Fifteen Endings for Michelle
1.
The boats that i had always depended upon, one day were simply not there. I had clung to their presence, their shape, to comfort myself in those times that i got nervous, that my breath became different, my steps unsure, head upended. There is no comfort in their loss. Nothing simple to explain how i am still here breathing, mouthing stones...hands holding nothing.
2.
And the leaves, yellowed and hopeful, shimmered to me that things that used to be okay will be again in time. And i nodded to the lichen wet and good, blew small kisses towards the here and there beetles. I sat on the giving leafed floor against a middle aged oak and looked up at the sky, watching closely for low flying angels or high jumping devils.
3.
I have had you in mouthfulls enough. Your ink of disdain Had claimed rich real estate on my body and these scars cannot be erased, only written over by another. In order to get through this, to exit you from the place in me that does the caring, i need to eviscerate another hooker. Eat her fingernails and drink her piss. Today is a Tuesday. The ramen special is pork belly. I think i will be ok.
4.
And the rain came. And it made me more pretty. I bloomed that Thursday on until three seasons had passed. And the wheat had fallen. The barley shook. The shy roadside flowers contemplated me and i fell into their favor. Books i had neglected read themselves to me. And the boys only dared shy smiles. And i became all over the place.
5.
Naked, she had torn all of the pages out of the book and covered the room in bad poetry. He watched and masturbated as she screamed snippets from the falling leaves. "your hate for me is alike a cold grilled cheese"? "what exactly in the fuck does that mean"? "i am aglow to you similar to fireflies"? "Are you comparing me to bugs"? Uptossed, falling..."for you i throb"? "holy cow this is also bad pornography". She arched her back to leap and throw that page especially high as he came and his pleasure arced and caught the page with a wet splatter hastening its quickfall to the floor as the door shut firmly and he was finally alone.
6.
What he used to think were invading indians in the morning light were revealed to have been rows of medication bottles lined up on the small window sill. This morning light was the only sobriety he knew. His brief respite from the influence of opioids and the clouds and the fancies they brought and also the terrors. This roomful of halos, this calm before the conflagration. This mercytime where nothing ever hurts. And then the shadows.
7.
These nights as you sleep i do a little watching before i go also. I don't put trust in things anymore, like god, lungs, falling airplanes and serendipity. To me your respiration is primary and like a cribside mother i wait and look until i am certain. I have learned to only turn the light out once. The rugs are in the places they should be and the windows double locked. I turn the corner of my book page over, lay it cover down on the floor and turn towards you. I inch my foot between yours and my hand will, as always, rest warmly on your belly just to be certain.
8.
She mentioned the Queneau book and mid-sentence i stopped her just so she could see me swoon. For maybe two and three fifths of a minute i was mid-reverie, so happy to be near this woman. This knower of odd and wonderful books that i also know. To know someone's books is akin to knowing the face they make when in orgasm. And yet so far away. It is often difficult to look at her for any length of time for fear of her eyes that penetrate. For fear of them knowing all that i wish i could say, all that situations do not permit. A man and a woman at a table in a cafe. The woman is reading the man's writing and the man is looking away then looking at her hands, her darling breasts, her lips. In a cafe at a table a man and a woman are having a conversation. The lord can only conjecture what is on her mind but he is speaking and he is listening and artfully also he is thinking of the two of them two years in the future, hands held, kisses given, books read together. Through a window in a cafe at a table is a man and a woman and they are giving each other words. The space between them is urgent with invisible things. At a cafe a table is populated by a man and a woman. One coffee is iced, one is not.
9.
He stretched his pale arms sunwards and soaked in all of the vitamins. Never felt this before. It was as though possibility were contained in those rays. Basin street had quieted as it does hardly ever. And he was washed over with warmth and his breath was taken. The world quit for a minute or maybe two and all he saw was yellow and there was a taste of apples in his mouth. When the world came back he was on a bench in Jackson Square, cup of coffee in one hand and a book in the other. In a place of so many maybes, so much possibility, he decided to stay. He decided to breathe again.
10.
She practiced mouthing her o's and he watched her mouth. She made small ones and also big. He enjoyed the small, they seemed more dear to her, the care with which she articulated. Was she in voice class? Was she an actress? Was she batshit and homeless? He decided to let this one go, god knows she had knives in her handbag, daggers in her socks, ideas in her head. He watched her uncross her legs, her skirt falling in the slowest of motions like a soft avalanche across her thighs, her knees. Hands on hips she arched her back towards the ceiling and exhaled, smiled, opened her eyes and looked directly at him looking directly at her. In mid-blush he knocked his coffee of the table and scrambled to fix it all. She halflaughed, ran her hand through her hair and watched him. He finished, looked at her again. There were two smiles now. He stood, shrugged and headed towards her. What's the worst that could happen?
11.
The lines did not connect and this was just fine. The curves carved by charcoal were unlinear. The amorphous careful figures crowded the canvas and then turned their backs. There iswas a yellow, a dusting of powderblue, more brown and a calm of chalkwhite on black. Walking across it all in black socks, considering an erasure, i thought of iced water, thought of cadmium red. Oil based paints strewn across rice paper becomes larger than most people thought it would. It is haloed by an oilyellow ghost. This nongeometry follows me across the studio towards the faucet. When i sleep i will be unbothered by the gestures, strokes, tones and coffee cans. In Helen's quiet arms i am left alone to consider the infinitesimal.
12.
Wide awake unfucked and as upset as hell. Learning to live with disappointment is the title of my next goddamned aria. This is my roommate, her name is disappointment. A shrieking banshee of the highest order, she received her advanced degree in killingme at the university of goddamned everywhere. She is asleep or reading her nook or bathing again or in a coma, not sure which. The last time i felt this way i drank three 40's of malt liquor and downloaded every version of Stormy Weather i could find, listened to them on headphones while i paced about, wiped boogers on random things in her apartment and ended up naked, ipod in one hand and myself in the other, masturbating to charlie mingus' incomparable sweetsad version, the one with eric dolphy's weeping alto sax, and finishing all over the left side of her sleeping face in a glorious gesture of hurrah.
13.
O do i invent a train just to say it came to take her? Do i say 'twas madness that drove her northward? Should i make lyrics to put to piano to laugh and cry as though this too shall go? Or curse myself for now for ever for being a being that just cannot? The unfathomable heart wants what it wants beyond all logic, further than caution. The toilet seat, the scattered socks, the morning breath, the milk left out, the rosemary unwatered. We murder by degrees things we once held close and place blame on the weather, on just not trying hard enough, on not ourselves, on it's not you. In the night air the collected lowing of dissatisfied lovers saddens past my porch and my throat will not work. I will not sleep.
emily amity aimily goes, going as thisthat. gone as ghost.
14.
Who would i run to when the earthquake comes in the middle of the night? The closest thing on this table is a beer, you are asleep in the bedroom and if i woke you you would complain about the late hour before you noticed the world was ending. While we were being sucked into the earth and swallowed by magma you would make sure the tile on the melting floor was clean, and deny my kisses because i had morning breath. But such is death. "i'll break them down, no mercy shown" it is easy for me to promise to rage hard against all these machines i make myself when it is 3am and i am in a comfortable clean house that is not my own and you are down the hall sleeping, dreaming up ways to further break my heart. Are there any fierce last stands left in the world? Waiting for permission the sun will always rise anyways.
15.
i am going to call up morrissey and shit on him. I need someone to blame for all of these wasted years spent caring about not caring. For those thousands of poems that never got me laid once! For those tears spent on whether the heart over her i's meant she wanted me too or she was just a cute gal. for overthinking everything. For making all words and actions gestures of enduring romance. And while i am at it i should look up that fat old drunk fuck bukowski for telling me that whisky and beer were good gods. For telling me that poetry would get me pussy. For making the untrying life seem so goddamned easy. For being so true in such a graceful way. For showing that life is beautiful dirt and ugly halos.
16.
She put her laptop down on my table and in a gesture, i returned and gave the a-ok. The cadence of her ass in a tight skirt closely matched portishead's machine gun and of course i was distracted until she got her coffee and came back to her chair. And now that i see she has a guy with her i don't have to worry so much about acting as though i am writing an important novel or knee deep in online business, selling stocks, moving company A to company C while purchasing company B from company D. I put a book of poetry on the table next to me because there is a chance, however tiny, that a bookish nymphomaniacal pig tailed brazilian teen should wander by, notice it as her favorite obscure poetess and swoon, devour me with her eyes and sodomize me in the bathroom, nipples aflutter. They have pretty clean restrooms here at starbucks.
17.
Emptiness is a conductor and my train is there waiting, in this rain, on a soft evening just ripe with mediocrity. This is madness, i say - MADNESS! Art Blakey - he just don't quit. I feel that if i take off my headphones the wetnight would absolutely ROAR with boomTss and badaadaa! Man if i had some nerve i would snap my fingers and shout outloud! A newMAN i am, will become! so in a bid to get more trim, so he can get more trim...david goes to whole foods and gets couscous, cucumbers, onions and tofu. They do not go to well with this iced vente latte. Or the toasted everything bagel with cream cheese. Denying myself beer for the last six days has given me some clarity, i clearly want a beer. Not in a gimme-an-ipa-or-i-start-stabbing-bitches sort of way but in a .... it would be nice to be in the pool with three 40's kind of way. Ok this fellow with scholarly glasses on just got finished talking to me about georges perec and the book he is writing about 11th century not knights roaming the french countryside feeling guilty about fucking. We both dropped our educations, he johns hopkins doctorate, me san francisco state masters, me poetry, he history. I got him to send me his first chapter and told him i would give it some time. Now i need to look as though i am writing the great american goddamned novel. And i am....just look at this shit, it almost writes itself, though it doesn't really write itself at all. How much longer do i stay in these uncomfortable wooden chairs in order to prove a point? I have been here for more than three hours, my ass is a mess. My coffee is empty, there is a swimming pool waiting for me. Tonight is tomato soup.
david layden
