“I’d rather see you dead little girl” so “paint
your face and dance!” but “please don’t wear
red tonight” for I am not yet “younger than
that now” enough to give up the “fear to bring
children into the world” that’s been hurled
by them, of course. I’m going back over the
ground I skimmed in “maturity,” trying to dig
my face into it to find the love I missed out
on in the misogyny I missed out on. A simple
story, punctuated by classic hits of the 60s,
to have something to wash off in baptism besides
the holy ghost of original sin that blamed Eve
and shut-up Fantasia, as if it is my misanthropy,
my self-loathing, because Notley and Riding
and I don’t believe the “Nice guy of the 90s”
Someday I won’t need Lucy in the Sky to orchestrate
the song that’s a beautiful lie (“I’m Only Sleeping”)
until you strip it of some of its dream energy
enough to actually indulge my “day of leisure”
and be silent to correct my neglect of Julian
by the househusbanding of Sean and watch the
shadow of the walrus wheels I could only be
when I rode them running scared cursing Raleigh
coz I’m just a jealous guy waiting for some
druid dude to lift the veil and note how abstract
culture eclipses the heroic personism that can’t
predict the life to come even by walking where
once he “tried to run” his crippled inside love
to reach the toppermost of the poppermost to
be an obscure 35 without having had to be a
famous 24
I told her there can’t
be excitement without anxiety, then (as if I
didn’t need her) corrected myself: “Where there’s
the smoke of anxiety, there’s the fire of excitement”
so there can be fire without smoke, but then
she looked at me with those big brown eyes to
make me confront the way I’ve suffered for being
a bad listener, as if I never had autism beaten
out of me, or listening kissed into me, and
I have to get better at asking questions and
holding my tongue and taking in all the info-pinions
(blades of grass) without feeling like I’m ready
to burst unless I have a notebook (subway) handy
and am ready to use it, and I gotta get better
at follow-through, at not being so thin-skinned
that their habits tempt me from me. Thus, if
it seems to her I’m being manipulative and seeing
life as a game in which I must trick others,
I’m sorry, truly sorry—that’s not my intention.
My intention is, was, is, to trick myself, to
trick the autism, the pre-pond Narcissus (pre-backward
glance Orpheus) that seems to be my “nature”
but is perhaps only my habit, like what I said
yesterday (had to tell her to tell myself) about
how it’s hard sometimes to get over the drag
and hump (when exercising or playing the piano)
of the first half-hour, but once past that,
not knowing where the time goes (and just because
I often get better as the day goes on is no
excuse for waking up on the wrong side of bed).
This could also apply to sex, for instance.
I’ve noticed lately, how I have to be inside
her twice to come. I’m not complaining about
this, because it prolongs the pleasure, hopefully,
for both of us (the analogy doesn’t hold, at
least as well as she does). The profound realization,
or funny thing, I think, is that I often stop
physical exercising, or playing the piano, more
out of guilt that I’m not getting enough writing
done than I am out of laziness, and now that
I know that, I think I can accentuate the fire
and de-emphasize the smoke, and can play their
games “without losing track and coming down
a bit to hard,” as they say (which is preferable,
I think, to “I’m not like them, but I can pretend.”).
I am like them,
even though she’s right about the vasectomy
dressing up fear as golden guilt…
|
