Forshadow Oblique

The Ages of Allure

              My life is filled with peculiar and beautiful women. The bandwidth of the adjective beautiful being such a source of divisiveness its fate cannot be adequately conveyed in seemingly any body of analysis or artistic medium, subjective does not begin this predicament, indeed subjective seems a somewhat lazy and cliché description. It is not ambitious enough. Beauty being so shifting and indescribable, wavering and varying, one seems in error of calling it “in the eyes of the beholder” for this still seems to imply a sort of invisible yard stick, akin to a cosmic particle which is not seen or measured, but simply believed to exist from inference. One could also deduce from that idiom some men are somehow better than others for being attracted to women who are seemingly less flashy or chic than others, but what difference exists if a man sees a siren or nymph in the face of the simple and modest? To this man boring and disguised Cinderella is Cinderella—sans dressing gown and pumpkin carriage.

These hearts all jelly and spades in your hands and you are all laugh and smiles in the eyes like it’s a daydream and picnics.

I mean, Every Day is the same. I wait for a mash up queue of the sun and fog while pounding some chardonnay—awaken from that haunting old dream of the city, which is to say any city (it’s all the same), and navigating the organs of a complex animal made of steel and pavement. Then scheme a way to conjure up my friends’ attention, but they’re always bored with problems, and the result is a slow loft into a rusty canyon…on and on to a nowadays.

When you think back to your twenties and recognize they comprise a good ten whole years, which is how many actual days?, you wonder where the romantic is—where the lovely and mundane is not. Where to intertwine the beautiful bows of childhood dogma and crushes with the laughable fortunes of adult news and brunches, and by doing so, untwine them; label them all a mess and forget the whole escapade.

The days are just too damn long―and what a ridiculous show anyway! We all just want the true simple and maybe a taste of monotony, as long as it’s laced with a healthy RX of nostalgia accompanied by that significant other, be it man or canine.

You laugh so lovely, and I’m trying to remember your face despite being pulled away by a coworker, or some stranger on the street (asking for directions), if only I could tell him he’s on the right street but he’s deaf and my friend is an impatient misanthrope so I wonder why he wants a friend anyway, and I’m trying to remember your face, or your laugh, when this is all I see: a crack in the sidewalk, telephone in my face, his sport coat, my friend’s impatient cringe, and my own awkward directions; but I really am trying to remember your laugh, or your face.

If only the statues would strike a new pose, and the roses would get up and move a foot over, the cars could go opposite—and we’d all read right to left—or whatever, but it’s the phone, the face, a negative grunt to my miscalculated orientation, and you and your lovely laugh.

I can think on and on like an extension bridge, with some good wine on and on, or back and back like a relay race in rewind, or back and to the side, or on and back and to the side like a jockey. But at some point you lose sight of what you were pondering, the subject of inquiry, and if so, probably some source of truth, wouldn’ya say? Even with our blessed faculties of the heavens’ touch, we do have our limits. Limits and limits—borders and treats—treaties and pacts; for the now, but more like manifestos which are kinda ephemeral. Almost a fad. So I think with the jug of vino but I don’t know—I don’t know and I know you; and that’s all I feel.

So when I speak it’s only you speaking and I’m just reciting what you told me a long time ago, when I remembered, and the person thinks it’s all me—and I’m this ingenious charmer—but really I’m not thinking anything just replaying a memory from a while back. You’re the funny genius, you see, but you’re long gone and I don’t know whatever happened to the nowadays because they just seem like a joke, and this is just another funny episode in the everyday song…my wife, my kids, they’re all grown and I remember you.

But I don’t remember what was real, and if I really remember your laugh or not; or when it won’t matter anymore. Even then I was delirious, already thinking about leaving you at the coffee table, and you just talking about your life, and me knowing we’ll never be together, and what your voice would sound like in my mind in years to come. But I’m just sitting here in my apartment smelling the wine, and the record is spinning around the prong like the charges of an atom―and we’re all like little dots orbiting something―planet and sun, moon and earth, me and you, and it’s funny that I know it.