Weekends

Medicated Limbs, lonely and greedy. Sick for attention, dying for
company, you're drunk for days. Overburdened, moss-rotten branches
heave slowly with the weak night breeze, like a failing heart, and
graze the stone wall.

The nurse in me won't let me leave.

Homemade illness hardens into sugar and batters your speech, draping
your dry white tongue over your teeth. Red pinholes for eyes, and
your mouth is a smudge.

Do I have to watch tomorrow afternoon while you keep your face
warm with the television and the maple drips on the lawn chairs that
flake and rust on the flooded terrace?

When you start snoring, I'll take the tray from your lap and tip you
over so I can look for the rest of your lunch under the green sofa
cushions and probably find those pills you've been hiding. By the time
the clouds dim and I start seeing us in the windows I'll be drunk
myself and ready to wake you for dinner.

(Viggo Mortensen - 1985)

Apart

You found my keys
on an angel's hip
moved half the fallen trees
from the frozen road.

This trip is
all I thought
it would be
and we're not
even 1/2 way yet.

If I can't touch you
with snow-hung firs
our only witnesses
can't have your eyes
when everyone's asleep
then the fire's almost out.

You ask the un-named
attraction to leave town
but keep checking
if I'm still around.

Should we sidestep
putting fingers to
words tracing lips that
would inform us?

Once said I'd missed
you every instant
before we'd met.
Now believe we knew
how sad we'd be
apart

(Viggo Mortensen - 1999-2000)

Breaking of A Promise

She made me promise.
She really did.
There were two promises.
One is to commit to turning up from now on.
The other is to swear I won't do it again.

Friend says, it's good. Like everything is getting better.
How happy it is. When it's so obvious that I've been given another chance to make another's life hell.
"Because 'she' is not emotionally tied to you." - and so it should be.
But damnit, as soon as she made me promise, the ties are made.
What does she think, that I'll promise and keep it up because she's important to me?
That I'll do it for her?
Is that the emotional ties work?
Is this how things really operate?

It was after 11pm that night.
I came through the corridor after turning my keys in the front door.
The air smells of sugar. And cocoa.
My flatmate, Nigel, is baking a cake, diligently, with a serene expression on his face I've never seen before.
It brightens up my day.
And I walk into my room.
To begin the breaking of my promise.



(What do you expect?)

Silent Years

Ending the silence that lasted all those years.

They Decide To Have No More Death

There is a group of friends, fifteen of them in all, who have known each other a very long time. In one year, three of them have died, leaving twelve. They are too young, this group of friends, to have had three of their ranks taken. So one day in May, in a house on a ridge overlooking a valley of heather and wheat, they meet to discuss what to do. After seven hours of ideas and deliberation, they decide that there will be no more death. They agree that none of them will themselves die, and that they will as a group work together to find a cure for this problem of dying too young. One of the group, Helen, draws up a petition and they all sign it. Another, Suze, begins, with twine and clay, to work on an anti-death device. Four more - Wilt, Bob, Antaea and Roy - build a lab in the basement, where they begin to experiment with gene therapy and thunder. At night they all sit on the floor by the fire and recount what they've accomplished, and speak about their friends who are gone. They talk about how Morgan, twenty-seven, heart condition, thought he could sing, though he could not sing, and how perfect he would have been for that recent TV show wherein the worst would-be crooner wins $100,000. Ginger was twenty-six and was killed when a train derailed instead of carrying her home. All of those assembled on the warm floor compare stories of when they first found out that Ginger's sweet, ebullient facade belied a quick cutting wit and X-ray eyes. One or two of them finds comfort in knowing that because these people - Morgan, Ginger, Richard - are gone and will do no more living, their lives can be summed up and dissected and turned into comprehensible narratives. A few of the assembled do this, silently, and smile at their concoctions The fire continues in the house and moths jump from the lamps to the windows to the ceiling and back again. Everyone talks and laughs but no one tells themselves stories about Richard, because Richard took his life, flew from a bridge, and no one wants to think about this because it might mean - almost assuredly did mean, they felt - that it was, in part, their fault. Who looked away? Whose door was not open? They go to bed, content in knowing that they have spent a good day doing good work (trying to solve this problem of dying too soon) and have done a good job of not talking about Richard. The next day they awake, none have slept but pretending they have, and they go back to work. Timothy and tanya build a catapult that would send a person to safety if death was approaching. Chrissy and Giacomo discover a way to live, forever, in a mirror made using smoke. And Mary - she with the mouth of a hundred curves - suggests that the remaining members procreate as much as possible, and overwhelm death with sheer members. Death will retreat, she says. Death will move on, knowing it cannot kill us all. And because Mary is the smartest of the group, and because her idea seems so practical and within reach, they all put aside what they're working on and work on her plan, first.

-----------------------------------

A story I read this morning. It really got me. For various reasons.
I wonder, is it humourous at the end? Possibly? Or it's hinting at succcumbing to the way things are, or moving on. Is it hopeful? Or is it declaring defeat?
And the other thing is "why" the people do the things they do. Being in the current state that I'm in, I went straight to the immediate thoughts that concerns me....
Are they guilty for their friend's death? Is "inventing" a way to deal? Recover? Live in Denial?
And what the heck is with the ending!!!!

*Meh*

Gentle He Is Not

A delicate, almost gentle, boy, his hands already a little coarse,
suddenly makes the triggerlike gesture that reveals the young punk:
flicking the ash off his cigarette with the back of the fingernail.

Float. Float. Float.

Still a little bit of your taste in my mouth/Still a little bit of you laced with my doubt/Still a little hard to say what's going on
Still a little bit of your ghost your witness/Still a little BIT of your face I haven't kissed/You step a little closer each day/But I can't SAY what's going on
Stones taught me to fly/Love taught me to lie/Life taught me to die/So it's not hard to fall/
When you float like a cannonball
Still a little bit of your song in my ear/Still a little bit of your words I long to hear/You step a little closer to me/So close that I can't see what's going on
Stones taught me to fly/Love taught me to lie/Life taught me to die/So it's not hard to fall/When you float like a cannon...
Stones taught me to fly/Love taught me to cry/So come on courage!/Teach me to be shy/'Cause it's not hard to fall/And I don't wanna scare her/It's not hard to fall/And I don't wanna lose

It's not hard to grow - When you know that you just don't know...

STONE TAUGHT ME TO FLY

LOVE TAUGHT ME TO LIE

LIFE TAUGHT ME TO DIE

SO IT'S NOT HARD TO FALL

WHEN YOU FLOAT LIKE A CANNONBALL

Last Note

Everything I loved - I hate.
Everything I love - I abuse and hurt.
God does not make us who we are.
Instead, the Devil marks us. Defines us.
Fallen, I am now, from grace.

Reality, is everything you can't leave behind.
All that is done. The sum of the past.
All that cannot be undone.
All that you cannot deny.

I am all I have.
I am nothing.
I have nothing.
To give. To take. To lose.

Last and final wishes.
That there's no Hell, or Heaven.
That I will depart from this world.
And have no destination.
To never belong.
Cease to exist.
No more dreams. No more memories. Nothing to be felt.
No more blood. No more tears. No more laughter.
No more empty words. No more colours. No more music.
Evaporate, into thin air.
Silently.

Love, is Lucifer's Greatest Invention.
The greatest lie of all.
Even God is fooled.
And we are all drugged.

Once you learn this truth.
You are left with no choice.
But to die.

Alone.

A Piece of ... Ms Joni Mitchell

Rows and floes of angel hair
And ice cream castles in the air
And feather canyons ev’rywhere
I’ve looked at clouds that way

But now they only block the sun
They rain and snow on ev’ryone
So many things I would have done
But clouds got in my way

I've looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down, and still somehow
It’s cloud illusions I recall
I really don’t know clouds at all


Moons and junes and ferris wheels
The dizzy dancing way you feel
As ev’ry fairy tale comes real
I’ve looked at love that way

But now it’s just another show
You leave ’em laughing when you go
And if you care, don’t let them know
Don’t give yourself away

I’ve looked at love from both sides now
From give and take, and still somehow
It’s love’s illusions I recall
I really don’t know love at all


Tears and fears and feeling proud
To say I love you right out loud
Dreams and schemes and circus crowds
I’ve looked at life that way

But now old friends are acting strange
They shake their heads, they say I’ve changed
Well something’s lost, but something’s gained
In living ev’ry day

I’ve looked at life from both sides now
From win and lose and still somehow
It’s life’s illusions I recall
I really don’t know life at all