Three Songs Upon Parting
A
shadow whose place of birth is gone.
With
her hands, she was always pleading. Her fingers were light, fast. The
flickering of a flame. Always the same plea “Me for you”.
I
did not have as many choices as it may have appeared. She should have known
that.
The
far wall. The candles give us a movie. An empty bottle of wine. The smooth
lines of a woman without appendages.
The
flickering candle and an enforced act. The music has died down, but she continues her performance. They both do.
I
hum to myself and blow out the candle.
An
entire city in darkness. It is what we wanted, then. What I want?
I
must will myself to leave. Her, to hate me. Freedom for the price of a flight.
No, not freedom but exile. The exile could be pleasant. Even the bitterness. I
would close my eyes and roll our words around in my mouth to better savor their
distinct flavor.
I
move about like a somnambulist, bored in the way the free usually are. The day
bleeds away. A tired light whose angry red shimmers, final reflections on
building sides and still closed windows.
I
am there too, burning.
The
haze of desire before my eyes, it was all I could see, everything colored a
throbbing red by it. What is the word you use for loneliness when you want to
lie?
I
had a few hours to kill before the night’s first set. I could walk to Libby’s.
The apartment buildings, all the people moved out, the empty windows giving the
building a gap toothed smile.
She
is home. She always is.
Here
is five dollars, make me feel bad. Don’t be embarrassed by your precision, my
assassin.
Somewhere
else is her.
Really,
it is not the time apart, but the time to think which hurts the most and that
has nothing to do with you. It all goes into my art. The bad seeming to work
better though. All my playing is like that, boy-girl thing, death and sweet
heartache. The savage tragedy of the human condition.
I
am ready for a week of Mondays.
Dawn.
Her lamentable breaths, her tears. A soft tinkling like rain, the piano about
to fall off the edge.
Kaiser Mélange
I
know of the Cheetah who lives on the limbs of the tree behind the building.
Your kisses can trap him. The eyes are the secret, a vertical truth. Stars, the
spots on its coat. Always, you must set him free at first light.
There
is a bleary eye, the color of a cigarette tip. The record player light. Hours
before, the needle had stuck and I listened to the same Strauss aria over and
over, until finally admitting a dawn defeat, I got up, humming, and put a stop
to it. As to not appear completely beaten, I did leave the machine on though.
Dawn
won’t quit, her last resistance, the small spear of light laid to rest at the
bottom of the door.
Last
night she had called me to have drinks in the hotel bar when there were no
tourists to hunt.
There
were always things she felt that she had to tell me, although none of it was
true. She always thought I would cherry pick her incidents of heart ache for my
stories.
Why
pretend to care one way or another? How often had I sat in the café across from
the hotel which still had a piano of Wagner’s in the lobby, two Kaiser Mélange,
waiting for all her work to be done? She knew, she knew and could have used
this to win, but never did.
It
is now so late that it is early. I lay there with my eyes still closed. Below a
car loudly idles, a dog barks. Through two slits, I now watch her. She briefly
looks at me, trying to decide if I am truly asleep, quickly she aims her nose
at her shoulder and inhales, then she pockets the money which earlier she had
assured me that “she could not possibly take”.
Quietly,
she closes the door behind her.
Ah,
baby there is a cat in the anisette, a lie in your heart, the piano is broken.
It is all us, it us all fading night and tired eyes, the spotted coat of a
cheetah.