1000 Words

I’ve seen this photo a dozen times but today it inspired something in me :

A burst of color at the center; soft yet sharp.
Pit.
Pat.
Rain. Heavy rain.
Of course.
There’s always rain.

It should be gray.
Muggy,
Dark.
But for some reason it wasn’t.

The rain was somehow fresh.
Cleansing, almost.
In a way that made the leaves sparkle.

Those leaves.
Those fucking leaves.
The ones that started on dead branches covered in snow when we first met.
The ones that burst to life as the weather turned warm when we first fought.
The ones that swayed gently in the even warmer wind when we first fell in love.
The ones that now sit speckled on the barren branches while we say goodbye.
A final goodbye.

Damn those leaves.
Damn those trees.
Damn this whole night to hell because you’ve never been more heartbroken and she’s never looked better and this damn rain is just making her eyes sparkle; literally, sparkle, just like the leaves and the pavement and the grass surrounding; she just sparkles.

And you have a thousand words bubbling up inside of you but you can’t speak. You can’t say a fucking word.

So you just watch her sparkle.
And you just watch her go.

-KA

December on the Subway at Midnight

I’m sitting across from a young man wearing a black tuxedo and a bow tie. He wears silver rings all over his hands. Black combat boots. A dusty black coat. As I write this he looks up at me, smiling, unintentionally, I think, more of a natural reaction when one sees something pleasant than an effort to capture my interest.

I glance away from my page for a bare moment to meet his eyes. We recognize something in each other–he sees the rings on my hands and my long black coat, my short, dyed-black hair, and because of these symbols, we connect. I turn my attention again towards writing this, but I still feel his eyes on me. As I glance back up at him again once, twice, to write down these details, he begins to get the feeling that I’m writing about him.

-ND

Possesion

Vision splits peripherally

you are not what your clothes say you are.

 

Bathing in dark perfumes and wet leather

pressing depressed pictures on your camera-phone in the daylight

calculatedly obscure

saying death but speaking life.

 

The grey mist inside my left eye,

both eyes looking in the mirror

but not seeing anything–

 

I think when I found you

I lost myself.

 

-ND

 

the flower and the bee

The flower does not dream of the bee. That’s how the saying goes, isn’t it? The flower grows and blossoms and never once dreams of a bee to come and pay it any attention. Oh how simple life would be as a flower; a budding rose in the whispers of Spring when the air is warm and the breeze soothes and the buzzing of a bee signals the arrival of something fresh. I always loved the idea of becoming a flower. I would start as a seed, perhaps dropped from the wing of a bird, and I would grow and sprout into something fragrant and lovely; something children would pick for their mothers for a special day. I longed for that. I longed for desire. And what is more desired than a rose? By children, by mothers, by bees. Ah to be a bee. A buzzing little bee bursting with brash abandonment. I always found that bees were misunderstood. One does not intentionally sting; the same goes for the bee. We do not seek someone to stick, we merely buzz through life and as we bump and grind into those surrounding us we find our stingers raised and poking anyone or anything that we perceive to do us wrong.

But I’ve gone off topic.

The flower and the bee; that’s why we’re here. So we know the flower never dreams of the bee, but the bee must dream of the flower. The flower directly impacts the life of the bee, and not only of that one bee, but of all the other bees. For if the flowers didn’t exist, neither would the bees; and if the bees didn’t exist, neither would the flowers. How delicate. Yet, we know the flower can not possibly dream of a bee. Do we know for sure that a bee can not dream of a flower? Do we know that a bee is born and thinks nothing of what to do next? Or does a bee come into this world and immediately start its search for the perfect flower?

Impossible, of course.

However the two are made to go hand in hand; without ever knowing, without ever wondering, without ever questioning. The two are drawn together by a force bigger than themselves; evolution, nature, fate.

Fate.

That’s the one.

And you see, it wouldn’t matter how long it took the bee to get to the flower, because the two were always made for each other.

And I believe the same is true of us.

You are a bee, buzzing brilliantly in the Spring air.
I am a radiant rose, yearning to be touched.
And we are meant to be, as fate would have it, just as the flowers and the bees.

-KA

this uncut heart

this uncut heart
this hot unbruised
quivering
virgin
chuck of flesh tissue
gave you its blood
and

you kept no human matter

-ND

One, Two, Three

I
My mind
Rotting with the thoughts
Of you,

Button down black-blue
Mahogany hit slather slicked back hair
On liquid clear blue

A crashing weight on top of
Me—
In flesh-colored lace and with my bone-white
Arm hanging
Over the edge
Of the bed
Holding a quiver-
ing soup of merlot

III
I hang up my rosary beads so they get cold
And when I put them in my hands they touch my over-heated skin like
Tiny daggers each of them.

III
Something feels a little wrong about last night—
Like waking up with gum stuck in the hair
And the cold wash of neon light
From heaven
On my splotchy face.

ND

Storm

You aren’t ready for someone like me
You aren’t ready for the storm
Because that’s what I am
I am a storm
A raging storm
A violent storm
with thunder and lightning
that crashes across the sky
and rain that hurts as it tears
across the humid air

I am a biting wind
that rips up trees and crashes windows
I am the pouring rain
A flood of emotions
both good and bad and everything in between
I feel so deeply
I feel so tenderly
I feel so much

I am a great storm
One that is talked about for years to come
The storm that blew through town
The storm that took so many
The storm that you won’t forget
The storm you can’t forget
because after the storm there is the calm
A peaceful calm
A quiet calm
A calm that can’t be replaced
A calm that feels empty
Empty.
Empty.
Empty.

And you’ll crave the storm again
With all it’s crashes and screaming
With all it’s pain and loss
You’ll crave that storm because
my God it’s better than feeling empty
because it’s better than feeling alone
because it’s better than feeling nothing at all
because after every storm comes
a beautiful rainbow
a chirping bird
a powerful sun
so bright and warm
the rain dries and the trees regrow
and it’s almost as if the storm never happened
and you remember the sun and the light
and you know
somehow
you know
all will be well
until of course the next one

the next storm
the next fight
the next explosion of nature
and then you’ll find yourself
drowning once more
drowning in memories
drowning in history
drowning in pain
drowning
drowning
drowning

so don’t
don’t drown

swim and be free
be free of pain
be free of hurt
be free of the storm
be free
be free of me

for I am a storm
mighty and powerful
a storm you are not prepared for
a storm you can not weather
so be free
sweet love of mine
be free
let someone else brave the storm

-KA

messing with stream of consciousness

Is that Euphorbia Milii his hair smells like? Either way, it tastes like salvation behind her nose. She inhales. Juniper grows across the northern hemisphere from the Arctic, south to tropical Africa and bursts from the mountains of Central America. Maybe he smells like Juniper. It’s tough to look him straight in those blue eyes, because she sees tundra, tropics, and teepees inside. No, these aren’t memories, she doesn’t know him, but she wants to.

“Do you have a pencil?” she asks, and the boy hands her a No. 2, and turns back to the chalkboard.

God, did she want him. Flaxen hair swept over coral blue clad, golden-ratio shoulders, and his baby soft eyebrows virtually touched in attempt to read the teacher’s writing. She maps Mount Olympus on the soft slope of his nose and counts his eyelashes like rose petals. He loves me, he loves me not…

And then, he sets his nimble fingers in motion over the white plains of a Composition notebook, and she feels herself spontaneously combust. Poppies sprout over her skin, and she’s towering light years away from the classroom, from Earth, from this Universe, from this Multiverse.

A wintry breeze carries one of his papers, and he sprawls his hand flat to keep it from escaping. She imagines that hand over a bushel of chocolates, zipping the back of her dress, or wiping away her tears. Clouds part and light peaks through parted red curtains so that the top of his head glows. Was that Enochian written on his papers?

She is a vulture, living off of the scraps he throws her. You see, sometimes he raises his hand or points his feet in her direction, which, according to Cosmo Magazine, means he’s thinking about being closer. Her English Literature classroom in the Shinto Torii Gate to Nirvana, and she reaches enlightenment every weekday around 2:00 p.m.

He speaks! “Nabokov?”

Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata escapes from his mouth, hummed by a celestial chorus. She mentally records his triumphant concerto and stores it somewhere in her head, right next to those summer nights in New York City and her first kiss—you know, where she keeps all the most important stuff. Far from the smack of a mother’s hand across her young, wet face, and away from all those cheating ex-boyfriends and questionable motel rooms.

Cleo takes a deep breath, and jumps. She drops her pencil onto the floor. Time slows, and the caped, winged archangel in the seat parallel to her bows to lift her…his…pencil off the floor. Cleo smiles at him, their fingers touch, and suddenly he thinks she looks fearless.

-ND

Traveling in The Autumn On Wednesday

I’m in the streets
“Give me that book,” says beanie, panting
student in pink whirls
“Give me the book,” he repeats
Next block book stand squatting, beanie no. 2 shivering in fingerless gloves
Big man’s saxophone plays ‘dream a little dream of me’
Like a toddler trying to learn the alphabet: without reason to be self-conscious, and pathetic
Suddenly the air smells like a memory
It smells like my first plane ride
And the boy sitting next to me who stole my window seat even though he had been on a plane before and I hadn’t and he agreed before that I could have the window seat and lied
Short, fat man waddles past, “sexy.”
He looks at the ground, ready to disown it
his mouth in my ear
I hunch in layers of sweaters and frown my unwashed face
I am every raging feminist
Train arrives, I let baby carriage in
Leather jacket cuts me off
Doesn’t move in to let me on,
But sizes me up when I brush past him to a seat
A decade of “let’s say you’re attacked on the subway, what do you do?”
“Use my fingernails to scratch his eyes out”
re-calls
Underground, faces pass on parallel lines
opposite, identical, and never touching
Not frowning like I had a bad day
Or smiling like I am in love
Ab-sent
I wonder what story girl in pink stole
The conductor and his passengers are speaking in tongues
And I’ve been traveling for hours
(Everything is further away when it’s cold outside)
The woman beside me struggles her peripherals to read this
But realizes the story isn’t written in her language
Dull glide of the train sounds like hands pressed to ears
It’s never sounded this way before
Maybe it’s because of the ice which gropes my hands and
The insides of my thighs when those doors slide open
Left is a couple, man’s arm splayed over his girl’s shoulders and it’s touching my shoulder,
But he doesn’t care,
He’s telling her a story

-ND