this is just to say: Not meant for this world, truly

18 March 2010

Not meant for this world, truly

I wish it were not true. I'm tired of the struggle. There is no reason for it, and yet it is inescapable for me.

I'm tired of hiding, the nightmares, the painful tug of my body fighting sleep and all the weariness. Sick of my whining, and the sight of myself.

Loathing cannot encompass.

I am not meant to endure this. I should know by now that I am meant to be isolated, alone, and that I have no part in the comingling with any other(s).

I dread the life alone, but it seems the only viable option. I hate myself, so then the terrible thoughts.

I wish I could love. I feel sometimes (& do dramatically) that I only loved one person.

Two years ago on St. Patrick's day you walked your bike to the Muni stop with me and waited for the 71 train to take me to Lower Haight. You rode your bike and got a flat tire and I worried about you while waiting at M's house. You finally arrived and talked to M about Lost and life and we all went to Toronado for my first time. It was meant to be just you and me because in those days, M forgot about me and you were always willing to accompany me on my endeavors.

At the last minute, M wanted to join, and he spent the time talking to a girl with a nerdy shirt and then a guy, and then another guy. Only strangers. He forgot about me. Instead, you stood beside me in the crowded bar and we ordered beer (you got Death and Taxes) and I remember I wore my new clothes (a black tailored cropped jacket/coat and a silk Kelly green blouse and new jeans with white flats from Muji) from my recent trip to NYC where you were supposed to accompany me. You told me that morning that you liked my new clothes.

I missed you before I was aware that I cared about you.

It seems so long ago, that night. I wish I could retrieve the moment. All the moments where you silently supported me, where we loved one another without the consciousness of it.

I see your pictures now from afar and am glad to see your now smiling face and know you are moving on and know that I cannot regret my choices. You wear that shirt I gave you in those pictures but never even touched it while we were together. I thought you hated it.

I despise my life and myself and loathe the consciousness of my being. I do not know when I will stop missing, do not know how to make the pain end.

You'd be right to say I do this to myself. I hate myself. I cannot be happy. I cannot know love or joy or be at peace in this place or any other.

I want to give up and fail in that like a lazy coward.

I understand the weight of my worthlessness.

I am sorry for thinking about that green night in the dim bar 2 years ago before we kissed before we touched before you tried in desperation to make right what went awry.

I am awry. I am lost. I am the flat wheel tossed in the litter of my meaningless life. There is no room for me anywhere. I need to muster the strength to do what haunts me.

I need to leave and never stay in any place. To be gone from all places.

from "Euphoria," by Sina Queyras

1

Dear Regret, my leaning this morning, my leather foot, want of stone, my age
Old, burnished and bruised, my hair lingering, my hand caked, spongy as
November my dear Relentless, my dear Aging, your voice tinny, dissonant
As Stein shot through decades of war and Fortrel, cocktails on the hour,
Zeppelins over Piccadilly, bombing blindly in the fog. Dear Skin, dear Tobacco
Mouth my refusal, my merely geographic, my fibrous strings for you: your
Abundant wit, your lack of shadow and still joy nosing the air. Each moment
Stretches toward you, your dry feet: I carried them, pumiced and peppery
Laid them where regret is a biscuit thing to lean upon and sweeten,
My hour of you, my cursive thoughts, a pulpit beating under these ribs.

2

Dear Time, you swallowed us whole, swallowed us lovely, sharp as bones
Crimping sadly under foot my benign, my flotsam and crabs thin as leaves
Your smoothing, your sinking in. Mornings or mooring, or wallowing
Jericho: tapioca air indolent. I am still there, supple and driftwood, you lovely,
You loved me, your memory dark and west, thoughts like tugboats stitching
The horizon, you pulling me, my pudding, my thin crustacean, sideways
In the late afternoon, your gaze, having so soon forgotten the sharpness
Of mornings, the bite of your look serrating the hour: my treasures, all
Of them, for the pleasure of that slice once more, of our dangling,
You and me, the lot of us in some car, driving some hour, mapless.

3

Under a spiderweb, a tire, slouched: flat, sad-lipped, I think of Newton
Of the original apple, all of these clones since, all of these scentless
Descents. I shake my glass, shake again, melted suffixes tinkling; observe
All things natural: foliage unfurling like old bills, wryly betraying
Your habits, like the dog who digs and rubs, the dog who whines, who
Paws and circles, you trace. Why is pain so much better than nothing? Or
The mark of it more understandable? Why is saying nothing so much better?
Your one-liner like blossoms, uplifting, your currents strap me to air, yes
I guess there is a little texture up here, and oxygen pure as baby’s toes
Which if I recall, are sweet as kernels of corn, if I recall so long ago.

4

To arrive is practice, conversation or conversion, a story over a field
My Sweet, of concrete or whispering, furrows of a path no longer, not
Sure, was there, and snow combed in curlicues and dog ears a zigzag
Through January. Sure you are witty, but are you any less romantic?
In my remembering, I have undone all my beliefs, it is a luxury to lay
Unencumbered here, or there, the bones flexed with tendons, the
Spine like a seahorse, the heart far from a cliche unless beating is
Innocent, though innocence is not as supple as you think, nor as flexible,
Nor as perfumed, nor convenient, or even clean: between things regret
Gathers force. I remember that day: it was cold and the coffee tepid.

5

The small red balloons like thumbprints, waves green as the brush of
Cedar, the wind lapping your hoodie, blind strings tap the air, camera
Bobbing like a dog’s tail. Such lightness, the dog heading off, all
The dogs of English Bay angling off-leash. I would follow backward,
Lay old maps on your white sheets, so sincere, I am in earnest for you:
We won’t regret having not yet knit our acrid puns and jaded barbs, nor
Having the wind slip in under our belt loops, though I gently refuse
Gor-Tex, and you bet I will not concede the game. Those small red
Balloons like tulips in your eyes specs of amber, an amulet, an avatar,
My thoughts of you fully indexed, ready to step into.

18 March 2010

Not meant for this world, truly

(underbed stor)age