By Aleksey Calvin
…so when she heard that Alex found him
Hanging from the ceiling,
She fell to the floor and screamed like she was burning,
Screamed like the mother whose son will not return; And
Turning to nothing,
Spiraling unwound, and
Like death herself: A newborn infant –
All yearning to go back, and tearing at the air.
She screamed “You selfish brat!” – over and over –
Just as the coffee machine chirped “Day!”...
And we just stood around her – silent statues,
Unimposing guests, distant as lepers,
And the daylight in our pockets:
Wanna throw it all away!
And to walk back and forth
Through this cold foreign city,
Staring like survivors
On some cold barren plain…
And all the brilliant friends,
Just for a moment, fell naked of opinions
Except for “Oh, so sorry…”,
Or “Let's go get fucked up!”
Another joke.
“But what exactly is a joke?” my mind pointlessly reeled.
And all-the-while asking “What to feel? What exactly is to feel?”
I walked alone, recalled how funny someone mocked
Him being sentimental, foolish, running off… (another walker in the city, just footsteps. Memory.)
Our City: a tide chasing, driving him backwards to the womb with visions of solitude…
Set against visions of ivy-wound global villages, of network-borne Edens,
Of painfully real romances ceaselessly blooming:
And then the revelation of hope’s failure’s
as ruthless as a thousand harpies!
Clawing at our brains, rendering each of us an incarnation of The Idiot.
Though unlike our forbearers, we know mere beauty won’t save the world…;
Not when its lone beholder in a crown of roses hangs…
Like a Christmas ornament!
And so is our generation: The Hanged Man card.
Stuck between millennia’s hour-marks,
Hanging from the clock hand...
We pretend to a young death, having been deprived of life,
But with eyes half-glazed still watch,
And may one day ask to be let down.
“In Oakland, circa 2010,” I wrote back then
“A young man hung himself from the ceiling,
Having grown tired of waiting for a distant world
To catch up to our hopes,
Having grown tired of hanging.”
And unable to shut my eyes in peace,
I stared out the window at the night and,
Seeking its audience, spoke out.
“Hi-Oh-hi, my sister night!
Why must I loiter in your chapel still?..
What can I find, oh sister night?..
Wordless and winged.
I choke to sing myself to sleep, (praying the muse my dreams to whip)
Clutching useless Tarot under a fallen tower.
Oh my violent, my ashen sleeplessness,
Tuck me into a sweaty cradle!”
*A knock on the door;*
“Come to the store?”
Okay, to the store.
We talk with wine, little sister and I,
Into our veins, over crackheads’ yells
And the wind, above him and about,
Under
The punk-shows ,
Through
The gunshots…
“Wasn’t he an Indigo child?”
Yes, one of a kind, his group’s talisman,
Traded Wall-Street for Greenpeace, was earnest and wry;
An endless source of sarcasm under the drunken lights,
And all-the while burning with some weird hung-up romance inside?
“Typical…”
“Someone said that he didn’t even sleep
In the last week.” She shrugs, then takes a bitter swig.
Can dreams take over our eyes?
Are our minds made of snow? What did he want to believe?
We are what we know. Though I fear we know nothing: He and I –
Born of the same litter, no matter if across oceans, peerage knows no countries.
He and I – the Hanging Men, the hangers on, the hang-outers…
Just a pair of modern kids, ever sucking up an unfiltered smoke of facts
From our flavored cigarettes, our customized screens.
He and I and all the rest…
One of a kind each one, tangible as the Sun (in a cluster of stars).
“He seemed fine, there was nothing, just dancing...” Sister shakes her head, wide eyed.
Just Shivering.
In the snow… The snow of time, like LA dust, swirling in the California air…
Forming figures of friends long-gone.
Though instead of a chill, I feel warm blood-drops on my long and greasy hair…
Smiling like an idiot. “Like a Taoist…” I utter out-loud.
And it is then that I find (Some simple secret of love?)
Whatever falters in a young stare…
As eyes turn to glass; Fate of generations turns
Like clockwork, obscured slightly.
Did he truly yell ”Drown me, fate, kill me!”
While running past the port?
Did he feel a perfect life stolen from beneath his nose?
When she said… What was it she said?
Could that be it? Oh, how silly, silly, silly… but maybe That… That…That?
“Well… What did she tell him before he fled?”
Some dumb refusal, a stupid secret.
So we talk in the dark, little sister and I, the January wind on my cheek,
And at once I know how the year will go, the wine and the dirty snow.
Invincible kids learning death, laughing. “How do you feel?” I ask.
“Can I have another smoke?”
The dance and the shiver,
And we go to bed alone.
--
And he hangs from the rafters:
The morning.
And hangs from the rafters:
The sunshine.
While someone still whistles
Through a cigarette trumpet,
And the smell of coffee,
And all the world’s warmth…
So, Please close the shutters
No one should see
That this is the last of this earth
Here in the city
Where time is forgotten,
And cold equalizes
All the bodies forlornly,
Under thin electric blankets
Grasping flowers in the dust,
Dreaming dreams we let go
Like badly made paper boats…
I see my powdery princess –
Shivering, dancing –
Sailing towards me on a thin raft,
Maybe grasping a silver heart,
Across the still wide river,
Past trembling rider-less horses
Drowning and begging
For the sky to save them,
To keep them still for a while…
A boy grown old cries,
"Where are our impossible flights to the stars?
Where are our heroes and gods?
Where is our universe of battle?
What is worth defending in these warm sideshow swamps?..
Where our youth reveals no truths
And herself never ends,
As time only teases us
With school yard becomings
And never even begins…”
- 2010/2013