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By chris Date: 2007 May 23 Comment on this Work [[2007.05.23.00.30.32333]] |
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Once you write about a thing, you own in it. So you write your life, say what you need to say, wrap the details up in a ripped-but-still-warm blanket and head for the back door, for a waiting car restless for speed. There is no need to save every detail, yet there is also nothing but need. And the things you own now own you, the things you have seen and taken possession of in the seeing: like the hot bottom of the Blue Mesa in Arizona that year, like stumbling up, up, up and feeling a thirst that could never be quenched and drinking finally and being sickened by the water itself; like the ice you still remember in crystal glasses in the restaurant at the very top of San Fran, the one that spun around to the genteel sounds of cabaret as the streets below ran with the blood of plagues; like the bruising violence of her thrusting as she straddled you in that desert-dark room to the sounds of the Modern Jazz Quartet; like the regrets that never came - and still don't - after the thousand compromises. Not even at three in the morning; like the sun that rises every day over Cabo San Lucas and makes the cliffs along the ocean turn the color of coral for just a moment; like home in all its pink and blue and red disguises; like the sand of a west Texas daybreak on bare feet, having just fled from the jungles farther east; like the rain that comes in time to mask tears; like the last light over the plains beyond Oklahoma City and the New York voices of your parents on the motel parking lot pay phone; like the desire that comes to you as fear; like the rising then falling into sleep and waking in a Bed-Stuy walkup in hot July and Nina Simone somewhere is asking, Oh sinnerman, where you gonna run to? |