and me, nights away from a call

"The speech we hear is an indication of that which we don't hear..It is a necessary avoidance, a violent, sly and anguished or mocking smoke screen which keeps the other in its true place. When true silence falls we are left with echo but are nearer nakedness. One way of looking at speech is to say it is a constant strategem to cover nakedness."
Harold Pinter
Oct.10,1930-Dec.24,2008
RIP

beloved Other

I've always enjoyed artistic works where the first persons point of view is stunned w/amazement (if they notice)when they encounter their own reflections. This might take the form of an alter ego, or maybe a doppelganger (or double, we all have 'em they say), or maybe just an illusion, a phantom, or a dream (or is it?)
Brilliant Argentinian tale teller Borges is so good at this smokemaking where truth may or may not be glimpsed.(and "the Other" is there) Someone who I think of as a classical romanticist, late Polish film maker,Kieslowski ,though offering more well known fine films, he has me spellbound with "The Double Life of Veronique". Someone who I think of as a classic romanticist is Robert Smith and his band The Cure.Many of his songs will take you to the middle,between the lines, to the unexplainable ("This Is A Lie" reflects on reflection for me)
Years ago, a love gave me Shakespeare's Love Sonnets. I tried to rouse & then maintain enthusiasm about them but their foreignness did not rhyme with my world, I abandoned them quickly.
Recently, I took immediately to the beautiful riddle-ishness in loving praise & passion of the spectre of the beloved Other.

Sonnet XLIII
When most I wink, then do mine eyes best see
For all the day they view things unrespected.
But when I sleep, in dreams they look on thee,
And darkly bright, are bright in dark directed.
Then thou, whose shadow shadows doth make bright,
How would thy shadow's form form happy show
To the clear day with thy much clearer light,
When to unseeing eyes thy shade shines so!
How would, I say, mine eyes be blessed made
By looking on thee in the living day.
When in dead night thy fair imperfect shade
Through heavy sleep on sightless eyes doth stay!
All days are nights to see till I see thee,
And nights bright days when dreams do show thee me.

safety

"Be prepared for truth at all hours and in the most fantastic disguises. This is
the only safety."

-Christopher Morley

a bad dream, & counterpoint

i)

No stranger, entering the room
(I've thought of it a thousand times)
A final scene in frozen zoom.
Effluvium;
a muskscent from a love above,yet menstrual metallic.
a joke on angelic.
She drapes my drawn face. damp.
I shapen long words for my last breaths and
She thrusts every page I'd saved
(stark boy to dark man/ all my sacred words)
She threw every page down (after waving them around)
and in sacred words of her own

"Read 'em and weep"
Then blessed her lips
onto mine.

ii)

a friend of a friend, on the phone.
she shared a sharp poignant piece of her.
sharp & important to her. It pierced me to hear.
death bed of her dear friend,
whispering from the Mystic,
He gathered his loves up,
and asked if his paintings were boxed up.