God Bless Our Troops

?!??

jewelry

An old coin from 1919, a 1/4 rupee from India.
Gandhi comes to the mind, inevitably and Zaratustra. British tea and sheiks. Hot, sweaty air and Ganges, burning corpses and brain splashing, sloshing, squirting out of the skull, eyes popping out like overripe fruits, skin wrinkeling up like dry baking paper, dissipating into grey black smoke that hovers over the holy water.
A man, who eats boiling brain, every now and then, to get in touch with death, a living absurdity with a long grey white flowing beard.
Monkeys and dusty street. The little princess, sarongs and beautiful women and mourning baby girl souls wandering restlessly about the earth, aborted, drowned, drenched with hidden tears, too much money, too much cost and too much loss to raise a girl.
To raise, like cattle. Not to rear.
Ignorance of the mind in a tradition of mind expanding practices - makes you wonder.
And when I look out of the Solar cafe on Cahuenga and Franklin I see an orange house behind the brickstone reddish apartment complex that, like staircases floods down the street in cascades, palmtrees blistering and glittering and twinkling in the warm gold liquid Californian winter sun. It takes my breath, whispering of thousand and one nights, seen out of context in the frame of a window that cuts away the dirty streets of Hollywood. The sun, just the sun, caught in the beauty of man-build stones.
I look down, my eyes following the smooth curves of my decollete, finding at the end of the plunging neckline, resting between two warm breasts which are sleeping in a rosebed, the turqoise-silver jewelry she gave me. A bracelet shimmers at my arm, nestled into warm and bright earth and sky colored threads. A shell, one of those white ones which look like a vagina, the sacred place and cradle of human kind. Women, so breathtakingly beautifully amazing. Kneeling in dignity, scrubbing a floor, a dirty behind, touching the dirt with hands that turn everything into gold. Potentially.
I breath in, slowly, and then out. How did I come here and where is it, where we are, exactly?

A web spun of filigran, subtle matters.

a hard rain

she started to sobb really hard and snodder came out of her nose, it spurted out in a burst and I ran to bring her some tissue.
Under tears she screamed, so dear, in comic despair and threw her hands over her greasy ash blonde hair. Her lovely eyes all drowned in salty waters and only one white dove left.
'I want to be also someone' she cried out loud 'who likes to be spanked when they are loved'.
A contradiction as it might seem but you have to know that she has always been in an internal quarrel about her fragileness, her softness, her kind heart. But there is nothing wrong with it. It's just wrong when you are in the wrong song.

Slowly, word for word, line for line in broken English this whole incredible love unfolds itself in front of my greedy eyes.
I see, how he told her everything. Poetic, insanly amazing. So, free with his love. So overwhelmed in his love. For her. Unfuckinbelievable.

I remember how I told everybody around me: Never have I seen someone so in love before. Never. And even though I felt like the luckiest girl in my own love I knew that their's was just simply amazing. She was the poetry girl. The different one. The one who dared to be an angel. And he touched her hand, he held her, with his words, his way, his soul.

And slowly it trickles in, the rain, from falling outside for so long. Long and hard.

Fast backward, a dark evening, southern Germany, lake Constance: she waited for me in the public bathroom. A lady in the corner, homeless, watery eyes with pus coming out, hardly able to see at all. Reaching out a trembling hand, a coin, please, if you could spare it please. Our 20 $ came as a surprise. We looked at each other and decided on the spot: if those creepy old men hadn't given us those 20 $ for playing music on the ferry we wouldn't have had them either. So why not give it away to someone who might need it better than us.

In the very moment the lady realized how much we had given, her eyes lit up in a sudden surge of light coming out from underneath her sticky eye lashes: wait, wait, she said with a raspy voice: I wanna special thank you - Can I tell you your future?
In a crazy sketch she outlined for both of us our lives, including places to live and other insane details.
What stuck in my memory, however, was the man on the other side of the wall who cummed loud in the bathroom. His moans and groans and sighs delivered a spooky surreal soundtrack to a spooky surreal old lady from Eastern Europe who held our hands with her shaking fingers pointing out our lives. In a bucket in the corner was a mass of fermenting leaves in water which smelled of rotten teeth and compost. 'Black spots on dicks' she said huskily, 'if you ever spot a man with black spots on his dick you have to go to this place under the train bridge outside of town and get these plants and ferment them and put it on the penis, to heal'
She looked at me and said something about my sister's man. And how I shouldn't take him away or let him get interested in me. And that I would live at the Lacoma lake.
And that my sister wouldn't be able to have kids but would get three adopted kids.
I bought her three juggling balls the very next day because I was so scared that she'd believe her. I said, here, these are your three kids, it's over now. Don't believe a crazy woman who talked about Jesus in the same token. Maybe this woman was a gypsy. Who knows, my love.

And, while all this happened a hard rain was falling outside. It poured like the skies would open. We were soaking wet.
And a hard rain fell on my hardwood floor when she tore her hair in a fit, finally, finally letting it out, a little.
And everything makes me wonder.
Like, why do I like to be spanked?
Like, why didn't my lover ever send me letters like that?
Like, why isn't he interested in history, philosophy and culture like her man is?
Like, why I do liked spanking?
And why doesn't she.

Like, why sound initally so perfect songs suddenly so wrong?

dark blue

I turn the blinders up and down, see through, blind, can't decide, can't find, no way to breath, no homeless tonight outside but inside, here, it is damp and dark, the glaring crude light makes me feel just even more like a foolish moth clashing with light longing for dark, smelling of dampness trying to burn what can't be burnt.
a plethora of words that I cross out, cross back in, come across, try to put across and now matter how much I try, it is a loss.
And I am at a loss to understand what's going on.
As I drive down the dark streets of LA's thousand suburbs in search of a downtown I listen to sombody else's cd just as I drive somebody else's car and it makes me feel altogether as if I was living sombody else's life, too. The music fucking throws me back into ice ages, last July when I still thought we'd be together. FUcking fuck that. And as I skip to find other, better, more innocent songs I find a techno song that throws me even further back to when I lived in Berlin and that's as much as a soul can take; I kill the music altogether and drive in brooding silence home.
The room is new and not so cosy after all, at 'home', nobody there, i sit down and play for the first time since I came here. For real. Distorted, careless, angry, fucking sad. I can't call anybody. There is nothing I would want to say to anybody. These days are over. For me. No complaining no more. No telling sad stories no more. No telling ' I can cope with that don't worry because I am such a bad ass motherfucker' stories. No crying on the phone. No bad mood for someone else to take or up lift. No calling you no more. You didn't get it. Your voice sounded depressed too, and it's about time we stopped that.
No fucking fuck fuck I wish I had words. But since I don't I shuffle along, like a cripple in search of a manger. All the inns full, closed, not for me.
And into the blue I realize that it feels so good without a phone. I caught myself a couple of times today feeling for it in my pocket, as if I expected it to vibrate. I want to call somebody so bad. But it's so good that I can't. And that you fuckers can't call me.
Now you gotta write.
And I gotta be strong.
And never have I felt myself so strongly alone.

untitled..

..for lack of an excuse. how could I possibly come up with an excuse, not to you but to myself, for this pathetic display, this outrageous atavism of lovesickness in its bitter sweetest edition?
Come one, I'd like to say but I can't. Come on, come on, it might be worth the discipline.
My regular homeless guy outside in the parking lot puts a white board (foam? wood?) in front of the stacked tables he creeps into at night. I wonder whether he tries to keep out the cold, the light or the sight. I see how he steps back, just like an artist, looks at his work and after a second of second afterthoughts he steps back in and puts it carefully behind the tables and walks slowly and leisurely back into the soft world of concrete Hollywood christmas day night.
In the play house they dance to James Brown, honoring the Godfather of soul and funk and groove and I just take a short break to write. I wanted to write about the weightlifter guy from Georgia (next to Russia) who risked his life to go to the Mr. Universe competition by paying a drunk luggage guy at the airport to fly in the luggage compartment where he almost died and got saved in the last minute already looking pale like a dead man walking.
Or how he went to his gym during the war in the early 90's, hiding behind trees, houses, cars, to escape the bullets which were flying incessantly.
Or about the Italian guy on the way back on the bus who didn't want to tell me his story about how he didn't have his car anymore although he makes like 60 $/hour.
Or about the incredible sweetness of the Guatemalan guy next to the Italian mafiosi, who was too short.
Or about the midnight christmas mass and how I teared up when I lifted up my arms. How I thought how strange it is - my fascination for religion paired with disgust and repulsion. And how the woman looked at me when I did something wrong at communion and how I thought, damnit, damn, did she know that I am not catholic? And is that a sin? Ha. Haha.
But instead I chose to write an untitled piece of a restless mind that is unsettled by horoscopic dissonances and alleged incompatabilities, missing the weak, immature Libra guy that Piscies woman supposedly seek after in their early tweens.
I mean, fuck. This doesn't even describe properly what I miss, like, your presence, like, the better version of myself when you are around.
I always knew that I wanted to be 30.

two pieces

1.
The Drunk
Sunset Blvd stretches and curves itself through lovely hills and ends at the ocean.
No sunsets today, though; clouds tower over the sea in majestic dimensions, adding to an everyday common drama unfolding at a bus station.
The drunk doesn't know of any of that and if so, only vaguely. He sits on his wooden porch and takes showers in shit stained knickers in the parking lot when the morning sun barely kisses the walls of my little room.
It might sober him up, actually, you never know, his wife bans him at times to the porch for days and nights and at times Rigo, the site manager, bans him back into the house.
Please, he pleads with the wife, you must take him back in, he cannot sleep on the porch all the time.
So she takes him back and thus a cycle comes to an end in a new beginning.
The snake that bites into her own tail.
The recycled life.
I wonder what he sees all day long when he melts into the porch, barely moving, just breathing.
When he slowly scuffles to obscure objects that look like trash to me and puts them into a new mysterious order.
I wonder, whether he knows.
The drunk.

2.
Christmas Eve Morning
Slowly I run my hand over the table. Push the crums towards the edge, watch them crumbling stumpling falling down. Free fall I think and start to day dream of zig zags. Free Fall.

The other is so intriguingly different. And yet, there are faint traces of similarities which squeeze the breath out of my lungs, I want to jump, plunge into the unknown but always with the assurance of waking up in warm arms.
A sense of lack of direction overwhelms me.
This is it: the futile nothingness of a straying mind. The search goes on for ever, but pieces of meaningless form monstrous bodies over the years: plump, arm- and leg-less, with three fingers placed inside the gross foul mouth, ready to push deep and evoke eviction, friction, vomit of fiction.
How could this beautiful day become so frizzy and dizzy, so disgusted and flustered, so blushingly reddish in the sun shining wheels. How could x-mas eve possibly become so stale in the face of destinies tired frown. How could I forget that luck is as always still too relative to be known.

2006

'sweetie, you know, just don't freak out when your period doesn't come...'
'no Mom, it's not like that, we stopped in the middle'
Gosh, and then there are condoms.
'...I've always kind of already seen this little girl with the curled black hair ...'
'oh Mom...'
I swallow.
I laugh.

And so it did happen like it could have been foreseen,

'you don't love me like you loved me before'

nothing but soundwaves, billowing and wafting through the thin air, hitting me in slow motion, winding their way up into my brains. into the convolutions of my conscience. trickle into the bloodstream, ever so slowly, tickeling nervous ends of raw nerves, poisoning my heart only almost, scratching at the concrete surface of the walls the protection service has erected not long ago. like before? no?
it hits me slowly like smoke spirals hugging my neck ever so softly, remniscing of filigran silver necklaces that I never got.
maybe I should have run into the bathroom and look him straight into the eyes when he said that he still wants to do 'all these things'
such as defeating dragons and solving riddles
such as being healthy and going to try and do everything to be with me and grow with me
where ever

you can get it, if you really want...
but you must try
try and try
try and ... the kingdom will come and it will be yours
not rife with 70 virgins, alas, but it will be yours, complete with me maybe and that might be just too much
oh yes, i do like fairy tales. it's like he and his songs... they can teach you a thing or two.
maybe I should have looked into his eyes
say: ...
say: ...
say: ...
say: ...

see, words, still lacking and a body convulsing in the death pangs of a premature birth of future. communication in love but not so eloquent. tonight belongs to passion and lust and despair and insufficiencies. to yesterday's knowledge and wisdom and tomorrows explosion of fantasy's dream.
tonight belongs to the king and the queen tumbling into pieces.

"And so it did happen like it could have been foreseen,
The timeless explosion of fantasy's dream.
At the peak of the night, the king and the queen
Tumbled all down into pieces."

In the morning we picked up our blanket from the battleground of mystery and fear and near. pulled the pants and sweaters and hair neatly into position. left yet another nameless motel room behind, like in the good old days except for this was a last day.
Leaving I felt how some song lines shooted through my veins like once heroin and other enemies shooted through his, likewise trying to forget but being haunted. It felt as if recognizing a situation, an obscure kind of deja vu that had it's twin in a song instead of in a dream like reality:

"The lover who just walked out your door
Has taken all his blankets from the floor."

Outside the parking lot I crept into his arms, shivering in the pale winter sun and brisk winds kissing our wounds from a raw night. In the car we listened to our old songs and I caught his smile, unconditional, for a second and free or so it seemed. It was a kiss of smiles, mine meeting his in a wild, laughing embrace, riding on the storm of momentary purity.
Oh, oh, gypsy gone, gone, gone gypsy gone.
'I can go wherever I want to go. And I have nowhere to go'
'They are not my family, I have no family, you are my only family'
'my cousins and I'
'i will never be able to be with anyone that's just how it is, it will always only be us'
'I do what I want'
'If it doesn't work out in Missouri, can I come back and live with you?'
'what if I just come back? you wouldn't let a naked baby lie in the curb now would you?'

I want you to come back as a man I said slowly.

-------------------------------

(the next day I asked him whether he thought it was a mistake that we had met again and he thought i was talking about sex.
I was talking about the sin of love's false security)

to forget

it's another thing to just be talented. to let it swoop you away. to go with the flow, never look back.
money tingles in my pockets like jingle bells as I press by all those sweating people in the bus. the logic of overheating busses in wintertime escapes me as I try to detangle myself from scarf, headphones and hair. always brought up, always at the verge of screaming. edward munch, the scream, the picture, burnt into my brain.
mostly mexican people, some black and I white. hippie girl they might think or not. a young guy offers me a seat, i offer a low-life two dollars. get a transfer ticket too, man, it's cold outside. you might need it. so you ride the skateboard too, huh? do you know any tricks? he asks and I nod distantly. getting back to a letter i will never finish writing. mix the ink with salty tears. lick them off my lips, as I lean my head against the cool glass of the window and let the street's uneven patterns tell me a rhythmic story of forgetting.
it's an artform of itself. it requires self-discipline and practice. not to let your mind sway astray. don't let the nearly perfect movement of hips delude you. never go back there, never, no, no.
it's as if I didn't want to jump again and that's what I get for my vain ideas of being an adventurous woman. vile strategies of mind try to self-destruct. worms yapping for air, here she goes, here she goes again.
back home there is a heater who generates dry air, bad for the cough. open the blinders. i see
I see a guy cracking his bones, jumping into a car, a homeless guy crawling into those old tables somebody forgot to put away, a crackhead trying to find some peace of mind and a twilight corner not to be seen.
i see.
how I felt uncomortable when I walked past all those black kids. there were at least 100 of them. and I felt uncomfortable. and then, how this guy looked at me, as I was hurrying towards what I call home and shelter. checking me out from toe to nipple, a quick glance into the eyes, I look away, a hint of a smirk, nothing more in store.
he was black too, and if it is one it is entirely different.
at least two of the guys I went out with were black.
and yet I felt uncomfortable.
not so much as for what I felt
but for the idea of what they might think they see.
a white girl,
hurrying home
in the dark
and

--

the war within.let it be

djihad - the war within

our first enemy lives inside of us
it is me
i hate the reflection of me in you
i hate you

war movies make me cry. i guess motherhood is imprinted into my DNA, my soul, my mind.
surprises make me laugh. when people realise their stupidness by actions of others.
i can't get over that look in their face
and my face

letting go
another excercise
and respecting people's freedoms, choices, wills and weaknesses.
not giving advice unless asked.
growing more silent by the minute.
only the evening sky can make me smile and talk like a waterfall
because
the birds
so beautiful

he gone,
far
somehow
and I have taken
charge again
for myself
another try
of

let it be

crosby

so crosby is gay and i met his children
melissa ethridge's ex-wife is now married to a gorgeous public defender.
they have a child, too.
and I should have known, that there is always more than only one crossroads on the way of surrendering
so i surrender my love or maybe i won't.

i can't ask why you do this. because it is your heart that tells you all these things.
all i know is, helplessly hoping touches me more now than does lay lady lay or it's all over now baby blue.

i can't ask why you do this.
caitlin crosby is playing with reeve carney tomorrow. as an opening act.
they ask to bring unwrapped gifts for children.
it is a great idea.
i wonder, why i didn't choose this road to go.
i wonder, whether she is right and I am lazy and arrogant.
I wonder, whether it will work out with you and I.

All I know is, I want to go and see places. be at places. study.
I was ready to sacrifice everything or at least, a lot.
Now I know that I will never settle for anything less.

sweet love of my life, you say.
and i answer with a whole lot of words.
you are crazy, you say.
and good night

if it only was that easy.

compulsive

compulsively taking things from other people. well, sister, niece, brother in law. still not okay. fucking put the nylon strings on the guitar already. wash the fur that your sister was so mad about your using it. don't take this wooden flower for the hair, it is extremely special.
people apparently have different ideas of what matters and what doesn't.
it sucks when two people have a similar attitude. they will hate each other more than otherwise.
worse, if it's not simply an attitude, but a trait of character, that has to be worked on.
oh, my whole body hurts.
even that we have similar - how our body reacts to emotional stress.
not talking.
not walking.
last minute stress.
that's how it always was.

I remember how I broke the drum in the Octagon in Alaska, Homer. Everybody was gone and I was so terrified that I just ran away. Our friends asked for days who knew what happened. One day my dad sat there with who I thought was his favorite daughter on the lap and said 'Emeralda, you can admit it, if it was you, nothing will happen, we'll just replace it!' and she added something so smart and wise that I wanted to throw a chair at her, like yesterday because she hasn't changed either. No, I wasn't nice.
I was small and I was scared and I insisted on not knowing what it was all about.
You'd think that's something that is so long ago that I should have figured it out by now.
I apparently have not. I do confront but only once. That ain't enough. And that's pretty devastatingly frustrating, my dear.

Some people have mercy for other's problems and flaws and mistakes.
Other's don't.

I've had my glorious five minutes as a favorite and now I am being rolled down the hill. Thrown over the cliff, with open eyes.
It doesn't feel good. It makes me cry. It makes me feel unappreciated. It makes me feel like I am tired of being a loser.
And, in the same time, it's not like I didn't know that she talks like that. Behind backs. There just was never a sign of love whatsoever. See, even this we share. That we need to be shown love on our terms. The difference is, I gave her massages. Oh well. Petty lives.

It might be time to stop doing things I so obviously can't.

heavy chest

a heavy chest
it could be a lot of treasures
it could be concrete
it could be
just a heavy chest

------------
emotionally distressed i am getting sick i feel it rolling on like thunder but I try to talk myself in believing otherwise.
it just seems a little much
right now