On Poems

'In the childhood of mist my soul, winged and wounded.
Lost discoverer, in you everything sank.

I made the wall of shadow draw back,
beyond desire and act, I walked on.

Oh flesh, my own flesh, whom I loved and lost,
I summon you in the moist hour, I raise my song to you.'
-Pablo Neruda

---
Of course I miss my father. And I comprehend the aching, the iced desire to pull him close to me in walking, waking hours; the desperate grasp at his work shirts, curling up in the fur of his cashmere sweater; reading the last year's emails at length, time and again: my first desire for frequent forgetting. I comprehend my small acts of desperation in my intellect, in my heart.

Of course I wish him back.

But for all of the of-courses, the expected, that which is told to me, are the unexpected. The dreams that come. The sore sadness of the moon. The sourness of the most memorable moments; mistaking the mild for meaning. Such harsh regret.

I suspect that the moments won't become any milder, just more expected and that, as selfish as I know it is, I will remain not only disappointed, not only torn, but finally with the knowledge of what it is to really need. To look up and back and within myself for some sign, an impossible, inviolable signal of un-disappearing.

I know that the bandaids will all fail, if not at once, in the slow, slippery unsticking of real bandaids covering much slighter openings--the truffles and laughter, cleapatra outfits and purple wine undone as my kindergarden braids, soft bristles of longing always present and pressing at my insides; that the temporality of tempresses, of needle-like touchings, will only tickle and tear.

I suspect that I will break in tears at poems he suggested, the posibilidades of Neruda, the southern suck of Wallace Stevens sidling back time. And that here, at the beginning of every day, I will have to remind myself that there are other ways of belonging, that I can sleep without his shoulder, that--even missing a belief in spirits or otherworldly forces--such love still licks the wounds.

Amelie

I rarely think of Amelie these days, but it was the type of film that made me want to be a filmmaker, in the same sense that Beloved makes me want to be a writer, or Fire and Rain is an internal revamping of my imagined musical career. Beautiful art, we all know, is much more becoming than beautiful people. It beats so hard. It hails small slices of heaven that are, surely, steeped in our earth; the flippant kind of fallen angels that breath, talented, torrid tinkerbells that bite back or roar.

He tells me I will not be Amelie, today. That I will not insight eventuality, that I will not shatter, then melt. He tells me to cry or scream, to un-level my baths, to preempt overflowing. In my rationality, in my fixation on the flowered clock, I nod. I know. But knowledge is only power if it too is harnessed and hell-bent on expression; knowledge can simmer on the back burner for too long. There is so much I have known, long enough to turn back time and again, but also easy enough to forget, to recall only in small, sleepy ways, to tempt with touch or tongue but never embrace, other than oddly, awkwardly and after far too many suns have set.

It does not seem so bad being her, anyway. Or like her, rather. Amongst waves of Parisian disappointment but not daring death. It does not seem so bad to be so many things any more--tired, torn, cold, wild and/or true.

It seems that what is right (if there is such thing, if it is somewhat more solid than that fairy I feel back at) is somehow simple. Not easy but clear. Not quaint at all. And when I leave, less anxious, yet awfully absorbed in myself, melting seems mild: unless pointed at by witches, unless clicking our heels actually brings us home.

It is beautiful today. Or was, in that Oxford way that every sunshine passes too quickly, that we crave that golden drug to seep our skin so much longer, after so much winter has passed. It is quite pleasant now and the peaks or peeks of sunshine dribble out of the sky, the picture windows surrounding me somehow, suddenly appropriate. And home, it seems, lives in so many sides of me here, both simple to sidle up to, or suddenly suffocate with new surroundings.

The Asian Supermarket. Oh that is home. It is funny that I have never cooked Asian food, really (tonight is a small debut), but I have been inside so many Asian restaurants and basked in the glory of so many Asian meals, that each shelf, each bright item makes me sigh. First, the ginger candy, the rice paper covering, the charged childhood madness where Katie and I would cover out hands, our mouths in the sugared-spicy delight. Where I would request perfumes and her lychee fruits, reminiscent of who were to become. The mochi melting into puddles of pink and green; frozen shrimp with beaty eyes; tempura crumbs kicking at the dusty walls. The height of Kikoman soy. The joy of bubble tea. The kiss of passionfruit juice, juggled in a can. And then, at the bottom of a black plastic frame, the sugarcane.

Julie asked me when I arrived here, why I had sugarcane in my bag (it is a bit rare, I must admit). I began but never finished my real explanation, or the perhaps childish expectation, that I could access some other kind of memory. That memory that wakes up when I smell cigarettes at daybreak or hear the unfortunate voice of Bob Dylan on the radio. That memory that is so much more body than mind.

And so, at the supermarket, I am not Amelie. The tears fall swiftly, expectedly and without panic, I feel too tired to fight them back. Just the touch of the root on my fingers brings up my roots and our walks amongst budding produce, summer's flowers of food. And then we are sitting, side-by-side in our maroon minivan, the sugarcane roots across my lap, one so suckled in my mouth that my dad laughs and can't stop laughing. I know I am small, because his hand is huge in contrast to my knee, because my fashion show is one of pigtails and a heat-responsive shirt, which changes colors when I touch it and now has drips of spit-designed pink across the chest. My own widdled wings, my own small handprints in desperate grasps with the green giants that I suck dry.

And he is right today. I am not melting. I am sad, surely, but still smiling, laughing even at the adult I am becoming, or really at how little I have changed; at the fact that he called me solid, and the fact that I am surrounded by sesame seeds and bak choy, by so much spice and nuts, and then to my left, a new beginning, a barrel full of baked beans.

Gypsies

Are taxis in New York, in a manifestation of the politically incorrect, which speed farther north; are beggers in Decani; are belly dancers in our child's minds, or in the bells of Fleetwood Mac. I am thinking of them now because I hear such bells, such coins; because the bottom of this woman's skirt beside me shivers to the hearty, breathy beat of my delight.

I am still wondering about London. I am not taken, but torn. I am insistent on learning to love this city and yet, my own escapades have failed me. The gray of the sky sheds itself on the buildings, the ash of pigeons so much more than animal: body of urbanity rather than real, ripe, wretched plumes. I want that blood of Berlin, the way of opening my eyes with such slight, slow pleasure that I knew the city saw me back. That I knew it blinked its bright, yellow eyes and yet never revealed my most naked of noddings.

There is an incredible awkwardness here; between the fat, full center, or centre (in British speak), or centaur (in my imagination, of course). And the lax outskirts, with human hands too few and far between. It could be the lack of nostalgia that at once nicely numbs and disappoints, the impossibility of bringing back, of begging back or breaking open other, icey, aged lives. It could be that I am actually growing up. Or that it is hard, in the constant shadow of such sadness, to really look, to really bite open these streets of sweater-shops and shy bricks. To really love back.

Walking through the park, devoured by the tulips of the queen; squinting my eyes not to the sun but to capture the ornate etchings beneath Big Ben; red velvet cake coated in marscapone frosting, coconut, mango, buttercream cheesecake, ginger & sour cherry merengues, soft chocolate-banana muffins. That was my London this time. A Sunday roast in a wharf, long wandering, large, fluffy, HOT vanilla latte. Laughter and Gossip Girl. Down bedding and boiling bath. The raw reflection of all day tea. Top Shop torn to bits.

I could live in London if I had money. And the sooty certainty of this is not so different from the city I hold closest to my heart.

Churches

I have taken the steps of a church only a few times and two, the only two I can really recall were departures. In both instances I was trying, in the stall of a lime-lighted ladies’ room, to pull myself together, to tug out the tears that tore at my insides; both times I was facing death and somehow, both were my firsts, such blood on my dress.

When I see Bob, I climb the stairs again, an unlikely third. I am barely there. I am still wavering in the first minutes when my sister called me home. I am still staring, slightly awry, outside of my portrait pane…and still, still I am calling his name. When I see Bob, for the very first time, I am not yet in mourning but the morning has broken; I have made the phone calls, and my anxiety has broken my rituals, my rest, my raw need for relief. I am hoping he will pull me back. Not together, as all of my insides have been ruptured and rearranged, as my heart is half, as I am hardly able to breathe in my own heat, let alone float in this faraway place I chose (I chose this, I must remind myself) over the Atlantic, with so few tears in my eyes. My mind is somewhere else and it is not mourning. Nor is it shock anymore; but rather the red-pebbled markings around my eyes are entertaining, are explicating, that I too am somewhat gone. That my stork, whether wiry or old, shot dead by his own insides, leaves me wailing, homeless and thoughtlessly un-whole. I am small, I tell Bob, upon us meeting. I am too young.

I think all children, whether definitionally so, feel this way. What I realize, what I am told, is this. And yet my own stands out so strong, before the fuzz has drawn its way around his eyes, before his beard is marked only by gray writings and wings, before I am attempting to draw—and now to write—him out, in fear of forgetting and fretfully forging the wrong man. My youth suddenly pounds upon my chest and my rush, to retire, to conclude my studies, to reproduce is slowed to a Midwest paste, African or Latin American time, the ticking clock crushed beneath my flushed, flowered, bitten fingertips.

I am nowhere near ready to lose this person that I love so vividly, to be frightfully fatherless in a world, a way already misleading. I am nowhere ready to say goodbye. And so, my first frantic embrace today is that of our words, our conversations, the broken lines where he brought me, always, home: today it is this, in his e-mails, on the cold, white page through which we once spoke. Me: ‘Are you sure I did the right thing?’ Him: ‘100%...but to what are you referring?’ Just the sounds, the soft of the semantics speak worlds to me, unravel me into the piles of kisses, warm embraces, quintessential (and essential) quilts of love, I still—when smiling, when centered on the teetering tip-toes of my mind—can find, can feel, can smell across oceans and much larger, deeper voids.

Godinama

I am always reminded of the wealth of words. If in laughter, if in the shrill delight of spinning circles of children afloat on my lobby floor; if even in songs that I cannot understand semantically, but still bring to life little parts of self that lay waiting, awoken only by older expectations.

When I read my father's notes, as I now do, his poetry as impartial as his advice, the softest of harsh honesty, I am filled with longing: to be younger, to hear the words that I wait for in those few sublime moments before really waking, that built me this tall.

When this song begins to play, I am strangely light-hearted, rather than heavy with the nostalgia I know too well. I want to sing, to sidle up to this artist that I remember as apartment companion, curled up against the goldfish and nighttime mint-tea, music videos of war a world ago. Maybe they are not his first words of my native tongue, certainly they are unbitten lies, but they are also those that are known too well: "I have no canons that roar."

I was asked a dozen times today how I am. Before, in a dreamy desperation, I would break into tears; or spurt harsh inaccuracies--'I'm going to die.' Now, however, I do not know what to say. I am trying to maintain a certain numbness, so as not to break; I can only cope with the smallest realities. Ringing that number again and again. Missing moments. I can't touch the real grief, the real roar that arrives before sleep and before waking, that itches and bears its teeth at times. I am frankly far too tired to conquer it now. Instead I shield myself in small ways; not sheltered, but not shattered. Only damp.

There is roaring, however, in the apartment that bears our name. It is almost promise, but somewhat less certain, somewhat less civil. It wakes me up inside. I still belong with him, I know. Not stupidly, but in my own rendition of fiction, I cannot relinquish that smallest piece of hope, of awakening to his laugh, the scent of cigarettes, aftershave and rolled rs. And I know, when I trip on piles of life left untouched, when the whole world stops, suddenly, roughly, raggedly re-arranged. I still belong in his softest heart, his strong embrace, his sneaking smile, now reminiscent in my sister's Riley, our beautiful bearer of better days.

Ode to the New York Subway

What better brother than a blue-haired ponytail, sidled up as sloth, somehow close as kin. He is the first I look at with wide eyes, having momentarily forgotten the event, entertainment, sheer show of riding the New York subway alone.

To my left: a middle-aged man with a waist-long gray ponytail. Somehow, he has attempted (and mostly failed) to die it blue. Not sky blue or the blue of seas, but an almost navy that is somehow sadder than the gray.

To my right: a middle-aged man engaged in deep conversation with a nine-month old; complaining about his hair. "I wish I had your hair" he announces, to the child that swats at him in serious delight. "It stays in place, unlike my hair, which is just too silky." The mother tolerates him and the baby, when he turns the other way, swipes his hat and gloves.

Then the mariachis come on. Perhaps the expectation would be a muse at the music, but all heads turn downward and ipods are produced in sync and in such hurry that I know dollars are at stake. Small children look up and dance with their heads; I am made dizzy by the combination of live Mexican music and the speakers in the ears of the pony-tailed man beside me, loudly playing "Touch My Body" by Mariah Carey.

I have a seat. And I sigh at this delight, in my exhaustion, as having a seat is akin to winning the local lottery. It is worth the two dollars and the pretense at personal space (somehow always overwritten by the reality of subway riders) pulses through my veins.

That is, until, I am on the red train. I stand waiting on the 42nd street platform, where hoards of people sing and dance, beg and beckon. Between the drums, the chimes, the bartering and the consistent converting, my body shoots into a sensory overload I must have earlier become accustomed to. I laugh. I laugh out loud and, expecting to be noticed, look down embarrassed. However, in this world, this city, on this platform in the mud of midtown, I certainly do not stand out. My laughing cannot be heard above the chorused renditions of Somewhere Over the Rainbow or seen through the frozen, human statue of Michael Jackson in drag.

I have reconsidered my pre-conceived notions: there is no need for shrooms.

When the Number One train arrives, my racket of reality hurries past the orange warning line, forming herds, or hoards, or other shallow human patterns. The train is full. An old man at the front steps off to let the train clear and then is summarily pushed aside by the waiting passengers, thrown into this sea of creatures scantily clad at the first sight of summer. He is left off the train.

In his place, it seems, and directly pressed against my side, is a sketchy man of about 35. He groans and veers forward, his body contact almost entire. Between us is a bag and a seltzer bottle, for which I am eternally thankful (thank god for my laziness in throwing away empty containers). He smiles at me with shiny gold teeth and I turn up my ipod, the Kooks a perfect companion for this eternal experience (forty five minutes, I reckon), this delightful, distasteful, distinct of making my way home.