..I packed everything with the intention of getting away from all the painful memories that brought me back to the whisper of devils. On nights where I could not play them away through song and no amount of prayer would keep me safe, I would write down all of my fears on whatever was handy. It was therapeutic but far from perfection.
These tokens - mementos - became flashbacks without reason, stored in a box in the apartment that I was always afraid of and never dared re-open.
When I left Berlin for the last time it was with one suitcase and the clothes on my back and I knew I wouldn't take them with me. They were the reason I was running away, again. I needed them to stay behind me.
Funny that you found them, after all this time.
Even more unbelievable - they were really yours all along.
Sheet Music - Black - broken down in 5'oclock traffic at the interchange into Los Angeles...
The Sign read City of Angels. I knew an angel once who lived up in Spanish Harlem. She could whisper the most wicked things from a sinner's lips and then spit shine her halo with the tangled sheets. Nothing can compare to the smell of her perfumed wrists when her hands ran through my hair. She'd said something visceral, " Você tem uma boca feio, incomum." And bit me.
I wanted to bleed into her mouth and fill the chasm someone else left there..
This tour bus was as hot as a whore in church singing about how Jesus saves. Then someone who looked a lot like that very Savior walked up the three steps to speak to the driver. Guitar players are always cool, and like blessed air conditioning, this one offered to take the band to the gig downtown. Praise be.
On the second bus now, he plays an acoustic and smokes a cigarette, offering me one. I took it with a gracious nod. "You play around here a lot?" But, by the fancy way he lifted his aviators, I knew he was a real star.
"Sometimes," he offered humbly beyond a drag. Smoke filled the cabin.
"What kind of music?" I asked.
"Rock and roll." He tucked his curly brown hair behind his ear and fingered his smoke, "You play that?" He pointed to my horn case.
"Sometimes," I answered and smiled. Feeding into the fanfiction, I made a request, "Hey, play me a song for a woman, the kind who is always with you. The kind you'll never, ever shake free."
And, he did...
Geneva. April, 2, a postmarked envelope....
I can't remember how your mouth looked.
Try as I might, the details of fine lines and bee-stung pout finally left me alone on the streets of Switzerland. It must have been the middle of the night. Newspapers swirled in rain puddles leftover from the day I slept through. The same day where I still remembered what your smile did when you were shy. Then it was lost, and I was gone.
Teenage lovers skipped on old cobblestones towards a punk rock club a block over. The same old streets carried haunting music from a café` across the alley.
A vagrant came out of the painted door of a hostel to bum a smoke. We stood beside the stage entrance of a Performing Arts Center where I propped against an old brick wall covered in theater posters, smoking French cigarettes, waiting for the Fixer.
He thanked me for doing business.
The plunger withdrew. Aspirated blood swirled inside the barrel of my soul and burned. If only I could remember her lips -- sweet and shameless -- tempting me away from this life, shoving me into oblivion.
I suddenly came to life with the stink of today's garbage riding on the gentle breeze up the narrow backstreets. Awake again because I saw your red-painted mouth hovering over my face making words from nothing at all.
Later, over a nooner of a gin and tonic, the lemon twist reminded me of something you used to say..
when I was junked-up.
a train station schedule from the Alps....
I was callous once.
Filled with an envy that broke every rule and
crossed the room with a clenched fist.
Then I saw you in a forest of swaying bodies.
The mirror ball twirling above like sunshine through leaves.
Thank Christ the train window opened to let in the fresh air and take away the stench of cigarettes and sour Swiss wine. The breeze was sweeter once we crossed the border into Italy. Railways carved in gray gravel showed the destination ahead, though that long line of track and grit never would lead me home to you. No, for that I needed cross continents and a big blue ocean of regrets. Why didn't I stay? The heady stink of my reality in second class coach seating drew outside and I finally caught that breath, the one you left in my lungs when you stole my heart.
The pen in my hand felt so heavy. Its burden leaked out in scrawled words to describe all of the reasons why I left that piece of myself in your mouth; so someone, somewhere, would remember me when I'm gone. I wondered as the ink started to stain the webs between my fingers if anyone - anywhere - ever held you as they should. Like I once did, where you left me immortalized.
Any Joe can learn the steps, but do they know just how to tango with you? Or, are they all cheap thrills in a suit and tie vying for your undivided considerations. Do they understand just what you want from a man? The thrust of arms. A heart that leads and refuses to follow. Bodies sustained in perpetual motion captured in solid frames and the momentum of your sighs when you were spun low and cradled. I worshipped your hands in mine, a repentance that could never gain me absolution.
Your kiss though that is what I always think of when I go deep within myself. How a dime falling into your coin purse made me wish, God I have wished,
I'd have paid the damned quarter for the whole night.
a napkin in Dubrovnik.....
Obscure thoughts happen most often in the litter of sounds all around us, rather than when we are alone in our solitude. My inner voice was suddenly drowned to a whisper, suppressed by the heavens opening up to a summer squall. All because I refused to close my eyes and flip the switch of consciousness with the pinch of a needle.
I sat within the walls of the Croatian fortress at dusk and suddenly realized I was inside a place exactly like myself. We were always lonely in a place full of people, you and I. Never actually participating, and instead, we became consummate voyeurs. Until we met under the flickering lights in a crowded room and nothing ( for me ) was ever the same.
I don't know if it's designed by architecture or circumstances but the old walls meant to keep armies out ended up protecting the streets so well they become a basin in a downpour. The ramparts held the flood in during the storm, washing away old secrets and leaking them back into the Adriatic Sea.
It felt the same with the notes I penned in ink on a napkin beneath a cold bottle of water. You were these ambiguous words; imperceptible and faded now that time had its way with your memories.
Under the burning summer sun, I prayed for another deluge to forgive all my sins from their implacable, bitter, dryness. Where ashes became speech flaking away on the breeze and the smoke became thoughts lost to the ether.
Meaningless and alone.
A leaflet in Venice…
Sweet mandolins compete against the backdrop of a violin somewhere thru the waterways surrounding the Ponte di Rialto. Gypsies songs of sorrow filter from a high nesting apartment, playing the soundtrack to my wandering mind. My tea was hours old and long since cold, but in the surface tension, I saw you. Salting my wounds with the tessitura of your bewitching laughter.
I loved it.
I hated it.
I longed to hear it across a crowded room.
My cup remained there, half-full on the café table. Leaving the tip by way of a message in the veins of a lemon tree leaf.
The brilliant sunset along the colorful stucco was all pink, and orange, and warm, it held me close and whispered all those secrets; hidden in the reflection of beguiling eyes. White curtains blew from every other open window along the side streets where I wondered -- if behind their slow wave in the wake of a passing gondola you hid -- with no one left to tell.
A group of tourists wearing I Love NY t-shirts walked with the excitement of being on vacation in a strange city. They rushed passed me to get to the very Nightclub that I will procrastinate in arriving at until the very last second.
Let them have their night out in the City of Love -- even if my own heart is breaking.
Let them drink ambiance and make memories just like the ones of you I carried inside the pocket of a threadbare tuxedo jacket.
From the darkening alleyway where the stage door lies I heard the hiss of a salesman,
hidden behind a Carnivals cartoonish devil mask.
..inside the cover of a Holy Bible in Amsterdam...
I watched the needle slip against a rolling vein, missing again, and again.
The ease of a window sill lifts open onto a fire escape making the perfect perch for my inner night owl who longs to be the sentinel from on high.
The city below was dank and loud, but my thoughts were so real and so very clever. I saw you there in the nimbus of neon lights. Your silhouette held my eye, moving through the crowd, lost in the City that Never Sleeps. From the haze of smoke and bright lights, I saw you appear again staring back up at me through the pink gloam of midnight under the modern convenience of energy-saving bulbs without a blackout timer.
..and you are here, in this pipe dream smoked through a lonely syringe.
Your fingernails plucked tobacco from a filterless cigarette off of your tongue. For an instant, I remembered what your fingertips taste like when they would reach eagerly for my mouth. Your voice, though? That, I simply cannot recall -- I only ever managed to hear the whisper of what you should sound like when you tell me,
" More.
There..
..yes "
When the music played off the fourth-floor brick wall across the alley, someone two blocks down yelled. "Stoppen met het maken van al dat lawaai!" A heavy coffee can full of old grounds hit the pavement below, splattering in front of a painted door.
I played one continuous sweet note through all of the local protests. Blowing away my hunger for the girl whose fingers taste like salt and tequila, whose lips taste like ash --
Whose body was the fog rolling over me on that insatiable night?
...a song in The Underground - London
Threadbare sleeves unraveled all of my feelings into strings.
Musicians are taught to bottle that up, use those uncomfortable moments, and abuse ourselves.
Become great in the shadow of Miles Davis..
..Or any player who can make those who listen bleed blue for a spell. Letting the enchantment of your song linger across a dark creaking stage, deserving to be soul-bared for selfish ears to pick apart at the seams. I couldn't find that same spirit any longer. I trained myself, ( lost myself ) until I was ultimately a ghost of a man haunting an English subway in graveyard tatters.
One by one I plucked the cotton weaves of this brown tweed jacket in the hopes that if the hole became broad enough – big enough – you would crawl out of my imagination and remind me that you still hold on to all those bits and pieces I’ve left behind.
You never did.
My hat was out. Busking for a few Euro’s to replace all the ones I threw away while trying to forget. Escaping the desire that you exist somewhere out there - torturing my already burdened soul.
My father always said, " Henry, a penny saved is a penny earned. " But, I never seemed ready to take that sage advice to heart. Like the vagabond I am the lesson, tracking behind me from place to place in the shadow of the man I fashioned myself into for the sake of art. So there I sat a pauper in the crowd playing for enough money to fly away from the pain, again.
At that moment, I blamed you.
Fault lines in the fabric ran from the elbows of that coat to the cuffs. In the quaking creases of each note, my hands shook with anger. Even when they are full of the only Mistress, who could ever take your place. She sang my sadness through the tiled echo along the Tube Station walls while people moved slower just to share a few seconds with me - and the very thought of you.
I saw it in their eyes; the pity for my predicament and their judgments over my life they can't possibly understand. What they don’t realize is that without you as the only air to fill my lungs My Mistress (the horn) and I are nothing but a hollow brass bone without a voice.
Empty, slow veined, and howling.
A playbill in California...
Never know how much I love you, Never know how much I care.
Absence makes a blue heart ache. A longing came sharply from my lungs leaving the copper twinge of blood in the taste of a raking exhale. Nothing makes a man's music this bone-chilling and rich with pain, except a woman.
When you put your arms around me, I get a fever I can hardly bear.
I forgot to turn the radiator off before falling asleep in a drunken heap on the twin bed. I also forgot to take my medicine. The wool blanket felt like her nails across the back of my sweating neck. The dreams turned into nightmares of vomiting and chills. In those glimpses of wakefulness, I saw her in the sorry excuse for a kitchenette making a cup of something warm to soothe this tortured soul. The smile on her red parted lips when she looked over a shoulder with nothing resembling the pity I felt for myself.
You give me fever when you kiss me. Fever, when you hold me tight.
The Palisades Theater marquee flashes white-hot light through the chince curtains. Steam blew in through the over-painted pipes. Would you believe that was comforting? It never mattered what country, city, state, or shitty motel I was in; I can't sleep in the dark anymore. Not without you. Her. The idea. My melody.
I heard the hiss of the heat whistling, and it reminded me of her laugh. I'll always be there in the abattoir of her making being slain piece by piece until my soul no longer knows its own body. I don't hold a grudge; I wouldn't want to come back to this sorry excuse for a home either. I longed just to let go.
Fever all through the mornin'.
The bed was wet, the sheets were stained, and I smelled the perfume of someone who could never take your place. Should I be grateful or guilty? Charged with the larceny of stealing another woman's heart just to fill the void you left when you went away. I called for you. Screamed and begged to make you appear. My ghost of a girl who fills the hollow I've carved with the knife named solitude.
A fever all through the night.
...a blood edged glass mirror in Berlin.
The one-room sublet smelled the same as it did on the day I left it seven years prior. Dust and cobwebs left behind by part-time tenants could never diminish the Chanel No. 5 that clung to the musty curtains around a broken window. I didn't mind when their sheer shredded liner crossed my nose leaving behind a trail of memories. I suddenly remembered the last morning in January when I vowed never to return to this place -- when all of my dreams had been dashed on a sidewalk five stories down.
Flashbacks of the moment I exchanged her for the very thought of you in the stardust of a Russian dancehall.
Leaning out, I could still see the faded outline of her silhouette staining where she once sprawled. All twisted and broken for passengers to rubberneck. Her heartbreak and pain took with it ( until death ) all of my hopes for a future in the flutter of crime scene tents erected by the Volkspolizei. It was that moment she became my ghost, and you became my greatest regret. A haunt I could never escape from and an emptiness I could not bear, and so I returned to this place so that I could finally rest in pieces.
It is you on the empty railway bench beside me. You who will always be the hand I hold close to my aging lips, blowing a slow sad song of invitation.
When I pulled back the dust cover on a damask easy chair, I saw the indentation where she used to sit with her legs thrown over the arm and a book in her lap. She would read while I sat on the sill playing out over the cityscape. I would try my best not to smile against the mouthpiece when her ballerina flat dangled from her big toe.
Looking back, how did I not see the unshed tears in her eyes filled with the visions of another woman dragging me off by the hand? Had I been aware of her staring through the gap in the drapes when I kissed another, foreign mouth? I was so very young and vain. I could have blamed the age difference. I should have tried to tell myself -- it wasn't my fault -- even when I knew it truly, truly, was. If I had only known then, what I know now: Life would have spun out on an entirely different axis.
We would have walked the fountains of the Friedrichshain hand in hand. I would take your photo on the marble steps with Milchspeiseeis melting down your delicate fingers from the sugar cone.
Instead of the garten paths, I walked alone to a crate of left-over belongings that bore my name, abandoned in the middle of the floor.
Had I left these tidbits of recollection and reminiscence to be forgotten? Good intentions in pictures, places, and a happiness I can't remember for all the regrets I filed away. Bit by precious bit she cleaved her way from some unknown compartment. She slid from the lathe and plaster walls wrapping profound sadness around my spine. Invoking the tingling sensation of my addictions to crawl over the skin of a ring finger in a band of golden soliloquy.
You and she overlapped until
two became one and are now the same notes,
played over and over until I know it by heart
( where my home forever grows more fond ).
And I wrote them for you somehow, without knowing it.
Now they belong to you.
Along with my broken heart
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