letter to my agent

It’s hard to disagree with you when you’ve so much conviction, and I’m growing sleepy and warm lying the wrong way on my bed listening to your voice late at night. The truth is, I think most of the things people do are full of shit; especially what I do and what I want to do.  It doesn’t mean anything, we are all just filling in time until the end comes and only survive in conversation as long as there are people still living who remember us. For most people it stops at their children.

I want to believe you, but I’m siding with Bukowski.  I wish I could be a pretty, well-kept and manicured girl but I’m just not. I’m a slob if you’re lucky and just plain cranky if you’re not.  I’m always frowning and thinking about stuff that makes me unnecessarily anxious and I just discovered mascara six months ago. I would drink way more and write that way all the time if I could get away with being drunk so often, but I left that behind in London too.  I love O’Hara and Buk equally, though I think Buk would have offended Frank’s tastes greatly, or they would eventually grow to be good but temperamental friends with me half-heartedly playing peace maker.

Frank would want to make us a nice mixer while Buk would want to swig straight out of the bottle, cue some choice words and animated eyebrows.  I would drink both, to be honest.

I know you think I am great, and good, and can do something meaningful, but I’m telling you…I just don’t think I have it in me; and if do, I talked myself out of it a long fucking time ago.

the orchard eternally

There's something in the anatomy 
of hands that fills you
with chimes, you told me.


That lone gravestone lilac
-part woman in the soil, ever
to be carved around her being.
Driven by the harvest, may 
her stellar attempts haunt
the orchard eternally.


Yet words still sprout as
though they were echoes in sleep
(and I know the chimes you
speak of; they're heard roaming
through winds arranged gently,
half knowingly by a Zephyr
made happy) when she once
smiled at the sight of 
you deep in 
a puddle of memory.

the cellar

I saw you the other night at Pinter's birthday party. 
You were mostly obscured by a strategically placed box of cereal and an out of tune piano; but when you threw your head back gently to laugh fondly at Meg & Petey, the lamp above the piano illuminated your face. Damn, you really are beautiful when you're in the moment.
Like that time you were down on your knees asking for someone to be your Lady Windermere, or was that your Mrs. Erlynne? And when Stan was once again being all tragic around the piano, you seemed to be looking straight at me. Then you stared as I walked past you smoking your cigarette. 
It should be a felony for people to smoke so heavily yet still own such flawlesstranslucentskin.


I saw you yesterday as the six-fingered man; and, darling Timothy, when you saw me laughing with glee during your sword fight, I swear by all the heavens you replied with a little smile back.

finis

The sun shines on him I think. And a little on you too perhaps when you're around him.
He was the first person I'd met that actually sent messages in a bottle...to be found  by a child in Norway looking for treasure with his father along the beach.
Now it is one of my favourite stories, along with 'the selfish giant'. I remember asking him excitedly one morning to guess what song I'd heard at 4am, only to have him reply 'piano man' without missing a wretched beat. It would be much later when he took me to his room and showed me Goya sleeping on the wall above his bed, the kind of sleep that produces monsters I'm told.

night garden

She snuck out to the garden
at night armed with a
torch to track
down what she was
after. In the morning
though all
was discovered.

The acrid smell.
The soft red smears on
her fingertips slightysticky but
what gave it away was the
smattered trail of vermillion petals
leading up to her
desk (like some forward-thinking Hansel
being led by his parents into
the forest placed them there)
The geraniums sat
dismayed in a Black Douglas tumbler
stolen in darkness.

Harpur

Swept up in a diagonal
rain of yellow leaves and
gleefully eating my avocado I
find the silverwood bench that 
I often fantasized about stealing


('cept it's bolted firmly to the ground)


I sit there as the sun
places her warm hand on
the back of my neck. Above, cirrus
clouds make sweeping 
gestures like a relative
just returned from overseas. Those
ancient bells stupidly ring out
'the Nutcracker' and 'when the saints 
go marching in' so that I cannot hear
grace above their commanding 
echoes. And I do 
not want to go back to
that stifling room of
orange
and 
brown
where the mean
tomes give me papercuts
because they know 
I do not understand them.

Epyrus

hey boy, I watch

                 you take the skyway

while I remain here on the ground

knowing that one day you just won’t come back

so until then…

my mother in the next room

watches videos of the island she left

as a child 25 years earlier

to make her home

somewhere else

she tells me that a lone cypress

tree still stands in the same

place she remembers it being

                        as a little girl

and I’m not sure if it’s

                       a miracle I smell or

those lilies of the valley

imbedded deep into the soft folds

of the woolen jumpers she always wears.

Tess climbs up onto my desk

to watch me work

                        and he calls her

                        ‘the perfect killer’

because she is so small & beautiful

                      and deftly quick & silent

but that is simply

the nature

of felines.

Georgia

It is here that this moment of splendor fails us.

Give me your sight and come now, for we have

both lost. You make ready your shoes

and suitcase (it seems the parting was inevitable)

while I hide here amongst the curtains, clutching

your photography and praying guiltily.

Now sorry I, who failed you,

must watch from the window

as the old glass distorts this last image of you

so that I can’t remember how you really were

(a blemish, something minor, like

the sliding of my hand across your skin

or the dialogue swerving to somewhere

we’d never been)

New tulle of my skirt quivering as we danced

too lost in collected notes to worry. I scratched

your arm trying to stifle the shock that came from

an idyllic clarity disguised as sound

Who was playing that night? All I remember is

you liked my dress, fascinated by the fabric.

Your palm on my wicker-chair, silent.

Then you said you loved the evening

since it held no light, and forced people to

concentrate on the idea of a person, eliminating

physicality which only obstructs.

Wine and darkness you said,

are the two quickest ways to

really see a person for who they are

(you untying the ribbon around my throat,

laughing, then following the stepping stones

of my spine from my neck downwards)

and my hand, perfect

there upon your sleeve

is the clearest of any

regrets I’ve known since then.

the second

December boy,

while you help me find my shadow,  you lose yours

like in some stuffed up Asklepious dream

where it is Holofernes who cuts

off Judith’s head and so

the courageous suffering

woman dies instead

I stumble across your room         

                     knocking piles of records down

trying to ignore the feeling I’m in a

well lit Howard Arkley painting

(god, why does he use those colours?

                                     they make me ill)

And where were you when he tried

              feeding me a line from

              Casablanca?

something about ‘all the  bars in the world’;

it doesn’t matter, he wasn’t even wearing

a fedora while he was saying it.

the first

Here you make sense of the rare moment

                    where the pulse distorts;

turning all into chords

full of Valentines

and sorrow

the storm salt            the peace touch

a lighthouse and I framed indefinitely

(the rare moment;

where the pinstripes have

fallen off your trousers)

have I really know you

            for so long?

a reply to Thomas Stearns;

The phone rings but not for you

and you try to be calm, composed

-but that is not you

You throw a plate to the ground

in frustration

You weep into the crook of your

arm at the sound of the china

breaking. And upon looking up

you see Eliot

waiting with words from Burnt Norton

(and like the best of them, dead

so long) articulating your sadness,

making it all seem so trivial, and so

you sit up, and stop crying

and read well past East Coker.

blue

In the grander scheme of things

you and I are separated by eight

shades of blue. You, kingfisher,

mix it with the turquoises while I am

ultramarined between delft and smalt

And don’t you know that

a little blurring never hurt

anybody?

a day in the life

Wednesday, June 25th 2008


Reading Schopenhauer on the tube...everyone thinks he is a mysoginist and a pessimist, I actually am quite partial to old Arthur. I feel for him. I know why he has these opinons of women and understand that he doesn't really hate them but he never managed to get the love and attention that he craved. 
When the first female role model in your life (dear mother) doesn't make you feel your own worth and bags you out to Goethe where do you go from there? Endless rejection, endless longing. My favourite grumpy German.

Cradling Marlboro lights on my fingertips. Old friend. Always there when I need to regroup and focus, cigarettes will kill you though. Gah. Red red wine in the evening leaves me looking like I've been punched in the mouth...a suitable illustration for how I feel. I have been converted to the Church of Blossom Hill...who knew the Californians can make a mean Merlot? Certainly not me. 

Decide I want a poodle as an homage to Mr. Schopenhauer. Ok maybe not right now though. 
I read an article that said listening to sad music when you are down actually makes you feel better, as opposed to worse; cue Ryan Adams, a man who has given me more comfort than he will ever know. Oneday I will buy him a drink or three. Absolutely.

Being a hopeless romantic is hard work; it's hopeless because inevitably no one will love you the same way you want or need to be loved. There are people out there, I'm sure. I've only met one so far and I'm too terrified to explore this further with him and so keep him in the shadows, much to both our dismay...the dissapointment and longing is a badge we hopeless romantics must wear time and again. 

Try in vain to keep away from one very very lovely English boy who turns me into a gibbering idiot with every interaction, and he reads Schopenhauer too, oh the pain. Searching for converstation but only find stammers and stops and banal comments on both our parts; "it's really bright in here isn't it?" Holy crap. If only you could just say "look, I really want to kiss you" maybe just to see their reaction. Ok, I like stirring things up...but I will keep that comment to myself. I hate when people ask for permission to kiss someone for the first time. The tentative politeness ruins it. Passion is not synonymous with politeness.

Schopenhauer is an old friend to me now. I rue the fact we will never have a proper dialogue..our conversations are so one-sided; I read him and relate and say to him "oh you don't really mean that, you're just hurting and scared like me" and he just keeps on going. Sometimes he relents and I break out into a grin, gleeful that I cracked his gruff exterior if only for a second, buried in a sentence somewhere.

Thinking about Virginia Woolf and she's right, I do need a room of my own. What am I going to do with all that spare time that was once gobbled up and filled to the brim with a lover? Be completely selfish, that's what. It's about time. Boys get more attention than they deserve and don't give much back for it either. Write, look out the window, do my own stuff without feeling self concious...it's been far too long.