All his little words

He is a four letter word: Papa. Simply writing it make the tears flow again. They blur my view of my screen. They sting. Papa. The word catches in my throat as I bawl, then and now. It's so incredible that four letters arranged, just so, can be so powerful. Papa: it's all I need to remember him intact, his love, his misery, and his blue eyes.

The language he learned from his parents was wrong. All their symbols were wrong. So, he found his own words. That language is a part of my earliest memories. He loved the feeling of its syllables: their flow, their sound. To watch him read from Joyce, from himself, was intoxicating. He was happiest when his words found resonance upon full rooms. I believe he imagined women dripping in the wake of his tenor.

Once upon a time he said to us: "There are no bad words. There are only colorful words."

By his words, a preposition should be as likely as phrases more banal, to get under one's skin. They should when wielded skillfully. To him, every word held its own grandeur. He knew that before and after could hold just as much awe as cock or cunt. His teaching: to see our words without prejudice. Hence, I've decided to skip ahead. This is my Future English, something my Papa would have loved to speak. But he can learn no more.

He's here in its vocabulary. For all that he was and failed to be, he helped create its beginnings. It's mine because he helped me learn of joy and despair, of love and rage, of fury and peace.

early times

Melanie locates the sugar bowl on the counter and spoons a few into her steaming mug with the logo of some forgotten company. She pours the cream and sips. 'Good morning to me,' she thinks. She sits on a stool at the counter and gathers the sections of paper spread out and discarded by her boyfriend, Charles. In local news: there's a story of a man saved from drowning; by his cat. A rare spot of good news against the backdrop of stories whose titles contain the words: murder, scandal, collapse. She reads a couple of lines and tosses the section back on the counter, and gives up on news.

Charles descends into the kitchen from what Melanie thinks of as "that weird stair". He smiles as he sees Melanie in her business suit. He's always found her sexiest in her work clothes. Something that he's never told her outright, but guesses she suspects. His gaze wanders down to her legs wrapped in nylons. He worships those knees, those calves.

Melanie flashes a smile, in turn, from the attention. "What do you think about Thai tonight?" Melanie asks to distract Charles from his current train of thought.

Charles knows that means she's almost done with her coffee and is headed out the door. "Great. Do you have time to meet me for lunch?"

Melanie eyes come unfocused for a fraction of a second. The thought of their last "lunch" almost makes her knees buckle, sends a shiver up her spine.

"yes," she says weakly.

"Probably," she declares, as she regains her composure. "I'll text you."

Melanie crosses to the dishwasher, going out of her way to brush against Charles going past.

Some steps in the right direction.

She, with her startling blue eyes, surprised me twice in one focused glance.

"Art or laziness or fear or thought or..."

"Just. One. Word." As she cut me off, her speech became a tango.

"But..." I said as I missed a step and stumbled. Then realized that was my answer. At least that's all she would hear. I felt a weighty unease at that answer. Unease. Because. It. Fit.

I laughed and spun around in my head.

There are some questions, unique. Not that they have never been asked before. But, that they fill a void, a gap in understanding, for that moment. They lead down dusty roads of thought which seem to be abandoned, or worse: never traversed.

Then I nodded, looking for balance from my thoughts. "How can I change that?"

"How am I supposed to know all the shit you carry around in your head?" She shrugged. "Although, you should probably stop making excuses."

"Just do it?" I giggled.

She glared at me for being flippant.

"No, seriously." I smoothed out my expression. "Would you like to dance."

She nodded, smiled and put out her hands.

As I took her hands, I repeated her question silently, like a prayer: "What one word has defined your life?"

My hands, your flesh.

There is a world close to this one. A world of desire, of joy. A world of mending hearts and hot, lusty fucking. This world brims and spills over with our fluids.

My cum. Your cream. Our saliva. Our tears. A trace of blood.

This world is you. You soak my sheets, leaving behind a puddle. It becomes a stain. Meanwhile, I stain you.

My hand-prints are totems. Your new welts and weals and bruises and raw pussy, the hills over the ocean. The scar on your heart a ship breaking the surf. I am a crow, perched, watching the sails.

My cock throbs with: anticipation, a little regret, longing, memory, and dream. It's pulsing time, the beat of that song (that one that came on while we fucked). This world is so close. Is it past or future. My hands, your flesh. And yours, on mine.

Gladiolus

There is a moment in time where the flower comes. Our flowers have bloomed; they are thirsty.

It has struggled through it's many phases. It has rooted. It has sprouted. It has grown tall. It has budded.

Then it is gone.

There are those on the deck that are concerned with names. Its name is gladiolus. In Latin it means sword flower.

But I was often puzzled by the names they drew forth. These names meant next to nothing. We might as well have been talking in first names.

"Phillip's work is the perfect example of expressionism."

"Matthew's is the founder of restrained drawing."

These examples of art by names makes me think of paint by numbers.

I think back to the morning.

A child dances with the uncontrolled gait of the morning. He rolls his foot slightly too much, then not enough. His eyes still encrusted with the remnants of dream, but still skipping about his day. A feat I'd be willing to relearn and pay dearly for its rite. A splash of the heckler hitting water, as a teenager hits a target near a tank filled. The boy skips and sings about nothing that makes sense to rigid old minds.

I watch a small girl's satisfaction of blinking awake into the sun, clutching her fathers khakis. The father's iced latte suddenly spills and splashes the pavement. Afterwards, the bees will sing his praises in his own ear, which he will dismiss with a shake of his fist. The girl will sit near the puddle and watch them dance about and wonder upon the structures and patterns of wings.

This is, of course, our brightest Saturday. The children dance and take us with us. There's so much to learn in every moment. A world not yet of Rothko and Barney. There are always miracles.

And flowers and bees.

Breath

Cities breathe. We lie in the dark. We wait for the dawn, then toil on machines of oil and dust. At dusk, the new day is over. Dusty children play hopscotch in the soot and ash of yet another sunset. Our sun setting, the muted light filters gently through our selfish maze of exhaust and rebar. Stars vanish under the low, yellow hum of sodium. We lie still; waiting for ourselves to be made right by the progress of yet another gadget. The robots will save us, we proclaim. Yet, our rising sun will never break.

Upon a faint and distant dawn, the solemn bells of our forefathers, peel. It awakens some to another day washed in the incense of putrescence. Others lie in bed waiting for life to consume, them, us. We still light our ways with metal and ash. Their acids digest and seep and bother no one in our immediate future; until, skin melts. Our brown wastes stretching autumn leaves into summer. Out of sight out of mind. We can't know, refuse to think, what our ancestors would think of our machines of gloom.

One day our children will condemn us to our fate. Our scales always balanced in our sight. Yet, distance proves our eyes askew.

“But,” we say in unison, “we recycled.”

How fucking noble?

departure

I'm trying to put the words right.
I don't know if I can.

You have set my world alight.
I want you to understand.

Turmoil lies beneath a surface, calm.
As if I were a summer sea.

On roads our tires become a psalm.
They sing of you to me.

Yet of the dark,
in my heart past,
there is another tale.

Inside it's marked,
shattered glass,
from my sullen trail.

Sometimes it's the road that takes,
our smile from our lips.

When time is ours it's me you slake.
I wonder where it slips.