How Alive I Feel

The relevancy of my attention becomes less and less as the evening progresses. Why she agreed to this night is beyond me, unless I am misreading nerves and shyness as perceived ambivalence. You know of whom I speak. She has long brown hair and a fresh tattoo of a mermaid along her left side. The lights in this nightspot are too dim. I cannot see her well enough. Although, I feel she is looking right through me. Why else would someone ask her out for drinks? She must know my intentions, my dull dreams and aspirations. Youthful cravings not satiated by drugs or drinks, only time. Her dark skin is so so smooth. Each time she blinks the smoke out of her pale green eyes, her eyelashes, long and curved, bat me farther away. I am on an island in the tropics. The trees are velvet and the sun is blown out. Black as night, my heart pumps blood. I do not trust the locals. The bar is crowded, but no one else is here. We speak quietly. The music is slow and mellow. I ask her if she’s enjoying herself. She leans over me and says yes, reaching across my body for her pack of smokes. I place my drink on the bar, and gently take the cigarette from her hand. I inhale, and tell her how alive I feel…  

She Is Beside Me

As difficult as it has been to forget about her I still try. Late at night I lie back and close my eyes to the world and enter her apartment. The heat has been turned up and continues to rise giving life to the plants and flowers on her windowsill. I peer out into the gray city and marvel at what a bass player’s salary can provide. I feel a hand on my hand squeezing gently reminding me I left the hot water on. The program on the television is explaining why tribes in an unknown region are at war in the thick jungle. Beside dark oak doors that lead to her bedroom rests her red boots and a pack of cigarettes. I open the pack and finger one long 100 to give to her and look for a book of matches. A sharp pain in my side reminds me I have not slept in days, and that hazy glow I see is not real. She is speaking in a language I do not understand but I know what she is saying. She reaches toward the coffee table for a tissue. A new record is on I take her face in my hands and kiss her lips and her tounge. Her apartment faces East and as we crawl back into bed we can feel the sun’s warmth on our eyelids. It sings us a lullaby we fall asleep to. I lie in bed wide awake and dream that she is beside me…

A Cool Pool of Water

Ok it’s cooler now and I can think again and I can write to you again…That was a bit rough I don’t remember much except that we bought that painting in the square. The one with the yellow paint was nicer in the sunlight but the one I purchased will be worth much more. Knowing her she will probably break it or ruin it or sell it and leave me. Does it bore you when I speak like this? Oh, don’t be so easily rattled. She distracts my detatched mind. Dump trucks and cranes can build buildings I will sleep in. The air feels cleaner up here, as if whoever upstairs just returned home from a long trip and flipped on the air conditioner. I think I’ll take my shirt off. No, that’s not a tattoo just really bad sunburn. I know, I had a girl’s leg draped over me. From the nape of her creamy neck to the underside of my foot we were slowly cooked. Pass the aloe. I was once at a party on the West coast and I sat on a inflatable chair right next to a giant aloe plant. I saw her there and she told me she had been doing a lot of cocaine and was really enjoying it. She asked if I had any, I remember it like it was yesterday and it was about six years ago. I pictured us having a conversation in the bathroom. I leaned back in the chair, next to the aloe plant. I closed my eyes and the stars told me a story that made me want to jump off of a cliff into a cool pool of water…