"How Insensitive" By: Astrud Gilberto

4.23.2009

Our days together in dream

   We were at a music festival, hosted by a hotel. The rooms were all full of musicians and you can hear an orgy of sound as you walked down the halls. we had the room at the top floor. It reminded me a lot of the sunroom on my old apartments roof. You could look down at all the people, The stage, The courtyard. Lots of different bands were there. Nick was there with his girl friend who looked like the daughter from the Gilmour girls, Alexis Bledel.  Maybe It was her. She also brought another girl friend of hers.

     My band wasn’t going on until 9 pm. but nicks band was scheduled to go on in a few hours. Something happened to his other band members and he asked me if i knew his songs. I said I didn’t but I could learn them very quick. He wanted me to play guitar while he sang and played the drums. We ate some crackers and his girlfriend, I’ll just call her alexis, her friend and my girlfriend stayed in the room, while we went down to the stage area so he could teach me the songs. The simplest chords and I couldn’t learn them. But he was standing very far away, and playing really fast, his fingers looked just like a blur, going back and fourth. Nobody could play like him, they could try, get all the chords right, but it would never sound like nicks playing. After several failed attempts and his looks of annoyance, I finally got it. Then we had to go up on stage to play. right before we started, nick told me one of his friends was in the audience and had asked his opinion of my playing, as if I should want to impress him. I could care less of this guys opinion, but i could tell he just didn’t want me to fuck up. So we play. It all went well and the crowd had a good time.

            On my way back up to the room now, I see my girl, who utters something hurtful about the one she’s with. We are no longer a couple. I enter and see alexis and her girlfriend quickly lay down and pretend to be asleep. then she “wakes up” and starts yelling at me to get out. They were both naked and drenched in sweat, blabbering on about unknown things and jumping wildly about the room. I knew they were on something. I tried to get her to calm down, but she was afraid i was going to use the rest of her drugs. Heroin. I look in the kitchen and see they devised a cooking method on the stove, where the little cups underneath the burner part were filled with liquid heroin. I then saw the process in my mind. They sealed off the bottom with saran wrap, scooped the powder into the cupped section and lit the stove. the burner acted like broiler, slowly melting the drug, she would then scoop out the liquid onto a spoon and continue to boil it off until it dehydrated again and she would sip up the smoke with a straw.

           getting hazy now, I flash a bit forward. they are both coming down, they’ve used up all they had. Alexis’ nose was grey, like a clown’s red horn nose. her friend was seemingly unconscious, rolled into a ball of naked sweat in the corner, the water leaking around floor like a bottle of spilt milk. Slowly creeping toward my feet. I’d get flashes of them in the shower, gripping their knees, rocking back and fourth, trying to justify their fucked up experience as just a bad batch. Cut to heavy in formaldehyde.  She was so beautiful when I first met her, now look her, a sick sight to see. She reeked, couldn’t hold a conversation, her skin wrapped around her rib cage like… like sticking you fingers into a balloon. No substance to her. Nick came in and saw the girls. He didn’t seem too surprised. He asked to be alone with her, so i left. I saw later that he was looking for some to use himself. I go to the roof and stare at the sky, the colors like borealis, reds and purples and blues and greens. Then I heard the sprinkler system come on. I got up, made a cup of coffee and began to write.

3.20.2009

A mourning full morning.

I sat in her apartment for nearly two hours, staring through the window at the billboard placed squarely in view. It stared back with it’s minimalist message which read REPENT in all caps.

She left for a business meeting early in the morning, left me to fend for myself amongst the feminine products and empty alcohol bottles strewn about the floor. I will get out of bed, I told myself. I rolled over unto the floor and slowly stood up. I will go to the kitchen. I will pour myself some coffee, I told myself. I slowly walk to the kitchen, careful not to trip on anything. I open the cupboard, closely examine the coffee mugs for any signs of recent use. I rinse out the mug and pour in some coffee. Just then the telephone rings. My heart races about. My mind scrambles in an attempt to figure out whether or not I should answer it. The message machine picks up for me. Telemarketers. I sigh in relief.

This apartment is nearly empty. Besides the mattress, A couch, a few milk crates covered in cloth underneath a table lamp, a Hi-Fi stereo turntable, various records and a coffee table. Yet it is over crowded with clothes, empty potato chip bags, cigarette ashtrays, beer cans and liquor bottles, blush, eyeliners, lipsticks and hair brushes. I don’t know why I am here. She asked me to wait, but I am getting bored and uncomfortable. It reeks of stale cigarettes and sex.

She has the eyes of a classic film star, aged, refined. The billboard pulses at me. The letters jump and twitch. I sip my coffee and continue to wait. The caffeine is making me nervous. I notice a small piece of paper in the corner, folded neat and innocent. I crawl to it, being sure to keep my body low to the ground, away from the prying eyes on the billboard. What could it be? A receipt from the market? A telephone number from an adoring fan? An emotional outburst of lust less frustration and romanticized hate forever forgotten by ghosts? I pick it up, scoot myself snug into the corner of walls, examining the mystery paper. I sniff it. Hmm, smells like cigarettes, or maybe that's just my fingertips. I close my eyes and carefully unfold it, making sure not to ruin the creases.

It is blank.

I sip my coffee and continue to wait. 

2.07.2009

Unfinished Form

False Face, Appearing In The Clouds Form
I See Her Shape, Stealing My Unborn

She'll Smile. She'll Cry,
She'll Wonder, She'll Run
She'll Wait, She'll go
I'll Wait Forever,
I'll Wait, I Know.

1.16.2009

I'm Not a New Me, I'm Not A Newbe

I'm Not a New Me, I'm Not A Newbie

So with my third eye in tact, I'd attract the fractals and attack the stacked bills burning a hole in my sheets.
I found it hard to sleep underneath the speaking tongues when we sung of how we long to be where we first begun.
I no I never expressed my distress at how at best I'm just a lonesome charity for those who care to be giving. My hair was always living.
This year I'm living all of my nightmares and moving to the streets where the night stares at me with little to no light pollution.
My institution of one hundred dollar bills, my slaughter kills, my water spills, My daffodils swaying in the breeze of me.
I found it hard to breath so easily until my ability to see the things accurately held the apple tree close, into closer perspective.
I never objected to the wanting of a never-the-same corrected past I schlep and laughed as i lept into the flame and crashed into the infected dissected.

I'm not a new me, I'm still a newbie, I not a movie, I'm still a new breed of humming the tunes to eclipsed moons, in the garden of June, floating on a string of balloons, like a cartoon being attacked by erasers.

I guess i should have told you, I hold you every night in my dreams, i guess i would use gold to compare the brightness of things,
but never again did we say the rent would be paid ed in the fall of day, i think we'd rather get laid then think about the way things could have been.
I'm Trapped In. I'm Backed In the corner, I'm Stacked thin like a mourner of life's survival techniques. I think I'm liable to peek when i hear bible speak.
I've died last week and lived to see the carvings in stone. she cried for me but she was all alone. So granted i am to be appointed this plan, to be a forgiving man, for she gave me my span of understanding.
demanding the cycles to bicycle through, the tires are white walled and the sky isn't blue anymore,
she slams the floor into place, she shuts the door in my face, i float off into space.
i hold my heart to her traced chalk line. hopscotch single malt shoppe time.

I'm not a new me, I'm still a newbie, I not a movie, I'm still a new breed of humming the tunes to eclipsed moons, in the garden of June, floating on a string of balloons, like a cartoon being attacked by erasers.

1.11.2009

I had a dream and it started with a song. almost gone, i am standing in the middle of a hazel thicket, under a low cloud of stars just glimmering there above my head. Fire flies glittering under the leaves of the trees. in the distance the men of the ferns danced to a light that lit up the groove like a moon. and then nothing at all. there was silence in the glade. i hear a females voice, high and clear, whisper into my ear to listen. i closed my eyes and studied the silence. "there you go, you've got your finger on it." i opened my eyes and see a man running in the distance, excited and scared as if he was being chased. after looking around me and seeing no one, i chase after him, calling for him to stop. He continues to run, dodging the trees and the bushes, who seemed to be after him as well. Reaching out and scraping his face and he ran by. He is trying to swat them off with his hands, still being careful to watch where he is going, still unable to hear me asking for him. then as i followed him, faster he was running, i noticed the trees arranged themselves into a wall. he was then encircled by the trees, with leaves falling in flurries around him, cutting and stinging as they touched his skin. the commotion was broken by a giant wail. " we're here" i hear in my ear. "we're safe". a tree stump grows from behind me, and i am forced to sit. then from the distance a woman dressing in an elegant red robe appears on a chariot lead by goats.