Month: September 2013

Attention gets hungry but doesn’t get homesick.

Attention has a center but it has no bounds. It might be the eye of a storm. It certainly has no master but it is quite easily seduced.

It, by nature, is curious and fearless, sometimes fool-hearty and often gets lost.

And there are persons and things that will set traps for Attention with interest.

Attention will gobble up interesting things, sex, money or attention. Nothing gets your Attention like attention.

 

Sometimes, I wonder what it would be like and what would happen if my Attention wandered away from me and never came back.

Supposing, one day, it pushed out the screen door and into the night.

It won’t get cold, not even in the coldest night air- but it will ask whether a bug gets cold.

What if it never came back? Perhaps, because it got lost or perhaps because it found a better home.

And there are people who are hungry for attention, so it certainly could end up on someone’s plate.

 

But there, I take comfort in Imagination.

Imagination and Attention are not the same, though they both tend to go off by themselves.

While Attention will look around for something to do, Imagination will build a campfire and feast on some enormous bird.

Attention can easily be fooled or confused, and it is Imagination that does the fooling and confusing.

So, I know if my Attention wanders off, it will most likely fall prey to my Imagination and though they may never come home again, at least they are together.

 

Run, Red Dress, run to him.
Let your tongue dance on his cheek and lips.

Let him chase the flashing light across your eyes.

Rain spattered Red Dress, Dance Slow Wind!

 

Smear red swirl,

Flash black eyes,

Speak hot breath,

Paint his jeans with fire!

He dies, but he dies just as he lives, making the exit with dignity and obedience, begging away as a fishermen to a quiet lake.

He dies as he lives, he eats and drinks and sits before the television doing crosswords, while the days trail on like well lit boxcars sometimes awkwardly, sometimes smoothly, passing at the crossing gate.

He dies as he lives, turning the page, going to the toilet, eating the next meal, changing the channel. There is no seam in the film, no shudder crossing the tracks, no jarring lights. It is continual change that takes him and he humbly goes.

Just as he humbly returns, passing through a revolving door, entering the theater in a new life, on another stage.

I watched the door close behind him,

heard its soft click.

And the memory would not leave but burnt all the color from my eyes.

Sightless, I now see as the wind feels.

 

My friends speak to me

Using words bent,

Screwed and

Wound through

Steel forming machines.

 

I answer with

Doorknobs,

Tire nuts and

Spaghetti ladles;

Sounds I cannot account for. Words and feelings I suppose.

You smile

His desire touches your breasts your thighs your womb

(In the closet

words boots and shoes

tumble to the floor)

You offer your body

And I surrender.

From my desk, I watched him leave.

He was quiet, respectful, careful not to disturb.

Thinking, I suppose, that I would not notice.

Thinking, I suppose, I would care to live without him.

 

Now, I spend my days carefully removing the labels from every memory

washing each and scrubbing them all identically white

hoping to forget that I saw him go,

watched him go, let him go.