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dead flowers e.p.
| Open Poetry #12 |
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dead flowers e.p. |
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bsquirrel
since 2000-01-03
Posts 7855
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eight poems for public performance, written Jan. 26-27, 2001, performed Jan. 27 Mike Chmielecki dead flowers die with her She asked me to say she was alive moments after I entered her honeyed hive. The rain fell from up high; we took a dive. She asked me what to say to be alive. Dead roses stood in a vase by the door. Dead gladiolas spilling off the counter to the floor. Dead violets and dead poppies galore. She clutched flower heads in her hand like apple cores. I’m not exactly sure what it all meant. Was the perfume of cloying petals a heavenly scent? No. To me it was heavy and senseless and it always sent me away from her confused, back the way I went. She stopped me on one of these treks back outside. Cried at me for the third time today she’d just died. Begged me if I could possibly spare a ride. Or at least find a way to find a way inside. I told her for the third time tonight let go of me. She did something else; the aftereffects blinded me. When I came to I was lying alone in bed. The note she left on my pillow said “Goodbye, my flower head.” lord knows i’m tired The rain is a solid sheet of water. I’d like to carve into its paper with a stone the words I’ve always wanted to say to her that night she let me down here, alone. Words from the sky glance off the overhang, puddle to the stone walk outside the window screen. If I could collect these drops of words and spell them all out you’d know exactly what I mean. Lord knows I’m tired of waking to a clock that has nothing to say except get out of bed. Lord knows I’m tired of answering a phone when all I hear is whatever it was I said. i don’t remember anymore I don’t remember anymore what it was she said. I don’t remember the feelings they caused. I don’t remember the reason I raged and quaked and fell like a statue with eyes gone muddy in layers of gauze. The sheets unwound like time’s own hand; only time has no hand nor face. I thought I found a hair fallen from time’s own head on my pillow, but it was just a piece of vase. I don’t even want to know the significance of that event, but it was green and sharp, as though grass could really come in blades. I smelled her perfume and figured out the way she had went but I was too frightened to move by the shadow under the shades. I don’t remember what it was that caused me to wake up with a mixture of laughter and tears in my throat. I must’ve swallowed a lot of them, because the salt in my voice kept me from crying more when I found her note. I don’t remember anymore why I loved her anyway. I don’t remember anymore why I loved her at all. what’s so funny about a smile? I remember her smile like a mile of earthquaked freeway, like a whole unsettled row of fallen trees – the fronds covering over the faces of broken buildings. Walls lying in the gutter like leaves. I remember her touch like the night I had enough and the roof of my head seemed to cave in. My bones felt all strange and my body felt rearranged and I never wanted to see her again. I remember her love like a record suddenly stopped and placed lovingly back in its sleeve. So the memories of fragments of notes can remain, and the dust can make its reprise and reprieve. I remember my image in the face of the mirror; in fact I just visited it a few hours back. I could make kissy lips and it wouldn’t attack; I could flip it off and it wouldn’t fight back; I could sing a detuned song and it wouldn’t say I lack. No, I don’t want to take it back. 16 minutes Okay, so I’m sitting there in the bathroom mirror, quite the man with the light overhead to give me that workaday just got home boy I’m tired fix some spaghetti with lots of peppers and onions but easy on the salt this time look. You know the one I’m talking about. You know. Okay, so I’m sitting on my bed in front of the TV listening to whatever wisdom a Nissan commercial, a Nike commercial and a Bally Total Fitness commercial can give me. It makes me want to, oh, I don’t know, oh I don’t know, it makes me want to, oh you know. You know what it makes me want to do. Yeah. It makes me want to buy a new car, new shoes and a new body. Ha. Exactly. Okay, so I’m sitting at the table eating a can of soup because I forgot to thaw the meat and the phone rings. So I pick it up, dropping the fork with a metal clang like a louder version of the rain outside. It’s another creditor, telling me I’m over my limit and if I don’t pay up soon she’s going to have to refer this to a collection agency. This makes me antsy. This makes me perturbed, because I’ve already spoken to two other, shall we say, female operators in the past, shall we say, two days about the same problem and I told them it was solved. I told them it was solved. But you know how it is. And now my soup’s gone cold. Okay, so the soup is done and the pot is in the sink and I’m listening to music. Nothing too creative or invigorating, just the radio. And a song comes on I really like. The name of the song doesn’t matter. The group doesn’t matter. The theme, tone, height, density, sonic weight, meaning, understandably flawed vision, guitar solos and drum patterns don’t matter. Anyway, so I’m singing along to this song, right? So I’m singing along to this song, right? Okay, so I’m singing along to this song, right, and there’s a knock on the door. It’s evening patrol. They’re telling me to turn it down. They’re telling me it’s time to sleep. They’re telling me what two other versions of the same buttoned-down, badged-up person has told me for the past two other versions of today. Okay, so I’m lying in bed, right? And I have some, shall we say, vision defects. Okay, like when I get a migraine, for example, for example, for example when I get a migraine, defined by me as a monster-ass headache, you know, when you’re nauseous and can’t breathe and can’t eat and can’t talk and can’t make love and can’t make hate and can’t make noise and can’t even pray for the pain to stop because the pain has become every bone, every muscle, every sinew, every, oh I don’t know, sinewy bony muscle, and when I get a migraine, all the colors are blurred, and the edges pulse and for that amount of time, however long, I can feel my blood beating and I can feel the inside of my veins and I can feel my heart working, and it thuds, and when it thuds, and when it thuds I have my eyes closed and the color pulses into the black canvas, and when I open my eyes, there’s a spongy floater floating on the ceiling like a gray balloon, like a ghost, like a supernatural sponge spongy floater sponge, okay? I, okay, I ... I have a migraine, and I can smell the flowers. is it all trash? The flowers were from her own hidden garden off the hill. She had trouble because the yellow, thistly weeds choked it out, and the staves she used as boundary markers rotted in the shade, so sometimes she couldn’t find the garden for days. I remember how we met at the park. I had a dried frond in my hand, looking at it like a brown feather and thinking about how happy and how sad the world could be. She was an extreme in both directions. She was especially horny when it rained. Unless it thundered; then she would cry. She was always nihilistic; her last boyfriend had died on the toilet with a balloon around his arm – fell off his horse, she called it. She just told me we were trash on the water. I told her then please float away. I guess when you think truly about what could be wrong it’s better to stop thinking about it for too long. And I hope if I am just trash, as she said, that I’m a piece being warmed by the sun. waiting for an answer that never comes Things seem dark from one side; from another they seem bright. Look at the dripping sky: the rainy moon makes sides irrelevant. Tonight was the anniversary of when her dead flowers jumped and grew in my mind where she just grew the dirt. I don’t even want to think about the feel of the rose, the way the pressure of my fingers made it not come back to shape, the way the scent was laced with the deeper odor of mistake. I don’t even want to experience it – the sound on the phone as she talked to me like desperation’s daughter; when i couldn’t help, she just said goodnight. I’m not even going to ask the question I had in mind. I’m just going to say goodnight. ending rainfall/goodbye Everything lives and everything dies. Every hello has its goodbye. Every blurred thought in a drunkard’s mind still makes more sense than explaining why you’re blind. Every new storm leads back to calm. Every fist is made by curling fingers in palm. Every traffic light hanging in the rainy night will blink and operate as if everything’s all right. Every shot of white will leave colors behind. Every moment’s insight is either kind or unkind. Every empty chair will be filled at some point. Either blood or oil will lubricate your joints. Every beginning has an equal end. Every lie is more truth than pretend. Every cut to skin will heal just fine. Every burst grape will just make more wine. I guess you were right after all: it did hurt when I missed the signs of your fall. Leaving not your soul, just a dead flower wreath and words and ideas forever buried beneath. I don’t have the patience to deal with grief or the substance of self to peel back belief and see it as so much flaking copper leaf. The rain has ended and I’ve been washed clean. I look at my reflection in the mirror’s fog and shine. I just remembered: your eyes were coastal water green. Why you let them close and stay closed is a scar of mine. But now it’s love? But now I won’t cry. Goodbye. These flowers need no more memories, and these memories no more rain. |
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| © Copyright 2001 MPC - All Rights Reserved | |||
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Angel in Flight Member
since 2001-01-07
Posts 381 |
so far i only have read your last poem. And WOW WOW WOW so much truth in such a short poem. It is truly wonderful And I must say i am going to come back to read the rest of your poem. I just believe i should have a little bit of joy everyday so in 8 days you will see how i think about all of your poems. I want the joy of reading to last a life time and if it can not 8 days will have to do.~ Amanda~ What comes with love are tears of pain. What comes with hate are brighter days~ Amanda |
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Irish Rose Member Patricius
since 2000-04-06
Posts 10263 |
I find much of your poetry hard to understand but believe me, these last two lines really spoke to me. "These flowers need no more memories, and these memories no more rain." Kathleen |
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bsquirrel
since 2000-01-03
Posts 7855 |
Amanda, I like your positive attitude, and your experiment.  Thanks!Mike |
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bsquirrel
since 2000-01-03
Posts 7855 |
Irish Rose, Yeah, I know my poetry is an acquired taste. But thanks for slogging through.Mike |
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SEA
Moderator
Member Seraphic
since 2000-01-18
Posts 22676with you |
Mike~ I've been reading and reading and reading here....... dude......I love the migraine one.......I know exactly what you mean........that and Lord knows I'm tired.....so cool......excellent writing, as always. -SEA |
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