From the Rock in Fort Tryon (Part II)

party people in the place to be

         you are now in the midst of a real MC

                   throw your hands in the air if you real as me

it was on a rock where she told me do I have to say it aloud and I hadn’t even looked around to question it her smile but I felt the swell within I think I’ve come to a good place I heard and smiled all the while ringing through my head             ‘did I mention that the sweater was a Jeremy Scott?’ were the sounds of her as we walked down circling my shoe soaked      she scaled the rocky wall with ease I led the way up to the rock wandering around the French turrets her voice distorting my summer her charm her hand on my arm

no

not yet (not not yet)

continuing in words speech people I must meet

communities to break in to

and there it was

the lifting of confusion

leading to

an overwhelming conclusion

           

Oh it’s so simple, I fear.

I want all the world to see we’ve met.

body and soul

my love sings to me

from the streams of Syldavia

                                                                        where emeralds line  

                                                                        a path to the sea

there we pound

on the drums of Arabia

                                                                        while my lost archive eyes

                                                                        reel in the concrete

she’s always here

she’s apart of me

                                                                        she’s always here

                                                                        she’s inside me

in the dawn beside me

I was hung up on how her hair flowed so free

in the cool naked light of a gently pulsing space

then she yawned            sweeping gracefully down garden steps

that only she could see

and I got hung about                        the nothing                        John promised me

because everything was real                        and it all lasted forever

there we were by the Dakota as nameless numbered crowds mourned

and I felt the thump of the drums the braying of cymbals the cowering snare

Ringo came near

From the Rock in Fort Tryon

I hear the soft strains of music fill the fleeing morning,
my face blurry in the candle-lit dawn. I turn inside,

facing the room where my love and I have lain…

…and see the cats, cross the roof, mad in love, scream into the drainpipes they sit in,

and it is I who am ready

to listen, never tired, never sad, never hidden.

movement still

A story about a guy who knew a girl when he was younger, only to lose contact until some later point in life when they met up again.

I used to take pride in my being alone

Hashem natan

Hashem lakach

yihe shem Hashem mivorach

there’s a song I used to sing at midnight about a girl in a moonlit plain

went something along the lines of she dances in cold light she dances so free she dances so quiet and she dances for me

and sweet Melinda would carry the melody for me that pleasant goddess of gloom

as I would walk down K Street in the foggy afternoon

I’d hear crickets chirping singing crashing into one another

and I would laugh at the unbadgered possibility

whooshing through the air                                    we were young unfettered the world splayed in shades of magenta and grey before us

highly educated highly literate highly providential

I loved a girl then I’ve found the same girl around me now

phantom engineer

in the capitol over the weekend            Dani still out                when I found that what I might feel might be able to wound to prod and suggest and cower but will not succeed to isolate      my refusal to be isolated            from the one I love            and I sang songs to fall asleep            ‘I come back to the town from the flaming moon…’             and others to keep my head             ‘there’s a flame/that snakes inside of me…’      and with all of it          we were together          with Nate and Rube and Leila and Steve   a feisty couple            fiery with one another            drinking wine and longing for the night                        and I was still racing along through dimly lit corridors to the handless black door at the end where mysterious department lit up the zigging interior of that foreboding little ministry               me and Albus             punching the air in celebration            and turning over then in the morning light to see what I could see                 hold what I could hold                the feeling of love the embrace of a lover the comfort of such promised proximity

and Daria’s speech-like promises             nothing was delivered             as Alex wrote of motorcycle crashes and midnight trains                            which got recalled with a de Chirico styled maniacal solitude            the plumes of smog unwinding away from the phantom engineer all we are         phantom engineers

Adar 5771

I called a girl                        she stood out on the subway

and so I stalled             for her             she joined me at the back of the café

and we watched          the poets sing         their melodies             as I felt our sun go down     yeah our sun went down          there’s no excuse for it to have hurt me like that or for me to then have hurt myself in that way but I’m glad                          I can feel these fresh contortions allowing me to speak my heart my mind can’t sing when the clearing in the wood no longer shakes beneath me                        slipping                         no third girl I didn’t want to be a part of I think I ponder             I slip beneath                        I remember being on my bed in yeshiva longing for the return of language furiously scribbling down the ramblings a lunatic loudmouth poet musician I couldn’t find her there I’m always expecting my mother and I never get her and it hurts it hurts me hurts me hurts                        I want                        my girl to have braved             the murky shores of Barnard to then tussle with me by the crystal streams of Syldavia       where rubies                    suffer             the weight of the trees                    I saw her raven tresses flowing down her thighs and knew I could never approach her from that angle my fifth grade heart pulsing erratically pouring blood into vats opening and closing leading the way into the fog of the middle                                    she asked about my classes I talked I asked about hers she spoke the car door opened she was gone                      

no plans             the future none to speak of

the thrush's song

and on my return I encounter fifty seven jugglers

double-balancing a life in precarious black and white I find

there’s something beautiful about being back in YU

even if it’s only to work on DC stuff

surroundings of people with similar eyesight dreams overlapping

feeling the streaking lightness of Geulah in the crush of Audobon

once upon a time I would come to these very tables

to pore over the words of the Piaseczner in Derech HaMelech

or that morning’s 3 new mishnayot long before memorization lifted its head

and roared

I don’t follow the same daily practices I once swore by

though I still find myself plagued by fervent curiosity at times

the need for the promise

of that particular glazed future

my showdown

            and I feel you then

            and the seams burst forth all around me

            like they don’t know what it means            

            to be held

            to be taken into arms and comforted reassured

            I waltz beside you in the garden

            and I’ve never danced before

we rejoice together in that lovely area

where I can fall but not too deeply

and I can sing but not too loud

and I can charge but without deadened eyes

and I can feel out in front of me with fingers warm and grasping

and I can connect without it ever feeling like a dream oh this fever

and I can hold on to you while aware that inside my heart hammers madly

and I get drunk crying to look at a song painting movement I otherwise can't see

and from within that drunken stupor I find clarity and foresight

and I can see through all of the decaying tree limbs

the sweatshops laboring to produce this past summer

to the thrush of the present

chirping away

I find it all when I reach out like that when I reach in

Handwriting Analyst

‘You’re a repressed leader,’ he tells me, eyes crinkling neath

the twinkle of brown spectacles. We walk slowly, softly,

a little confused, I remember well. The scrap of paper flutters

between us, creating in bursts a bond poring into thick,

crackling tomes never aroused. I blink, it’s gone.

            I remember asking him about the death of John Lennon.

            ‘All great men,’ he told me, ‘find what they’re looking for

            only once they stop looking.’

He stares at the scrap as long, whispering cresses of white beard

rustle through pulling hands. ‘You need a girl who will

challenge you, stand up to you,’ he deciphers. I cough, staring at my

sandals. Waylaid by the rustic heat of the swarming desert.

A thought achieves coherency as my toes

escape confinement, prodding the fine sand.

I don't have the backbone for this calling.

I'm aware of his muted presence beside me,

hushed, robed, waiting for an inquiry.

                        Once I sat in my favorite spot,

                        as the light, natural, dusty, filtered through

                        the open window, thinking how I'd dare not share

                        repressed questions floating through

                        desolate air. I turned to a friend

                        my muteness knows no bounds in the moment

                        I turned to my friend. 'What daf do you want to start'

from the beginning I would act. Act act act. No thought, not a sliver.

Now my future is determined through the squint of eyes

in the desert heat of a deserted moshav. I look at his face,

his beard, his stature. I know nothing more than what my scrawl imparts.

thumping adrenaline/the best part

                               joy of good fortune the sad twinge of being given over experiencing yes I am privileged red red heart opened to the swinging strains pumping gallons industrial size creativity saw the girl mad mad wild lit up the corridor hammering charging pounding bleeding desired love and obsession overwhelming desire infatuation disturbing all of the swirling nonsense gleeful in casting off throwing down wind get away from me you murderer unneeded undesired change is in the cards I look to the horizon and appear to smile to myself (I’m not really smiling to myself that’s the best part) tho this time it might be hard