I exist, not here, but only as a series of my past experiences. Places I have traveled to, people I’ve met, things I’ve done all create me. I am always lost in memory, and I cannot tell you what I am, you have to decipher that. Where am I now? When? Who?
To say that I adored the woman in the yellow dress is a bit direct in nature. I loved her, and I loved her flaws. I loved her facelessness, and her aura. I loved that she probably cracked her knuckles, or swore too much. I took all of it at once, like an addict ingesting all his cocaine at once. My heart could and would explode, but no matter. I loved her, and that’s all there was to it.
I knew that I was in my bed with my eyes closed. I knew that the sunlight was bound to hit my face and break me of the spell of sleep at some point, but I submerged myself in my time with her. I despised the time that was misused, the time awake, or the time spent chasing others in a dream. That time wore me down like the soul of a shoe. It was beaten, defeated. That time wore a hole straight through me, and it would make me vomit and go insane from merely thinking about it.
Time, the woman in the yellow dress taught me, was the only thing that existed. Time was the primary giver and taker of the soul’s energies. Spend time in madness and you’re madder for it, spend time in or away from love and you find another madness. The woman in the yellow dress, faceless though she was, was my ideal. She was everything, because she wasn’t pure. Her flaws made me love her even more.
The woman in the yellow dress often would talk about how she hated herself, how she had one feature or another that she despised. How her skin would crack, or her voice would go out on her. Or that her eyes would drift off and lack focus when she got tired. She said how she could do nothing right, but in the imperfection, I found perfection. I didn’t want to change her, just exist with her. That’s all I needed.
I knew that the woman in the yellow dress had been through a lot. She pushed me away like magnets on the same polarity, and that energy made me love her all the more. I imagined, if I could stop her for a moment, how we could stare at the sky and lose our minds together, but I could never catch up to her.
One of the worst feelings, is knowing that you, on your own, may be crazy. It’s as if someone told you to stop craving water or air, yet you go on breathing and drinking. It’s simple to say no to such things, but much harder to implement that lacking feeling into your life. What problem or difference does it make to the air or water if I still crave it? If I feel the need to protect it by planting trees or skimming the lakes, then what is the problem? The water has chosen not to drown me, and the air has chosen not to choke me, but my energies, as they are my own, can be spent however I see fit. If I want to long to be drowned, then allow me that dream.
A dream within a dream. I knew that the woman in the yellow dress was in that world. I knew that she existed, and it was my dream and goal to find her in that, or any world. I remember the faintest hint of perfume that would trail after her as she walked by. I remember the sun hat she wore on occasion, or the scowl that she would show when she was under stress. My God, I’ve prayed for and of only that.
It’s a drunken feeling to adore someone, more so if they should ever decide to placate you by reciprocating that love. If they requite your love, mountains collapse. The entire world gains promise and meaning, but when they tell you no, it’s as if someone has hit you in the head with a wine bottle. You see stars, and you’re left without breath. It all feels like some dream, a trauma that no one should experience.
I could feel my lungs taking in air meaninglessly. I could sense the senses of life coming to again. This was problematic, as I would rather stay a lifetime asleep and touching her in dream, than spend a lifetime richly awake and longing for her. I wonder if she knew, or considered me at all. I wonder if she would rather put a pillow over my face or if she’d just as soon walk away. Breathing. In. Out. In Out. The air tasted like garbage again.
That evening my stomach was raw. It was empty and on fire with not hunger pains, but something more visceral. Because my wallet was empty, I walked over and talked with a friend at his workplace.
My friend, or at least I could call him that, worked at an office of sorts. I never called nor talked with him, and usually only visited when there was nothing or no one or no place worth going of doing or conversing with. When the voices got too loud, I’d go and listen to him prattle on about this or that.
When I arrived, he was picking up a phone, and hanging it up again. He’s talk a bit in between, but I could tell by the dead look in his eye that he had no connection to the job.
Shortly after I got there, he took a break. We went outside, and despite me having my own, I bummed a cigarette from him. His hands were shaky when he offered out the pack.I took one and lit it without a moment’s hesitation. He lit his own and we stared off down the street to the vanishing point.
There’s something to be said when two men, two lost men, can mindlessly stare into infinity together. There’s a connection and an understanding to it. For a few minutes, our minds and stresses fall away and we can believe in something, or nothing. Things have meaning for one solitary moment. It’s the same feeling one gets with a romantic climax, but much more cerebral. You lose yourself, and you want to. You want the concept of you to wash away. You want to just pass out and pretend that life was all some sex-dream.
But this moment, that my friend and I shared was more than that. It was, though honestly I didn’t care much for him, a kind of mutual disconnect. I had to admire that.
When his break time was near to be over, he threw down his have consumed cigarette and tapped his watch. He said nothing in words itself. I shrugged and glared back down the street. He took notice and gave me a few dollars, then he walked back inside the building. I stared down the street as cars passed by. I stuffed the cash into my pocket, and stood there like a madman. I stood there for over an hour.
Breaking my trance, I took to walking again. I could have died in the very spot, turned to dirt and fallen away into time, but a car horn woke me up. I walked in somnambulant form. It was as if I’d been injected with Novocain and my body was numb. Shit, I didn’t feel a damned thing, and why should I?
By then, it was nearing nightfall. I took the money in my pocket and went to a club. I still didn’t feel anything, and decided to get a beer. I drank the beer while looking at a dance floor. There were several homely people dancing, or trying to dance. They always looked the same, you could see the look of doubt in their eyes as they swayed. Other people wore genuine smiles and danced with ease, but these people were away from the pack, or the herd, or the swarm, and were as scared as a gazelle at the moment it is being consumed.
I drank my beer in several large gulps. It burned in my stomach, and made me almost immediately intoxicated. At least there was something in my stomach. Beyond the dance floor, there was a pool of dankness. Over time, shadowy forms began to come and stand within it. I could see their outlines as they monitored the prey on the dance floor itself. Never once were the homely or lacking people approached. No. I watched them each show a fake smile and walk out the door alone.
I felt sorry for them. Those sad bastards that would always, without question, be alone. I was one of them, but was too numb to change or consider it. I wondered if those homely bastards ever felt sympathy for me when I’d go home to smoke and shut my window. No matter. I was disconnected for now.
Several hours passed by and I could tell from the occasional glare by the bouncer that my introspection wasn’t appreciated. Not at all. If I were out dancing, or pretending to care, or trying to find a lay, they’d welcome me with open arms and ask for money in the process, but because I was silent, and poor, and alone, they wanted me to distance myself. The trash goes outside the dumpster to rot, it seems.
I returned home and smoked a cigarette with my window closed. My shirt stunk from the club, so I threw it in the trash along with the coffee cup. More superstitions. I wanted nothing to do with those desperate, overly perfumed and intoxicated bastards. I wanted nothing to do with trash, or pimps, or whores, or business men, or apples, or airliners.
I fell asleep in that stagnant room and dreamt of a woman in a yellow dress. she had no face, but smelled of sunshine. Her glow was radiant and she was always ducking behind corners and falling just out of my reach. I loved her. I really loved her.
The apple in my stomach is rotten, and as I lay here, I look upward at the sky, tormented by my crippling pain. Here, I am heart-broken, wholeheartedly. I am hollow, and hardened. But this is not to say that I am hardened as an erection upon seeing a divine goddess in the distance. I am hardened like concrete. No, twice as hard, and twice as cold. My heart is hardened like lead in antarctica. Snow falls on it. Lead snowflakes that prove to only weigh it down further.
I look at the sky and see an airliner curving far over me. It was either over me, or over another state, or another daydreamer, or another country. God only knows the direct point it was overhead of. I wondered, as my stomach destroyed itself, if there were any enemies on that airliner. I wondered if, in some holding pattern, there would be enemies made. It’s simple to make enemies, as simple as waking up some mornings, perhaps easier.
To make an enemy, all you have to do is not contact someone. Within mere minutes fear and imagination take over, and before you know it you’ve constructed an enemy out of the bright, blue sky.
I’ve know people that talk as friends and before the beverages are served, or the no cigarette sign flickers, they can turn like some lion on amphetamines and bite you in the throat.
I have known people that, from a fake smile, or a distance glance, can turn a friend into an enemy. they can bruise with those looks. All my previous lovers have done that at one point or another, and that as when I decided to give up the ghost. I knew it was all lost.
There would also be, on that airliner, a preachy man. He’d go up and down the aisles, berating the tired passengers and talking about God’s divine will. He’d say how, if the plane were to crash, it would be God’s will. If it landed; God’s will. If he were to shut up, which he never would, that too would be God’s will. But on that airliner, someone was heartbroken and lost. That denial, was not God’s will.
Lovers know that God has nothing to do with loving someone. It’s chemical, or animal, or a tactic of the enemy. God does not interfere with love merely because it’s too complicated. He can’t make one person love another, and he can’t take that love away from someone who needs it. I needed it. I needed to lose that love that I was holding onto.
I vomited in the grass next to where I was laying, then sat back down. No, God was not listening in the matters of love. If he was, everyone would be content, and no one would be denied or heart broken. There’d be meaning to the whole damned thing.
I remember, when i was younger, how I could love someone and it was simple and love wasn’t an enemy. Love was embraceable. It was something that would encompass your world. You could believe in it. Now, love was some destroyer’s game. It was people telling other people what to do. God, if love were only so easy. I’ll take you out for coffee and admire you, and we’d live happily. But it’s never that. You sipped your coffee in silence most nights, as you stayed up late, never thinking about me but as a problem. I thought of you always, and as the answer.
The words that tell you that I will always love you, because of fate or God, have been replaced by the words saying how I will always hate myself. Oh, and those hypocrites. They say to love yourself first and there will be someone to notice you, but there never is. You can cover self-hate with layers of concrete and people will still see it. You can never mask it enough to have it erased. It’s like showing up to court with the damned murder weapon in your hand. “Here, this is what I used to destroy myself.” I’d say. And they’d take the weapon and turn into my enemies again.
The vomit began to stink. Mostly because, beyond the apple, it was mere acid and coffee. I lit a cigarette, placed it in my mouth and took tiny puffs from it. Small, blowfish breathes. After it was gone, and the airliner was gone, and my mind was gone, I stood up and began walking again.
The snow on the ground is melting,leaving.
It changes, cyclically and distantly
into its various forms.
It changes into thoughts of you,
or long lost sands
on forgotten beaches.
The sun hides itself away each night,
not because it has grown tired,
but because it cannot outshine you.
It gives up each day,
just to try again tomorrow.
The imperfections of concrete
echo at us, call to us,
about its resiliency.
Its flaws and winding paths
carry us,
endlessly unnoticed,
but there.
Like the concrete,
I will support you,
keep you from falling through the world.
I will change as the melting snow,
because you’ve melted me with your love.
You’ve altered me, removed me,
and I’ve become as free as the air in your lungs.
So breathe me in.
Use me up, my beautiful.
Change me with your sun-kissed body
and endless eyes.
Show me tears and smiles,
that will exist in my heart each day,
like the blood does in my veins.
Show me sunlight and shadow,
because, for you, I see them all
as beauty in a frozen land.
Give me your hand when you grow cold,
and I will warm it.
Give me life in life once again.
Nicotine and Beta Blockers 