I am a believer of memory.

I know that I wasn't born out of love, nor out of lust; I was born out of the memory of these feelings. I was born out of a recollection of a past that was supposed to be forgotten.

I believe in the existence of emotions; I also believe in their cessation. I believe that the memory of having these emotions is what gives them their seemingly unending existence.

I believe that love is felt by remembering the memory of what love feels like. Loathing, from the memory of what made you feel such.

I believe that memory shared is a vessel of emotions shared, emotions understood, misunderstood, reciprocated.

I believe that there is no present. Everything is a memory of a past - always a split-second future turning into a split-second past. There is no present.

I believe that forgetting is not eradication of memory, but denial of it, with intention or without. It is latency; it is hibernation; it is panels of fogged glass that would inevitably shatter with periodic bombardment of rocks.

I am a believer of memory. I am also a believer of freedom from it. Because memory is as beautiful as it is ugly.

Viva Nicotina

01.01.2017

Heavy and overstuffed from food I haven't eaten, have seen; gnawed to the bone by all the stormborne silence, blackness. I lay dissolved in this womb-like fluff of a blanket which my mother gave me.

Here, I am still - everything is perpetually moving.

It's another year, another year to burn. Burn, burn, burn to ashes. Burn to ashes.

 

Miss Havisham

"Did I never give her love! Did I never give her a burning love, inseperable from jealousy at all times, and from sharp pain, while she speaks thus to me! Let her call me mad, let her call me mad!"
- Great Expectations, Charles Dickens

I own her

In nights of wailing chest to knee, in three a.m. conversations with lady nicotine, in shortness of breath and mosquito bites, in the cafe on the far end of Adriatico Street, in drunk dancing to an old blues band

She is mine

In a wave of people dressed in white, in the popcorn booth table, waiting for a man, in cutting fabrics to be sewn but never to be worn, in the absolute of math and weaving dreamcatchers round and round and round

I thought I own her

In Japanese after disheveling of hearts, in late periods and never ending questions, in black paint and tattooed arms

I meant no harm

When I longed to save her from misery like my own, when I told her to feel nothing when affectionately touched, when I told her this will lead to that, when tried to own her, when

I tried to own her heart
I thought I'd give it shelter, I thought my hands were big enough to guide the beating, the pumping of blood but

She was never mine

And our hearts are different stones

Wickerman

The hour has come to sleep 

for the weaker man, my wicked one.

Now woebegone woman, be gone.

Now woe, be gone; woman, be gone.

 

Lost Myths

   

We keep hurting ourselves
and call it love.

Venus is us

  

Shoot the Greenman in the head;
This land is ours. 

We are children
of lust and sweat,
of blood and sea,
of unwed bodies. 

We devour men like sweets,
crumbs on our lips, 

But it isn't enough, 

nothing's

enough                                              

to                                                                                         

          tape together

the bones, the veins,
the calluses, uncut nails.

You are the sane,                                                                      the insane.

Pour honey on bare breasts;
Satiate, satiate.

Love us, love us;

Venus is us.

Prelude to a postponed afternoon of rain

"It is rather observable that darkness comes before midnight." He said as he rubs his head with a fresh white towel to dry his wet scruffy hair.

"And by that you mean?" She asked, book in hand, a Kerouac. She doesn't like the Beatniks, but on some occasions like when another lover left her quietly for the night leaving a little note that says thank you or that she was wonderful, she reads a Kerouac. She likes the way her tongue rolls in her mouth as she says his name. Maybe it's to forget or not to make a memory most probably. And it's a problem because she easily remembers things and she doesn't like these little memories, things that will make her remember her little careless decisions like sleeping with men because they happen to read Anaïs Nin or that they happen to pretend they love jazz and offer her a good tasting whiskey, and she knows they're pretending, but you don't ruin jazz and a good whiskey just because you caught a fool on act, she doesn't like many things, in fact.

"People need not fear the dark of midnight, there's the dark of before midnight and the dark of after midnight too."

"So you are saying we need not fear the midnight"

"Night." He cuts her of mid sentence with a gesture of hand. You can see the acrylic paint stains on the joints of his slender fingers. It was a good thing because he couldn't paint anything for almost a year and his curator is demanding new works to put up until he met her on a crowded music festival. The next day, every stretched canvas he had there waiting to rot had her face and her eyes. Her eyes that he claims to love more than every part of her body. And she doesn't really believe that. He loved the lips of his previous woman, and he loved the shoulders of the one before that and the neck of the one before. He's just another painter who found a new muse after all.

"Right, night..." She squints her eyes, demanding an answer.

"Well midnight, before midnight and after midnight."

"Right, night. So you are saying we need not fear the night but the darkness itself." She said, reaching out for a cigarette and running her hands violently under the waves of white cotton sheets until she found her antique Zippo lighter right in the middle of the wet patch.

"Exactly!"

"But darkness is something you should not fear. I love the darkness myself."

"You don't love the darkness." He parts her legs as if parting water and rests his knees just between her translucent thighs, he crouches his back just enough to put his face right in front of hers. 

She exhales right at his face, high cheekbones, long lashes, creating a wall of smoke to separate them. But still, out of the blur, she tries to take a good look at him, tries to look for something asymmetric, something ugly, something not worth remembering. And as the smoke went away, his face came clear, his eyes trespassing hers. He takes the book from her hand, puts it away on the crowded side table and puts out her cigarette next. She didn't even resist. And it's quite unusual because she loves her cigarettes more than she ever loved a man. But it is also quite usual because you just can't know exactly what goes inside her head.

He lifts his finger and gives her nose a tap, something he would always do when she's quite the entertainment.

"You, my lady, use darkness to protect yourself from the darkness."

He leans to kiss her and she took him like honey in her mouth, her tongue cold against the warmth of his.

(Found:) Notes about my Valium10 dealer

February-March 2010

I was done smoking a pack, and you’re down to your last, but the smoke that separates us never fades. A simple muscle spasm might make our shoulders touch in an instant, but the face (your face), that I’m looking at, is so blurry that you seem so far away.

--

You say you love my feet. You like staring at them. You like staring as I wiggle my toes. You like watching me walk barefoot, soles gently touching the cold sidewalk. But that’s just now. You’ll soon realize that mine is nothing but another pair of feet, made ugly by veins that protrude on the surface.

--

It was a hot afternoon in your cramped apartment-slash-bedroom. John and Yoko didn't care that we're seeing them naked in your wall. You turned on the radio; Bjork was singing. You let the curtains down as you hum Venus As A Boy. Still humming, you filled my coffee cup with Jägermeister after you did yours, but the clink of the mouth of the bottle meeting the lid of my cup was louder. It even seemed louder from the silence when the power went out, and we were there bound by four corners. You tried to kiss me as we talked in your bed. I pushed you away. You said, "What's the matter?" And I told you, "I am here for the Jäger." And I hummed Hunter.
--

I am the brush wash. I am the bruise
in your elbows. I am the carpet burn
on your knees. As you pushed
your member into my dead father's urn.
I am my mother's scream cut loose.

Coffee

/ˈkôfē/ noun.

1. The only thing that kept me awake before I met you.
2. (But) it does better in keeping you awake on your drives back home than I do.

A conversation and a poem from my parka pocket.

M: I can't write when I'm  not sad and I'm afraid I'd be desperate enough to chase my demons back and offend them so much they'd track me down more violently  than they did before.
P: Why are you writing now? What makes you sad?
M: I don't know. It will always be here. Just hiding. Waiting to grab me when least expected.
P: I'll be with you.

---

hush little lady
you with the nicotine fingers
and artificial winter breath
(hide you're breasts, they're distracting.)

you crease your brows
in the middle of white walls and silver windows
you look older that your bones -
white coffins to your marrows.

red circles, and green, and yellow
as the ones in your cheek
(where did you get them?
I don't know.
a hand landed on my face and I like it
oh I'm liking it even more.)

virtue little lady
where has it gone?
you washed your laundry by hand
and innocence was bleached
along with the stains
of baby screams and distorted dreams

(stop talking
you shame me
you scare me)

hush little lady
you with the nicotine fingers
and artificial winter breath
(show me you're breasts, they're ravishing.)

As strange as we, your portrait on me.

Paint your feminine face on my pale skin, in that place just above my navel and just below the ripples of my ribs.

Mix the blood I kept with your medium red Van Gogh and trace my veins with the gentlest of brush strokes.

Feel my pulse and move your hand in synchrony. "We're still alive," you'd say. "But the dead is dear to me," I'd say.

Look my darling, such a mess we made. Red pigments on the floor seeping through the cold, stealing our breath away.

Photos by Czar Kristoff. More here. Visit his blog here.

Last letter

To the boy who'll die at thirty five,

You have left me to die and I wanted to forgive you. All you needed to do was apologize. "I hate you," I told you. And you tried to come clean. I needed to tell you I hate you so that the hate I feel for you would go away and consume itself. I wanted to tell you I hate you until I don't mean it anymore.

(It was funny how you think you know me and act as if you really do. I don't want to be near you.)

An apology, an apology, that was all I needed. I wanted to let go of the hatred. I wanted to be liberated. And until now you're such a dick. "I still hate you," I said as you got out of the car. And my thoughts all night were shame and regret for trying to think that you would say the s word and shame and regret for being ready to say, "Don't worry, it's okay." I guess some people really don't change.

But I do. And this is my last letter to you.

Once yours,

The girl you left gasping for air

And it burns, burns, burns.

6th October, 2012

"It was nice touching your pinky," you said. Yes it was. But it was torturing at the same time. 

I remember us sitting side by side on the cold concrete plant box and we were talking, staring at the unmoving parking lot. The shadows casted by the moonlight on your face were a dark shade of blue and your eyes were moist and glistening and mocking the two am sky. And I was trying not to look at you  because I fear I might not control myself and recklessly throw my bones for your arms to crush. Then you started talking about love and relationships and responsibilities and I couldn't help it. "Can we not talk about that?" I said. And it wasn't really a question. And you were sorry. And it was hard to breathe. 

We haven't seen each other for weeks and we shouldn't have seen each other yet. But there was a car like yours and it turned out to be yours. And I circled it, peeking in your windows - the tissue box, the passenger's seat -  and I can see myself sitting on it and you're sitting on the driver's seat, your eyes on the road and my eyes on my book, and you'd hold my hand, and you'd look at me, "You'll hurt your eyes, " you'd say and I'd look at you and close my book and fidget with the ends of your hair, and you'd squeeze my hand tight, and kiss it, and I'd say, "It's okay not to hold my hand, you're driving, drive with two hands," and you'd say It's okay and I'd always believe you - the dashboard, the picture of San Josemaria Escriva and my necklace on it. All I needed was to see you to believe that you were really there.

Hands side by side on the cold concrete plant box, fingers restless, "Do you miss me?"

"So much."

"So much?"

"So, so much."

To the boy who'll be my other half, my destiny, my flesh,

I don't know if your jaw bones are sharp or if your lips are prettier than mine, but she knows. And she has memorized you more than she has memorized the stops and turns of her bus ride home. And you have memorized her as well; in fact you're more familiar with her anatomy than you are familiar with yours - her moles like a star map, her scars and how she got them, (I bet she had one on her knee from a bike accident when she was nine or ten, but I could be wrong; you know her more than you know your childhood and I'm just guessing), the wrinkles on her elbow, the lines of her palms, the slight bend of her fingers, the cracks on her lips, the cracks on the soles of her feet - if you could draw her you would and the details would be unimaginably accurate the great realists of the Renaissance will weep in their graves in shame.

And right now, you're thinking the same. You're thinking, yes you could draw her and she'll like it and maybe she'll love you more for it. And you cradle that thought as you bury your nose in her neck, drowning yourself in her scent as the rhythm of her heartbeat, in perfect synchrony with yours, fills your head. And she caresses your hair, careful enough not to miss a sensation. She hums your favorite song, and asks you, "Do you love me?" You let out a sweet chuckle as you lift your face, then you tuck her hair behind her ear, and rest your hand on her cheeks. You gaze at each other's eyes as if you don't have enough time. And then slowly, gently, you press your lips against her forehead, her eyelids, her lips.

And I wish that in the marriage of your mouths, you understand that her breath that you breathe and everything between your souls, your bodies are nothing but temporary.

With love, 

the girl who'll be your other half, your destiny, your flesh

Don't worry, I don't expect you to answer me.

If I tell you I love the slender of your arms that tapers to bony wrists that I also love, and your knuckles that turn white when you close your hand to a gentle fist, and the outline of your nails and your fingertips, what will you hear? If I tell you I love your eyes planted in the sockets of your feminine face, and your brows, and your lashes that tease tired lower eyelids when you blink, and the elevation of your cheeks, and the curves of your lips, what will you hear? If I tell you I love how the ends of your hair curl and how they touch the nape of your neck and the backs of your ears, what will you hear? If I tell you I love your toes, if I tell you I love your ankles, if I tell you I love your knees, if I tell you I love your every inch, tell me, what will you hear?

Middle

The height never felt so comfortable. Forty three floors far from the ground, when in fact it was just forty two if you account for the absence of the thirteenth. People are superstitious and I'm afraid of heights (and I have a bad habit of putting two unrelated thoughts side by side). My body always has this response of cold sweating hands and cold sweating soles, tingles in the fingertips, quickened heartbeat, weak knees and an urge to run somewhere safe. But not tonight, you see. The lights, the little world beneath me and the night sky above me, I am sandwiched by two different places. And I would like to think that I bring them together, not separate them. I am the tunnel, I am the bridge, I am the keeper of the the door between. Where I stand, the wind is liberating I want to stretch my arms and believe that I  have wings for flying. And I might get carried away. But if I jump, I will do it for the freedom of my downward flight in celebration of my return to where I came from, and I'll scatter petals and be welcomed by mother ground.

Selfish

they do not exist

butterflies with feathered wings
but i live in dreams

--

i stole your paintings
and murdered the timekeeper

i killed the wrong man

--

water strangles lungs

light headed and heavy limbed

the absence of words.