first draft - an ode

Johnny is a boy from down the street. Sometimes I see him through the window in my room. He struts down the sidewalk, in a way that makes me think he doesn't care. That is what people say anyway. I've heard talk. The brim of his leather cap leaves a dark pool over his face. Despite the darkness, I can still decipher the look he has. A sardonic grin, a bit askew as if the midst of cruel laughter, with his bunched up above the obscured eyes. The neighborhood girls who cross his path quickly pass him, even darting aside into the street to let him pass, yet as soon as they do they give each other a look and huddle together. Secrets pass between them. At night, when I am trying to sleep, sometimes I think I hear his motorbike in the distance. It is likw the animals at the zoo have been set free. It frightens me. I wonder where he is going. If only I could know. How easy it would be to slip outside.

I've seen him also at the cafe, sitting at the bar, slumped over. His leather boots perched on the handles of the stool, one foot fidgeting. I stare at it, the scuffed-up boots. Some boys my age cause a scene in the next booth over. Napkins and fries are flying. My mother mumbles at me about hooligans and boys like that. The boy at the bar looks like Johnny, at least I think it his him. If he only turned around, he'd notice me. I am like him, and he'd know it when he looked at me. His freedom reminds me of the smell of the gas pump at the gas station where my father fills up the car. He was there too, leaning against the Texaco sign, some insignia embroidered into his leather jacket.

The summer has been so long, and it is harder to sleep. Every night, I hear his motorbike crackle down the town's streets, perhaps farther, it seems to reverberate forever. There is a field a few blocks away, behind the bank, that I sometimes visit, but not past the fence. When I look out at the window, past the sidewalk and the apartments, I can see the field. In the morning, in the afternoon on the days when I come home from school during the school year, it is there. The messy colors of the horizon seem to sink into it. I dream of distant lands and wind and sidewalks, some sidewalks broken up. There is a curb across the street from it, before the shambled fence that I like to balance on. Teenage boys on their bicycles hurtle past, their loud voices shattering the air. Are they yelling at me? God, I hate them.

There was a dance one night, not long before school started again. I'll never forget that night. There was a horrible accident.

reenactments

attempt one

A boy passed through furniture. The lights in the room were on, illuminating the latest showpieces. The chair of the month. A deal, a bargain.
After nights in that dark passing-streets
the sharp corners dampened by the unforgiving evening,
beside the dull bright lit words,
an emergence.
To join, what he wanted.

Glove in stool.
Hair in the folds of bed sheets.
Hesitation of the hat stand,
the deferential bows of the coat rack.

The elegant downturn of carved ends. The austerity of the suits that move between the showroom, each a setting of future grandeur. He wanted to feel the soft steps on carpet. He wanted to know what the furniture knew.

Secrets: Fruit portraiture, weeping of plastic grapes, the place where he could sit, letters of words giving semblance of the value.

Missed Connections - Olympia - November 5th, 2008

I saw you in Fred Meyer, you were in the bread aisle. I saw you touch a loaf of bread. You put it back, and then wandered with your cart until you came to the jellies. I saw the way you looked at the Smuckers strawberry jelly. I passed you by, on my way to the cereal aisle, and I saw you looking at me, or were you looking at the jelly? I know the jelly comes in my different colors and consistencies. I understand why you would look at it. I liked the way you looked at the jelly and the way the bread hung in your arms, as if you were cradling an infant.

"and only _______ could make a birthday mix cd that segues from magnetic fields into nurse with wound into antony and the johnsons. i love that girl."

God, I miss you. I must forget, I really must. More dreams: I remember the last one about you, it was oh, two and a half months ago. In it, I chased you around dark city streets. You alluded me, until we came to a museum. I followed you inside, and finally got you into a tiny booth with me. I said, "I love you, I love you", and you struggled in my arms, but I was finally able to get you to submit to me. We held each other tightly for a long period of time, but you then vanished shortly thereafter.

This is so terribly personal. I might delete it later. I am feeling quite impetuous.

I had a vision. It started with a song I had composed in my head while on the border of wakefulness and slumber. Then I felt a great rush of a strange desire. I felt the profundity of the language of desire, how caresses are their own language, and I heard/saw the words in my head, the words I wanted to say, the words indistinguishable from the movement of our hands.

why I am awake at this hour

I keep waking up from these dreams. The last one shook me violently. I dreamt I was traversing the country. I was with these men, men I had never met before, and we were about to commit a crime. I think we were in Tacoma, Washington. Or was it Shelton or some kind of combination of both? I had a tiny, tiny apartment there that reminded me of my dorm in college, except it was very messy, which is unlike me. So, I was with these men, and we parked in front of this building where the crime was to take place, and they told me to lay completely still in the car until they got back. I suppose I was a lookout, but than why I was just to be a heap in the car? When they did come back, we rushed off to their cries of "Go go go", through the crowded streets of the city, and unknown assailants were shooting at us. I was shot, straight through the hand, yet it was a tiny wound, like one of my paper cuts from work. After all this happened, I was alone again, and wandered around the streets of downtown Tacoma/Shelton and thought about the pain in my hand and how in heavens I was going to pay to see a doctor. Oh yeah, I had all those overdue movies due to the library, I need to go to the library too. I returned to my tiny, clustered room and I realized how unhappy I was there. Suddenly, a vision of the delights of Seattle beckoned to me. I saw myself ascending a narrow, creaking wooden staircase in an old house. I knew I would be content there. Oh, contentedness at last. Is there such a thing?

There are gatherings in the forest. The girls in bows spread the jam, the boys frolic, the pool glistens as bright as a candle in the hall. There are embraces, fleeting shadows. The music is distant, and it beckons to passers-by. The light off the coast bleats and leaves imprints on the armoire. It tosses in slow-motion. You're lost to the water.

Impossible to retrieve, yet you return.

Bows and waving. Sighs.

to gather in darkness

Today words began to gather in my head, the words from songs. To be specific, three disco songs. They are what captures the allure of these songs, and the sublimity of disco. For on the dance floor, it is an expression of pleasure, or surrender to one's body, hurtling towards someone unknown space, and thus why there are so many disco songs set in or evocative of space. In space, our identity is permeable, and we play with death.

"Music takes me where I want to be"
Musique, "Keep on 'Jumpin'"

"And if it wasn't for the music I don't know what I'd do"
Indeep, "Last Night a DJ Saved My Life"

and of course, the first rule for listening to such dance music,

"First step, forget where you are, next step, forget who you are"
Noel, "Dancing is Dangerous"

Dancing in a discotheque, you can forget who you are for only a lapse of moments, and you become as transitory as the strains of the track. We can be who we want to be, in our embraces, in our movements. It is the fervor of the momentary rendered eternal. It is for these brief moments that I breathe.