Saturday, March 26, 2011

If Only I...

It’s funny how sincerity is not always a good thing. You think being honest is what it’s all about, but it must have to do with the people you meet. You hear that all the time, being honest, being sincere, because it’s the right thing to do, but you meet the wrong people to be honest and sincere to. I’m no stranger to irony.

I would tell them, let them know the truth, everything about me, because you think it’s the right thing to do, the right way to start it all, but the world is a funny place. I’m here to let you know about all the realness I have inside me. The last thing you should be is ashamed, you tell yourself, but you end up feeling that way anyway, at least sometimes. I laugh about it because it’s the only way I can get past it. To think all that honesty and sincerity would come back to bite me. It’s like your heart is talking to you, telling you there is no other way to be. Is my heart wrong, I think? Is my soul lying to me?

I put her up on this little white cloud, held her beauty there like the sun, wondered all the time if she was just that beautiful inside. I think I said that to someone once. It’s part of the mission, I guess. Part of the quest, the one thing to get you past all the rest, that everything I thought and felt was real, genuine through and through. How could you fail, you think? Everything I wanted to say, knowing it came right from the heart. Some had to do with honor, even. Unbelievable, you think. Old fashioned approaches, authenticity. All dead now. To think none of it was pretend, and that’s what you were trying to convey. All these men are really little boys, and there was a measure you were living up to that said otherwise. You were trying to tell them you were worth more than that, that you were worthy of them, good enough, when really, it was just the opposite, wasn’t it?

I wasn’t just talking to amuse myself, to give you all the things you wanted to hear, to sound like every other guy who just wanted to get what they wanted at your expense. There’s just so much suspicion anymore, it seems. I guess the right person would know better. You wouldn’t have to convince them of that, would you? They would know. That’s the difference between the right ones and the wrong ones. They didn’t believe you anyway, despite what you felt inside. They couldn’t feel what you felt inside. You wondered where this role reversal came from. Little boys and their video games, their lack of responsibility. Women without a shred of sensitivity, colder than a drill sergeant. Something happened along the way and this, today, is the catastrophe. Frightening. I would kill to find a girly-girl, a shred of pink, a bright color, a laugh like a lilt. You can cry at everything. I don’t care. Just cry on me. That’s all I ask.

I was always putting the perfect personality to the pretty face. You can imagine my disappointment. Someone who actually cared about the way I thought and felt, saw the world. Supported my beliefs and ideas, stood beside me, said they wanted to come with me on my pilgrimage, because they believed in me. What was the point otherwise? That’s what made it work. But alas, it was not to be…

I wanted her to know I could listen to everything she had to say, let her be who she was, good and bad and love her for it. Be sensitive, thoughtful to her every need, acceptance, without judgment, protective, honorable, and all that old-fashioned crap people don’t care about these days. Seems the world is in short supply. I was just trying to create a little balance. But some women don’t need men at all. They have all those qualities anyway.

It was your femininity I liked best. Old time movies, your girly nature, soft-batting eyes, you little coquette, coy looks and laughter. Girl through and through. Radiance when you walk through the door. You make the sun blush, a beacon through the cloudy haze. Eyes that smiled, too, charm—virtually villainous. That is how you seized my heart. You taught me more about love than I taught myself. If only I…I thought. If only I….If only…

We’d have these late night conversations, pillow to pillow, every subject covered, every secret revealed, every word like a bridge of conviction, a dawning solidity, confirmation that two identical souls had come together and set the world on fire. We were the dawning, second by second, moment by moment reality. Proof that sometimes things were meant to be. A grand scheme, a design, a compliment that we could be part of something that bold, mysterious, and beautiful. A play, a poem, a sonnet revealed, a song, a Victorian novel, or some damn thing. I wanted you to be my Jane Eyre, my Anne of Green Gables. She deserved someone more dark and mysterious than Gilbert, I thought. I could love her more than him. I built myself from the shrine of ashes, everything like new, but still scarred and somehow that made you like me more. Even boys can have fairy-tale dreams, like you girls do. But some girls turn into men, and let them die. Boys turn into girls and do the same. That’s why some dreams never come true.

I wonder what happened when we both built for ourselves the perfect each other, conquered demons, slaughtered dragons, only to find the tower empty. Created myself for myself and you to be everything I could be, I thought. Unrequited love, and there was never even a lover. Go figure. Just a thought in my head I didn’t want to be the only one to uncover. Words on a page. Bitter irony. Alas, a dragon slain. And for what? To walk the streets alone in wonder with myself as my own company to keep me company. Do you meet the same dead ends I do? Why is it always a destination I’m trying to get to, as opposed to understanding this is enough here now, the way I am? I am missing the moment otherwise. Do you wonder why just being you left you so frightened and alone with no one to talk to but an idea I might be out there? That’s how it is for me here, finding my own solid ground to stand on. But still wondering…If only I…

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Fallen Echo

I wonder if there’s something beyond all this. More than words can describe, nothing I can capture here. Colors you can take a bite out of, something sticky and sweet that drips down your chin. I wonder if I can be a constellation someday. Look, there in the sky! It’s me in a constellation now!

I embrace the cold, empty air as if it were a woman, holding tight, my arms wrapped around her, breasts pressed tight against my chest. See me. Touch me. Feel me. Like that song by The Who. Hear me run. There, as I move my head back and forth, a slight lingering aroma of subtle perfume in her hair. Copper curls, maybe. That’s what it was last night. Black. Brown. Platinum. But it’s all pretend.

A different road leads off into deeper solitude, tall trees on each side, blocking the sun. It’s barely a road at all. Pretty little cloudy day anyway. There must be something beyond all this—here, this road never got me anywhere but the same old wandering. Leads me back to where I used to be a hundred years ago.

Just on the edge of my vision, something black flickers, a shadow moves and breathes like a whale. It snuffs out everything. I see redemption and mercy in fire sometimes, enough to put a smile on my face as I soak in tepid water with more than water going down the drain. My face doesn’t blush anymore. Flames are loud enough to consume me on their own. I think about them on the ceiling. Shadows are black enough to hide me. I have no excuse. But I’m still looking. Sometimes, it just gets this way in here.

Everything you ever wanted to be, everything you ever loved decided not to show up one day. I take my walking stick and begin my trek across this land. A pilgrimage, I tell myself. It’s necessary. Almost forty, still trying to be a man. Wish I had wings so I could fly away, a boat that could sail around the moon. There’s more to it than this, hollow prisons shaking the fruit from my tree. I keep telling myself maybe I have some gift I can offer, something I can wrap up, put in a little box, distribute to all my neighbors, family, friends, something everyone can have a piece of. Rejuvenate the world, one piece of cake at a time. I don’t mind suffering for a good cause. Dying’s nothing new. I know what’s going on here, but it’s funny how it still surprises me.

These eyes I see with are not my own. This lonely feeling is alien to me, but it’s been around for a while. I just pretend it isn’t there. This pain I feel isn’t mine, either. I know there’s something to learn from all this, and when I do, I’ll share it with you, so you can avoid all these stupid pitfalls I put myself through.

I want to stand alone on a clear, beautiful day, on top of a mountain, and gaze in silence at the world all around. I just want to see hills and hills and more hills, no city, no people, no anything. Just the earth and the sky and the clouds. Maybe get lost at sea for a day or two with nothing but the sky, the ocean blue, and whatever mammal wants to visit me. Anything to clear my brain, take this cluttered confusion and just iron it out with clear blue water. Nothing but me and the vastness, so I can see the vastness, understand how tiny I really am in all this. But wonder and hope, as beautiful as they are, seem to create nothing but pain.

I let the world fall away on both sides of me. I don’t want this same old conditioning anymore. I want some new skin to wear, someone to lift me up for once and tell me everything’s okay, that everything is perfect just the way it is. That maybe there is this crystal shard, this golden, unbreakable thing inside that cannot be touched, and it is the most beautiful thing in the world, in creation, that has every existed and will ever exist, and it exists in no one but you. Know what I mean?

I miss those sunsets, no matter where they are, behind mountains, lakes, the sea, the world going down, like a slow-blinking eye, stillness, just the sound of my heart beating. Makes me sad in some way that’s beautiful. I know that feeling. Turn it all into a cloudy day. It’s okay with me. There’s no reason it’s there. It just is. I can’t explain it.

My whole life, I dreamed all these big, impossible dreams. That I could be a super-hero and fly around the moon. That I could live like a cartoon character, a vampire, or smash a dragon’s skull with my bare claws. They were good company for a while, but I need something I can feel and taste and touch.

One day, I tell myself…One day…I will be the captain of a beautiful ship, and I will sail light years across the sea. I will war with Vikings, own a planet, a distant star. But I know better. I can’t base my life on tomorrow. How come that ocean isn’t here now? Why can’t it be?

My quest begins with a solid pair of shoes and a good walking stick. I used to cling to all these ideas, images, something to make me happy, and I realize I’m not so lonely anymore despite what my heart tells me. You can only make so many changes in one lifetime. Just who do you expect yourself to be? An invincible, flawless, warrior poet?

I look up into the sky after the sun’s gone down. It is just night and stars, but I don’t see a sign of me, not where I can draw those stars together and make them do what I want. What kind of puffed up ego is that? Self-absorption? Narcissism? No more than a speck, a tiny, easily forgotten thing. Barely makes a mark, a scratch. When it talks, it doesn’t breathe. You can’t hear anything. Even the slightest whisper doesn’t make any wind.

My voice is all the company I have, an echo that fails to return any of my calls.