In My Room the Women Come and Go

If only they would limit their discussions to art.


Instead, they lament, voices plaintive and thick, slurred with alcohol and death.

Go away, mournful ghosts. I do not want to know the weight of your sad hearts, the texture of your scars.


Why pour your misery into me with such intimate whispering? You have no secrets. You splashed everything out in bright blood blossoms all over your pages for everyone to read, the neglect of parents, the betrayals of husbands and lovers, the abuse and abandonment of your children. You have no secrets left. Your words and memories should be enough to carry all your guilt. Your ghosts should not even exist. And still.



Even when I sleep, your voices drill into my head, mewing complaints forcing me awake. I spend my time in your cigarette garden, whiskey watered guilt-flowers stinking up the landscape.



God, given me back the bachelor butchers: the General, the Surgeon, the bleak and sour-faced soul-reeking priest.

I'm more comfortable with demons bent on destroying me than these mad, mournful ghost-ladies clawing for pity, tearing my heart into strips, swallowing the pieces.

The 23rd Street Cafe

Although I haven't been to the jazz club in a while, I was thinkin' about it the other day while cleanin' the house...

1. The Big Top

Trumpets stretch long notes

in the blue light. 

Blue smoke 

tears apart as it lifts.

Shadows drape against sound.

In these wires her song hovers.

Conversation suspends 

as she sings.

The slow notes fall up, 

balanced on the pull 

of martinis 

on our senses.

Straining apart, 

we hold our breaths 

to hear the precise spin 

of elevation;

the sequined wink

of the catch in her voice

before the rising refrain.

Smoke and held breaths

are not a net.

Her voice does not fall. 

Torch singer.

Not because

of the smoky burn 

of her songs;

the fire they build 

within 

the frame of our ribs.

It is the weight 

of her brightness,

how it carries

over distance.

2. The Haunted Attic

There are ghosts here;

the world is doubled.

One

stands behind me,

filling the same space

as your right arm

spread across my shoulders.

Another 

in a bowler hat

sprawls sideways

in the lap of our friend

and occasionally sips

his whiskey.

The bar is draped

with ghost women draped

in ghost feathers.

The rising smoke defines them.

Blue light fills their eyes

and the murmur of their laughter bubbles 

under the echoed notes

of a ghost piano and a ghost trombone.

What haunts me 

is the smokey thought 

that one day

I will grace the bar

in dead feathers.

You will disturb the lap

of a teenaged clarinet player

perched on a table's edge,

waiting to play.

Your smile flickers across his face.

With a sudden jerk he spills his gin

and thinks 

it is just nerves.

3. The Cathedral

I could go blind here.

What would it matter?

Bright green bursts

in my mouth: 

gin-soaked olives.

Conversations stained

with sophistication:

lipstick red.

The violet scent of smoke,

pink perfumes,

the orange flick of matches.

This light,

stained glass blue bouncing 

off the amber of the ashtrays,

and halcyon trumpets

in every phrase

she lifts, carries,

and turns.

When I close my eyes

I hear her bending light.

I bow my head and clasp my hands.

I bow my head and give thanks.

In this place,

it doesn’t matter if you are blind.

I Love...

Waking up alone, at dawn in a strange apartment. Watching the light move. The smell of green tea and sandalwood. 

There is no where I have to be, nothing I need to do for hours. It is early April morning, but the city hums with summer: air conditioning and sprinklers. 

I stretch and turn over onto my stomach. I bury my face in the scent of someone else's sheets. I hear kids at a distance. The aching part of the year when it feels like summer but still, there is school. I remember. The countdown days. I am outside of all that now. 

Stretch again and flip again. Reach down and pull on my jeans. I have the intention of going out, for coffee, for juice, for sunshine, but the light moves so softly on the other side of these blinds, illuminates the room inch by soft pink inch, so I lie back down, pull my headphones on, press play, fill my head with sounds.

The Roots and other summer music. K-OS, bouncy hip-hop that makes you think of stacked girls in tank-tops. City walking rhythms. The light reaches me. 

One more stretch and I'm on my feet, wash my face with headphones still on, wash some dishes, make some coffee. Take two shots of last nights rum and I'm open like a morning glory.

Today could turn into anything at all.

Sounds Abound!

There is this spot at work, outside an open doorway where they keep fax and copy machines, and there is an electronic singing sound that comes out of there that makes me see rainbows. I walk out of my way every time I leave my desk just to walk through this shimmer of sound. (If you want to hear something very like it, listen to the static in the first 30 seconds of (This Is) The Dream of Evan and Chan, by DNTEL.)

There is also a glorious noise at 30th Street Station in Philadelphia, when the table that tells you what track the trains are on changes. It is an older table, and instead of being digital, it is a bunch of little character cards that flip. When it changes, they all start to flip real fast then slow down until there is only one left. People who think rainsticks are cool would really enjoy that noise. It is one of my own personal favorites.

And since it is winter time, if you happen to be over Robbie and Stephen J.'s house, they have a kerosene heater that, when you turn it on, makes this amazing bendy metaly whale sound. Oh man! It is all curved and echoing, like listening inside a shell. But it only does it for less than a minute, so you have to be there at the right time. I think it is one of the most beautiful sounds in pretty much the entire world. 

Hotel USA

You don't need ID yet to travel by train. You can take the yellow line north and west to some small town far out from the city. Find a hotel where they won't ask your name. Pay in cash and they will give you a room key that's still a real key, cold cut metal on a steel ring, painted with a little white number.
Climb the stairs to the fourth floor, which is the top floor, so its the furthest from anywhere. Close the door behind you. Twist six locks, and if there is a phone, unplug it from the wall. The windows are already closed, white shades down behind thick white curtains. Everything outside this room does not exist anymore.
Everything inside is white and scuffed and nothing smells like anything. If there are paintings they are just lines and colors. They don't remind you of anything. There is tea on the counter, small bags wrapped in paper, next to a white chipped porcelain coffee cup. Pour yourself some hot water from the dispenser, just to watch the steam curl up. It moves like dreaming. Rest seems to be a thing you could hold, distance is a sound that maybe you could hear if your head was clear and empty like this room.
Peel your clothes down. Leave them on the floor. No one cares about those things anymore. Leave the bathroom door open while you take a piss. No one exists to listen. The shower is running for seventeen minutes before you even get in because you like watching the steam twist into the white room. The clouds and curls bring comfort to you.
Everything beyond this tiny room has just switched off. This is everything you want. The water is hot. You laugh out loud; hot water is good. The sound bounces off the tiles and you smile to hear the sound of yourself happy. The bed will be soft. The white towels are clean and so are the sheets. Everything outside the empty walls has ceased to be.
Ivory soap and mint toothpaste. Your skin smells like a stranger. Naked in bed, you have no identity. The TV is off because quiet is better. You're no longer a person who watches television, and in the morning you will not read the paper.
The world outside here has turned out the lights. The dark doesn't scare you like it did before. You can dissolve. Inside the dark, inside the white walls, all you can hear is your own pulse. Beating heart, slowing breath, a building music inside your head. The swelling sound drowning out everything but this island. All the world is in this room. You catch yourself smiling again. It will end soon. But now there is this:
Yourself inside the shell of a white room, ivory smells, the folding light, steam and clean sheets, ironed smooth, and the music inside.
Hold it in your mind. Write it on a folded piece of paper and tuck it into your back pocket. Keep it in your mouth under your tongue behind your teeth. Press it into a pattern and tattoo it in black ink under your skin to remember when you are called back again.