Pieces of Ghana…

I scribbled down some stuff while I was with Kate in Accra, Ghana this past summer… It’s all sort of blurb-esque. I didn’t really develop any of it but looking back I like the sound of some of it. Anyway…

1.

In Ghana. Shards of broken bottles improvising as barbed wire. One low powered fan, swiveling. One hundred degrees of heat and ninety percent humidity. Frogs that sound like crashing pick up trucks and muted street voices. Not to mention the shutting of doors.

2.

I hear church bells. Probably not real bells but some awkward recording played over some bulky mega-phone. The sound tip-toes into our room with the heat and sounds of rain, rain like you hear in movies or on meditation soundtracks.

3.

We met a girl named Luisa today. She stopped us on the street and told us she wanted to be friends. We shook her hand and told her our names and then she smiled and walked away. It made me wonder if something had been lost in translation but it seemed perfectly normal. I’m tired. Maybe because I’m sick or maybe because I’ve been listening to too many church hymns from the neighboring worshipers. I think I’ve exhausted myself just trying to decide whether I like their music or not. Big band orchestra meets bongos meets Jesus… Possibly not in that order.

My eyes are like tidepools…

He told me he wanted to see the blood on the floor

I told him it was gone, that I’d mopped it up months ago or days ago depending on the incident.

He said the stains were there, that they’d never go away.

Blood doesn’t just wash away, it drips for years.

And I told him that tears never go away.

That the water leaves but the heavy salt lingers on my eyelids and cheeks and int the corner of my lips when  I tried to wipe them all away.

He said that he’d expected that.

That he could smell the taste and taste the smell.

That my eyes were like tide pools and that was a dead give away.

And I thought “dead.”

Dead like not living,

Dead like not breathing,

Dead like not moving, not touching, not feeling.

But my eyes are not tidepools.

They can’t be that shallow. That cold. That colored.

Note: Written in Tenth grade… Trupe’s class.

Don’t know what to do with this… any ideas? worth continuing?

It’s not really about that, is it? Not really about you. It’s not really about me either. It’s about the way the lone streetlight let it’s glare fall along the potholes.

Panic Attack

This was when life left us and good sense abandoned us and the music was noise and the art was just paint and souls were just pawns and children were just burdens and words were just sounds and the world was just light and organisms exploding and spinning and seizing and falling, so I ran. I sprinted n ninety-nine degrees and my breath was just air and men were just obstacles and clothes were just weight and my memories were just blurred images and truth was nothing. Nothing. I hit nothing when I hit the malecon. The ocean lead to nothing. I let myself fall into the nothing, opened my eyes and let the polluted and salty water burn them. I floated in the ocean, letting my felt get scratched as they hit th rocks and my lungs empty as I refused to grasp for air. My clenched fists relaxed and my hot body cooled and I was weightless and my heart stopped drumming and my ears stopped banging and my head stopped spinning.

Sirens Follow

He doesn’t want to fight them, the toothpick monsters in his closet. Their voices roller coaster through his veins but he knows the echoes won’t come out. They’ll stay cavernous inside, ricocheting like antique pistols. While all he wants is quiet, the type of quiet that comes with sleep and night and hot baths and softly falling rain.

He paces roughly around the world while deep dungeons call up to him. He tries not to listen. He doesn’t think that dungeons seem like a very sensible thing to listen to. But undersized monsters with oversized swords are attacking his insides, so you can’t blame a Pajama-clad warrior for thinking a damp-dark-hideaway would be the perfect place to find that hushhh.

He’ll fight because we told him to, not him directly, just all the little hims that struck a chord. We tell the hims that the world is in it for them; only he knows that the world is precisely the entity they’re trying to core. Like an apple. Get all the ugly out of it. Hoping you don’t ruin the whole damn thing.

So he dips his corer around black holes that he hopes are his world. In the end he pulls up all sorts of garbage, like the fisherman whose big catch turns out to be a boot. But these nets come up with nothing. All that work and not even a good story.

We tell him to hold on. But he doesn’t see anything to hold onto. Nothing to grip as the winds of the world whirlpool him with a vengeance. Unsympathetic apologies flicker out as dissapointment dominates the clouds. He cries but the resonation is swallowed by the sky. Gulped into the heavens. Mixed into the air.

So he runs. Hard. The way you run in dreams… being chased by the monsters. Only the monsters cling to his back and the harder he runs the louder they roar.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Nightmares were supposed to be just for sleeping. But somewhere along the way his mind got tripped up, and he could never regain his balance. So he runs to the end of the world. Hoping the demons will fall off the end of the ocean.

They don’t. So he stops running. Stops still in his footprints. He holds his breath and he dives into the pavement. The monsters rush away.

Sirens follow. Silence shatters, for all, except for him. And all the people with rivers on their cheeks ask, “why?” “how could he?”

But he doesn’t hear them. He takes solace in the silence. For the heavens have enveloped him and all is quiet.

Note: I got a prompt to explain something in different terms. I thought it would be interesting to write a children’s story about a suicide. Not for any practical purposes. But kind of a twisted perspective. I think it worked out well enough.

Burma

I saw a photo this morning. Of a woman crying. Bending over broken bodies. Torn bodies. And she had that face. That face I’ve come to recognize. That we’ve all come to recognize. And it occured to me that, maybe we shouldn’t. I saw her twisted expression, her tide pool eyes, her malleable arms, her mouth opened so wide and her gaze lost so deep. So. Deep. With a face so tattered I could see the world in it. But then I clicked on. To check my mail. To drink my tea. To say “how horrible,” then keep on living. And maybe we shouldn’t. Maybe when you see eyes like tide pools you’re supposed to do more than pause. Maybe when you see bodies lining street corners you’re supposed to scream. But I don’t remember how to scream. Do you?

Burning Books

“Screw you Father!” Ernesto yelled fists clenched as he thundered out of the confessional.

“You’re a stubborn old donkey Ernesto!” Yelled the Father after him.

Without turning around Ernesto retorted “Ha! Says the high-strung penguin!”

I watched this all through the open church doors while I sat on the flagstone steps leading up to them. Ernesto reached the sloping stairway and charged down it, the man of cloth stomping after him, the Father reached the top of the stairs and his angry eyes fell on me. I looked at Ernesto who was strutting into the plaza with no intention of waiting for me, so I got up and ran after the pacing man. I was trying to hold my face: I didn’t want to imagine his wrath if I were to burst out laughing. But he never looked me in the face. I trotted behind him, all the way to his building where he stomped up the stairs, threw open the door and plopped onto his couch like a stubborn little child. Time passed awkwardly as I sat parallel to him and watched him stare out the window. His glare was so fierce I kept imagining it would shatter the glass.

“I want a fire.” He said, minutes or perhaps hours later. I really couldn’t tell you.
“It’s ninety-nine degrees.”
“I want a fire.” He repeated.
“There isn’t any wood.”
“What else could we burn?”
“Have you lost your mind?”
“I want a fire. Is it too much for a dieing man to ask to have a fire? I have a fireplace that I haven’t used in two decades so I want to use it.”
“You’re not dieing.”
“Have you ever burnt a book?”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“No, I haven’t.”
“No fire wood but plenty of books. Let’s burn some books.”
“What’s that quote? ‘Where books are burned soon people will be’ or something like that.”
“I don’t want to burn people, just books.”
“Well it’s the principle of the matter.”
“Screw your principles.”

“What books do you want to burn?” I asked. He reached to the small table and started stroking the cover of an old tattered book and I squirmed from the armchair to see what it was, when I realized I became paralyzed.

“We can’t. It’s wrong.” But he had made his decision. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a match. He grabbed the book from the table and walked to the fireplace and I sat silently as the bible went up in flames.

“Look how the pages catch the light.” He mused, I didn’t say anything. “It’s liberating.” I stayed silent. “Let all the stupid martyrs burn.”

“We’re going to hell.” I spurted out.

He chuckled. “Good. We’ll roast plantains and ride the fire-breathing dragon.” I smiled, eyes still affixed on the fire.

“What’s your problem?” He asked. “You’re not even religious.”
“I know.”
“Then what’s your problem?”
“It doesn’t feel right.”
“You think too much. Has anyone ever told you that you think too much?”

“What’s wrong with thinking?” I asked, defensively.

“You think your thoughts to death.” This bothered me. He was probably right but I didn’t want to be that transparent, that predictable. I stood up from the chair and walked to the bookshelf, I grabbed a book and chucked it into the fire. We both stood there, staring at it with terribly obscure grins on our faces as the pages burnt up.

But in fact I had burnt a book before, or rather witnessed one being burnt before. That is perhaps what gave me such inhibitions about the whole ordeal, and when I saw his face staring at the burning books and realized the expression upon my own, I was terrified. Not of repercussions or hell or anything else, but rather of myself. In how I enjoyed it. There’s an incredible rush of power in destroying something or at least the ability to feign power as you watch an otherwise sacred object go up in smoke.

Pleading with God

It was indeed a great church. Beautiful anyway. And Ernesto entered his temple bereft of the vengeance he had moments before. “Are you coming in?” He asked. I shook my head and he disappeared inside. I sat down on the steps, peering in on this strange world. An old woman wept inside, she pleaded with God on bent and shaking knees while others around ignored her sobs and clasped their hands together asking for this or that, all in a competition of who could pray harder. Young girls were clutching their rosaries below stained glass crucifixions and several people were lighting candles. Candle after candle after candle. This intrigued me and I leaned back against the wall as I watched people send their prayers to God through brown smoke and cheap wax.

Growing eyes for Cuba…

“Helados” said the sign with swarms of local children interspersed with tacky European tourists clutching their Polaroid’s and fanny packs. There were old men in neon mesh shirts smoking two-cent cigars and lazily moving their chess pieces. Boys were whistling at va-va-va voom women and everyone in the square was inhaling ice cream.

Ernesto asked for “Fresa.” I asked for “Chocolate.” And I dropped pesos into the hand of an old woman as she passed us our ice cream. We sat down in the grassy center of the stone park and attempted to lap up our ice cream before the unforgiving sun did it for us and simultaneously we watched. I watched the expatriate wannabes of the world frantically searching around crumbling columns and impatient booksellers. They were attempting to locate some dwindling inspiration; something that they hoped Hemingway or Stein may have accidentally left behind. I watched a man as his hands hit a drum and a woman as her hips hit the air, people playing and dancing, bereft of inhibitions. I watched boys kicking a flat soccer ball with a vengeance and all sorts of artists splattering their brushes along freshly stretched canvases, others flicked guitar strings. I think it was in these awkward and quiet observations that I first grew eyes for Cuba; somewhere in these moments I began a love affair with a forbidden country.

PTA Princess

Sometimes I drone into insanity.
Just by hearing the static of Del Mar Moms and PTA princesses searching for their picket fences.
I sit in poverty amidst plastic wonderlands and try to build sand castles out of the dust,
I watch girls flip their tongues around repetitive “I Love You”s as if they could sculpt Grecian goddesses out of play-doh.
I am drowning in the words of my heros wishing I could be their owners.
Lasso the “I Have A Dreams” and “Howls” of the world and keep them in my Rodeos.
I do not dream in poetry
Or see blue smoke from old cigars.
I’ve watched people die a thousand times
And when their lines go flat I re-heat my TV dinner.
I do not have tints in my glasses that let me capture different things through different lights.
I do not see you the way I’m supposed to