Yesterday and I visit the Grave of Love
Oct. 21st, 2005 10:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jack_babalonThe air here in the city has a constant haze to it, even on the brightest of days. It creates the illusion that you are not 'seeing' what is around you as much as remembering it. Now suddenly there is no now. You have stepped into an interactive memory, look around. The details coated with the graininess of old photographs from the late 60s, early 70s. Sitting on your mothers lap, the smell of moldy paper, brittle images of burgundy & paisley that crush in your fingers like flowers when you touch them. I light a cigarette. I look around. Whenever am I doesn't matter, because wherever I am now i'm lost. I began taking turns randomly on my baby on impulse alone. Right now i'm on an empty street, cruising along a row of abandoned houses with boarded up windows, burnt furniture or husks of refridgerators & ovens standing on the porch like kitchen appliance scarecrows. The doors are cardboard sheets some posted with NO TRESSPASSING signs, some spraypainted with gang sigils that use the six sided star & tridents. But the houses here aren't so much painted as they are colored in. Fire Truck Red, Construction Helmet Yellow, New Pair of Jeans Blue & Soda Pop Orange. The contrast between the colors and the form give me the impression that I have discovered the secret graveyard of dollhouses, lost toys buried forever in the backyard of the city. I stop at the sign of movement from underneath a porch. I crane my head and look underneath. There is wildman with a brillopad beard looking back at me. He's laying on his side, with his head propped up and surronded by trashbag cushions. He nods at me casually, I keep on riding.
I come on the corner of Gaskill(Gas-Kill as I pronounce it) and Savannah. Two Bubba's are sitting on a porch decorated with bicycle parts. Their eyes have formed into a permanent squint. They are forever looking into the sun of a better day that will not come. Camo baseball hats, double chinned, god fearing mustaches & pot belly disposistions. I glide by them trying to remember which of these hills will take me to Carrol Street. I can feel the heat of their stares on my back. I remember the bike parts hanging above them and an image quickly forms in my head. Click-Click shell slides into chamber. A single shot that sounds like a car backfiring if anyone was to ask, which they won't. I'm dragged by the heels to the backyard to be buried while the bicycle pirates strip my baby of her parts. Now I realize that those wheels & frames are big game trophies. Inside their living room, over a TV set with a tin foil antenea hangs our plaqued heads with our bicycle helmets still on. I click and switch gears and pick up some more speed.
I'm on a hill. The Cemetary is spread before me. I hum a few bars of Rachmaninov's Isle of the Dead and conjure the shadowed cliffs of Böcklin's painting. Along the brick walls of the cemetary a school bus pulls up. Children begin laughing, streaming out in mock chases & giggling whispers. Flanked to the right of where I sit, the CSX lets out a long wail that silences the children, then the engine rumbles to life and if you focus you can feel it vibrating through the handlebars. A week late, the Phantom Trains I summoned have arrived. There is a little boy with a mop of sandy brown hair wearing a white button up shirt. He too is listening to the train, his face filled with curiosity and apprehension. The face of all smart children. This breaks my heart for reasons I can't explain and I glide down the hill and merge into traffic, I hit MLK Blvd and follow the walls of the cemetary to one of the broken gates. Apparently someone rammed the gates. It's chained up but no matter, I slip my bike through and roll under the chains. I'm right next to the obelisk honoring "OUR CONFEDERATE DEAD" and from here the skyline meshes seemlessly into the tombs,sepulchres & graves all around me. I'm remixing my vision and projecting outward from this bound circle the reach of this Necropolis.
I sit under the statue of an angel who looks down at me while pointing to the sky above. In her shadow I eat an apple and sip water from my bottle watching a gray cat stalk across the unmowed grass along a grave. It is in this same spot that she pulled the car over, she turned up the radio, nightime and the gate should be closed. A rare opportunity. We step out and walked over to this very angel. She takes me by the hand and tells me that she loves how it looks like the angel is releasing the dead from the earth, that even death shall not be a prison and that no end is final. We walk over and sit where i'm at now. I open a folded notebook page and read her a poem. It's shit really- empty calories of a poor mans Nick Cave, sugar flower Whitman with a little bit of Kafka ambiguity sprinkled on Bukowski frosting. But she eats it up. She asks if she can keep it and I tell her 'No'. I tell her 'Lets leave it here for the for the dead that will soon be free, lets leave it so a piece of this moment will always be here'. I confess that this one part panty hustling, but yes, one part tragically sincere. I plan on saying more, but in her wisdom she silences me with our first kiss. Hands under the shirt, through the waistband, breathing in sighs, the graffiti in her eyes. We take turns removing each others clothes, a child plucking petals from a flower..."She loves me... she loves me not". Fumbled fingers around the bra strap. Looking for my sole condom dropped in the dark. The feel of grass and dirt against my bare back. The sirens & gunshots in the background. The first shock of slip into her, a firm glove wrapped against a frost bit day. She rides me the way the night rides the earth, I reach up for her and she has thrown her head back and her eyes are on that angel, following that prophetic finger to the roof of clouds above, to the veiled stars, to whatever it is they promise. From the port of my body she launches the ship of her soul outwards into that sea eternal. Later as she adjusts herself and brushes the dirt off her knees, I fold the poem into a small little square. I dig a hole with my fingers and bury it in the dirt when she isn't looking. Ten years & X amount of days later I finish my apple. Light up a smoke and lean back into the grass. I follow that raised arm and guiding finger all the way up to the sky, desperately trying to see what it was she saw that night.
I come on the corner of Gaskill(Gas-Kill as I pronounce it) and Savannah. Two Bubba's are sitting on a porch decorated with bicycle parts. Their eyes have formed into a permanent squint. They are forever looking into the sun of a better day that will not come. Camo baseball hats, double chinned, god fearing mustaches & pot belly disposistions. I glide by them trying to remember which of these hills will take me to Carrol Street. I can feel the heat of their stares on my back. I remember the bike parts hanging above them and an image quickly forms in my head. Click-Click shell slides into chamber. A single shot that sounds like a car backfiring if anyone was to ask, which they won't. I'm dragged by the heels to the backyard to be buried while the bicycle pirates strip my baby of her parts. Now I realize that those wheels & frames are big game trophies. Inside their living room, over a TV set with a tin foil antenea hangs our plaqued heads with our bicycle helmets still on. I click and switch gears and pick up some more speed.
I'm on a hill. The Cemetary is spread before me. I hum a few bars of Rachmaninov's Isle of the Dead and conjure the shadowed cliffs of Böcklin's painting. Along the brick walls of the cemetary a school bus pulls up. Children begin laughing, streaming out in mock chases & giggling whispers. Flanked to the right of where I sit, the CSX lets out a long wail that silences the children, then the engine rumbles to life and if you focus you can feel it vibrating through the handlebars. A week late, the Phantom Trains I summoned have arrived. There is a little boy with a mop of sandy brown hair wearing a white button up shirt. He too is listening to the train, his face filled with curiosity and apprehension. The face of all smart children. This breaks my heart for reasons I can't explain and I glide down the hill and merge into traffic, I hit MLK Blvd and follow the walls of the cemetary to one of the broken gates. Apparently someone rammed the gates. It's chained up but no matter, I slip my bike through and roll under the chains. I'm right next to the obelisk honoring "OUR CONFEDERATE DEAD" and from here the skyline meshes seemlessly into the tombs,sepulchres & graves all around me. I'm remixing my vision and projecting outward from this bound circle the reach of this Necropolis.
I sit under the statue of an angel who looks down at me while pointing to the sky above. In her shadow I eat an apple and sip water from my bottle watching a gray cat stalk across the unmowed grass along a grave. It is in this same spot that she pulled the car over, she turned up the radio, nightime and the gate should be closed. A rare opportunity. We step out and walked over to this very angel. She takes me by the hand and tells me that she loves how it looks like the angel is releasing the dead from the earth, that even death shall not be a prison and that no end is final. We walk over and sit where i'm at now. I open a folded notebook page and read her a poem. It's shit really- empty calories of a poor mans Nick Cave, sugar flower Whitman with a little bit of Kafka ambiguity sprinkled on Bukowski frosting. But she eats it up. She asks if she can keep it and I tell her 'No'. I tell her 'Lets leave it here for the for the dead that will soon be free, lets leave it so a piece of this moment will always be here'. I confess that this one part panty hustling, but yes, one part tragically sincere. I plan on saying more, but in her wisdom she silences me with our first kiss. Hands under the shirt, through the waistband, breathing in sighs, the graffiti in her eyes. We take turns removing each others clothes, a child plucking petals from a flower..."She loves me... she loves me not". Fumbled fingers around the bra strap. Looking for my sole condom dropped in the dark. The feel of grass and dirt against my bare back. The sirens & gunshots in the background. The first shock of slip into her, a firm glove wrapped against a frost bit day. She rides me the way the night rides the earth, I reach up for her and she has thrown her head back and her eyes are on that angel, following that prophetic finger to the roof of clouds above, to the veiled stars, to whatever it is they promise. From the port of my body she launches the ship of her soul outwards into that sea eternal. Later as she adjusts herself and brushes the dirt off her knees, I fold the poem into a small little square. I dig a hole with my fingers and bury it in the dirt when she isn't looking. Ten years & X amount of days later I finish my apple. Light up a smoke and lean back into the grass. I follow that raised arm and guiding finger all the way up to the sky, desperately trying to see what it was she saw that night.
