free falling
eleven past ten
The stomach is searching for a hand
To push pieces of growth down my throat
My spirit hungers
Past the rows of mute stores, I reach the false light of
the yellow coffee house
Where obese women push carts piled with plates
Half eaten food, bent forks, slippers left under chairs
Patrons, vanishing halfway
Policemen speak with health fanatics
Whole family dinners left untouched
Chairs toppled
High heels under tables
Wife and hubby and autism child gone
“It’s the strange boy” the gymnast girl said, “He made signs with chopsticks, then our food went cold…” Skinned animals in sauce came back to life crying for their mothers
The tv is blaring
There’s a football match replaying since 1986
The lights on the field has gone out
men, running, un aging, striking blindly beneath the old moon at open wounds, goal keepers diving in the dark
Whistles blowing
No one is watching except me
What can we see really?
In the half starlight, the stadium is slowly filling
People with no shoes, wandering in confused
too weak to cheer
Stomachs, empty.
That is where the disappeared are going
That is where the strange boy took them
But the cops were suddenly gone, so I could not tell them
Gunshots ring out from the screen
Star strikers fall in the penalty box
The crowd cheers
Death feeds them
The crowd grows on screen
While the coffee house thins
More foot ware left behind…
A pair of bloody shoes sit near my feet, it’s hollow body still warm, it’s sole burst open
And I know it belongs to the falling girl
Ten past eleven
Ten Years past slipping back in seconds
Just a block away, that’s where it happened
the gym bag fell first, nineteen stories
followed by all that shouting and crying and struggling and climbing over the ledge, over the edge of failed romance
When the hanging on to arms did not succeed
And the lost lover shook herself free
Free falling
I am free
Free falling…
Life minus hope plus Mass times speed equals mess
She landed on her feet
They say only mad men clean up suicides
Throwing white salt on beige walls to wash off yellow fat stuck in crimson cracks in concrete
When you walk by barefoot
Trying to learn the histories of falling girls
You can still smell her insides sometimes
I tighten my shoelaces
I hang on to the yellow table as The bile in my belly finds a solution
Death makes me hunger
So I Emulate the Harvey Norman man
And Order mee goreng and a coke
The sweaty Indian chef with Korean actresses captured in his phone delivers my last meal
A heap of orange worm like organisms release fatal fumes into my face
I fork my food
Fork it till it grows fat and soggy enough
To slide down my throat till it touches an ocean of acid and walls of flesh where ancestors drew faces of their animal gods
reminding me that the blood of the first human is still in my veins, and in the drains, and in the cracks in concrete
Humanity is spilled everywhere
I down the Black orbital liquid to drown out the worms
I roll the roots of old earth in paper pulped from witchita trees
there’s a taste of wasabi in the cigarette
fog of Voudon world spreads through my rivers of lung while the falling girl beneath the block watches me smoke slowly and surely
I thank the deities of disappearing for not taking me to the football game
For my night here is not done
Leaving coins on the table, a token for memories
I leave smoke to suspend
Then walk towards the fated block
The camera in my blue sling bag wants to feed on nocturne light again
It hungers for tortured flight paths
Impact craters
Bloodied shoes
The fallen girl says, “How can we leave if flesh is bound with salt?”
“I know.” I tell her. “I know”
I remove my shoes on the spot
where she landed
I walk backwards in time
Rewriting her history
Snapping, snapping without flash
I give her distance
This Cinderella spirit, waiting forever for midnight
that finally arrives
The shoe fits
Breaking the spell of fantasy
She picks up the pieces
Her gym bag with clothes that no longer smells of her lover
She walks backwards, away from the block, towards the sea with the autistic boy
Falling out of love
Free falling
I am free
Free falling
