Saturday, May 30, 2009

A Sleepy Street

Dark; illumintaed by the Hotel Venus Love Hotel across the road; I step out into the early evening of Hongo, where the night is so still and thick that you can hear the scratching footsteps of the late-shift working business men and women scuffling from the station. The amber hue of everything is almost romantic, but under the arches of the train track viaducts it truly is the sleepy suburb area of Nagoya that I was promised. When it is sleepy, I mean seedy, which is what I was shirtfronted with when the glass bottle fracturing and shattering on ashfelt chimed and echoed in the adjacent street to where I was seated at work, pavement based by a gutter on my laptop. The nights nor anything have ever felt cautious or dangerous in Japan. But evident everywhere, there is something sinister going on, always.

The man; stranger, in slightly tattered cargo shorts and a dusty polo t-shirt, maybe a little off middle-aged approached me, perhaps just for unfortunately making coincidental eye contact with him. He walked, and kept walking, with that slow, confident, dark and moving with the darkness of the night steadiness. Speaking something I could not understand, his word for it's pronunciation and likely unfamiliarity was of alarm. I begun the scenario creating and playing out of what to do and where to go and what to say, where the blurs of such a pace of thought disable you and disarm you from any action.


Sitting a little more upright, and closening my laptop to my chest instinctively I softly, unconfidently uttered back my standard cowardess of only speaking English. The man was almost evily joyed as he replied that he speaks a little English, with need of gesturing in a pinch of his fingers the minute amount he knew. His words still speeding past my interpretation, I heard him say Dangerous! And repeat the Japanese word he was trying to tell me meant dangerous. Explaining to me, in a tone that spoke enough danger itself, he remarked of the dangerous area I was in and that I should be somewhere safe. Hoping my playing dumb would increase any charm I had for this intruder to my protected and safe and easy-going knowledge of Japan I repeated what he said trying to show I understood but was all unaware prior.


When he'd ranted for long enough that I'd caught up to my action plans I closed the lid of my laptop and maintaining eye contact slipped it into my sachel bag and gestured that I would get up and go somewhere 'safer'. He was nodding and saying something in agreement along with noting to me that there are no police in this area, as though a justification for the harm he about to approach me with. I stood gathering myself and my standing and collected a packet of cigarettes next to me and he put out his hand to offer me a shake. I shook, nervously, his hand and nodded in acknowledgment and he noticed my putting my ofcigarette soft pack into my pocket. Having let go my hand he stuttered and asked for a smoke with gestures easy enough to understand that universal request.


As if paying my way out of an unwelcome outcome I surely gave him the smoke he wanted though I'd normally have been uninclined. He insisted on shaking my hand again and I obliged, nothing else to do and took a second before turning to make sure he would turn too. Walking our separate ways I braced myself for that ready rear infliction of anything, even his look. And I glanced once more behind me as I took to a few doors down to try and settle. Then every sound in the amber-lit, seedy, sleeping train station street sounded like his approach or bottle breaking or husky alarming voice. I walked and kept walking, until the sound of the street became softer and the lights turned less amber than flurescent and I stepped into the first corner bar to order a beer.


Friday, May 29, 2009

Going, Going

I remove them from my bag; one at a time; running them through my hand and over and noting the detail before venturing their contents. The glue is thick and sticky and holding on the folds of the envelopes that I know propose your letters. My excitement's evident in the irregular tears, almost violent at the seams. In between eyeing the lines, as I try and face your words, the plane windows entice my gaze as we taxi along the runway to take-off. There's a definitive break in the purple, indigo cloud coverage touching the horizon. And where it meets; an orange line, licking thick with the sun's setting.

It's arrived and now in decline; the day it's taken me to leave, which has been a long day, and seemed a lot has happened. But a lot has not actually happened, though the small amount that has has held a lot of meaning; great meaning.
Included are: the conclusive Mocha's coffee session, with appropriately a foccacia; the many cigarettes; the Final Cigarette; the longing looks; the sad eyes; the heavy sighs; the tears inevitably cried; the hugs held; the silences felt; and my head turned back for one last glimpse and piercing of eyes of understanding. All of the moments where I understood, though with lack of words to describe, what actions demanded.

About to rise into the air and flee to another adventure, I sat cramped and crumpled and untidy on the aeroplane, waiting to be taken from you. You were two. When we were seated, either side of me and pouring both so suddenly and steadily into and within me. Silently I was willing time slow down. I'm not ready for this, I thought, but resolved, whenever are you ready. Never; you just go. I just went. I'm just going. But, I'm going to miss you. The promise of I miss you will keep me steady towards a return to you. And as I lifted off the ground and into the air having read both of your letters I knew that nothing could take that away or recreate it and it can never be mistaken that you are anything less than most important to me.


As I finished reading your letters, the rain which was starting up all day, became stronger and heavier as the plane climbed through the clouds. The droplets would strike the glass and speed so quickly in a trickle past the window. The rain and weather and skies, that had seemed to open up today, carried with me from place to place, and stop to stop all the way to touchdown at my destination. And though it a fortuitous coincidence, I paused with every shower thinking of the suitability of the imagery and moment, knowing that you were thinking the same.


Monday, May 18, 2009

Truth's Future Immures

lit; lover's bedtime lead cigarettes
cast silhouettes on a rendered wall
and all their exhaled smoke rises
to the stars climbing in thick waul

as perched as sparkles they glisten
and she listens to the beat of his heart
which hastens claim for what he hates
will shine though apart when he departs

tired; their loaded eyes hold sleep dust
as lust their kept open only retention
slowly, whilst night dissolves to dream
heart's confession their resolved abstention

words edge to their lips in fumbled tumble
and pause hesitant before whispered
as what they failed to say turns instead
words not mentioned intentions with kissing

imbibed in moonlight their final drags echo
their together warmth spent hands clasp
and balmy they slip, tip-toeing the steps
to the tether of the becoming swift past


Thursday, May 14, 2009

The Robber Of What To Forget

I find the fondness that you follow
me for so full that I choke to swallow


I wish myself more hollow to take
your affection but it tastes of mistake


awake you won't dissipate from mind

asleep you don't hesitate to remind


dreams seem filled with blind passion

where you wear me like I'm in fashion


I don't appease any other than you

why'm I pleased to know not to do?


this reckless you won't let me or try

to exit when our only kiss's goodbye

sigh, sigh: we say the same but mean

different; you placate; I demean


deem uncomfortable a continuation

I do of our comforting situation


but such helpless for so long duration

is part of the known your and my aging

it may not be parted, Lover, with yet
but bond of our glue is becoming unset

and yes, you know to rob me of what to forget


Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Guilt's Apprise

then; upstairs moving in her room as rolled with a five dollar note
snorting a torn capsule line of ecstasy off an album cover like coke
thoughts soon successive; then racing made the night's sides blurred
as the pace of the whiskey and MDA in my veins spilled and churned

turned down a gear to the limit my conscience danced in spasms
awakening it became difficult to tell what'd been and what hadn't
I resorted to thought I'd caught myself in a strange chemical induced chance
and events of the night spent I couldn't recollect all it's circumstance

it wouldn't shake; the drug I did for awareness of it flaming in my skull
and in hindsight it did it's job for even leaving I'd not hit a lull
the most striking of it's evidence was all the hasty exclamations
to Stella about hairspray and textiles and subtle sexual temptations

I can't say I concur with or fathom the recurrence of need to be high
though I do understand chances failed and a heart's bleeding sigh
I always try to be positive, but often the best is the worst's disguise
and it's most evident that I'm not telling everyone what guilt wishes apprise


Monday, May 11, 2009

A Bed Time Story

It was Sunday. The night clear, the moon full and the streets emptying as the cars crowded the roads. Everything was growing less alone. And this evening, as he walked; brisk in the chilling air, was becoming so for him. He lit a cigarette and leaned his weight on the fire hydrant outside: in front of the shop window; placing his eyes through it and around it; all over it, for her. Spying her blonde locks, he was glad. Glad to wait and glad he not late. She was finishing her shift at the shop. He dragged: on the filter tip and on the activity of Chapel Street; taking it all in and exhaling with patience. The slowness becoming, for her, an increasingly eager and pleasing proposition. As he stepped out the butt of his smoke, she crept up on him and hugged him; tight a second, holding him before locking upon his lips firmly with hers.

He enjoyed their greetings: the slight sighs and widening eyes of acknowledgment the dive of the day over and the wave of relaxation about to begin. They imparted casual catch ups on moments apart and begun to walk, knowingly, towards coffee, which becoming their crutch, was a looked forward to exposé of their mutual and crucial beginning. They had now acquired regular places for their undertakings and it was becoming less evident a prerequisite to discuss where to go and instead just a silent knowing.


Silence was a comforting conversation for them. He'd catch her gaze and try reading in her eyes the lines written in her mind but she retained a cool and subtle edge, pertaining to a slightly elusive mystery. He could not help noticing the little particulars of their time: the haste in comparison to him, which she finished a coffee; the way that before sipping it, she'd tip her spoon in and out of the froth, feeding the chocolate with delicacy between her lips. Also, their both distaste for sugar and the savoring of the drink rather than it just an instinct.


He noticed, also, of himself, after must've been a few times now; his subconscious trying to maintain them on the same cigarette cycle and was enthused by her focus on just the situation and her lack of distraction by the world around. Now, whilst, in her modesty, he knew she would claim to be off in her own little world or spacey and baring less trace to conscious thought, she created a bubble of a world that was her own but where he was allowed to be a part of. And he felt exclusive, privileged, as though she bared him access to secrets no others chanced. And he was convinced words too often overrated. They paid, equally and left.


Then, driving; he was consumed with thought of them as a musical composition. Notes and melody with rhythm and tension and build-up and release. Maybe jazz; for it did not have consistency, necessarily, but for all it's activity spurred on a desire for life and the butterflies to which great music is responsible. The road, though fairly speed limited, appeared more like a highway in the night, streetlight lit, glowing horizon line. Stretching out before them and beyond them; with that beckoning of more and exciting unknown and travels.

They arrived home; and still only concluding dusk, they decided to dine and effortlessly turned a simple task into a quirky, contagious, binding event. Pleasantly, the evening progressed with that slow front porch smokey haze wafting pace that shapes an evening with a perception of not as late as true. And on that porch; with her at his cigarette in flame; he leaned, and her draping her legs across his in a warming almost fetal huddle, they were losing one sense of control, finding another and in console to himself he told it out in a sigh. He not realising it so loud and obvious; she inquired why. And he proceeded reply in explanation of it- visceral. That, which he wished he could place but only came without reason and logic and sense and stayed with him impossible to forget. He looked at her with the most innocent content and adored her destroying all his guard and once intent.


They begun inside and retired to her bedroom. She tackled some homework on her laptop and he worked with pen in his notebook. Their air of content settled with them there and the quiet was sleepy and calming. As it rounded the later hours and yawns increased in frequency they put aside their work and grew warmer, with each other, beneath the made covers of her double bed. He read to her a story and the words with his voice were a lullaby and almost shy in their delivery. She cuddled close to him, her head on his chest listening to the rhythm of his entire body winding down for the night.


They both dressed themselves in sleep attire and began to dream before even falling asleep. The inclination of their bodies seemed to gravitate them to lips together. He kissed her and tasted her and imbued himself in her offering to his senses. They continued, becoming more hastened with passion, kissing and kissing as everything else disappeared; dark and dissolved. They resolved to each other the hard task of beginning to sleep for wanting to persist in affections. But, for both their acknowledgment of the predicament, they knew they could rest well being so together. She turned to her right and on her side he slipped his arm under her neck and shifted his weight to alleviate any strain. He kissed her head and she sighed, relaxed, intoxicated, satisfied.


He felt the heaviness of his own head subside as he commenced a drift into sleep. He held her and felt the slowing breathing of her chest heave. Now together, they knew this the best and only pursuit of dream. Where waking, for whatever day lies ahead, is in the just so slept other's arms and the confident return to its gleam.


Sunday, May 10, 2009

How Does That Conversation Go; Buying Cocaine?

There is certainly a drinking alone that invokes a loneliness most overwhelming. I was waiting, in my pattern of distaste, for her to return and contemplating how waiting is only hope's younger brother. The shadow of it, and the evening, as all like this, was trailing the other older, more respected, invested in by others, inspirational nights. Why do girls always go to the toilet in pairs if availability makes so convenient?

I watched; unfolding before me, the ease of a stranger dissociating themselves from me, likely unintentionally, but still reprehensible, and so opposing a convention and etiquette I was used to. But still, for history's sake I felt the inclination to wait it out in the foresighted anticipation of it bettering. I wondered of such casual disregard and how it imparts an other with the most banal sense of worthlessness. Where so unfair a situation exists and so loneliness persists, it does impose me to question my intentions and pray one day to resolve in holding hope less.

I fucking hate these dregs requesting of me a smoke. Why don't they buy their own and what makes them such a taxable request, like to withhold is some kind of condescension? Whilst cigarettes are so contrived; well tailored for the hopeful, that does lead me believe maybe never quit. But I have zero sympathy for the soul not bought their own, or so unprepared for the morning ahead that they are leeches and pestering scum.


I cannot resist the desperation for a further, longer, headier, more telling moment. There is a current; strong, that carries to an ocean where and when the unknown is totally giving and interesting and exceeds all expectations. I wish and resign so wistfully to penetrate the souls of others in swift instance and create requisite to never look back. But she does not give me that chance and seemingly without regard departs for another part of the room and leaves no clue to if she'll return and so eventually I have to move and try and find her. So now, still so alone, I decide to be proactive and gather the pieces of an evening shattered at the beginning and maybe buy another drink. But wait what's this? The bouncers aren't allowing anymore beverages outside!? Fuck them and this; I light up a smoke and stroll across the room, tapping the ash on the shoes of those I pass by, kicking out of my lungs the smoke into the dim lit ceiling rungs and make my exit with no pleasant discretion, calling it a night.


Thursday, May 7, 2009

Whilst Driving

The drive home we rode in silence.
The highway stretching out before us.
And my feelings clouding and surrounding my thoughts
as I kept composing what to prose her in my head.
You have an indescribable quality of almost too quiet, I said.
And I wished the words were clear of the fear and dread
so's I could say them as all I meant.


The Crime Of Bad Timing

there's a singeing tinge of disappointment in your voice at my saying of leaving
it recognition of the infringement of the chance to the past we won't be grieving
yes dear, I'm a thief of what we, know but don't say, both wish we could be liable
and lover, swift as it occurs I dig in the spurs and bad timing makes it violable


Saturday, May 2, 2009

The Brink Of Winter

Instant coffee never tasted so good as this morning; when I sat with her on the ash covered, small steps of her front porch, with her beside me and her head, then, on my shoulder and the thick smoke drifting out of our mouths into the crisp, swiftly ending Autumn morning Balwyn air. The day was both beginning and ending. Beginning with the end; our time together, since earlier last night's evening and sleeping in each other's arms and now having to leave to our respective, separate days. And ending, then, with the realisation and wistful foresight; of my saturation in the beginning of love.

I knew it was so and such only because it was the feeling; haunting in it's long, likely unfamiliarity and my trouble to place it with rationale or logic or thought or explanation. Further, whilst excited me, it terrified me in it's ambiguity and I knew firmly and desired inexplicably to continue determining it love. And though the word betrays my desire of description, my inability and ignorance with English language or the very impossibility of a precise word existing, suggests such imbuement knows no other fitting vocalisation of the intense surmise of excitement and attraction inside me and the immediacy of it lacks reason other than that so.

I was taken to and with heartbreak and relations in the Winter, and with just after beginnings of sentences stating that these things always happen in Winter. This morning was feeling the brink of Winter but the sun, fortuitous in it's appearance, escalated my hopes and heart's glow. It was almost as though, her and I had
succumbed to sleep last night, perhaps at the end of Summer and when awoken today found, dream-like in absolute sense and logic, that Winter had been universally and completely skipped, history of it non-existent, and we were embracing Spring as a butterfly born from a cocoon.

When so unsure of a feeling, of a consuming, maybe gnawing or nagging sentiment, notion, emotional inclination, daydreaming, we feel compelled, driven, desperate to categorise it and name it and mind-map it's
entirety in order to resolve ourselves with control of what it means and where it will take us and to continue instinctively towards knowing ourselves. But I am unresolved; unable to reconcile the fortuities for the facts; incompetent at acknowledging the simplicity that one so short and over used, underestimated word is sufficient. My heart is writing it's four letters over and again upon my brain, whilst my mind is wiping them away with a stubborn eraser waning to keep up speed.

But, today, I sipped, enjoying the instant coffee in a moment of solitude- black, sugarless, warm and pleasantly bitter and awakening.


other people waiting

we're not strangers anymore