January 31st, 2010 by Hoopleton

“I knew you were in love with her from when you used to talk about her,” says my wife as she drinks her coffee.

“You knew it before I did?” I ask drinking my scotch.

“I can see things before they happen, didn’t I tell you that once?” She smiles at me. “It’ll all work out, you’ll see. You just need to give her time to sort things out.”

“I feel powerless.”

“Fight for her.”

“I feel so alone without her.”

“Fight for her.”

“I just want to see her show up one day, bag in hand.”

“You will.”

I wipe the tears from my eyes. She stands to hold me.

“Things are never easy are they?” I ask.

“I should’ve left after three years,” she says, her mouth wry. “I stayed fifteen.”

“Things are never easy,” I offer.

“You love her. She loves you.”

“We do.”

“Then that’s all you need to know.”

“I’m glad I married you,” I say.

“I know,” she says going back to her coffee. “I saw that too.”

January 31st, 2010 by Hoopleton

I can’t bring myself to remove the coffee cups or fix the covers on my bed. I sit on our couch and read my old journals thinking about the trips we’d take. I smell you in the cushions, I see your shadow thrown down against the floor. I dream about reversing time again, if only for an afternoon. I’m not doing well today. I can’t seem to breathe since I saw you last and the pain is getting more intense. I don’t know my worth. My place. And my imagination runs screaming. I’ve never had darker thoughts than this. For me. For you. For us. I won’t live without you. I know that now. My heart may beat but I won’t be the man you know. I’ll drift without purpose. Aimless. Undefined. Empty. Shattered beyond recognition. Weak. I’ve given you all my strength. To protect you. Help you. Set you free. Until you return I have nothing left.

January 29th, 2010 by Hoopleton

Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! WAIT! WAIT! WAIT! WAIT! WAIT! WAIT! WAIT! Ok go.

Huh?

I’m not gonna tell you again.

I think there may be a lack of communication here.

Have I told you about this woman I met?

It’s all you talk about lately. I’ve been meaning to tell you to shut up about it.

She’s brilliant. She’s funny. She’s adventurous. She’s graceful. She’s passionate. She’s independent. She’s inspired. She’s tough. She’s vulnerable. She’s beautiful. She’s dark. She’s light. She’s…you’re not listening to me are you?

You told me to go.

Huh?

Look, I’m very happy that you’re in love. Or at least I would be if I could feel happiness. Let’s say I’m not displeased. But honestly, there’s more to discuss, there’s more to the world than her…savvy?

No, no, no, I really don’t think that there is.

You should eat something. Go for a walk. Read a book. Something.

No, no, no, I really don’t think that I should.

This is pointless, it’s like talking to a fence post. I’m not having this conversation anymore. I’m leaving.

Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! WAIT! WAIT! WAIT! WAIT! WAIT! WAIT! WAIT! Ok go.

January 28th, 2010 by Hoopleton

I stop at the sink and turn the tap. The soap feels good against my hands. The hot water feels better. In the other room I can hear her pacing. She’s been pacing for days, wearing the floorboards thin.

There’s nothing I can think to do. If I start now we’ll be living on the second floor within hours. Another day and we’ll be on the first. After that there’s only soil and a pronounced lack of living.

I decide I hate my reflection and shut off the bathroom light. I can’t seem to face her today. I know what she’ll say if I do and I’d rather drown myself in the bathtub. At least that way I’d die at home, grinning at the convenience of it. I imagine she’d find me eventually. Then the only question would be whether she’d pull the plug or jump in after me. I’d like to think she wouldn’t hesitate on her choice.

I turn the tap off and listen for a moment as she shuffles back and forth. The rhythm is uneven. Her steps are hard. I can smell the smoke from her cigarette. At this point she’s lighting one from another. I think of lighting my own but decide to wash my hands again instead.

The water is hot and soothing on my skin, which suddenly feels warn and brittle. In the mirror I can only see a faint outline of my face. Even this is too much.

The uncertainty she has unnerves me. I feel pushed down into the tile. Pressed with the full weight of the building on my back. And she pacing somewhere up on the roof. Above her the sky is falling, sunlit chunks of moon rock making cheese of the clouds.

I want you, don’t you know that? Oh fine, it’s gonna be that way is it?

I sit on the edge of the radiator, beads of water dripping from my hands. I know I’ll have to go out there eventually, but for now I stay in the dark.

January 26th, 2010 by Hoopleton

The temperature drops to well below freezing. The sky is the same overcast steel grey it’s been for weeks. As the train follows the track into a sharp left turn I can feel the wheels shift slightly. I imagine them slip. Six cars full of evening commuters falling off the elevated platform, tumbling into the street below.

This is not the same day that it was yesterday. So many todays and never a tomorrow.

That’s just the way it goes.

For a hot minute I’m lost in the rhythm of the tracks. The idle chit chat of the women sitting behind me. Of the nearly undetectable static churning out of the intercom.

We’re in week three and I feel like I’ve known you for years. I almost, nearly, miss sleeping, eating, functioning as, I would think, ordinary people do. I like that you never drink the coffee that I buy you. I like your hands warm.

No, this isn’t the way I wanted us to meet. If I had it my way we would’ve met when we were children. So we could’ve grown up together. Been innocent together. So that I could’ve always been writing of you. Dreaming of you. Being of you.

I want your head pressed against my shoulder when I fade to sleep tonight and your eyes on me when I wake in the morning. I want you here on this train with me. Buried halfway between imagined catastrophe and the ambient noise that consumes me.

And I fear constantly that my passion for you will push you away from me. Will overwhelm you. So I take a step back and again find myself alone. Missing you. Craving you. Desperate for you.

The train pulls tiredly into the station. Sparks explode and people gather at the doors. As I grab my bag and button my coat I glance back hoping for some trace of you. But instead you smile, kiss me on the cheek and say goodnight. So I step outside, braced against the steel grey cold.

January 26th, 2010 by Hoopleton

Lady Love by Paul Eluard.

She is standing on my eyelids
And her hair is in my hair
She has the color of my eye
She has the body of my hand
In my shade she is engulfed
As a stone against the sky

She will never close her eyes
And she does not let me sleep
And her dreams in the bright day
Make the suns evaporate
And me laugh cry and laugh
Speak when I have nothing to say.

January 24th, 2010 by Hoopleton

It always seems to get colder when you leave

Me, standing on the sidewalk, hands in my pockets, my collar turned up

I can’t imagine it’ll ever get easier to watch you drive away

Even years from now with countless days behind us

When I’m grayer, you freer, bound ever tighter together

Then too the sun will go out of the sky

Then too again the cold will rise

You, my dearest most cherished friend

I wait and wait and wait

January 22nd, 2010 by Hoopleton

It was true but only in that the lights had all gone out and there was nothing else to be done but to feel for the walls in a mad attempt to find the exit.

So I crossed the floor, the biting taste of wine still on my tongue. It was exactly as I had imagined it. Nothing in the black beyond a faint blue glow emanating from off the surface of the hardwood, coiling as if steam.

I thought of her immediately, trapped somewhere as I was half a world away. I thought of her hands. Her long nails. The precious scars on her forearm. Her probing eyes. Tussled hair and the silence of everything that lay between us.

I called to her and waited. And waited. And waited.

Of all the little dyings none was worse than this. My voice snatched up and tossed down broken against the wooden floor.

I shook myself and imagined the city crumbling down around us. Walls enveloped in explosions of dust. Firestorms. The smell of burnt paper. Ash coming down in waves.

I thought, beyond this happening there must be others now, of similar, possibly, I dare hope, exceeding grace.

But all there was, was the rough surface of the wall and the absolute absence of her. Black and a faint blue glow emanating from off the hardwood.

I stood without moving. Numb to everything but my pulse and the thoughts of a future that remained stubbornly out of reach. And so I brushed the dust off my shoulders, paused and began again.

Long ago there was only the shimmer of trees and the groundswell of earth rising up from the trenches of the sea. In that place we were together free from all sin. You looked at me then and ran your fingers across my cheek. All that was of you and all that was of me. Corporeal being and celestial hymn. There we were free, caught up in the garden of paradise, no walls, no floors, no bounds of flesh.

This too I remembered. Broken of spirit, bathed in darkness, longing, yearning, pleading. This too was me.

January 21st, 2010 by Hoopleton

In the not unlikely event that this world will simply explode in the not too distant future, please remember the following:

Age was not synonymous with wisdom.

Youth was not squandered on the young.

The politicians are the ones who got us here, but don’t forget we elected the bastards.

Democracy was always a myth.

The human animal was doomed the moment someone decided, and yes it was a man, that anything belonged to him.

Yes, we did evolve from apes.

No one ever really believed that the world was flat.

The Mona Lisa was overrated.

Socialism was not evil.

Being gay wasn’t either.

Capitalism was just as corrupt and oppressive as Communism, in many ways it was worse.

God never took sides.

Marshall McLuhan was right about everything.

Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf and Ann Sexton did not commit suicide, they were murdered.

Christopher Columbus, Henry Ford and Walt Disney were despicable human beings.

Jesus never wanted anyone to hate anyone else.

When Alfred, Lord Tennyson said that it was better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all he had absolutely no idea what in the hell he was talking about.

Love could conquer anything but itself.

Everyone and everything dies alone.

We never needed any of the stuff we bought.

We were all weak and deeply, deeply flawed.

Yes, we really could have done anything we wanted.

The death penalty was the first sign of madness.

Reproductive rights were never about murdering anyone.

There were no good wars.

Christianity was wrong.

So was Judaism.

So was Islam.

So was every other religion on the face of the Earth.

We all had blood on our hands.

We all meant to do it.

I meant to do it.

I meant everything I said.

I loved you from the first moment I saw you, even if I didn’t know it then.

January 20th, 2010 by Hoopleton

Imagine a raft adrift in a vast ocean. A single spot on the sea. The sky is black. The moon barely a sliver. It’s been days since you’ve eaten. Your lips are parched with thirst.

Imagine you’re lying on your back. Feeling the rhythm of the tides that knock against the wood. In this you feel the sensation of being in a cradle, being lulled to sleep.

Your mind sinks into the emptiness of action. Your senses grow numb to the vast expanses of the wholly pelagic landscape. Your eyes reflect the absence of light.

In some far away consciousness you can feel yourself dying. The air in your lungs vanishing. The beat of your heart slowing. The warmth of anonymity spreading across your skin.

In this instant that seems to roll forever, you feel freedom for the first time in your life. There are no worries now. No regrets. No world beyond the darkness and the sea.

You let go of all your burdens. Even the things most precious to you slip away. Caught on the tides and left to drift. Absent of context, happiness and pain.

As the moon fades and the darkness becomes total you wonder at the choices that brought you here. Is this the curlicue whimsy of fate? Is this the hand of God? Could I have changed things if I wanted to?

Dream takes over. You fly. You soar. You imagine places you’ve never been. You imagine moments you’ve never experienced. You imagine rewriting time itself.

But in your most vulnerable you always come back to this. The moment our eyes locked. The moment everything that we were and who we could be hung in the cold, silent January air.

It’s the one memory neither of us can part with. The one point of burden we grasp onto with every fiber of strength we have left. This not even the waters can take. Nor the darkness.

You open your eyes. Still adrift in the ocean. A single spot on the sea. And above you stars. Billions of stars, the luminary remnants of supernova, the celestial trails of comets connecting like neurons.

Our journey doesn’t end here. Not like this.