’t lose your sense of self.

That you’ll be in time to celebrate your birthday next week.

——————

Mad Girl

And you. Never being able to break out of this disease, becoming a pale shadow of yourself. One where rationality has gone to naught, one that is ruled by an imaginary God.

Prisoner of your own mind, stripped of humanity. Rendered child-like, unable to live your life as you ought to.

It’s 11 years since we knew each other. It hurts to see you like this, it hurts knowing I’m not strong enough to shoulder you. I don’t have the resources, I don’t. I don’t.

——————

When the going gets tough, the tough get going

I don’t get going because running away solves nothing. I’ve always maintained that in order to move forward, one has to make her peace with her past.

Which is why I’ve learnt to compartmentalise, to let one part wither and die so that the rest can soldier on.

It’s a survival mechanism, no more no less. But when the people you love are lost in a tidal wave of grief, the gush of empathy eclipses everything else, even the defences you’ve laboriously erected.

And you’re left naked, so completely, irreversibly exposed. Shakened beyond belief.

——————-

What comes is better than what came before

Divided between this succour and another — that’s something I never thought I’d do.

But the survival mechanism must kick in. One part must wither away so the rest can soldier on. The one part that’s bled too fast, too hard, until it was eviscerated.

And I can’t bear to pen it here, so the other must suffice. To contain the raw, untamed yahoo within, the ego that hasn’t stop berating itself over its appalling lack of judgement and pragmatism, the one that will easily disavow faith, if I don’t curb it in time.

Not hiding, but… making peace.

[Posted with hblogger 2.0 http://www.normsoft.com/hblogger/]

Intensive Care

Third time in the ICU. Still the same unpleasant, cloying, helpless sensation through and through.

I’m numb. and worried. and hopeful. and scared.

Homily, just because I can’t bear to draft my hopes and dreams here anymore, at least, not for the present.

when you bleed fast and hard, you eviscerate

been writing. just not here.

Giving myself up

I give up my eyes which are glass eggs.
I give up my tongue.
I give up my mouth which is the contstant dream of my tongue.
I give up my throat which is the sleeve of my voice.
I give up my heart which is a burning apple.
I give up my lungs which are trees that have never seen the moon.
I give up my smell which is that of a stone traveling through rain.
I give up my hands which are ten wishes.
I give up my arms which have wanted to leave me anyway.
I give up my legs which are lovers only at night.
I give up my buttocks which are the moons of childhood.
I give up my penis which whispers encouragement to my thighs.
I give up my clothes which are walls that blow in the wind
and I give up the ghost that lives in them.
I give up. I give up.
And you will have none of it because already I am beginning
again without anything.

– Mark Strand

———————————————————————-

So my “usual style” is just about as murky as a piddle of shit and piss? Of equal, or less in value? By saying the inverse, you’ve made your point, and viola! you’ve also perfected the art of delivering sarcasm, drip by drip — nevermind it’s something you counterclaim.

Congratulations. Make do with Mark Strand then. At least he’s been published; therefore he’s at a more advantageous position to invite constructive criticism.

And I, being a gauche wannabe, will cease penning my illiterate hopes and dreams.

From me, you’ve always got what you wanted. A free tool, a play toy, something completely dehumanized to help you get your jollies off.

Except you’ll never sully yourself by walking a bleeding fuckin’ mile in my shoes, will you?

1. Quit playing the fucking victim when I catch you on your hypocrisy by saying “you never fail to make me regret.” That should be my line, innit? What’s yours?

2. Stop twisting the story around so I’m merrily sent on a guilt-trip of your own making.

It’s high time you take bloody responsibility for WHAT YOU WRITE.

I’m past being goaded. I am not a dog for you to throw a bone at, and expect to come grovelling at your dainty princess feet. Whatever made you think that INSULTS are perfectly fine as compliments?

As you wish. My overdrawn, loquacious ramblings will no longer be an eyesore for your literary eye. As. you. wish

Take my photographs off wherever they’ve been posted. Is that clear enough? Please do not force me issue a cease and desist. By disowning them I do not sign them over to you.

interval

through the interval
breath escapes,
in swift pursuit, light.
a blank expanse folds into
itself in longing.

blanket your eyes.
they must learn to cry
in the disappointment
of light. too little, too much.

upon the cold pale sneer
of moonlight
raise your cheek,
drink the rain like cold beer,
dagger your stomach
like a half-blooded hangover.

faces decaled on colourless
acrylic. pinched, pallid.
these are shadows undiscarded
when you exit stage left.

tomorrow another coat
leaves the rack,
entwines itself around you.

supple as a lie,
warmer than desire.

in spite of its soft cheek
you plaster hope
on battle-scarred gravel,
each scrape wishing it would catch.

————————-

Load of the day:

The Innocence Mission – Edelweiss