Shams' Muse

kiss kiss

Would there be a motzart if austria had antidepressants, and should I wipe my memory if I had the chance not of the memories, but of the emotional component. Why when depressed do I draw so much better, and why when depressed does my mind ruminate over and over on details that I write and why when not depressed do I just function and not care about drawing or writing? Or do I? How much is my own myth making, my own sense of my own Motzart?

the blind guy is reading a book, and sometimes he turns his face towards me, as if he could see me. Maybe he can.

He says that to be born again, you must die first. How long until I am able to die, or rather kill, these feelings that still cling to me, like hard, sharp barnacles? I can not pry them from me or torch them or freeze them. they stay attached, simple and eternal, shells that need not a living being to stay on my rocks. All the same, I forget they are there or maybe they are not there, and for a time, they can not cut my feet or my hands. It is so much easier for so many others. They just find someone else, and within months have moved on. Easy swimmers who float with the tide, from one wave to the next, one beach to the next. Today, the barnacles were back, as I fantasized a scenario of ten years ahead in which he returns, and I said, I have two kids now. I am married. But we had an affair anyway.

today we are 100 shams 100 poems some good, some bad how does it feel? we were depressed, we got better. we loved, we lost. we have not loved since, though perhaps we pine a bit we are still seeking, shams, still hoping, still looking, still trying to make sense of the world. I'm glad I have you, Shams, so glad.

it takes so much to hold my shoulder in this crunched place. And when I finally move it, heat. The heat. I wear this emotion on my body. And I break this emotion by opening my body.

I loved the artist, not the man, and I just can't seem to stop loving the artist and ignoring the man.

in my head is a constant scream sometimes that is so loud and so negative I want to stick a plunger in one ear, and push it down or pull it out. Life is not fair, life is not fair, life is not fair.

I take so much comfort from the fact that I know you always come back to the same place. Even if we don't have that kind of relationship.

how can i explain this, to you. This is what I'm thinking, thinking about the long lashed boy and his chasm of need so deep that I still haven't heard the coin I dropped in. He's alright, you know. He's alright. So what if he gets mad when I take the local and he's on the express. Not my problem. Or is it? I don't really care, and that's where I have to answer to my conscience. Remedy this, it says. But I still dream of him and I tell myself, even in those dreams, you're not allowed here anymore, we don't have that kind of relationship anymore. I guess those energies go somewhere though. I am so glad I have my divinity. We are so small, our concerns so small, so not truly of ourselves, manifestations of that divinity, acting out divine things through energy concentrations. To me it makes perfect sense.

We sat politely, talking as people do on first dates, as this has been one in a string of about ten or twenty. I'm so weary and bored of the task of finding love. If only it would find me first, and put to rest the labor. Feeling nothing on date number one, and not excited, enough to go on date number two but I must. It takes me many weeks to feel a pull. I like artists best. Sitting and waiting, oh did I feel a pull for The man with the giant beard and the book at the next table and I wanted to say to him, good sir, let us leave together and find stars and fill our pockets with stars and dine at night and sing songs to the wind and the wolves and the crickets. But my first date came and the good sir he left. I kept his smile in my pocket all night, and pulled it out in my dreams.

there's little I wouldn't catch or keep, penning my heart up like a sheep wandering to greener fields lest there is a greater yield

your last refuge in my life is in my dreams. only there are you a physical presence, who cradles me, and then disappears. We start in a tent, in a park, or we start on a train, and all is bliss, all is love. Then you leave or disappear while I am occupied with something else. I look for you until I wake, look for clues to understand. The story has told itself in anagrams and symbols, myth and picture. So I lived my life for two months, studying the same facts with a ferocious obsessiveness that bordered on madness. Or was madness. No pressure of my mind would loosen my tight grasp. I suffered. Oh how I suffered. But now, my waking life is mine again, and I am not sure how I managed to fit so much of you into my day, into my very breath. You are gone at last, I am free at last.

More than anything, I would like us to watch the stars.

he's looking at me with these big doe eyes, batting his lashes. I'm thinking, he's like a girl. He's in love with me. Lately, seems like everyone is in love with me. Except, of course. As I sit, book in hand, I try to look him in the eye, give him the kind of treatment I would like. He's not so bad. He's just not. And I'm not sure if I weren't so haunted I would like him. There's got to be some kind of route to bring us back, I'm thinking. No matter how many variations, we all get to the same outcome.

my love for you is big and grand, and ocean wide. I can drown all your sorrows in my sea, and cradle you when you cry tears that don't fall. Water can't get wet. You can walk in from the shore, toes, shins, knees, until at last you are past the depth where you can stand. My love is bigger than you, silly man, silly silly man. Float with your arms stretched wide, vulnerable to sun, to wind, to birds. I will never drop you.

is listening to my

alone in the car, silently screaming, troubled by troubles without any meaning