at the height of the deep, dissolving into air, stretched out in an incomprehensible amalgam of cables and fiber optics, cut through canals and manifest in the brawny 19th century infrastructure of railroads and sea lanes, sweaty rare-earth minerals yo-yoing from satellites inimitably connected to the infinity of lenses and sensors all focused on the two-thousand plus miles between us in this sinewy twinge of machines all inexplicably called vaporous.
But, I am sitting here and this maudlin basement is as solid as the karaoke crooners nailing all the high notes and melting over one another in the corner.
They sing,
I am dug out under the scattered sky of green and ruby laser-pricks on the lacquered tin.
I am giving in to remembering, slipping in the music and it is summer, the leaves are thick with perfume laying over our necks, the wet air wears us down, radiating from our skin while the echo of the dirty beach plays thin in my ears, seesawing on phantom waves next to your shoulders freckling constellations in the cooling hour, it doesn’t mean a thing, settle down into the weight of it, let those laser-lights above cut and warp over one another slipping slowly under your eyes and
float out the door,
under the pale moon
skip over the rooftops
like Fantomas
swooning against my arm,
chasing phantoms of us
forget the shattering heartache of it all
forget the rows and the uncertainty
dusted in snow beneath these pinprick stars, the city is ripe with excavations.
Read again,
and just the two of us were left
among the empty glasses and dirty ashtrays,
how beautiful it was to know that you
were there like an oasis,
alone with me at the night’s edge,
and you were lasting, you were more than time,
you were the one who wouldn’t leave
because one pillow
one warmth
was going to call us again
awake to the new day,
together, laughing, disheveled.”
1
singing a psalm slung low
listening in to the past, listless in the present
before the end of terrestrial,
in the air between us charged
listening to the present listening to the past,
and never arriving
If I could tie into that vertical hex of slipped grids tonight I would root that mountain down and disappear into the "beautiful past" with you
The distance between spaces seemingly stretching out in an incalculable void?
Having no idea what your friends had been doing?
And the discovery of some stupid bootleg appearing like a holy relic?
I am walking down the middle of Broadway past Canal Jeans in the snow at the center of the universe in the unknown spaces between them and us and it is silent.
But,
What is that saying about the things that are gone becoming more real than the things that are here?
And,
Really, weren’t we just play-acting then too, slumping in the corner-booth down at the Rock Star Bar?
Acting out our Voidoid-dreams as if even then this city had a need for our illicit fantasies?
You know,
They shaped high-rises from the rubble. It's Little Denver now. All our Cities look alike now. More and more, I forget the differences or even to ask for directions, because why would I? Only the Africola is still exotic and only the sense of displacement remains.
And then that other rubble stays other rubble
Far away in memes
Wired to the empire
And
Meanwhile,
Love on the intercom.
They are going so hard.
Barbaric yawps each.
They are boring into us distracting us with foolishness and pitiful miracles promising epic wallpaper, dopamine and fresh underwear on demand.
There is no this or that way,
but,
When I close my eyes,
we are lying still on a hill in the woods
and there are horses nearly trotting on my head.
This is and isn’t real
now
still,
I hear these voices like the split-screens
I used to walk around recording on cassette tapes
and I wake,
stuck on the mirror scrutinizing lines wondering, “Just how bad is this all going to get?”
Wait it out with me
On ruins
There is room for the both of us
To wait it out
Under the earth, in this bar
Under the lasers
Swooning
Together
With the evening
And radios
In the spring,
men shaved their hair to show their neck
In and of itself, there is not much to say about it
Our bodies were as bodies are
Stretching across avenues to the places between.
Where once there was something else to bare.
Time passes, and what of it?
Nothing.
Restlessness falls down summer leaves
our feet running against air
a rumble shakes our ears
through the shattered water
breaking loudly
against the empty sky
-
Julio Cortázar, "DespuÉs de las fiestas"
Y cuando todo el mundo se iba
y nos quedábamos los dos
entre vasos vacíos y ceniceros sucios,
qué hermoso era saber que estabas
ahí como un remanso,
sola conmigo al borde de la noche,
y que durabas, eras más que el tiempo,
eras la que no se iba
porque una misma almohada
y una misma tibieza
iba a llamarnos otra vez
a despertar al nuevo día,
juntos, riendo, despeinados ↩