roadie of a lifetime

spex of dust were everywhere and still we could not see them. you looked immaculate to me (though sullied by religion the word captured what i saw in you). you somehow had not sold out in a world of sell out crowds. and though it left you virtually alone on stage, without lights or ticket vendors, audience or effect, i would be your roadie. and if only i could, i would be the roadie of a lifetime. doing your makeup in the green room. pear green manicure. strengthening your eyelashes with my famous beeswax and used car oil (i tap it from my very own volkswagen). coaching you in the red room, whispers of unintelligible talking points. making love to you in the eggshell room, comingling of hands and the clock. you have the most striking off-presence, haunting the auditoriums. and after your final bows, the curtains hanging still like they never want it to end, I will hold your hand in the dressing room, fording our river of forgetfulness    -katya

light in august and shredded mail

The guitar. The bicycle. The running shoes. The webcam. The laptop. The unopened mail. The opened mail. The shredded mail. It's August and sure enough I risk being overexposed again. Doesn't take much nowadays. I do my best work predawn. And I'm sorry to the ones I love whose lives are not yet settling with the dust. There's little chance I will be able to open my doors to let you in, this month. 

August and the light cannot be intimidated by glass of any thickness. From a distance I see (and even feel) your struggle, for it only takes a few words or an image to convey. Maybe you want to stand before me so I can see and know more, but what good would it do? We both know I am not the solution to your troubles, though I may make a petty salve. Triple antibiotic. I offer my heart, my mind, my spirit. 

I would so like to say I love you, the spirit of you, the best in you, but what good would it do? You should know by now, you should. Deep down I think you do, otherwise you wouldn't be inviting me back in again. I am honored, too. A few years ago nobody was inviting me anywhere. I was always tryin to be so hard and now I have softened again under the sun, how did I become so soft and hard like glass to light? Who am I to be a walking contradiction and how do you walk, this way?

August. I think on Faulkner who somehow captured it for me, or wrapped my sense of it with his own personal papers. He made August more real for me. There may have been others but I cannot remember. I think of Rodin, but only because his first name was August. I won't have any children, but if I had a boy I might name him the same, for we could nick him - Oggy!

We see no end to any summer in August in the valley, the light and heat will have their way with us through September and often into October. And some of us, what once was me, will see no end to misery, misfortune and pain. Nobody should be told they brought this on themselves, but if you have been there like I have, you also know that you had some part in it, and maybe even the largest of all the roles. For you are always there in the center of it, are you not?

Learn your lines well, my dear, and know you are not alone. I am behind you as well, with others whose parts are also to be played. I will take that deep breath from behind the curtains, steady myself and walk in under the lights with you in my own time and when the script demands it. Your stage presence in your own life is irrefutable. 

Journal # only one way to get the rush

Look I am worn down, too, after what me and you, we been through look at us -- are we not friendly now? All the vanity got rubbed off and the ego decimated and sentenced to hang where the public could watch, and really good riddance to the rubbish anyway, now we can rest and work behind the scenes where the works are, the ropes and pulleys, the measured weights and ladders and a train of laundry bins on tracks carrying reels and tapes and costume clothing... where the bespectacled producer discusses the talent with the director while his bloodhound noses about some dusty storeroom treasures and everything smells of woodsmoke and light is coming from the back where metal doors have rolled up into the ceiling so the caterers and couriers can unload upon the docks the goods, look, under my eyes are long crescent moons turning purple in the seam tonight, and the crows feet show in my laughter, as I listen to another stagehand talking about a date went wrong, smoking down here in a bay in the back, where the light is white and the air is cool and far from the action on the stage which would not exist without us, of course, sweet dream, you and me, to file away the old script that felt strange on the tongue, and the makeup made us look so pale and so young, let us be casual and severe, minding our business back here, lending a hand to the horn section of the band, as they parade off the symphony half-shell. Off broadway is nice slice of life for us now.

years of certain darkness

In the eyes of angels
blackpool wells
swallow the
world

years of certain darkness
marked us all
for life

years of sullen sadness
lost another
smile

archived
file

years of watching death
swiftly steal the
stage

another leading man
embroiled in his
rage

another leading lady
frozen by her
fear

years of certain darkness
they really ran
their course

right here in sunny
California
our day of perpetual
anhedonia

dis of ease and
ability

turned angels
into devils
dying

angels into
devils into
angels back
again

into angels
fallen angels

into angels
once again