mort mot juste

julho 31, 2009

i'm coming home- pt. IV

so i moved. ok, more like took a dirty bus and feared the risk of infection and death by swineflue and stayed at bella's for a while. she was away visiting her folks, and left me keys under the mat and CDs in a cookie jar.

made me feel respect no more

her creepy argentinian roomate had cleared the map a month prior to my arrival, so i was all alone and tranquil. bella thought of everything, she really did. all i had to do was wake up and open the window and feel the ''awful suicidal breeze'' as she calls it. makes me giggle every time i open the window to her bedroom.

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i can smell bella's shampoo all over the bathroom still. she left the bottle on the sink, green and a bit sticky with no label on it. she always peels the labels off every shampoo bottle. it started when she moved to a new apartment for the fifth time. the floor is still a bit wet from her taking a shower just before leaving. a long, red string of hair: hi, bella.

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so it was a castle or a monastery in portugal or the netherlands or bahia or any of the fifty states. a tall creature staring at me, ambling closer, she's got the longest hair, some ancient kind of blinding bright eyeshadow and shot silk around her slight figure which i can distinguish quite clearly through the gown and all is emerald green and those long purple flowers the liberal shepherds give a grosser name and my black hair and her yelllow hair and braids of arms and fingers and at last black and yellow hair and emerald green eyelashes entangled growing thicker and tearful teeth and suddenly nothing.

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bella's alarm clock. her mirror next to the bed. bella's black eiderdown. my hair is red again. like hers. my hair is red? what day is it? my throat feels like duck feathers and rain. the sun coughs and i hear the light, her CD playing all night repeatedly cause i forgot to turn the damn thing off. i need to call richard about this. i could have never woken u- richard's dead. richard is dead, i remember now. and this is why i came here, and this is why i'm going out for some fruit and water and not thinking about him, not thinking about him, not thinking about him.

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i come along, but i don't know where you're taking me

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holy heavens, it is still that time of year. that time of month. that cursed time of day when the cars all start, the engines all grin, the trees all bend. they bend in curtsy for you to walk by, my dear. it would be almost unbearable if it weren't delightful. i know you well. you're coming back, if not from the dead, from the halted hourglass of was, which is really just a profound sleepiness. but no, not until another week. for now i should only wait, and walk to the bakery with a friendly smile and say: g'day, sir, may i have, sir, an excuse to stay outdoors, sir? and not going inside will be a kind of triumph, and sitting at a park will be a kind of allegiance not to some flag sewn in a whorehouse but to the sweet scent of shampoo, and bread, and woodfire smoke.

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maria 6:30 PM 1 vociferando estavam

julho 03, 2009

i'm coming home- pt. III

one word: funeral. never liked it, it's not only the meaning, it's something else- the way it sounds, the way you can say it over soup, over coffee, and it's alright, it's not like it's your goddamned funeral.
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let me rephrase it: richard's funeral. dear rich, dead as the next fellow. flowers, bells, pounds of tissue, black attire, last words (but not really), children with their hands in their mouths not knowing exactly what, why, how, i see a duckling, mom where's the gum, is there any gum, how does gum taste when you're dead etc.
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richie. dead. gone. a memory, a (there's another word i really hate) corpse. i could start from the cliché: this is like a dream, i might wake up at any second all sweaty and confused and it will be fine, i'll go downstairs again, i'll check the clocks, he's alive at last- alive and well! i could go from here to another part of the world: jenny gives me a call, we pack and casually leave for the Cayman Islands. we get so drunk on the plane we believe we can see giant birds in the clouds, but not regular birds, more like flying dinosaurs. a beautiful, blonde friend of ours meets us at the airport and takes us for a swim with the pirañas, the friendliest pirañas in the whole planet. i mean, their teeth are made of something- what's it called- it's sweet, it's sticky... it's cotton candy! yes, and the water is actually gooseberry sauce. and you could not by any means be anymore pathetic, dear. he's dead, that's all there is to it, go whisper your last insults at the (i shiver, i shiver a lot these days, but mostly i shiver when i hear the word inside my head:) corpse.
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i leave. it's five p.m. again. the widow(they weren't really married or anything) has stopped crying. the duckling rests, he never heard the news. ever wondered which one of us is dying first? well he never got to know the answer. sometimes you see it coming, and you might wanna try grasping someone's sleeve, a piece of furniture. i think that's actually worse. it's better this way, he doesn't know he's dead. quite comforting.
i sneeze, i give the sign of the cross a chance: and fail miserably. was it left to right? my chest aches anyways. i'm fine without the cross, i can just yell at the gods from the roof of my house, it's more direct. works faster. i need a drink.

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deary, i made you this plastic-holding-guzzler-idiosyncratic-drinking-disposable-material-top-quality-tool. that's so sweet. this kid i'm always having, he's a sweetheart. dreamt of him twice this week. he's a pain in the arse at times. but he's my baby. and a friend of mine told me that when you dream of babies-

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gooseberry. it won't grow everywhere. it's very particular about where to cast its fruits. i once had a conversation under a gooseberry bush. you can tell, can't you? that i was quite small when it happened. i might have been eight. i might have been under the influence. of the zodiac? of my grandma's fifth of distill whatever? of my evil cousin, murderer of small creatures? of the neighbor's kid, the dumb one with the freckles?
i was actually planning my death. not my death, like, real death. i was just going to stage it. get some people worried, laugh afterwards, lemon-grass tea, nanna's cake, a good beating.

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the apartment. and i had promised myself: not this city, not again, people treat you like litter in the bus, they scream on the dirty streets, they kill you with bullets just by pointing their empty hands and fingers at you. they listen to awfully bad music. they have nervous ticks. they eat raw meat with their very hands. yes, rich. it was one eventful year. i'm closing the door to the bathroom, i'm writing a poem in your honor. you'll see how silly i can be, silly to the extreme, when someone i know just dies. just like that. you were too proud, too blind. i liked your paintings, your cavities and most of all, i liked-

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at the sight of death we all become our parents, their parents, other people's parents; jenny said.

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i had an idea today. i'm leaving new york. did i tell you that already? i have been leaving new york for a few years now. it takes time, it is such a large city.

maria 1:15 PM 1 vociferando estavam



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