Tired strings slung together
a bag of bones on its back
and no way, no how- possibly never.
This is when, exactly when:
The three am hour when my head starts to crumble
just a little bit, before the dreams come
and I wake.
Here’s the score: sleep’s been chancy, rare
and generally ineffective due to the surplus of thoughts
and electricity in the veins. Loud drunks braying outside
on the street for hours also do deter.
Raggedly pushing piles and boxes doorward, downstairs and out.
The water in the building’s been out for four days now.
Supposedly the Sewage and Water Board is behind it.
Meanwhile, it’s getting pretty mediaeval over here
and I’m getting quite sick of living like squatters,
which is basically what we are, at this point.
I need a chamber pot, I guess.
Some incentive to make moving more attractive.
Running water is really one of those key essentials, I feel.
Incidentally,
Yes, a new place has been located, actually quite a while ago
I just have been too distracted to mention.
It’s good, near and not too far..Up high the way I like it
with a gargantuan wraparound balcony and lots of floor to ceiling windows,
lots of good light. High ceilings, not sprawlingly huge like this palace here,
but what is? A clawfoot for a midget, and porcelain to boot.
A stained glass window in the pantry, and a free-standing fireplace,
Nice details above the doors and intricate door-knobs.
so I think I will be satisfied somewhat.
Hopefully those trailer trash neighbours
won’t jigsaw every afternoon.
Meanwhile, it’s true that selling off your discarded goods
can be quite profitable, and even enjoyable on a gorgeous autumn day
in La Nouvelle Orleans..My thanks to all those who came and left staggering under the weight of ten years of pack-ratting..Spartan living is a concept I can only smile and wonder at in others. I find it interesting, but not feasible for an instinctual treasure hunter and squirreler-away of random objects.
Moving them is tedious, however.
A few notes:
1. Tobias Schneebaum and Floriano Vecchi must come and have tea with me someday.
2. They can be accompanied by wild men from Borneo, if they like.
3. Beware giving directions to seemingly harmless young men in burgundy sedans.
They may have pseudo-continental accents and appear to be fumbling for the
address of an imaginary bar on Dauphine.
In truth, they are fumbling for their penis.
Which then found, they will proceed to wank, with great fervor.
All the while entreating you as you turn away to,
“Please! Watch me? Please! Wait! It’s safe, it’s safe!”
in cracked and needy tones. Now really. How absurdly rude.
4. I would rather ruminate on the great wine press of love, whatever that is exactly- Alexandria, ah Durrell..”One needs a tremendous amount of ignorance to approach God.
I have always known too much I suppose.”
and then this also-
“Place Zagloul – silverware and caged doves. A vaulted cave lined with black barrels and choking with smoke from flying whitebait and the smell of retzinnato. A message scribbled on the edge of the newspaper. Here I spilt wine on her cloak, and while attempting to help repair the damage, accidentally touched her breasts. No word was spoken. While the Pursewarden spoke so brilliantly of Alexandria and the burning library. In the room above a poor wretch screaming with meningitis..”
5. And memories of late-night conversations, comparing secrets
voiceless and visionless, but with a fervent stirring somewhere.
There was there a weathered soldat, there were tiger stripes white;
here an opaque field, here an imaginary embrace.
6. Nostalgia begets nostalgia begets nostalgia begets nostalgia.
Ad nauseam.
And now that is all.