this may be a shot in the dark...
dressed up in the beach of cali and down in this skin
old and coarse like sands of time
i step onto the tarmac
and we take off.
she says take off this skin, it stinks
stand bare
bear the inside out
and bore a hole in your chest
'cause only hollow men fly.
this boeing won't bear the daydreams of little boys.
it isn't big or fast enough.
J’ai un langue dans mes, mmm, un langue dans mes...
...no, no, so I point to fill in the blanks and say you know I keep language inside the tendons of my hands since sixth grade before literature class up a wooden ramp a long splinter came off the handrail and the blade stabbed in the loose skin between my thumb and forefinger and that’s when the words got in, it is a disease I have, there’s still no vaccine for writer’s block or what’s more fatal, writing.
Ah, je parle un peu de Francais.
I keep language in the tendons of my hands and toss them up for the rainclouds to hold until it storms and Sunday some words fell short she tied my hands behind my back with a thread called la francais that she pulled out from her eyes in that place she hides her tears and she speaks in the washed out ruby red of Paris or a place that isn’t here, (she says oui, Paris) or a city constituted by gray matter you know synapses and neurotransmitters passing through that light up skyscrapers all neon-like when the people doze off and go up in flames when the people read Titus Andronicus (ah, c’est tragique. oui) it is a city built on DMT day-emm-tay the stuff of dreaming.
Je ne comprends pas.
Our tongues an axe words destroyed behind our teeth and in our throats we spit out the petite seeds and broken brown Adam's apple cores of English et Francais.
I don't understand.
There is a wordsmith inside wipes dusting his hands on his pants and says he’s done with this conversation and sets down his knife and measure, defeated. Il ne peux pas la finit. As a rule he does not take on small talk by god he kicks himself for agreeing to this job but she sweet talked him into it.
She says C’est ma premier fois en Etats-Unis ...and points up at premier saying one and first and showing to me the sky for the first time. We know the same clouds that cover us all and sometimes carry our voices like two cups on a string if we speak a silence into them and quiet into this cup and pour my words and drink yours back.
Non, eh, wet air you sayeeng.
You heard right. I’m saying “wet air”. (‘Cause you dance on drops of rain one to another and never ever touch the ground, ne pas rien. Soaked hair in braids and wet glasses round rimmed c'est belle and I want to dance like you in the rain dance with you in the rain and we will rain dance like there's a drought.)
I see now and then she is
silhouetted
in the airplane window
and the San Andreas fault line flagging behind her like a tassle
hills rolling spanning off her skin.
I think she cries out coastlines red.
Her tears are mountain lions hiding in mountains
waiting to kill me.
Hills rolling like r's she still trills when she cries.
And I say habiller not habiter, I ask if she dresses in the heart of the Paris meaning to ask if she lives in the heart of the Paris no no I think she dresses up in the heart of Paris wears the Seine like a necklace.
A wordsmith asking for one kiss just one peck. To at last move past your lips lay tender on the inside scrape stones to make sparks set fire to your tongue weld the words himself reeassemble the shards of Anglais et Francais into a dialect you and I know by heart back in the hours before waking opened eyes and ears closed chests and know it by heart hearing a mother’s heart kick out its first four-to-the-floor rhythm and us kick back in the warm orangeblack. One kiss just one please. I will close my eyes purse my lips and wait. And wait. And I will press your chest to mine so our hearts will whisper what we can't translate in our heads much less say we will X out these accents sign X-O-X-O Tiphaine on my throat with your lips and I will taste your signature it is sweet like original sin I'll spit again those petite seeds like rhymes and hide Adam's apple cores and ask for more I need more than a one-course dinner like an original sinner you're my first i confess and I want seconds yea that writer's word-thirst you suppress send me to the Seine to drink and sin drunken and still, just one kiss please you see I read with my mouth. I am hungry.
And this is the fear of god you fear when dreams take on flesh and prophecies happen five minutes and two stanzas ago. God, so scared and with this dry mouth words scraping along my tongue I try not to spit up sand into my hands. We are flying over the desert. My lips are chapped in the heat. I stumble upon X-O-X-Oasis your skin the shape of the atlantic the color of sunrays skimming the waves it holds oceans inside I want swim down inside beside you into it all the way to the oceanbed. Yes. I checked and double checked my bags so as not to leave my heart in San Fran and instead I keep it six miles over Sante Fe where you said to step out the emergency exit so I did hitting the current of wind and hung my only heart on a clock-shaped cloud with that same thread from your eyes. Like a shot in the dark my broken arrow head heart speaks to the desert in broken kiowa-tanoan and tries on its accent but can’t recall the vernacular. It’s forgotten the language of its fathers. It wants to sound like the sand and wolves and look like a star hanging up there in twilight twirling. Yea, I say, my heart grew sick of staying inside my ribs feels more at home in a constellation longs to speak the earth’s slang spell out words with other stars. And i swapped out my heart in the emptiness filled my chest with your memory. It is heavy. And sharp.
flight fourteen forty four
‘lord send this plane
into the sonoran’
desert high-diving all divine
you take my hand afraid you kiss me afraid
scared tongue out
hand reaching out you fillin up with
life or what’s left so much
it spills out your arms
like the land
swallows
last drops of rain before a drought
we burn in
the desert dancin’ in
gasoline ignited in
tongues of fire in
wrecked steel skeleton in
the ribcage of a blue whale lost in the sand somehow in
the desert dancin’.
candlewicks last breaths of
a blue whale pressed out in
a blackened orange
misses the sea misses its home.
i miss my home.
Like the spur on a boot I want show you the heel of America Texas and the dirt I want to show you how I walk miles on a hot summer street at midday like a hindu monk on coals you ask how? ‘cause i did this as a kid and i prefers my sole to burn but not burn up. Yes I want to show you Texas and you will teach me back your home and your art.
A lesson in chemistry in my throat you weld the welt yourself and show me how to do alchemy how to push inside my chest a stone just stare smile walk away and allow ten minutes for it to cool swell push prod up under my skin and I will chase each detail of your face lines in your cheek I will miss you so much that I‘m out of breath always.
A lesson in reading with my mouth watching hands wrapped round a barbed wire fence in between the barbs careful now dancing in between the barbs. Say you’ve never seen cattle up close before but you see them now look how big they are oui c’est vrai ils sont tres tres grands they are big and still stand still wait for a love to write back in blades of grass they read with their mouths they are hungry (like I said, I read with my mouth I am hungry for you to write back). You sit on my back like...um...I regret I know not the name of egrets perched on cattle-backs picking off the flies flying out and out for days but coming back let’s dance like that like they dance I regret this bull is ugly make me pretty, pretty please don’t fly away again like white herons do, there’s gray hair on my head from thinking of you heroine I need saving heroine I need a hit just one kiss please grace me gracely and I’ll keep grazing. I’ll stop asking. I swear.
A lesson in fashion I have a hat called Paris that I wear when I want to feel alone and she dresses in the heart of the city dresses herself in my thoughts pulls up into it in the night like a skintight dress that she will not take off.
(One kiss just one eyes closed lips out waiting hearing you walk away.)
And my eyes closed still. tonight i sleep with my ceiling fan spinning fast as it can just to feel the wind ya know believe in something invisible overhead ya know and something that i breathe. i sleep with my fan spinning fast as it can to pretend im in the sky again and i am that plane flight fourteen-forty-four and hold you on the inside window seat in my mind staring out from my eyes. and if you’d like to fly back i’ll someday tell my daughter, ‘your mother and i? we met in the sky. cause that’s where you meet angels.’
Mais tu est en France maintenant. Je ne comprends pas.
I don't understand.
