Monday, March 31, 2008

French Bread

Biting through the crust, eyes closed, to the soft chewy interior, you wink at me, suddenly, sharing your pleasure. Sip my tea, already full, full of tea, of bread, of you, watching you. I smile at your pleasure, indulgent, holding the cup in both my hands. So cold. The cold never goes away, no never, but sometimes when you are...I don’t feel it as much.

Another sip. The scalding tea lands in a bog, rivulets in cracks of putrefying fear. Shakes me. Pouring sugar to cover it with sweetness but the granules miss, bounce, scatter like the headlights of an oncoming vehicle on a rainy night. No matter. I travel to the funhouse, absorbed by mirrors of distorted self, endless loop, trying to breathe.

Where did it go? When did it change? Knife slowly breaks my skin. Seppuku. Look down at my spilling insides, at my cup which holds no answers. Glance up through the veiled lashes. Your fangs rip bits out. Chew. Swallow.

I shake myself back to the now, hearing a muffled voice. Whose? Yours? Hey, do you want to try a piece? Here, have some. The end. I know you like the end. Break off the heel of the bread, a sacrament you hold out to me, then place on the communion plate.

Stare, turn it over slowly. Schoolgirl withdrawn, refold my hands in my lap. Biting my lips, muffled voice fills my skull. Can’t you eat? It’s really good, sourdough. Plugra butter. Smearing butter on the raw open insides, broken off piece filled with dead ends. The melting butter makes its own path through the pockets, seeking an escape. Sour aftertaste. Ultra high fat butter. Blood fear pounds, pulls me under, throat too tight to swallow the tea held behind my teeth.

Your arm around me, not a comfort, a prison. I shrink from your too-long fingernails, the glossy, deep red polish. Sweetie? Are you in there? Hey, is anybody home? Avoid your eyes, avoid you, what I see. Beloved scavenger, beloved predatory beast. I stare at your coffee, milk fat, grinds floating. My tea, clear. Read the leaves, read the grinds. They all say nothing. Nothing except seeping cold.

Thursday, March 27, 2008

Dream Lover or Wednesday Night at Austins

Every week I turn up there just to hear that voice
Get my fix, get inspired, get HOTT-that voice
That voice telling me things
Making me feel things
Want, oh yes, that voice makes me want
makes me go home, alone and....
I hear it, talking me through it.
That voice coming from that mouth
that mouth, ta geulle, ta geulle, that mouth

i want that mouth between my legs where my hands are now
no se branler, no. ta geulle,
embrassez moi, embrassez moi, lèche-moi, lèche-moi
descendre à la cave et et et
baiser moi, baiser
je serai votre amant de rêve

oh that’s an oxymoron
but say it again
je serai votre amant de rêve

A dream lover doesn’t exist
of course a dream lover doesn’t exist
but that voice tells me he is somewhere
that voice would be my dream lover
that voice sings to me

oh robyn
oh robyn
je serai votre amant de rêve, votre fantaisie, votre jouet
je serai n'importe quoi que vous voulez que je sois
mmmmm...

I will be your somewhere
i will be your whiskey drinking, tattooed, pierced, six fingered, pre-op transexual one-legged oatmeal wrestling midget.

Thank you rocco
love ya man

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Interchangeable Places

I don't even know if you've ever been in this particular one
So why does it hurt, standing here, without you?
Why should I care anymore, feel anymore?
Why do I cling to this stupid dream?
I have a better life
a better place
a better lover.
Everything better.
So why do I want to change the
‘e' in ‘better'
to
an ‘i'?
Why does an ‘i' come closer to how i actually feel?
Why i? why?

Misadventures of the Shoes: Revenge is tout doux

We warned you. We told you over and over again, but no, you wouldn’t listen. You know better, right big shot? And now look at you.

We told you we were not going. You couldn’t make us go, not for all the tea in China, India and Pakistan. Cobblestones, rough terrain, airplane security [they make us go through metal detectors? X-ray? Us? No way] cold snap and no guarantee that we would be taken out like we deserve, like we want to be taken out? Not by him, certainly. Penny-ante cheapskate. We were not going to risk our heels going there, no way. Better to stay home and watch repeats of sitcoms on television, which is never our first choice or even our twenty-third choice in terms of things to do, but between staying here and going there?

Huh. That was a no-brainer.

Yeah. No brainer. That’s our little girl, all emotion and maelstrom and hither and yon, brain totally turned off when it comes to him. Pathetic.

Yes, we know, little girl, we know. You can admit it to us. We know you really didn’t want to go either, not there. It’s so wrong, so very wrong, that you went because you just couldn’t figure a way out, a way to tell him ‘no.’ Although you did tell him, over and over, that you’d much prefer to go to any of a hundred places instead of there.

Little girl, you should have used your ace. That’s why you have us.

All you had to do was tell him the shoes said ‘No.’

What do you mean, you told him and he didn’t buy it? We are your shoes. We are your protectors and guides. It is up to us to say where and when you go. And we said ‘No."

End of story.

And you went anyway.

Now look at you.

Tears, tears, tears. Ridiculous. You’re shedding tears over that bully? Wipe your nose, child, it’s running. That bully who never heard a thing you said? Even when you agreed to go, did he take you any of the places you wanted to go to? Hmm? Do the things you wanted to do? Eat where you wanted to eat? Even your dream restaurant, which you wanted to stay a dream. Now what’s your excuse to go back? He ripped the mystery from your dream and left nothing in its place but a ‘closed until further notice’ sign.

No. Your wants are secondary. It’s all about him. Asshole.

Sorry, little girl, but it is supposed to be about you. You don’t even know why you went, but we can tell you, it was not the same reason he went. Selfish bastard had his own agenda. You know he was planning to break up with you while you were there? You realized that, right?

And now you have such a lovely souvenir. The gift that keeps on giving. Are you going to ask him where he picked up that little present for you? Rat fuck.

Don’t worry, little girl. You just concentrate on getting better, on healing. All of you needs to heal. We’ve got his number. We’ve got sharp heels. And we have connections. He’s got that bright, shiny new car with that beautiful slick paint job just aching to be...aching to be...aching to be... Customized. Yes. That’s the word, customized.

You don’t worry you pretty head about anything except getting better. We’ll take care of it. You leave it to us. Trust us. We are your shoes.

And nobody fucks with our little girl. Nobody.

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

liar's haiku

Your egregious lies
hang there. You think I'm stupid?
Sweet poison tongue sings.

Looking through the wrong
end of the telescope-fool!-
and seeing nothing.

But I'm a bigger
fool. I look. See. Know. And still
love your sorry ass.

Friday, March 7, 2008

melancholic lust

i wonder how you will feel inside me.
next time. if there is a next time.
roll over, alone. counting days.
i have ten fingers and ten toes.
and two breasts.
i can count to twenty-two.
i can count the ribs underneath my breasts, too.
can count minutes, hours, days.
weeks.
months.
years.
for you, i will count years.
still dark, streetlight sends a thin ripple over time
whatever time it is.
even the ducks are quiet.

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Bed's Too Big With or Without You

No more bags. How the fuck am I going to pack the rest of this stuff. I am disgusted with detritus, he thought, and debris. Aw fuck, toss the crap in a pillowcase and be done with it. It’s just bedstuffs anyway. I’d leave it here if I didn’t need it.

He pulled a pillowcase out of the stack of linens. A striped yellow and pink pillowcase, standard size. Hers. From before they even lived together. Staring at it, its stripes worn and faded, he sighed. Standard size pillowcase from back when they shared a double bed, before they upgraded to a king. A king size bed, so much more room to watch TV, read the papers, have breakfast, make love, be creative. So much more room to be creative while making love. Life was good. And when life was not good, not kind? So much more room to hug the ends of the bed and avoid ‘accidentally’ touching each other. In a double bed, you’re always bumping into each other. Can’t go to sleep angry in a double bed. You touch every time you turn over. Which means you better make up or you better make up. In a king, the hurts can lay there right in the middle of the bed. The hurts send out suckers all night long, grow new branches and push the root systems deeper. Never again, he muttered to himself, stuffing towels into the pillowcase. No more king bed. Maybe a queen, but a king? No. Not in this lifetime. No.

How many piles of sheets and blankets on the floor? What next? Splitting a household is much tougher than merging. Merging was gradual, CD’s, books, clothes here, special pots and pans there. Over time, things come together. But picking apart who got what, determining whose it was originally? They did not have the luxury of time for that, each eager to have a new life. Well, one of us was anyway, he thought, shoving sheets into the other yellow and pink pillowcase. One of us has a new life, and the other? What do I have? I have some striped yellow and pink pillowcases. And no bed to put them on.

What happened? When did it happen? When did I realize that it was all a pack of lies I’d been fed? And lies about inanities. Lies that could be found out in a second. So why do it? Was it all just pathology? Or because she told so many lies she didn’t even know what the truth was any longer? Little lies as a front for big lies? Was the point to have the lies discovered, confronted? Had it all been a learning exercise to test the honesty of the pupil and not the teacher? He looked up at the light fixture. No answers there. He’d never know, did not want to know. Because that would mean admitting he’d checked. That he had suspected enough to look.

And then he found out the inanities were a cover. That there were more lies underneath. Serious lies. Threatening lies. Lies that went beyond simple facts into the realm of thought, action and emotion. And she had lied about all of them, lied in her thinking, her deeds and in her feelings. It was beyond any whiter shade of pale he could accept.

Blatant and stupid as the lies were, was it worse to admit the initial distrust on his part in even checking or worse admitting the discovery of the lie? He knew he’d been looked into, the ubiquitous google and zaba and zillow, but that was to be expected. To check on her? The audacity on his part, the niggling doubts. And then...

If she lied this much now, what kind of lies would she tell later?

Why? It had only served to tear them apart. His knowledge of her lies, her knowing he knew and both of them silent. The longer it went on, the harder it was to admit. Even to say, hey, I wanted to see if I could do this and look what I found. For her to say, you knew how to verify this, good job. Or, you SOB, you’ve been checking up on me. What was the name of the elephant in the north east corner of the bedroom? The green elephant, not the purple one. That big green elephant, my jealousy is as big as that elephant. Not going to be an issue soon. How she chose to squander her time would be her prerogative. And whatever webs she cast? Who cares? Not him, not anymore.

He looked at the pillowcases, her pillowcases filled with the sheets and towels he was taking. His new life wrapped in a bit of her old life. If I put those pillowcases on my bed, when I finally get a bed, it’ll be like sleeping with her. He shivered. Lust? Grief? Whatever. I’ll figure it out later. I wonder if she’ll notice they’re gone, that I took them. If she realizes I took them, maybe... He pushed his hair back and picked up the pillowcases. The rejected sheets and towels lay in heaps on the floor. He kicked them, then walked through the piles, scattering them down the hallway.

Got to finish in the kitchen. Not leaving her my good saute pans or my celphalon pots. Let the bitch buy her own. Pupil passes teacher. Pupil does not want to pass teacher. Pupil still loves teacher. Sometimes. Just sometimes. But sometimes...

Love is not enough.

Monday, March 3, 2008

Chicken Soup for the Snatch

Onions are good. Chop a few onions, coarse chop so they’re still in chunks. And celery stalks. Mise en place, good rule to follow. Get all your needs and wants lined up before you even start so you know where you are going. That’s a likely story, knowing where I am going. Rinse the celery and cut into small pieces, about the same size as the onion cubes. Onions are good. No one knows...when you are slicing onions. No one sees, no one knows. Put the pieces in a bowl while I brown the chicken. Oh yes, don’t forget to brown the chicken pieces, the thighs, drumsticks, wings and neckbone.

Make the skin crispy while the fat melts into the pan, golden rich fat. The thighs are smooth and plumb, dark juicy meat you can sink your teeth into once they’re cooked. Brown them until the meat is al dente, flaking off the bone into your bowl, still in solid pieces, not gossamer light breast meat. Breast meat floats to the surface, pale and bland, easily overcooked. But thighs are full of flavor, toothsome. Like my thighs. Like when he used to bite my thighs, all suntanned and firm, many hours of walking or bike riding making the muscles long and hard, but with the meat striated between. Biting them, pulling them apart, shredding the meat with his teeth, sweetly resistant against his tongue.

Make sure the flame is high enough, so hot that flames lick up the sides of the pan. The fat will drip off the pieces, sputtering as they drip. Easy to get burned, fat can bounce right out of the pan and burn any part of me that is not protected. Have to remember to wear protective gear while cooking so I don’t have to worry about additional scarring. I am already scarred. And scared. I am scared all the time now. But I wasn’t scared then. I didn’t know I’d get new layers of scar tissue before the old ones had a chance to fully heal.

Remove the chicken pieces from pan and set them aside on a plate. Pour in the cubed onions and the celery. The celery will add texture. The onions will caramelize as the tears add an almost burnt sugar flavor. Keep cooking them, over a medium heat. Stir. Add some water, salted water, to the pot. Almost ready to add the broth and spices. Don’t need salt. I am making my own salt, my own broth. Standing over the pot, the steam leaches my tears. They hit the grease, the caramelized onions and sizzle, evaporate.

Slice the carrots into shoestrings and the parsnips into coins. There are two schools of thought on slicing vegetables: either everything should be cut into the same size and shape, or cut everything into as wide a variety of shapes and sizes as possible. Today, I am going for variety. I want things as varied as possible, as different as possible. I want to be able to pick and choose. The thought of everything being exactly the same, fitting into a neat mousehole makes me queasy. I am a geodesic peg and I don’t fit into anything. I don’t even try anymore.

The turnip. I’ll cut that into wedges. No one ever cuts a turnip into wedges. I want it my way. Not my mother’s way (thin slices) or his mother’s way (cubes, lots of little cubes) but my way. Wedges. This is my soup.

Pour in the holy water, toss in the soup greens. Add the browned, crispy chicken pieces back to the pot. Simmer. Skim the foam that rises to the top, the greyish speckled foam. It’s the exact color of, the exact same color as... and the soup greens, the bright green parsley and cilantro and dill... Oh god why do I have to remember that? Let me stir the soup. Add pepper, minced ginger, garlic powder. Stir, skim. Stir, skim. Taste. It has enough salt. Simmer.

Noodles. I forgot to make noodles. Alright, I’ll make them now while the soup simmers. Mix flour, water, egg. Dash of pepper. Mix it, knead it, roll it out. I wish I had my favorite rolling pin here, the tapered French maple pin, but I will settle for a child’s plastic pin I bought for a dollar to use on playdough. I just have to push a lot harder to get it to work. Nothing comes easy. It’s all work. Cut the noodle dough into strips and toss into the soup after it’s simmered for a bit and is almost done. Is it ever done or is it always almost done?

The noodles swirl and twist, a dance, over over, a convoluted dance, so tangled up. Why doesn’t he want to dance with me? Why doesn’t he love me anymore? Did he ever love me at all? What did I do wrong?

Oh hell. What did I ever do right?

It needs more salt. The noodles sucked up the salt. I’ll just stand here for a few minutes. It’ll be fine then. I’ll add the salt and the soup will be fine. In a few minutes. Yes, it will. It’ll all be fine.