Past transgressions: The Prince of Cups

I said the words and then it rained

Like a final release.

Booming thunder and lightning in the sky like veins.

I stood there on that city street

like I'd always imagined the two of us

on our deserted island

where we could really be together.

The water came down heavy like shells

exploding into tiny pieces as they hit the ground.

My sandpaper feet felt like silk on the asphalt

and my hair stuck to my face like

a thin layer of tissue paper.

For that moment just before the storm

That moment where you can feel the electricity in the air

The "if only"s came out of the tips of my fingers

and danced on the tree infront of me like little birds

mingling with the heat and the iris' below

ever to be forgotton?

I think not...

Ever to be remembered

Catapulted into the past like my grandfathers eyes and the way the smoke came out of his mouth as he sat on his warm brown chair.

The prince of cups.

He stairs into the wine and tells me what I'm thinking.
Lilacs and loss, a parallelled past

Cascading over the puddles

as I look and my reflection and see him instead.

Sometimes I wonder if once day I'll wake up

and he wont exist-

like he was inside me all along.

Or maybe I'll wake up and I'll be on that island

with him sitting in a palm tree

smiling that giant smile that takes up his whole face.

Today I woke up and the rain had stopped.

I woke up and couldn't remember what he looked like anymore.

A few short breaths.

This morning I woke up
And the air was still -
Electricity died down in my life for a
Few
Short
Breaths.
Today I woke up tired and fearful.
I woke up and began to break my own heart
- Before you got the chance.

Lips do what hands do
But hearts do the antithesis of what brains do.
I pray with my lips
-with you and inside you
And I feel for you with my mind
-without you and outside you.

This is the part where I break in two.
Dive headfirst into the shallow end
and feel my skull split.
This is where I realize that I boarded the train
- Simultaneously with the realization
that its moving to fast to get off.
And its taking me further
And further
And further away
From my body.

Still, Rather than taking in the scenery and the majesty - of you
I cover my eyes and impatiently wait for the sound of the crash.

The truth is this...
You may break me.
And there is nothing I can do
To protect myself from this.
You also may not.
And I'll have suffered for nothing.
The truth is,
I must go on standing
To keep my spine intact.
I must go on moving
So's not to forget who I am
Truth is,
The train is me
And if you hop off
It will keep going forever.

Eyes open, dear
You are love
I am you
And we are free most
Just after we've been caged.

A letter from a drowning girl:

Tonight I am alone
Much like other nights
but tonight my head spins
and I cant shut it off.
Tonight I think about love
and ships
and how they sink
and how we have no control over that.
I listen to music, I watch a movie, I drink cinnamon tea
They distract me briefly and in small measures.
Mostly I picture open water
thinking this will soothe me
but again I start thinking about these ships
White sails weathered brown and rugged from the storms that pass
in and out of you and me.
wood splintered and digging into my feet.
and how even with all this I still refuse to jump
I still refuse to swim.
I only keep my eyes open for another ship
prepare myself ready to make the jump.
Love is not heavy, but mine is.
And if I’m not sinking in you
I’m sinking in me.
Only I go deeper.
And it’s cold down here in the places within myself I pretend aren’t there.
So I claw at the water praying for a saviour
a god, a man, a little bit of truth
something other than myself to keep me afloat.
Somewhere warm to crawl into
cause when I’m thinking about you
I’m not thinking about me.
No, love is not heavy
But mine is.
and I search within myself for the mermaid
the siren, the scaled flipper, the thrust
the last little part of me that believes I know how to swim.
praying that even the search its self will keep me afloat

Just for today.
Just for this minute.
Just for this second.
I am here.

Wishes

I sat on the church steps and wished to stop loving you.
Again and again over my life I’ve made this same wish.
Over birthday candles, out my window before bed,
Blowing dandillions in the fall.
I don’t talk to God
Until I want to stop loving someone,
Who’s what I want - but nothing close to what I need.
Making this wish again and again you’d think I’d figure something out
More protective mechanisms so I dont have to wish this again
But I dont.

You’re one of a kind - until you’re not.
You don’t cross your t’s or dot your i’s - and I cant read you
You relax me in my deepest parts - and then you stir me up again
I am yours - until I can be mine.

Today I reached for you
And when i pulled back my hands they were empty
I looked deep into the crevasses of my palms
Wondering briefly how these hands got so worn
So many wishes - so little growth

There’s insight here about letting go
Just do it - or dont - it’ll do its self, right?
Stop reaching - stop extending - stop exerting

Just relax
It’s over
I am done…

February

Yesterday the birds thought it was spring.
They sat on trees and sang rejoicing songs.
But I was much more practical than they were.
I thought to myself. This is Febraury, after all.
People flooded into the streets wearing their summer clothes.
Bought their whole new spring wardrobe at H&M.
Restaurants named their specials "Sunny spring wrap".
A glimpse of a world without snow warmed their 5 months cold hearts.

But I sat inside and waited.
My goose down coat, scarf and hat perched by the door.
Curmudgeon faced I sat, sipped warm coffee, and waited to be right.

At 5:45 the wind came.
First a dull whistling through the corners of my windows.
I looked out to see summer skirts blowing up on the girls outside the beer store.
A grin spreading across my face smooth like warm butter.
I put on my coat, my hat, my scarf and stepped out into the world.
The only one prepared.
Yes.
The only one prepared.

I relish in the practical control I have over my life.
My socks matching in thread count and colour and my hair ironed pin straight.
I don’t need God, I’ll tell you
I’ve got everything under control, dont ya know?

Today I woke up and there were no birds.
The trees we’re skeletal with long arms that reached in all directions for signs of life.
the people swathed their bodies in furs and synthetics to hold onto their warmth.
So indeed I was right after all.
February was still upon us. Heavy like my eyelids.

Once upon a time I believed in magic.
Once I believed in faith.
In hope.
I would twist the stem off my apple and recite letters of the alphabet until it came off. Believing that the letter I ended on was the first initial of the man I would marry.
I would play princess, and my bedroom would turn into a tall tower with exposed brick and forget-me-not's growing throughout.
At night I would talk to God asking for buttermilk pancakes and new beads to make necklaces with.
Sometimes, nowadays, I accidentally let a little piece of that girl slip out.
In conversation, at tea houses, or in parks when the day is especially glorious.
But I quickly grab and put her back where she belongs.

I cherish practicality for fear with without it I might just turn to dust and blow away.
I cherish it even as it swallows me.
Somewhere along the lines. February swallowed me.
But you’ll kiss me and wake me up.
Wont you?

Past Transmissions: Death.

Thinking about the ones who've left earth a lot lately.
Torn between lonliness, jealousy, sorrow...so it goes.

I remember, vivid, how they told me you were gone.

A drunk on the corner told me. The feeling started in my chest and like a solar flare it spread to my shoulder blades, upper arms, down the blue and purple flowers of my tattoo, to my fingertips and out onto the pavement. It poured onto the littered brown cigar butts you had in your beautiful oversized lips not 12 hours earlier. My eyes exploded and that was that. Everything inside burned up while my skin stayed cool as a cucumber.
I was loading my guitar amp into a sticky floored, dimly lit nightclub when when he told me you were gone. I walked into a room of Asian pool hustlers betting on shots. I sat in a misplaced looking red chair in the corner of the room and placed my head in my palms. I pictured myself holding you from behind all those months ago. Beaded dread locks and the smell of tide wafting off your tie-died T-shirt. When I finally got off of that red chair my hands were wet. I rubbed and massaged the salty wet into my skin and it evaporated.
I read that you were gone.
I saw on the news that you were gone. A flash sentence then onto the weather. Its gonna be hot today, but he wont feel the sun on his broad tattooed shoulders.

Flashes of the last things they saw.
The constellation mural on his bedroom wall while the drugs pinched his toes and dragged him down into their furry little cave.
The cases of Dr. Pepper and Benson and Hedges 100's as the rope burn became the last sensation he'd probably feel against his skin.
The white tiled ceiling and the feel of crisp starchy sheets while morphine and pangs in the belly collided and made light.

You are no longer with us.
Last night I sat with you on a picnic table and stared at the lights of the buildings flickering off the lake. You said you weren't gone at all. That you were just away visiting family. Yet still in the stillness, I knew something wasn't right. You took my hand and placed it against your lips and I felt the hairs on my arm gently lifting and reaching for you. It was only when I surrendered to this that I woke, opened my eyes and briefly smelled your cologne spinning around with the dust in the air above my bed. Cigar smoke dancing in the fingers of light that reached in through my window. I felt a oneness in this moment like yesterday and tomorrow, ground and sky, my soul and yours, were all weaved in a soft little ball in my hand. I held and caressed this feeling. It was rare and beautiful like the cardinal that used to fly onto a tree in our backyard when I was young.
Just the same.
Red wings spread and caught the light like garnets.
And it was gone.

And this was ok.

-Jade

I will write until I sing again:

Today I chase a bus that doesn't stop.
Because I am not the center of the universe (contrary to my belief at this moment).
(Stop), I pause and take in the city.
Caked in a layer of grime. Exposed from being hidden under the freshly melted snow.

Sometimes I feel like this. Like my sparkly skin could just melt and reveal the grime that hides just millimeters below. That I might one day become transparent to you all.
(Waiting)
I sit on a wet tinker toy plastic chair in the bus stop.
Trying to get a glimpse through the glass
now almost opaque from the dirt that cars have splashed onto it.
(that could be an old lady that just passed...or a dog...I'm unsure)
Anyway, I sit here and I think this:

What is art without fans? Like a tree falls in the forest kind of scenario. If my art is never listened to, read, watched, appreciated. Does it really exist? Is there really any point?
We artists need validation as much as the next guy if not more. So does there come a point where without nutrition...our artist dies?
Once when I was very little I knew a man who I believed was a true, true artist.
This man chose his art over everything. Including sometimes, me. Which as a child I thought "wooooooow...his art must be sooooooooo important". He would wake up in the morning with music in his ears. That feeling that it must escape and tooth brushing and showering are just guards standing in the way of his great release. Days would go by with his door closed and sounds leaking out from under his door. I would sit outside like Christmas morning waiting for the door to open to see what he'd created. To see him again.
One day when I was much much older. This man stopped making art. Slowly it trickled out of him in smaller and smaller drops until one day he was dry.
And at that moment. One of my biggest fears as an artist. Was born.
See I knew why he went dry. Validation. How many years can you make art for just you? Fifteen minutes of fame breeze by you- you wonder if they even happened at all or if you just daydreamed it during a particularly bad hangover. But what IS art if there's no one there to see it?

Anyway I sat at this bus stop and I thought about my own artist and how I haven't seen her for 17 months. Since I last had a drink of alcohol. I've caught brief glimpses but nothing of real measure. And I wonder how long I can go without that relationship. And I miss her. And I hope she comes back soon.

Jade