Intangible Take 2

I never wanted the plane to land, but the Andes rose like a white dream puncturing the sky. All the blue leaked into the eyes of mestizos. Time flowed backward, lined up like basureños in shacks along the Apurimac. Lined up like the locked eyes of death on several continents. The snake dancer from the selva cursed me. I was banished from the garden. The bridge at San Luis Rey failed me. The six-legged nightmare rode on the smoke. Ask me what this means, I can’t read your history written in the smoke of the victor. The garua fog hid our feet. A gorge divides water from water, brings it together again. Except the L.A. river. What leads us on? A child’s face buried in the moon’s path.

She stored apples under her bed. She said she was afraid of time. The teeth of graveyards. Riderless horses. Fear of Eden. Fear of the scent of money, fear of poverty. Fear of the telephone in the dead of night. I said I stayed in my dreams. Memorized floor patterns, but specific moments never came. The desire to return was embedded in the fear of fear. But I said there are many fears to choose from. Fear of not growing up. Fear of control. Of growing up and not being in control. Or of growing up and being in control. What if I ran away and no one stopped me? That moment of star-crossed thresholds. Not saying, Now I lay me down to sleep. Saying, I see my future as nothing, becoming nothing. The thrones of angels. Fish with the hearts of men. Each belabored breath blinded by the light, I opened my eyes. Looking forward, looking back. My dreams littered with scorpions. Descend with eyes open wide, like Beatrice.

Do you remember when we danced face-to-face? Your mouth opened into my darkness. We swam to the ceiling. You flew into the light, grew fins. We needed to rearrange definitions of speech, of the forgotten rain. Kiss me while the bones of humanity learn to sleep in doorways, and eyes learn not to see. They bathe in the streets where privacy is closest held, yet farthest away. To suckle memory. Whose tongue in my mouth? Por el loro, he said. Van Gogh’s sunflowers weren’t gold enough in the city of bankers. Raucous words flock to the trees like wild parrots. The computer is the 13th muse.

Fear of your thoughts. A code trickling down my thigh. What I ought to have said. Or, if I said too much. Fear of my thoughts. The audience dreaming of an audience dreaming. On bulkheads facing the sea, and in stairwells facing dark alleys, fear the semen trapped or not trapped in translucent orbs, a tangible sign on all the continents. The bridge becomes a flamenco skirt for the moon. Who wears the moon’s mask? The lover’s hand under the dress. No mermaid’s tail. When I said love, I got religious. Learned to walk, then crawl. Post-modern love deconstructing beneath city clocks without hands. Orgasm is closest to art. I didn’t mention syringes or T-cells.

What are we willing to accept? Kennedy shot again and again. And now this. Everything post-catastrophe. The TV channel-surfing in an empty room. Think of random blue noise as a way of life. Intangible instructions. When will blood learn to become stone? Was it better than anything, walking on the moon? Were we ever in the garden? One thing is certain: Night is neither noble nor sacred; her indifferent legs are open wide.

See also

© 2002 Maureen Hurley