POETRY PAGE 7
ALL MATERIAL COPYRIGHTED: ROY EISENSTEIN.
HIDING IN THE CLEAR LIQUID
The vodka went down like a cure for some unnamed illness. A whispered secret to some long nagging question. And yet the dull, brain-deadening power of this clear elixir made for a pleasant fog that blocked any memory of where the angst all started. And perhaps that’s the magic of the whole thing.
I may have dozed off for a bit but can’t really tell for sure because I seem to be dreaming either way.
I laughed over nothing for a while and then cried a bit. Not sure why, but everything seems so important and so remote at the exact same time.
I wanted to escape and I seem to have, but yet there is still this soft melancholia echoing in the background. Something making me feel or emote or want to pay some ancient debt.
I see how this works. You tell yourself a lie in shot glasses or mixed in some fruit juice and then after that you still have to visit every gravesite where all your pain is just waiting for resurrection.
Oh yeah, there’s a slow motion cloudiness to this trance, but a sentimental dirge is still heard and felt and even indulged. So at that point, what’s the point?
Another dose would add to the diplopia but wouldn’t kill the ghosts of pain. No, you can’t kill a wraith. You simply have to live with the haunting.
But in the meantime I’ll take this laconic drift with some anguished music on the electronic wind. I’ll let the spirits have their time in my head with the hope that they’ll eventually dissipate into the ethers and I can fall into that gentle abyss of sleep to awaken into a day where no scars remain.
PRISON BREAK
It’s a stinging barb
Like some venomous bite
A slight prick of the flesh of dreams while awake
It releases some ghosts of longing that have been hiding like sequestered genies in the lamp of the heart
They burst forth malnourished having been forgotten
Overlooked or even buried from view by defense mechanisms
Now there’s a pulse
A rhythmic tattoo of emotions
The ignition of a small yet threatening spark
It’s a tune that circles the mind refusing to leave
A face almost remembered but remains just beyond reach
The name just on the tip of the tongue
That kiss
An icebreaker cutting through the frozen parts of old wounds
A crack in the wall
The pierced armor now useless
The cage has been opened
And all the wild things inside want out
THAT BASTARD MOON
The moon totally crapped out behind a determined, marine layer earlier this evening, and yet it’s still a mad scientist night. One of those nights when you just want to create a monster.
The banging in the upstairs apartment of my brain wants my attention and although I’m curious, I don’t feel like climbing those metaphysical stairs.
I wish they delivered.
I definitely see the side effects from living alone for so long. Not all bad. No.
I do sometimes speak out loud, and then when I realize I’m talking to myself I get a little annoyed and tell myself, in a commanding voice that carries the weight of my disappointment, to stop talking to myself. And then realize that even THAT was talking to myself.
It’s a strange cycle of wasted dialogue, but at least it gives me someone to fight with.
There’s loneliness at times, sure, I’ll cop to that. And yet I’m so solid with just flying solo for hours on end. I guess I just like opening my head and looking at the maps.
And I don’t get beat up in the silence anymore from that critic someone hired years ago to go along for the emotional ride and point out all my imperfections.
I guess he’s off the payroll now. Just don’t hear from him anymore.
Yes, this would be a perfect night to gather all the undead parts of everything and stitch them together, throw in a few volts of this and that, and make ‘em dance.
Assemble every wound and tickle gathered in transit, and slap it, weld it, nail it and glue it onto the thing. Fill its head with crazy ideas and dangerous music.
Build it up with dreams and hopes and a tight left jab.
Make sure it works out. Gets tough. Pumping irony, dead lifting sarcasm, and sweating angst.
Give it moves and a smooth defense. Teach it to glide and slide and hide. Bob and weave.
Make it larger than anything that scares me.
And give it a hat.
Then shovel in fuel and confidence along with every doubt that ever had a whisper of my attention. Crank up the RPMs, the MPHs, the TLCs and push that bastard out into the world.
Yeah.
Get all the townsfolk out in the streets with torches and pitchforks and let’s make some noise.
Oh yes, it’s definitely a mad scientist night.
Thanks to that bastard moon.