trespass. in a storm

There was a storm last night. The wind and rain assaulted the trees and many limbs were lost. A palm frond fell on my head as I was leaving my apartment and I forgot my name and yours. I broke into a car with keys I found in my pocket, to find shelter from falling stars. They tend to be much bigger and more dangerous in person. I noticed a warm light stretching out from an apartment in an adjacent building, so I opened the gate and entered the yard and walked cautiously up the stairs, which were littered with stardust, the skin of trees and wet leaves. I knocked on the open door and called into the light. Nobody came. That's when I felt the tickle on my neck and realized my head was bleeding. Otherwise I wouldn't have gone inside. How strange and fortunate to find pictures of myself and my family on a desk and table; I no longer felt so bad about my trespass! Clearly this stalker of me had great taste in art and food and music, I thought, as I snacked on their Blue Diamond sea-salted almonds and sweet peanut-butter coated granola bars while listening to the Jimi Hendrix Experience in stereo on vinyl. They even had my favorite hot sauce and moonrocks, and brown eggs, too. Then some baby tigers approached me and looked to me like I was their leader. I offered them coleslaw but they weren't interested - not until I drew a puddle of sweet cream across a saucer for them.

Nobody ever came home, so I made the place mine with very little rearranging necessary. I even answered the phones with a catchy name I made up which was well-received, and all of the magical passwords which came to mind automatically, opened me into their systems so I could learn exactly who I was supposed to be, in one week time, and all my new clothes fit perfectly. How fortunate I cracked my head open on that singular stormy evening! Otherwise I might still have nothing and be nobody, and that was no way to be. Damn. Now I'm gonna have to consider paying taxes.

murder by memory - part iii

The way you remembered it was not the way I remembered it, and everyone else had already forgotten.  The NRA was not a weak lobby in DC. Many financiers and real estate magnates and movie stars and pro athletes and paranoids and phobics wanted to keep a .44 in their glove compartment,  and worked the legal system hard to find the highest caliber argument. But soon there would be no head to put a gun to. Only a heart which held the lantern of truth up to an establishment which held stake in a lesser truth, perhaps an eco-friendly low watt lightbulb. This was no revolution but there were two sides and both believing they were bonafide fighting the forces of darkness. Everyone else was confused as hell or too busy to bother. What were we trying to accomplish? The way you remembered it was not the way I remembered it, and everyone else had already forgotten. But collective forgetfulness tended to take the creases out of faces erasing lines had been drawn, like twilight, like darkness; so long as you could not see them the crashing waves were not so frightful, and might even lull you to sleep.

Journal # 04.12.15

Sometimes I won't listen to music lately. Because I wanna remember how to feel on my own. Yes. There, there, now I remember a little. The way you come into me. Can I welcome you inside? Do I have room there for anger and grief, laughter and joy? Or must I stop you with a silver spike gripped by brass knuckles, facing out from me and my shadow tonight?

No, no, come, come. Come into my arms. There now. Let me hold you like you were my child. Let us pass into a new understanding, the kind you find where there are no more secrets.

The thing that upsets me most is the amnesia. Or let's say, the limits of human memory. I feel I cannot endure your forgetfulness. Or mine. Who am I to forget everything or anything you ever told me. The things you told me with great difficulty, especially. Let's pretend I really was listening the first time, not cycling through my own internal. And so now there is only the matter of recall. There is the train whistle, subdued like a foghorn. No longer shrill anymore. Oh, this I remember. There is the haunting call of the fox and the wolf, the loon and the whippoorwill. These I could never forget. But you, you have told me the story of your life.

You have told me the story of your life, and now it continues. Now it continues on from where you left off. And you have my rapt attention, today, just like once I had yours. And there could be tears in your eyes, my dear, or are they just allergies, and I am present with you fully and I absorb your pain like a freight train I have willfully put myself before. Standing really in your place, though. To  only feel the feelings you felt. To only know you that intimately. More than I sometimes know myself.

Sometimes I won't listen to music anymore. Because I need to remember how to feel on my own. I am sorry I forgot what you told me. I see the hurt in your eyes. Now this I know succinctly. I can honestly say I am sorry I could not stand in front of the freight train of your full speed feelings you conveyed. These, my dear, are only for you to feel, alone.