I Know I Used To Live Without You But That Was Before I Knew The Brown Speckles Of Your Eyes Or The Softness

Christoph Niemann Book Cover Design 2010

please could you be tender and I will sit close to you let’s give it a minute before we admit that we’re through

hard feelings/ loveless, lorde

The letter be

I do not think I’ve ever told anyone this story. Right after it happened, the memory lived then left, trespassing the dark edge that neighbors the mind: the void at the back of our head. I once read somewhere about a neurological effect, one in which memories forever stay inside our heads; they linger camouflaged into the wallpapers of our minds until abruptly popping into thought again. Like this morning when I woke up to the bright lights of this story you’re about to read; it seemed to be the only thing to fit inside my head: omnipresent as the blues in the sky; self-evident as sin in a church.

It happened in New York City a while back when a lady on the N train sat by my side. Books laid on both of our laps, only none of us read. She asked me if like her, I stopped my reading when the tracks of the train rose above ground. I can’t remember what I answered, but next thing I knew her words were walking me through her world: 67, a widow, avid reader, a walker when her knees cooperate.

She seemed to have a predilection for the affirmative; a sort of soft spot for full stops. At some point in our talk she voiced “You’ll think me a lunatic, but I’ve spent a great chunk of this day thinking about the letter B”. “How it comes second in the alphabet; how nobody acknowledges its prominence despite being of more consequence than any other letter there is. Do you ever think like this?” I said I didn’t, her eyes spotting my lie.

“It has become my favorite letter, the more I think of it” she added, then moved on to explain —through the deafening shrieks of the tracks—how many words beginning with the letter B were pivotal to illustrating the nuance of a life. “Think of the bright & the burned, the born & buried, the blessed & the blamed, the bountiful & the broke, the balanced & the belligerent. It goes full circle, doesn’t it? A cycle where opposing extremes slip their skins into the same gown. Black & white, beginning & ending are just that: sisters” Her eloquence, exquisite.

I stopped listening to commuters and their pressing chatter, the train’s wheels in the tracks screeched the weight of friction. My thinking surrendered to the dragging strengths of the wave this lady had spilled out of her mouth. I flicked through a million thoughts. “You’re absolutely right” I uttered.

“And isn’t that how we conjugate an existence? With the verb to be?” she topped her previous words.

This lady's imagery & clever murdered me unready. For a split now the world paused, our bodies yanked to the rhythm of inertia bred by our train hitting the brakes.

Awestruck & blank, I didn’t know how to react. Her analogies were skilled.

“Oh BBBBBrooklyn, this is me”.

She walked out, sly as a cat, and stood on the platform looking back into my eyes. Her lips spread a smile whilst the MTA guy begged for the 50th time to stand clear of the closing doors, please.

As the rubber edges of the doors rushed to a close, she mouthed:

“BBBBBBYE” & laughed.

Dear Dr. Frankenstein

I, too, know the sciences of building men Out of fragments in little light Where I’ll be damned if lightning don’t 

Strike as I forget one  May have a thief’s thumb, 

Another, a murderer’s arm,  And watch the men I’ve made leave Like an idea I meant to write down, 

Like a vehicle stuck  In reverse, like the monster

God came to know the moment  Adam named animals and claimed  Eve, turning from heaven to her

As if she was his To run. No word he said could be tamed. 

No science. No design. Nothing taken Gently into his hand or your hand or mine,  Nothing we erect is our own. 

- Jericho Brown (The New Testament)

Dear god: I just want to be believed in. Dear god: I had a syrup dream – the sky was grey and sinking, clouds of sugar and milk. Dear god: We don’t have churches anymore, just the blood that we kept in them. Dear god: I named the animals and now they’ve named me back – deathgirl, gentle hand, silver teeth. Dear god: In the end, water is thicker than blood. Water is heavier than anything else. Dear god: Laila killed those cats with her bare hands. Dear god: I have difficulty with faith. Dear god: I have difficulty with apologies. Dear: god. Deer god. Dear, god. Dear god.

Olive Prays, Yasmin Belkhyr (via wildflowerveins)

To be touched so lovingly, so fondly, as if one were still healthy. As if one were still worthy of affection and respect? It was cheering. It gave us hope.  We were perhaps not so unlovable as we had come to believe

George Saunders (Lincoln in the Bardo)

In looking out upon the world, we forget that the world is looking at itself.

Alan Watts (via quotemadness)

I pray you are what waits To break back into the world Through me.

Tracy K. Smith, “The Speed of Belief.” (via literarymiscellany)

the things we learn on our mothers’ laps

see that lady standing there between the window & the fire extinguisher? she’s just lost her father & i think her boyfriend just left her.

why the fuck would you say that?

i’m telling you, i’ve got this superpower. i just know.

how’s that? a superpower?

not a marvel studios superpower, u silly. more like this supreme capacity. i’ve always had it.

when my dad abandoned my mom, she lost herself in the world’s most dangerous drug: poetry.

she used to hold me on her lap while reciting emily brunte & sylvia plath.

i think that’s why i can read into people’s sadness.

when i come across sadness on the street, authentic sadness, the blues crawl out their host & come talk to me. i’m thinking of starting a mémoire or a blog on it. like that humans of new york, u know?

talk about those things we learn on our mothers’ laps…

i reckon everyone who’s lucky enough to have a mum will undoubtedly learn something whilst resting on her lap. my mom used to sit me on her lap while she revised old latin scriptures & tried herself at egyptian hieroglyphics.

that’s why sometimes tombs & churches murmur their secrets to me. they tell me stories about the afterlife & how, if demanded gently, fire can caress the soul the way water strokes the curves of an overflowing vase.

they find it hilarious that we make a big deal out of our own end.

when all there really is, is an everlasting void.

- @skinthepoet