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NYC Limits - 2 - Ostia [February 17, 2008]

NYC Limits - 2 - OSTIA

Ostia, late in the morning. After the rain, on the beach, the haze is a cloud of children. Cora sits slacking at a round tripod hanging on the bums at the front porch of a bar shack. On the table a Dior and a Razor. Every five minutes the phone beeps. Cora is going the distance on a puffy roasted croissant filled with thick chocolate cream. Vanilla snowflakes are everywhere: on her fingers, lips, on the black tank-top and on her knees.

A rainbow-striped smack back from a fishing trip hits the shore. Two men are dragging over the sand amidst a crowd of supporting kids, then dock boxes are dropped. Fish is being sold on the spot, at the shoreline, to a growing audience of passers-by.

Cora is fixed on the scene, reminded by the sugar to give her crescent a take.

A morsel falls down splashed on by the phone a quarter of a second later while she detangles from the chair's frame and runs inside the shack. Everything is covered in sand. The flip-phone opens and rings.

Cora grabs a bottle of red wine from under the counter, backs into the light with a victorious cheer, takes a sip then digs the bottle half into the sand, picks up the flashing phone and answers.

- They only trust their Tamiflu. I closed for 28 millions, including hedging on most of the hairy assets. That makes me not exactly happy -

At the other end a soothing voice is crossing legs, moisturizing lips on a glass of Gordon's and sharpening on an ice cube.

- We're liquidating, not taking a bet. Is a good price. When you don't have to give a blow to each of these morons with the package you buy my smile. I'm waiting for you here. Enjoy the weekend.

Struck by warm acquaintance and thrown back into early afternoon, she looks deranged on the leftovers with plans growing to get drunk on the way back to the Hotel. With the Italian allies in the black and a second bottle of wine fit in the suitcase Cora is swiftly getting into her wheeler and on the road to downtown.

The phone, discharging on the passenger's seat, rings several times unanswered. On the fifth call, blinded by the sunlight on the rearview mirror, Cora answers the phone.

- He called?

- I would say yes, yes - She laughs.

- He was here early morning. I'll see him at 3 pm.

- I will most definitely get jealous. Are you going to fuck him?

- Have to think about that. He's quite focused.

- I know and that's my problem. Now I just want to get wasted.

- Take care

Drops the phone ends under her seat and for a while stops beeping. Sticks Dior on and speeds up to her Sheraton's cube. Out of the Mini it's 4 pm and she's framed into the security cam with bright green eyes wide open. Lipstick half gone, half a guesswork, busy with the memories of her conversation and on the stairs to her place Cora opens the suitcase against the door. The red wine is barely fluttering in the bottle.

Posted by lck at 10:01 PM

NYC Limits - 1 - Keren Surrender [February 15, 2008]

NYC Limits - 1 - KEREN SURRENDER

Keren sits alone on the blue leather couch by the window. It’s early morning. She is brushing her long white hair. The sound of suspensions cracks panning from left to the right of the room. Keren is wearing a white Waffle and is barefoot. She is loose, content.

Jimmy Dean sits legs crossed on the vinyl, office-dressed, Reebok Flip and rolled-up sleeves. A thin aluminum suitcase lies by, open and empty. Jimmy looks confused, waves hands. Although he is talking to Keren he is expecting her to ignore him.

- I thought it was the right thing to do. You know me. (whispering) I could not tell she was about to turn me down. Not like that. Not like that -

Nailing on his flap…

- You know, you were the one with a crush on her, I really… last week in Paris, both, did she smile and say anything to you? Or was it the market roller-band and hotel rooms? Did you sleep at Clad Sweeney?

Jimmy pauses, pushes on his legs up to the wall then hangs starring at Keren in silence. Keren is done brushing and is now turning to Jimmy with and idle face.

Jimmy walks to the blue couch and sits next to Keren, opens arms to embrace the cushion behind him and takes a deep breath. Keren turns to the man then speaks, marking every word.

- We were somewhere. Paris… or something. Had more sex than we usually get from these trips. She did not turn you down. You sank the whole affair yourself -

Keren is starring, awaiting, slowly tracking Jim’s breathing and wavering her hands on his lips and neck. The hairbrush has been dropped. Jimmy is amused by the girl’s sudden re-calibrating, legs crossed, toes pushing.

- I could not pronounce her name. We dug the metro and wringing the sadness in cinema-scope coloring at 3 in the morning, a gorgeous, sun-kissed Friday morning like now. I wished you were with us on the up and downs of the vodka outbreak. I really missed you -

- Up next Riverside, Jimmy. Coffee is at 3. Cora is in Rome on the Citi swaps with UBS and stuck up to Sunday. I have an audition in 40 minutes at Atkinson. Just don’t call her -

As the noise from the awakening cloud of chemistry outside starts pouring in Keren disappears.

Jimmy staring at the camera relived, his muscles relaxed. There are after all so many things, he thinks, for him to love.

Posted by lck at 09:09 PM

Coney Island [January 25, 2008]

On the shine of a sunset beach
bicycles on the boy's birthday
fast moving shadows
scratch a twist of stars
in the sand the young boys
pull to picture the scene
now you tell me
breathing and laughing thru your skin
in waves between magazines the rain
the sunshine stumbles in repentance
and though I'd like to laugh
at all the things around us
in the harsh light of day
somehow back though the wavering weeds
like a paper plane in the sun
I'm diving

Posted by lck at 11:10 PM

Feathers - 8 - Quartet [January 01, 2008]

Look around the scene
everyone is dancing
some dead some imagined
some hit the street.

Crack in a motel room
stretch out your hands
like a compass
your practical balance.

Widen to gather
a fine world
the glint of a light
touch-tone your way out.

Posted by lck at 12:36 AM

Feathers - 7 - Sweet Sweet Candy [December 31, 2007]

The sea to its leaves,
the waves to their darkness.

With no ease down
the old language sleeps
through the fire
on a breath
on a step
a subject where
repetition
a body walking
each night into the minutes
trying into existence
one must be careful
a thing or gesture
not attached to where
even darkness and night
have disappeared.

Someone should know
we're no longer human.

Posted by lck at 02:33 PM

Feathers - 6 - Lux Nox [December 30, 2007]

They live on the fourth floor.
When they look out their window all they can see is the other window.
When they awake in the darkness on the phone is the other phone.

They don't know each other's names.

A wire-mesh barrel rolling every 30 seconds
at certain hours
between nightfall and morning.

Beyond the pane is green grass holding back.

He says people make him feel strange.
He knows all the old songs.
He’s fifty years now.
He has moved ahead.

The Winter’s Wheel tramples our singing.
Work out.
Don’t quail.

She stands along the pale dock-light.
She puts on some make-up.
She looks back at those forks along the way.
She has nothing to lose.

The old of the new world's steeples
against the window
nothing will know that you are gone.

What they survived.
What they could not live.
What they were.
What they stood with.

What by their lights is time to.

She didn't want to do
nothing
with anyone.

There's no anger or patience.

They live on the fourth floor.
When they open the door all they can see is the other door.
When they awake in the darkness the hand that shakes is the other hand.

Posted by lck at 02:28 PM

Feathers - 5 - Jesse [December 29, 2007]

Whenever I write in numbers
to seal the water triple cap off
the drowned girl beneath
lifts her head by a slow degree

falls about her knees
like buds upon broken glass
the hands above the head
to get my headphones on.

Whenever I write in numbers
to black with civilization
these phantoms at their innocent gasp
lift glue upon my language run the route fall

in a tethered pose
like Jesse
the dark roses two years later
to a leaf of social furniture.

Whenever I write in numbers
to form a common breathing passage
the river that there alone we followed
lifts the art of each sung through

in walking paper
like the carrying skin
the vineyard stands
to trace our footsteps.

Posted by lck at 02:14 PM

Feathers - 4 - All I need [December 28, 2007]

There's a hush in everything you do
a feeling across the words
 the waves conflected exert
wandering droplets of

your smile
touching places
within this teasing beauty
inside remains

short of the left side
a touch to stifle your steps
which leaves me feeling
you is all I need.

Sitting long after midnight
the eye begins to see the night
Julie and Candy
flowing with birds

after the rain stops
the landscape is another scene
and every rock drifts
but cannot leave

in the broad day
we come at last
which leaves me feeling
you is all I need.

Posted by lck at 02:10 PM

Feathers - 3 - Free-fall [December 27, 2007]

Who we are and all they are
you know right here now
on the board but what comes first
comes along unnoticed

Sunda, Ayla, Reena, the little embrace we must
get to know the young air darker
as we rip for every ground
all that is missing we'll not know 

where I imagine her long fingers
have only ourselves to sell
 and if it grows holding its warmth
 to get the hang of it over the free-fall

and then dying off the nail shooting
at each passage
we have never risen
 from a slant of the evening sun

I picture her here
cracking over the details in her lap
I picture her here 
and no matter how long in grace.

Posted by lck at 02:08 PM

Feathers - 2 - To Walk, to learn [December 26, 2007]

As the tides of human emergency
hitting the dive onstage
rejoice without hitting away
alive at both ends

I have begun
ten minutes past eleven
to refrain from representation
and retracing that it is another sixty minutes

as blood runs out like water
and circumstance irradiates the playground
bordering the cracked walks I walk
astounded

in the snow melted
shivered in the new wind formations
how clouds crumble
silently drifting

before I know
all I want to do
the clock moves to twenty one
as through complicity confidently forgotten

you separate the dark from the dark
to signal forty-four
the trees buck and quake
by the magnetic hectic bang

I know you do not know who I am
engaging downward from
warlike talent downcast glance
every torrent burns.

Posted by lck at 06:45 PM

Feathers - 1 - The Santa Rally [December 25, 2007]

With the Santa rally well underway
behind the long arm of the law,
the crowd has it and the man in the straw hat stands in the red marquee under the ballroom.

The seasonal demand cycle,
the nocturnal pulse,
one need never leave
the front-run it and perhaps get smashed.

What happens to the O-ring when you're wrong,
talking in the tongues again
a band of light across a blade of grass,
when it was never

by a single gesture.
We would move back,
dancing too close,
arriving at the wooden gates.

It courses through the cables laid for,
it mounts to the candles and beats
tender,
blue like the sky

and changes all the time.
Involved with the surge,
in the one-day dialogue meeting,
confines of New York to grab the greenie.

Enjoy some other sign of my will that people do not,
entirely specific of breathing in the spring air,
I am always looking away
or again at something after the photo gallery.

Not yet 10 p.m.,
Ms. Greenhouse takes a drag of her cigarette,
smiles away sweetly.
I wrap myself in slanders.

Posted by lck at 07:48 PM