#02.2012

I impulsively save ticket stubs

text messages

edges of napkin-folded messages in bottles

fragments of my time here on earth

proof of the past and my presence in ink and paper

-- don’t forget me.

Footprints in snow fascinate me,

tire tracks and bursting trash bags,

the dead skin of our exfoliated

eroded comings and goings.

I paste the black and white skeletons of conversations to my bedroom walls

to stall the stale sound of silence

around my settling bones.

The echoes of my former selves

lie pressed between the soft sarcophagus sheets

of journals,

coming back to me in the familiar form

of pillow marks on my groggy morning cheek,

controlled explosions of former feelings

I revisit like exhibits in museums,

their possible meanings distantly contemplated

under cold marble ceilings

sealing my subconscious 

in the security of tupperware treasure chests shoved under beds.

What if I came unglued?

What if -- I threw away all of my past paper selves

and focused on the truth 

in this moment--

                     I want you.

in this moment--

                     show me some proof

of a life lived without receipts,

without old IDs, old pictures of a younger me,

without the imprinted, handwritten testaments of living heartbeats,

without a need for the constant retracing of the beaten path,

rewinding, unwinding the frayed friendship bracelet 

ends of our beginnings.

We tried so hard to tie forever into those strings.

The truth is--

I want you

to stay with me

so that I won’t have to piece together your presence in my life 

from old texts, letters left unsent, and notes folded into pockets.

I want you whole, and here--

I don’t know if you’d be able to fit into my museum;

I’ve got too many perpetrators of unrequited love in there already,

and that exhibit is too full of pain and wasted time

to ever be home to your memory anyways.

But I have to let you go somehow.

Because until I shed the black and blue ink

that has defined my life’s truths 

I will never be able to loosen up

and skinny dip into the oceans rivers lakes

of the present tense.

For now, I am stuck on the shores

of the subjunctive,

teetering on the possibility of sending your paper trail

sailing down the river styx,

but never actually feeling like saying goodbye.

I am writing lines

folding rhymes into 

origami

I’m sorry...

If you want me -- free and unfettered,

I’ll need a room to stash my once-dear wishes,

piles of my pennies tossed into wells,

fragments of fortune cookies and

broken grammar predictions.

I want to lock them all away 

in a large ocean-liner crate

and drop the convoluted time capsule 

into the great darkness of the Pacific Ocean,

only to be eaten away by fishes 

and crawled over by crustaceans.

Where else could sustain the weight of my memories,

but that submarine kingdom beneath the waves?

The present is a folded-newspaper ship,

we sail onto the future every day,

salt-water past disintegrating yesterday’s news.

Oh dear God,

Holy Elvis Presley

and St. MJ in heaven...

I think...I just had sex

--on the dance floor.

Well, not like actual sex, 

not like anything you’d need protection for,

even though we used the rhythm method in full force,

just, some baby-making without anything gettin made

or anyone getting laid...

What I’m trying to say is,

I have never moved like that with anyone before.

At least, not since that central american summer 

when he taught me how to move my hips like---so

and shuffle my feet like---stop-stop-go

and his hands circled my back and we moved

reeal slo-o-o-w...

como, en el estilo romántico

His low-slung spanish syllables

wound themselves around my ear-drums

and burned bachata fever forever into my feet.

Which ends up defeating any attempt of mine

to control the urge to bump and grind

because when I hear that--

BOOM B-CHH GET OUTTA YOUR MIND

I start to

Drop it drop it low girl 

drop it drop it low

low

low 

as the bass bump-bumping 

all the way up to my breastbone

my chest--is going a mile a minute

breathing in the dance floor lack of oxygen

as I’m writhing in time to the

music.

music.

please don’t stop the-- please don’t stop the-- music.

and--Pause. Breathe in the beats of stillness,

This is the calm before the perfect storm,

the shadows between 

the lights--and the movement--and the music,

the ringing reminder of the reality of a quiet that soon must come.

We all have pieces of silence in our steps

and the solitude of the loneliest solos 

remind us that we too can know the feeling of 

the holy ghost

moonwalking down the isolated aisles

of empty churches every Monday,

--or dust bunnies

waiting for the smallest gust of wind

to twirl themselves together in a cluttered dance of corners,

--or your grandmother 

when she was young, waltzing for one 

with nobody but a Buddy Holly broom 

to sweep across pastel linoleum meant for two.

Those dances will come

--and have come--for years.

For now, I am young:

20 and sweaty and fist-pumping--ready to 

go

go 

go--dancing in the warm night air,

hot with bodies pressed up against me

dreaming in sound-waves that are bachata beautiful,

merengue magnificent,

twirling around in circles of dizzying drunkenness

trying to move in patterns good enough

to get us into heaven.

Because God knows we all need a little lovin’.

So make the most of this night.

Feel the bubbling movement in your veins,

the music in your skin,

and I’ll show you that if you really want to

move me...

undo me...