Making Bracelets [Nights at Bassam’s]. Digitally manipulated photographs. December 2013.

“We all need someone to look at us.  We can be divided into four categories according to the kind of look we wish to live under.
The first category longs for the look of an infinite number of anonymous eyes, in other words, for the look of the public.  The second category is made up of people who have a vital need to be looked at by many known eyes.  They are the tireless hosts of cocktail parties and dinners.  They are happier than the people in the first category, who, when they lose their public, have the feeling that the lights have gone out in the room of their lives.  This happens to nearly all of them sooner or later.  People in the second category, on the other hand, can always come up with the eyes they need.  Then there is the third category, the category of people who need to be constantly before the eyes of the person they love.  Their situation is as dangerous as the situation of people in the first category.  One day the eyes of their beloved will close, and the room will go dark.  And finally there is the fourth category, the rarest, the category of people who live in the imaginary eyes of those who are not present.  They are the dreamers.”

Milan Kundera

-the definition of unconditional-


daydreamer
stargazer
we make an unlikely couple
– we sure do –

i’ve been in my head
dangerously close to the sun
i don’t have icarus’ wax wings –
mine are made of foil
they will not melt, but burn.

turn your journals into songs,
irresponsible happinesses,
stringing beads and giddy smiles…
i always, still, get lost in the immense, dark pools of your eyes
drawn to, swim in, drown.
undeniable whirlpools, deep waters: as far as i am concerned, the whole building tilts towards them.  i can’t escape the pull.
their whites, though, is like the white of clouds
i could stare at them, and calm myself,
like one does with cumuli and strata, cirri.

i’ve been making a mixtape –

each song was bought and paid for in heart pieces.

i have traveled
through winters in fargo,
my freshman years,
nights in Florence,
i have opened lost love letters in california.
for you, it’s always for you.
and if i’m wasting my love
if you are stealing it
I’m a more than willing victim
fake-fainting in the arms of the gentleman thief.
your handling always extracts poetry from me,
you are an expert player – and I am pliant.

we don’t live in paris or rome, i know, but i swear on our stolen nights i was walking by the river and looking at the stars —
we are not on park boulevard: we are in heaven.

perhaps it was just need that brought us together
we wanted fire
and it was provided.
I am convinced we are each others’ figments of the imagination.
because nothing is ever real when we are together: it’s vivid, surreal pura vida, and exists in air chambers.
or, perhaps what i have with you is reality, only feeling, only present, only now –
the rest is a filler.
time is relative under the bell, we are forever kissing – every action continues in perpetuity.
months go by, but i just held you.
the silence is absolute, and you can’t hear my screams.  I know better now.

i wake up with sentences fully formed,
i have not left your eyes or your chest where I slept.
where you let me sleep for the first time.
i am still there.
i am letting the days go by
as one gazes, mesmerized, at colorful and bland socks
tumbling in the dryer.

this is what i really want to do,
tell you that i replay your words in my mind,
that i am happy you feel my eyes on your
[caressing] eyes.

that you kissed me with lips of pillows and petals
and that i slept in them.
that your skin is made of the most exquisite silk
and that each kiss i gave you was my blessing.

i wanted to use our bodies as instruments
make love, no, a symphony.
the words that part us will never come from my lips
or my fingers.
we both know that i am unable.

there is an overlap between
freedom and loneliness.
i’m perhaps utterly lost,
but finally at peace.

i want you to know,
i would never take a single touch or word
for granted. or your soulheartbody.
the night dissolved in your arms
faded
devotion made touch, flesh, verb, breath-
you are the definition of unconditional.

more paper trails for me to burn on,
Love is not warm milk.
i want to
adorn you in precious metals and words
last night’s embers are still glowing.

when i die, i will be made into fireworks.

San Diego, December 16, 2013

………

We want what we want.
We love what we love.

From ‘ Beautiful Ruins.’

songlist: