22 posts tagged “imagery”

The man sitting behind me won't stop talking.
To the pregnant girl who lacks a wedding ring.
He can count on one hand how many of his friends are still married.  And he advises her to go garbage picking.  For carriages, cribs, rockers, and all baby things.
"Fuck, you can even reuse diapers if they're only filled with pee"
She's 23. I'm 25.  I feel sorry she's not sitting next to me.  Not that I would have any advice to give.
I just wouldn't say anything.

The pale woman with cellulite knees and sagging cheeks declares that she hates people. 
Then she laughs.  Hot puffs of air forced from cigarette wrinkles.  Her arms, resting on her soft round stomach, rise and fall with each chuckle.  At least it's funny.
At least we're still laughing.

An older gentleman, with a sweat stained undershirt, takes the empty seat next to me.  He tilts to the right, toward his wife, exposing a hairy backside.  He leans on one ass cheek and a warm push of air blows on to my exposed thigh.

One hour and twenty minutes.
They've called 21 numbers.
5 more to go.

The advice man gets up and wishes the pregnant girl luck.
She thanks him.
I start to sigh.
I do this, a lot.  (or so I've been told)  Long, soft exhales.  Expressions of time and life.  It relaxes me, in this DMV, where I can't smoke cigarettes or drink whiskey.
And I can't get up.
I'll lose my circus seat.  

He is gentle with the door.  So cautious, in fact, that I barely hear his entrance.  He slips his sneakers off, laces still loosely knotted in a shredded nest, and initiates the quiet morning appearance.  He peals the maroon cap from his matted, chocolate mess, hangs it on the back of the warm door knob, and squeezes a plastic grocery bag between last night's poker game, crowded ash trays, and empty bottles of dry red.
I pause, momentarily, from my book.  Lift my chin from my knees, my eyes from Nabokov, and shoot that silent question through closed lips. 
Where did you go when you left my bed? Where have you been?
He turns his back to me, bends over the bar, and fumbles with the contents on the counter.  The white rag of a tee-shirt pulled against his back.  I love his back.  The broadness of his shoulders from years spent fighting with waves in rough waters.  The lines of his lats, narrowing into a V above his hips.  I could spend years touching him.  Holding on to his ribs and pressing my thumbs in the soft flesh below his shoulder blades.  Picking each bead of his spine from nape to tailbone.  Kneading and pushing with the heel of my palm.  Tugging the roots of his hair, violating his scalp.  Pressing my breasts against his trapezius, wrapping my arms through his, pulling back and opening his chest.
He swings back in an excited burst of accomplishment.  His eyes start giggling, sparkles and warmth and innocence.  He raises his trophies over his head like he just placed in the Tour de France.
In the left, half and half.
In the right, the Sunday paper.
I finally exhale. And laugh.
Open my fleece cover and welcome him back.

"You got that light behind your eyes again."

I'm in the bathroom getting dressed, for work. Three-inch raven stilettos.  High waist, ink dress pants. Midnight push-up bra stretched around my chest.  Black on black against bare skin.  Delicately leaned over a cosmetic covered sink.  My white button down is tossed neatly over the back of the toilet. 
I like this outfit, but I always think it's my in case of a funeral  attire. 

I had been laughing to the face in the glass.  Blushing and giggling and teasing myself.
Flirting with the coffee and eyeliner.
Smirking.
Last night's dreams still foggy in this reality.

"What?"

"The light is there. It's nice to see it back."

"Thanks....." I whisper.

And realize he's right.

I respond,

"It's good to see you're still in the bar"

He pats the next few beats into the wrinkled pillows.

We laugh, contagious explosions of excitement in the gray, pre-rain morning.

I finally got that shift I needed.

That Change in Energy.
 

The faucet sky leaks a gray drizzle and the air has come in from the shipyards, again.  It is cool and foggy in my candlelit living room.  The cat has collected the couch stuffing and makes herself a corner bed.  Below the window sill, in the dewy carpet, she pillows a moist nest.  No one will bother her where it is wet. 
Second cup of coffee mixed with half a cigarette. I'm busy making these minor improvements. And thinking that this is, in fact, a new morning. One I have not lived through yet.
A sense of calm drips on my fresh skin. From the breakfast room comes a foreign voice. She harmonizes relationships.  Explains the art of human interaction.  The music waif dances with eggs and bacon.
And I thank all the Energies for this existence.
On this April morning, I have found it.

starts with an orange silk slip dress. with ties and an open back. one that swings with each step, but i'm not walking. skips and dancing. waltzes and two steps.
there are hands that hold my hips. pull my woman against your man. face to face kisses. sandpaper beards that scratch softness. and your breath on my neck. ohh, shivers and magic.
there is a bed, not too big, not quite a twin.  there are seaweed sheets tangled around bare ankles, ribbons of linens decorating opulent breasts. as a cleansing rain falls outside this sanctuary. beats the splintered wood of a stained deck.
there is a white, cotton night shirt. hugs the curves of my femininity. falls inches below my open goddess.
i welcome the morning with an outdoor shower. with perky nipples and slick hair, sliding down my back, glued to my bare shoulders.
and we made love in the early hours. in the falling rain. in the beginning of this new thing. 

it's a slidinglaughingslippingfainting on crumbled bedsheets
dreaming
dripping wetlustandsensitivity
female sensing nativities
and birthplaces of melted skin
unification of man and woman
handfuls of fleshy hips
held together with your cagegrasp arrest of my ribs
a light breeze of caramelchocolate wisps 
dancing the hills and valleys of fragile shoulders,
rolled in
collarbone ravines
where fingers run rivers and nestle in my plush breasts
kneeling, eyes to lips
skin to skin
palm to heartchest

She steps from the shower, without apologies. I watch the beads drop from her ear lobes and fingertips and nipples. Puddles form below her goddess. She cautiously places her left foot forward, on the cold, cracked tiles, covered with cat litter and strands of hair: platinum and chestnut and angry gray. She bends from the hips. Everything hangs: relaxed smileless cheeks, her empty baby bottle breasts, the flesh that stretched and pulled and grew 90 pounds with the son that took six pregnancies to keep. Then she reaches behind, to yesterday and the day before and the moment she first saw me crawl out into this world, with these questioning, open eyes and my sensitive mind. She pulls drug store lotion down solid arms and through healing hands.  She spreads the cream across her emotive chest and slides the excess down her curves.  Then she lights her first cigarette, Marlboro Ultra Light 100.  The slim stick rests on her moist lips. The smoke curls and clouds early morning realizations.  And she stares at her self, in this vulnerable nakedness.  Moments linger and I wonder what this says about today.  Does this mean beauty and freshness? Cleanliness and starting again?  But I can't decipher any of this. I only think, Lord, one day, make me the mother my mother is.

First came the smell.  The noxious, warning, gas of blue collar garages.  The ones owned by Jack Daniels and Jim Bean and Joe Camel.  My eyes scattered when she was around.  I often focused on my fingertips.  I always thought they would be oil slicked and greased, grimy and embarrassing, but then I would remember: the oil seeped from her heels.  It followed her, a winding trail ran from each step.  Men loved that scent.  They were drawn to it; more then baby powder or  lilac or honey.  More  then  the taste of women, creamy and warm.  And she loved fire roulette.  She would hand them matches, laughing.  Her eyes taunted, sparkled, "come burn me."  She would dance, circles, just to make her hips swing and her arms float.  She imagined the patterns the fire would take, sailing down her oil river.  She pictured the frequencies, like the Appalachian landscape, the movies of backseat windows.  Sometimes she would bend, from the waist, lock her forearms between bubbling breasts, and bring her fingers to her lips.  She would whisper something about Jesus.   We always thought she was flirting.  I think she was self destructing.

and fall in love. When the storm blurs your vision, blocking distances greater then 5 feet. You'll find me.  Balancing on the edge of a street corner.  Wobbling on worn down heels.  Struggling with slick plastic and wet cardboard.  You'll watch me dodge drops, as I attempt to twist matted knots under a consignment shop scarf.  The strands fall freely from my messy bun, loose and lovely they play cat and mouse with the wind. A ruined leather purse keeps falling off my shoulder and hooking in my elbow, but I interpret frustration as teasing. Boreas' molestation amuses you.  How he eagerly gropes at my curves and pulls on the buttonless trench coat.
You think about crossing the corner. You think about tucking the runaways behind my ear and draping my bag on my shoulder.  You offer to carry my packages and you hail a cab, for us.  You silently beg for me to catch your eyes with my shy, scattered glances. And you pray I smile at your surprise assistance and clammy touch.  You will come to rest on these steel gray corners and finger paint with the smudged mascara and faded liner. 
And you'll convince me, with a Belgian brown ale, to escape the noon storm and start drinking. So we will.  Forget.  Forget our pasts and the possibilities of a future. Forget all that we are supposed to be being.  There will be laughter, light and innocent.  And an accented bartender who becomes our best friend.  He thinks we have known each other forever.  He thinks we have a history and a past (we do, but we don't remember).  And you tell me about your children, with pride.  I fall in love with them.  And you tell me about your beautiful wife.  With excitement.  She is gorgeous.
Our beers will be bottomless, but we will leave each other.
Different.
Back in love.

I shuffled through the hallway, a lost soul on a pilgrimage, wary of my surroundings, but tired of the jeans I was wearing.  Those jeans had been through breakup conversations, departure cries, security checks and three rounds of airline food: Bloody Mary breakfasts and miniature bottles of dry red at dinner.  They had been clever during cryptic conversations with blond Canadians, comfortable while consuming solo lunches at an Irish pub in London, and exhausted as the worn denim crumbled under the weight of a voluptuous African teenager who occupied the space reserved for me.  They were wet with ink tears that ran from the pages of my diary and wrinkled with the worry of navigating through JFK, Heathrow, and finally Nairobi.  But they were my home and I was taking them with me.  Even as I made my way from the poorly circulated cabin to the confused and confusing airport, those jeans were proudly protecting my dimpled flesh and determined calves. 

The hallway was narrow and never ending.  My vision was foggy and my fears had subsided.  Those nagging insecurities were sleepy from 20 hours of travel and I was grateful  for the quiet peace that directed me to a dark, stuffy room where I awaited my next flight.  I was too tired to feel under dressed, though I should have.  My cell mates, clad in gold and blood red Senegalese-style dresses, seemed oblivious to my prostrate existence, knots and dirt and stained denim.  So I sat there, too exhausted to sleep, too subdued for conversation, in the ebony of Kenya. 

Moments are eternity when you are waiting.  Waiting seems endless when you are anxious.  Lonely is comforting when its crowded.  And Night is onyx in Africa.  The room had windows, so they told me, but nothing was visible.  I sat in a warm plastic bucket seat, staring out blind windows, waiting.  Pulling on the wet edges of the long legs and airing the humidity trapped in GAP fibers, I longed for a shower and a different pair of pants.  I was fixated on the present.

A diamond of sunshine started to sparkle somewhere in the distance.  A flicker of energy filled the crowded room and within seconds the entire sky burst into a fire of noon, at six thirty in the morning.  They were right.  There were windows and outside those windows was an existence violated by humanity, film and literature.  I can depict the rustic landscape, the promising acacias and elephant grass, but even this is insulting.  What I can report is the overwhelming sense of calmness, acceptance, and life that brought me to tears, that still brings me to tears, even in memories.  How worries and travel and existence were burned to nothing in the oven room; justified, roasted, and baked.  My jeans melted into the chair and dripped through the closed windows, feeding the fried grass with mankind.

I recently sat under a Jersey October sky, watching the cyclone fire dance through the clay chimenea and glancing, occasionally, to  the muted  stars.  I felt like crying.  I longed for Africa, to be at home again, in my dirty, tattered jeans.