Wahnbriefe

[i lied.  sorry.  i’ve been feeling it lately, and so things such as this happen to happen [to happen to happen].  it’s 5:24, so i will/must note some of you chums tomorrow.  thanks kindly g’night k bye.]

No, no, no.  You don’t understand, I explained.  This isn’t what I meant to do.  SO much of EVERYONE else’s is more eloquent, more profound, more important.  None of me is the best or the worst, a superlative to brag and be loved (live?) by.  It’s the rubbish minutes I burn to keep my head and heart warm.  The letters, the silly little syllables shaking uncertain in their lonely style: I am ninety percent words, and those words are ninety-five percent style and five percent substance.  Don’t look now, pretend you’re not reading: those five percentage points of substance are piggybacking in on the staggering, struggling legs of the style.  It is part and parcel and all pretend.

But it’s me.  It’s me.  It’s me as a puddle at the bottom of a tar pit, bubbling and boiling and beckoning.

And I have no other choice but to swallow the living whole, wash them in sticky black, and clothespin them across my own geological record.  Shiny white fossils, the things that were.
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You stood on the shore, hesitant and hiding behind the curtain of grass.  What if someone sees? you asked, your slender and (gorgeous? elegant?  haunting?  keep trying, keep trying, keep trying, Mitch.) ghostly hand gesturing towards the yellow lights guttering across the lake.

They should be so lucky, I said back, my legs and arms lazily treading water beyond the buoys.  You moved like a impala before a pride of lions, hooves churning the sand as you made for the safety of concealment, to cover your breasts shifting and shaking, the growling of wild cats hungry and growling, prowling, titan tails whisking away the scrub and brush and the peeling face of the parched savanna.  Not fast enough, though, because I still can’t shake the image of your pale skin holding the moonlight and your freckles glowing like opals, cat’s eyes with pinhead pupils watching the world flash like a star bursting into a million electric flowers and a billion neon petals unfolding.  I can’t shake that mantle without losing it, a Pyrrhic victory, and I’m chasing this yellowed image that flickers inside of me, coming and going to remind me of the alternatives, the emptiness.  I’m pouring water on sand, and I can’t remember how to make it glass.  To make many things one and squeeze it until it shatters and becomes many things again.  Only sharper.
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Tell me you’ll be there in the morning, she demanded as my fingers fumbled and fiddled with her buttons.

Hon, I don’t know that tomorrow will be there, much less me with it.