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Glory of the 90’s (a series), "1994 college boy"

1994 - I felt innocent as he lay next to me in the dark. I can still feel the mark of his fingers on my skin like invisible pulsation's of the past. Scarred by something I used to like. His breath like fog before my eyes. And I find myself in his warm embrace even now in memory. It's hard to abandon your past when it lives uneasily inside you. He was the other half of me I didn't want to recognize. I never wanted to know inside myself.

He fell into me as easily as he slipped out. All I can recall is the empty want and the flood of desires that drowned all other thoughts out when we touched. It's the stain of history seeping below the skin. He is a memory that won't fade, an apparition that wont leave me alone. It's like I'm 18 all over again. It's like I was never set free from this.

I used to think: If I am going mad I'd like to be left in silence. It's his good looks I hate the most ... they make me want to kick him when he smiles and flow like warm honey when he insults me in public.

Smacking was another way to impress me - cutting, biting, breaking, (not with weapons but with words, which always seem to hurt worse) - yes, ingenious boy that he was, he was fine when he was not genuine with me.

I craved one thing: that he could shatter me with his judgements. With his dirty jokes, his political incorrectness, his lies, his troubles, his full bodied resentments, his Republican southern/midwestern upbringing, with his St. Louis drawl.

I wanted to feel some of that anger he held so precariously between his fist and my face and never strikes...

He built another icy wall until I'm black and blue from bumping into them all afternoon.

2002, "Appertif" (a series), "the Agony of Love"... and Other Rococo Things

Is it in the pause between words, in the naked glance across the room, in the quiet touch passed between strangers that makes me think it's somehow worth it?

Exhalation. Craving. Rememberence. Solemnity. Playfulness.

A fat golden moon hung sad in the sky. The press of lips against my hand. A few parting words, 'don't forget me.'

Violins which sound like cries of love.
The ecstasy of hate and the agony of love.

I want this kind of agony. The kind of coldness that leaves lips blue and limbs numb.

I am already immune to heat. The heat of a thousand sighs and caresses meant for something more.

Do not love me too much or you will leave this world with empty hands and an empty heart.

Do not love me more than I am capable of loving myself. It hurts so much I can't feel a thing.

Spin me around, my little world on it's axis, upside down, twisting endlessly alone and fruitless.

Why love more when the bitter is sweeter than my happiness?

Why love with all my blood and bone and flesh and feeling and thought and heartbeat?

Why struggle through the blackened seas of primordial beginnings?

Why regress to an embryonic state?

Why flow on waves of sentiment and fear and attachment?

Why bow and bend and scrape to chemistry?

Oh, that's right - because it's interesting. Ah, because I cannot help myself sometimes.

Still, I bottle up my passions for a later date. I dash a little behind each ear and on the nape of my neck when the wind blows a little stronger some nights.

And then I call you near me.

2002, "Appertif" (a series), Erato, A Siren’s Calling Card

I want to rush in and take over.

I want to sweep it all under the carpet.

I want to stay up all night and rush with the feelings of a get-up-and-go drive, drive, drive!

Fire, inner heat and energy move me under the cold mothering moon; blue sphere, moody witness.

Music pounding in my ears, heartbeats matching the rhythms of Lola Rennt.




I don't need your tears. I don't need your salvation.

I like the wind, the movement, the pleasure of not knowing.

I like the moment.

I like the darkness in between the trees in rough forests, in places not found on the map, in words that mirror places seen in nightmares.

I want the pulse to quicken, jump and sound out into the night.

I want to dance and dance and dance and keep on moving.

I want the skulls to break through the soil, the dead babies to dance on the streets, abortions to be as beautiful as candy laid out in shops, chocolate to taste like piss, enemies to kiss and fuck, happiness to be sold in bottles, light as air...

I want dreams to be boss universal (but all we do is produce nightmares), I want the meaninglessness of another conversation to hit us like a ton of bricks and squash us flat against the pavement.

I want pain to not mean much and joy to be a take it or leave it kind of thing.




And...

I want my fist against your face, I want to see the blood flying. I want the sickening crunch of teeth cracking, I want to smell the stench of urine on your trousers as you plan your escape and I beat you to it. I wanna be, wanna be, wanna be your demon with a dimple and a denim skirt and long lashes. I want to suck your lollipop till you burst.

You hit me first and then we can begin this properly. Mind your manners. No blood on the carpet. Save it for the grass out of doors or the hardwood floors. Oh you think I am joking? You think this is more playing? You think I don't do this? You think I can't be both sweet and bitter?



And....


Don't understand me. Don't ever understand me. Don't fall behind - but don't follow too closely, either.

I like the boys who tease before they please. The ones I think about years later, when the severity of their no's still leave me in tears.




Up all night, the darkness at all angles, the chill crawling up the walls and into your bones. Skin retracting and soft, not your own these days, of some other world. You want your body back. You want to float in your own brain again. Whole. Complete. Resolute. What are you waiting for? Dive in.

Seconds tick by, the moment doesn't change much but you move and keep on moving. You search not for any particular point of light in the horizon but for a slight ripple in the universe. Body bends, mind screams out, mouth mocks in quiet salutations, hands free themselves from pockets and gesture wildly, legs move from left to right and hair circles your face...




And....



Aren't you just a little curious, boy?

Don't ya, just a little, want to know how to wind up this clock? And turn down the sheets?

Would you take up the sword and divide mother and son, father and daughter? Would-ya, could-ya break me in half? Torso split left to right, or top to bottom. Or better yet, rip the psyche from the monster's belly, separating mind from body...or soul from character.

I want to break things these days. I want to shatter and drop and dissipate.


I want to strike you in the deepest part. I want the one blow to your mind and your ego to be the one that remains sore for the rest of your days. I want to hurt you and I don't know why. I don't need a reason. I just want. I. want. this. And you cannot stop me. Not the way you keep smiling and offering me kisses.






Or....


I want the perfect words, the perfect smile, the beautiful walk, the glossy hair falling in cascades across a slimlined shoulder. Beautiful breasts that peak with glee from angelic-curved silk and steel. Sparkly eyes, glowy features, moist lips, flat tummy and rounded hips, long legs to walk miles with, haute couture melted onto me and mind made of sharp, absorbant wax, brimming over with thoughts, ideas, and mathematics.

Hands that paint memories. Black boots to press the earth under me. The kind of cool efficiency and poise and assuredness that gives me many roads to choose from... and I always choose the right and hard won (and effortlessly accepted) path.

But this is not me. Not by a long shot.

Not I, said the fly, Not me. Not ever.

Damn logistics and messy hair and clumsy limbs and gluttonous eyes and greedy belly and wandering mind and no interest in money or possessions and a constant drive to create and showboat with my arrogance in all the wrong places and the slow, steady poison of insecurity ... and a libidinous mind with an almost saintly body...




So....

Still there are the fantasies. The illusions of grandeur. The delusions. The wishes. The masquerades. The words which tumble out and impress (or frighten them away).

This is my siren's calling card, I suppose.

I want ownership and later a complete and utter breaking away.

I want freedom. Now and always. I am Uma ... 'no-one's bride'.

I am the terrible beauty you were warned of.

I am as imperfect as I am violently charming. Sid and Nancy post-mortem.

Silly, malleable, fiery.

I change as easily as I remain exactly the same throughout my life.

I am forgetful, but I never forget what really matters.

I am both honest and a liar.



I sleep and I feel you near me.
Awake, I am as remote as an island.


I will listen to your troubles but in the end you may just fear me.

2002, "Appertif" (a series), Erato, A Siren’s Calling Card

I want to rush in and take over.

I want to sweep it all under the carpet.

I want to stay up all night and rush with the feelings of a get-up-and-go drive, drive, drive!

Fire, inner heat and energy move me under the cold mothering moon; blue sphere, moody witness.

Music pounding in my ears, heartbeats matching the rhythms of Lola Rennt.




I don't need your tears. I don't need your salvation.

I like the wind, the movement, the pleasure of not knowing.

I like the moment.

I like the darkness in between the trees in rough forests, in places not found on the map, in words that mirror places seen in nightmares.

I want the pulse to quicken, jump and sound out into the night.

I want to dance and dance and dance and keep on moving.

I want the skulls to break through the soil, the dead babies to dance on the streets, abortions to be as beautiful as candy laid out in shops, chocolate to taste like piss, enemies to kiss and fuck, happiness to be sold in bottles, light as air...

I want dreams to be boss universal (but all we do is produce nightmares), I want the meaninglessness of another conversation to hit us like a ton of bricks and squash us flat against the pavement.

I want pain to not mean much and joy to be a take it or leave it kind of thing.




And...

I want my fist against your face, I want to see the blood flying. I want the sickening crunch of teeth cracking, I want to smell the stench of urine on your trousers as you plan your escape and I beat you to it. I wanna be, wanna be, wanna be your demon with a dimple and a denim skirt and long lashes. I want to suck your lollipop till you burst.

You hit me first and then we can begin this properly. Mind your manners. No blood on the carpet. Save it for the grass out of doors or the hardwood floors. Oh you think I am joking? You think this is more playing? You think I don't do this? You think I can't be both sweet and bitter?



And....


Don't understand me. Don't ever understand me. Don't fall behind - but don't follow too closely, either.

I like the boys who tease before they please. The ones I think about years later, when the severity of their no's still leave me in tears.




Up all night, the darkness at all angles, the chill crawling up the walls and into your bones. Skin retracting and soft, not your own these days, of some other world. You want your body back. You want to float in your own brain again. Whole. Complete. Resolute. What are you waiting for? Dive in.

Seconds tick by, the moment doesn't change much but you move and keep on moving. You search not for any particular point of light in the horizon but for a slight ripple in the universe. Body bends, mind screams out, mouth mocks in quiet salutations, hands free themselves from pockets and gesture wildly, legs move from left to right and hair circles your face...




And....



Aren't you just a little curious, boy?

Don't ya, just a little, want to know how to wind up this clock? And turn down the sheets?

Would you take up the sword and divide mother and son, father and daughter? Would-ya, could-ya break me in half? Torso split left to right, or top to bottom. Or better yet, rip the psyche from the monster's belly, separating mind from body...or soul from character.

I want to break things these days. I want to shatter and drop and dissipate.


I want to strike you in the deepest part. I want the one blow to your mind and your ego to be the one that remains sore for the rest of your days. I want to hurt you and I don't know why. I don't need a reason. I just want. I. want. this. And you cannot stop me. Not the way you keep smiling and offering me kisses.






Or....


I want the perfect words, the perfect smile, the beautiful walk, the glossy hair falling in cascades across a slimlined shoulder. Beautiful breasts that peak with glee from angelic-curved silk and steel. Sparkly eyes, glowy features, moist lips, flat tummy and rounded hips, long legs to walk miles with, haute couture melted onto me and mind made of sharp, absorbant wax, brimming over with thoughts, ideas, and mathematics.

Hands that paint memories. Black boots to press the earth under me. The kind of cool efficiency and poise and assuredness that gives me many roads to choose from... and I always choose the right and hard won (and effortlessly accepted) path.

But this is not me. Not by a long shot.

Not I, said the fly, Not me. Not ever.

Damn logistics and messy hair and clumsy limbs and gluttonous eyes and greedy belly and wandering mind and no interest in money or possessions and a constant drive to create and showboat with my arrogance in all the wrong places and the slow, steady poison of insecurity ... and a libidinous mind with an almost saintly body...




So....

Still there are the fantasies. The illusions of grandeur. The delusions. The wishes. The masquerades. The words which tumble out and impress (or frighten them away).

This is my siren's calling card, I suppose.

I want ownership and later a complete and utter breaking away.

I want freedom. Now and always. I am Uma ... 'no-one's bride'.

I am the terrible beauty you were warned of.

I am as imperfect as I am violently charming. Sid and Nancy post-mortem.

Silly, malleable, fiery.

I change as easily as I remain exactly the same throughout my life.

I am forgetful, but I never forget what really matters.

I am both honest and a liar.



I sleep and I feel you near me.
Awake, I am as remote as an island.


I will listen to your troubles but in the end you may just fear me.

2003, Rites of Passage; Caroline’s not the only victim, bebe.

The terror of the first cut into unwilling skin, the searing heat of your first humiliation, the first glowering sense of shame. The loss of your first love. The loss of your innocence. The regaining of it. And the losing of it again.

The wavering sense of self. The first time the empty pit hits you, and lowers you, and brings you in.

The first time you dread falling to sleep.

The first time you realize there really is an end.
Then when you question what that really means.

The first time you're beaten at your own game.

The first time your pleasure gets the best of you. And you go back for more with a surge of power ... and reemerge in defeat.

The first time you hurt someone and like it.

The first time you do it and feel nothing and do it nonetheless.

The first time you cheat.
The first time you steal.

The first time you are taken granted. The first time you forget someone's name.

The first time you are forgotten or passed over or looked through.

The first time you see this is not some game. The first time you find this is nothing but a game.




The smoldering awareness of the duality of your nature. Inside out, outside in.
To call it Jekyll and Hyde is to simplify the complex and not give it a proper name.
Not so much black and white as varying shades of grey.




The one you dance with, the one you kiss, the one you fuck is not the same as the one you talk with, the one you read, the one you listen to. And yet we are one in the same.



And you ask yourself why are we born to be alone in the world?
And yet have saviours tucked neatly in the corners just incase?

Why is blood thinner than water, than oil, than paint?
Why is the idea of freedom as vital as oxygen?
And why does the conventional spell death on every level to your sense of fate?




Let the tremors of another heartache half felt and spilling over, and later stored away in dark recesses, in limitless caverns, in that vast and ebbing hole which nothing can quite fill or touch or placate.

Feed the demons before they rise out of you.
Before they strike you with the truth of all the buried hate, and abuse, and disillusionment.
Before they come out in more than a few raised flares of temper or some sarcastic perversion half heartedly expressed.

Oh, you are the clever one, aren't you?
So self aware.
So secretly righteous while you claim a complete and thorough liberty with the world, it's men, it's eternal present.






In Other News...

I long for this. The smoothness of an ounce of perfection.
The lifelong vague desires all balled up into one big bang and realized. What about a taste? A little taste.


Instead I rage in the afternoon, waiting or plying time from fate like a master barterer. I always think I'll win even when I'm losing. It doesn't matter the cost of my foolishness when I'm swept up and carried off in a song, in the morning wind blowing through my hair, in the dewy kiss of my cheeks ..noons like this. What matters but the moment and how I capture it?






Meanderings

I wandered around today to see if I could still find my way back. The road was foggy. The rain slid down my face and blurred the mascara into my eyes. I followed the scent of your latest retreat. I wondered how far my regret would take me. I wondered how deep your madness ran. I wonder if I'll ever know you again. They always leave, the ones you love, they always disappear and forget you were ever born, the ones you spring from, in the end, the pain is too much for them, they are blind to the present, they are deaf to the future, they are mute to the world.

Well, hell then, I don't need your brand of chaos, anyway, darling.

2000’s, "This love of life makes me weak at my knees"

Allow the floodgates to open. Allow this to wash over you, to wash you away, to erase the everything that makes you, you. Invisible hands lead invisible eyes, make hidden lies seem less important, less dangerous.

I want to be less dangerous with you, I feel less fatalistic. I feel myself floating. I feel myself passing through this. I feel myself under the influence of something beyond my control.

I understand you less and it's the way it's supposed to be, isn't it? Isn't it? Just this way and not like another. You and I and not another, no-one else.

The movement of the earth, the sky a cold shelter and no need to measure the time between us. No need to weigh and calculate the cost of communions felt only by us.


This is almost like a dream. If I were left standing and you were the one under the ground. You'll never bury me, you'll scatter my ashes, you'll let me loose in the wind, into water, into air, into fire. I shall walk the way by fire, I shall fly in my final exit.

Exit into - what? Into the Great Big Empty.

I wanna grow up one day and be Nothing, Mummy dear. I wanna end it in a big big way. I wanna impress the Sky Gods and sleep with the Fire Goddesses. I want the sun to smile ever so slightly at me. I want to take the moon as a lover (discreetly so).

I want 18th century flamboyance, I want deco darlings and hungry bohemians wandering through overgrown gardens.

I want to spin and twirl and feel something awhile. Feel anything awhile. Feel you. See you. Leave you.

Move and keep moving. It's alright. We know this tune.

We all move, even if it's retracing steps, even if it's walking back into one's self, even if it's walking with eyes only.

Yeah yeah yeah watch this watch me fall in some grand gesture that seems less and less significant the closer I get to the Finale. Oh well it was worth the laugh wasn't it?

Every gesture is worth a proper laugh, a laugh, a smile cracked, a pain so sharp and vivid it entertains for hours.

I want to win you with a sweep of words which wrap you up and redesign you. I want the next big thing I come up with to hypnotize you. I want to be the one who tricks you into believing how wonderful I can be! How divine an imagination, how intense and provocative a prowess.

I like mysteries that unfold slowly. I like secrets which remain just so out of reach. I like the next step to allude me. I like blindfolded minuets and muffled talk on dance floors, the music too loud to ever get it across how you feel.

I wonder what it's like to have things settled inside you.
I wonder what it's like to know to thine own self be true and then never falter.
I wonder why I like to stand so close to the golden children of the future.

Why is it I loved the brighest stars and for awhile I amused them enough for them to forget their godly appeal. I feel the court jester sometimes, tricked into wearing the kings crown and nearly beheaded for my mistake.

I feel like the 1980s when I was a child and love seemed something out of reach for me.
I feel like the 1990s when love was everything to me and I chased it through each minefield, a little explosion hitting me here and there, knocking me around until I landed into the 21st century pretty much intact.

I made the mistake of loving once, twice, three times, four times, more or less, more times or less I can not recall...

I loved I loved I loved and I fell.

I stumbled a little more each time. I smiled less. I felt something stir. I felt something die. I felt something else stir. I felt things peel back. I felt things open. I felt them fester. I felt blood drawn. I felt myself quartered. I felt the universe's laughter.

Another one down for the count. Another one getting up again to go back down. Down again and climbing back up. I felt more die.

I felt more break off and dissipate. I felt the ashes of the past rise back to the surface. I felt other times, other ages, other choices embraced. I felt love like it was when I had it in undiluted embraces.

I remember love when it still felt innocent.
When I felt someone invade and I was grateful for it.