“152 days living next door to Aza”, or “The Bitter Stench of Desire”
I’ve written you everything.
Stuck a blade into my soul and pressed and pressed
And watched myself ooze out
And it is but nothing;
All the words are nothing- the letters too small, the paper insufficient.
How can I tell you how painfully I have loved you; how each time you tore that glorious laughter from my heart I wanted to cry instead ?
How can I put into words the feeling of pure and utter love that welled up in me when we lay together, two hungover souls on your desk, feet hanging from the window, and you sang “When Suzanna cries” with all your heart and soul into the Saurer Apfel bottle for me ?
How can I explain to you the furious desire to squeeze you, to hold you, which struck me brutally when we sat under our bridge like gypsies and sang with our own echoes and laughed about eating ducks for dinner ?
How can I tell you that there were nights when I lay awake beside you, and you lay there, torturing me with your t-shirt thrown aside because you don’t like how it slides up your body when you’re sleeping, the smooth sweet curve of your breast calling me silently, basked in the harsh blue light of Boots’ S&M Bar across the street. How do I say that I wanted to take your nipple between my lips and bite and suck you gently until you awoke?
Should it be at our breakfast table that I casually throw in “Hey, sag mal, errinerst du dich an letzter Nacht, als du neben mir geweint hast ? Weißt du, dass ich dich angestarrt habe und wurde von dem schmerzhaftesten Verlangen getroffen, ganz langsam meine Hand zwischen deine Beine zu setzen, um dich sanft zu streicheln? Und, ja, danach bin ich feucht geworden, und habe mir vorgestellt wie gut es sich anfühlen würde, dich einfach zu nehmen - deine Unterwäsche wegzureißen, mein Gesicht zwischen deine Beine zu stellen und dich zu lecken, zu küssen, dich zu saugen, dir einen Wahnsinnsorgasmus zu geben.” I don’t think that kind of thing goes down well with morning Müsli.
How can I say that there are moments when I lie naked in his arms, moments of pure unadulterated bliss, bliss that he gives me just by blowing coolly on my skin because I’m sweating but he doesn’t want to let me go, and then tell you that sometimes I wish I could swap those muscled, haired and moled forearms that I love for your thin breakable wrists? How can I say that even his deep and passionate thrusts don’t entirely fill me ?
How can I admit that the scenes you imagine of us living together for our whole lives, maybe needing men, but maybe being enough for each other, are somehow all that I want ?
How can I look at myself in the mirror, and ponder my freckles, my calves lick, and look into my eyes (green, like yours) and tell myself that I am a raging, burning lesbian?
How can I be this ?
“Da lebten wir, wie Menschliches” Saarbrücken, 11.5.12
My dearest Azadeh,
It is as though we are all of us living together in the same house, using the same bathroom, the same bowls and floors, looking out from the same windows and leaving from the same doors. There is, however, one room in this great house which is kept forever locked, and whose key is scarcely ever found.
When I first met you, and your laughing gaze burned softly into mine, I knew at once that you, too, were on it’s trail. Then one day, (I forget exactly when) there it lay, twinkling playfully at us from the table. You picked it up, and with a glance that spoke of everything, beckoned me into the room.
Ever since then, it is there, or rather here, that we have lived, learning of life and love in the silent yet deafening room of our souls. It is here where everything is said, yet not a word is spoken, and it is here, too, where all the lines are crossed yet nothing is left broken. Here I learned to love you as a part of my own self, a part which will detach itself eventually and move on with it’s life. And it is not despite your bad or tired moods, your wearied depression or your lovely madness that I love you, but rather exactly because of each of them.
It is a very rare and wonderful thing to look into the eyes of another and to see there not only the almost grateful acceptance of your own mild insanity, but rather a reflection of the same from within. Your words have come to mean more to me than all the world’s poems, your laughter more than music.
And although these are our last days, and each laugh, each tear, and each moment of wild existence is numbered, I need us to be happy, to live on unencumbered. You will always be with me, a smiling shadow of my present, my future, my history. You’ll be there on every red-covered cinema seat, in the faded scar of my ankle, in every dirty, wild, belly aching laugh that leaves my throat, and in the quietest yet brightest recesses of my soul.
The time has come, now, to move out of this space we’ve built together, and to catch the next train to tomorrow. But one day, I’ll come to you, in the new room of the new spaces of your new life, and we’ll have coffee and a fag, and sit and smile at the endless beauty of change, but also of the permanence of all that we were.
Until then,
I’ll be seeing you
In all the old familiar places
That this heart of mine embraces
All day through.
In that small cafe;
The park across the way;
The children’s carousel;
The chestnut trees;
The wishin’ well.
I’ll be seeing you
In every lovely summer’s day;
In every thing that’s light and gay.
I’ll always think of you that way.
I’ll find you
In the morning sun
And when the night is new.
I’ll be looking at the moon,
But I’ll be seeing you.
I’ll be seeing you
In every lovely summer’s day;
In every thing that’s light and gay.
I’ll always think of you that way.
I’ll find you
In the morning sun
And when the night is new.
I’ll be looking at the moon,
But I’ll be seeing you.
Ever your little Irish bastard,
Michaela
x
I wake up to the musky scent of our mild disgrace,
and turn to see that crooked smile on your gentle face.
You stare at me, waiting to see if you’ve scared me, or hurt me,
needing to know what you’ve done.
Very, very slowly, almost not at all,
I allow the beginnings of a smile to creep across my face
and you laugh and seize my face in your hands
and kiss me fiercely
and nothing was ever so poignant
and I don’t understand why I’m struck by this awful need to cry.
Kindheit
Es wäre gut viel nachzudenken, um
von so Verlornem etwas auszusagen,
von jenen langen Kindheit-Nachmittagen,
die so nie wiederkamen - und warum?
Noch mahnt es uns - : vielleicht in einem Regen,
aber wir wissen nicht mehr was das soll;
nie wieder war das Leben von Begegnen,
von Wiedersehn und Weitergehn so voll
wie damals, da uns nichts geschah als nur
was einem Ding geschieht und einem Tiere:
da lebten wir, wie Menschliches, das Ihre
und wurden bis zum Rande voll Figur.
Und wurden so vereinsamt wie ein Hirt
und so mit großen Fernen überladen
und wie von weit berufen und berührt
und langsam wie ein langer neuer Faden
in jene Bilder-Folgen eingeführt,
in welchen nun zu dauern uns verwirrt.
- Rainer Maria Rilke
Das habe ich in letzter Zeit auswendig gelernt, und müss ab jetzt und für immer an Aza denken, wenn ich es lese.
The Blue Bird
there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I’m not going
to let anybody see
you.
there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pour whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he’s
in there.
there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?
you want to screw up the
works?
you want to blow my book sales in
Europe?
there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody’s asleep.
I say, I know that you’re there,
so don’t be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he’s singing a little
in there, I haven’t quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it’s nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don’t
weep, do
you?
-Charles Bukowski
Haben Sie je in einer Supermarkt-Schlange gestanden, und wurden von dem schmerzhaften überfordenden Nachdenken getroffen worden, dass das Leben mehr sein soll, als ein grauer Abnehmer von dem Katzenfutter und den einsamsten Joghurten, die man je gesehen hat, zu werden?
Manchmal, ich kann solche alltägliche Gehaltlosigkeiten echt nicht leiden, worauf ich mich in die hellsten Tiefen meiner Seele verstecke, und ernähre mich lieber von meinen Träumen.
What a curious thing it is to have spoken every word you’ve ever known, and yet rarely to have said a single, solitary thing.
Love me, Charlie.
“…in that drunken place
you would
like to hand your heart to her
and say
touch it
but then
give it back.”
― Charles Bukowski, The People Look Like Flowers at Last
Ceasefire
Imagine all fire was held, all arms laid down, and you and I could talk unencumbered.
You might, for the most fleeting, yet important, of moments, see me for what I truly am, and I like to think that you would be proud of what I’ve become without you. I see you everywhere, you know; in books, in films, in people walking down the street or laughing on the bus. You’re the silver gleam in the accordion-players eye in a cherished tale, the gruff old man taken aback by the barest act of kindness who brings me so easily to tears. I ask myself, always, if you ever picture me in your mind’s eye, and I wonder what you see. Ours is a strange love, a realm of silence and often fury, permeated with the stench of what might have been, had things been different - had you been different. I’m running now, and will go on running, until one wintrily sunlit day when I stop and pause for breath, and you’re there waiting, wanting to know everything I’ve been and all that I’ve seen.
Until then, I’ll be here, becoming myself and preparing the story.
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