Rosanne's Lounge

It is only just september
and already leaves turn
golden, orange and fall
next to green apples, tart
in the ukrainian sunlight
outside the window the wall
of a metal train carriage
white number 406354
before we slowly glide
soundlessly away. 50 years
ago, the train might
have held people, hopeless.

what constellation of rack, curtain,
rail, sand, window, light,
movement, lurch, netting, space
will hold for you the sense
of this place, 19 hours in,
14 to go.

I mine myself for emotions
I have travelled too far
and am anchorless in the eddies
light on water
tiny wooden villages
in green fields
sunflowers

distress comes clothed
in biting winds
rushing crowds
toothless women
by the tracks begging
for grivna tossed from windows
moments and reactions
resonance

my own curator’s tag
is in a tongue I do not speak
object clear, context
entirely absent

rocking of the train
lurches from kiev
to bratislava, through
wet forest. this journey
is odyssean, unfastened.
i have swallowed the world
and lost sight of land.
i can hardly remember
where I began. this headache
must be indigestion, a feeble
attempt to process what
I have learned. squat houses
pass by outside my window,
sharp contrast to palatial
extravagances of cities.
gold restorations, fountains
built while others starved.
if I had to choose between
bread and circuses, I would have
said bread was the more important
for survival. in my capsule
24 hours of solitary, time is
surreal and there are no words
for the dingy yellow curtain,
the green plastic blind, the
dirty red carpet. we are travelling
the wrong direction, other than last night,
this landscape becomes familar
and the familiar will seem alien
on my return. borders and space,
languages. I am crossing histories
and hospitality. arbitrary lines
when the real divider is tongue.
we shudder to a halt next to wagonloads
of rock, next to elegant stations with
ironwork, in the middle of nowhere,
for pre-determined amounts of time
secrets of timetables, secrets of maps
across land, navigation and ancient paths.

i

reasons to die:
jewish, intellectual, queer
refuses to bow to authority.
whoever’s calling the shots,
i’m a goner

ii

forget forced marches:
my lame leg
would get me shot
within forty paces

iii

news from siberia:
the latvians report
stomach bugs, long queues,
one portable wooden bucket
and no toilet paper
in four years.

iv

forgive the cramped writing:
bark is hard enough;
ink ran out last year
and since my glasses broke
my nose is millimetres
from the text. It is
as close to you as I can get.

v

i don’t want to think
about the special treatment
I’d get as a girl:
long legs that open
when pushed. I’m not
exactly strong.

vi

then there’s the lungs:
my weak pair weren’t made
for breathing air this foul.
They seize up. I’m allergic to
wood mould. No joke.

vii

say i survived:
who’s left
that I loved?
all are broken.
me too.

from almost the first moment
it was kant heidegger nietzche
deleuze foucault you-name-it
we name-dropped it, argued over
relevance and challenged each other
to define terms, over beer, over vodka,
in the dank cabin, in the smoke filled bar,
under the clear blue sky on the deck
tennessee accents vying with aussie twang
lone bird witnesses miles from anywhere
horizon sharp lined, cloudless
debates over truth and nothingness

from there, it was an easy leap
to politics, family, hallucinatory journeys
through addiction and suicide attempts
music, always back to music, that touchstone,
rocky moments half-joking about national pride,
ideals and the harsh everyday, whitman
and fdr, jefferson and how it could've been,
but definitely isn't (stolen generations,
deaths in custody, oil wars, black men on death row,
fifty five percent of the population do not
want this president in power and yet:
florida, absentee votes, and on it goes,
the slow tide of change, the helplessness,
drowning in seeming futility)
then on to what it was really all about,
schopenhauer and genius, art and intellect,
poets and form and beauty against
a sunset ached with duskrose and tangerine
and burnt cinnabar and finally charcoal-smudged
musk fading into granite grey cloud,
while knees just touched and eyes met fleeting
then glanced away, casually deliberate.

and then we, he, i, climbed up
as high as we could go
top of the sky
wind-whipped tower cold
kissing and hungry, liplocked
shivering under an enormous sky
roils of dark cloud on blackest night
hiding moonshape and reflecting
the waves beneath and around us
and we tore at each other, eager,
warmth in bodies, warmth in touch,
the minimum of exposure, the sighs
and touch of thigh on thigh, and I
rose high, fell, echoing the boat below,
just so till we both shuddered and wailed
to the wind, no longer cold, and held close,
laughed in the vast wild air, moongazed,
crept back down, calm and quiet, no words at all
just the blissfulness of touch, his arms wrapped,
protective round my back like a shawl.

I am heat and sap-riddled
sluggish pulse through skinsack,
breath comes shallow, slow
there is steamheat in my drumthrob
chest, waterheat on my sweatbrow
feet hung limpid over tub-edge
taking in air like a dog's tongue.
the oceanfoam is like skyclouds
i soak in centuries: blueazure like mosaic,
indigo like dye, violet starshape leaks
lavender oils, creamy beads of sandalwood
and ylang kiss my surface like fish.
my soap is pale lilac, the scrubpuff alabaster.
phrases seep from my fingerlips
escape in the saunadamp swampmind
i am heat and sap-riddled, sluggish.

so, take this key. we are leaving tomorrow.
they say: sell everything. they say: there is nothing
here for you anymore, nothing but death.
i am stubborn. they will not have this house.
i was born in this house, its enclosures were
my playground as a boy. here in this kitchen,
my wife lights the candles as my mother did;
as her mother did. i have my books. i have coins,
cloths. not much else. i hope this letter finds you well,
my brother. i hope this key is not too great a weight.
one day, when it's safe, come back and open
the courtyards to the light again. there will be
ample water in the aljibes. from the terraza,
night times, when it's quiet, you can hear
the birds on the Tajo, distant, not so distant,
calling to each other, among the voices,
whispers in the bedrooms, admonishments
for errant children, laughter in moments
of forgetfulness, hushed quickly as memory
rushes in unforgiving. So empty, these streets
now. Ysaac and Shoshana, gone already. Miriam
and Yuçaf. Avraham. Well. The boys talk
in huddled conferences, planning rebellion.
Useless. Better to live, no? It's not as though
we haven't done this before, our people.
Too often, perhaps. South, this time.
Morrocco? Ironic, back to Egypt?
as for me, well. they will not have this house.
i am stubborn. we are leaving tomorrow.

rooftop shooting stars
the warm cream /yellow glow of lights from surrounding houses
the voices on the hot air
occasional breezes
talk of the left and power and language
and words falling in amongst light and smoke
wine and gazpacho, laughter
neighbouring televisions
intimacies
childhood memories of carrying water from the river
candle lanterns
hash and sweetness
the heat, always, the heat
new friendships and red wine
the old town, the stones and history
moments and moments and the night and the light
and the tops of distant cathedrals lit
labyrinth of rooftops and alleyways
antennas
voices carry in the night
voices on the wings of the wind
still heat, still deep heat
spanish and english and french
politics and pregnancy
the shift and sussuration of the night, of the wind, of the heat,
and so close the neighbours, their worlds
their whispered conversations too
lowering our voices for fear
in the darkness on the rooftop
lying back on cushions
searching for constellations
and always, the shooting star, the shooting stars
the heat, the dark, the shooting stars.

your old stones
cobbled alleyways
whisper under my feet
of turbaned men
hurrying to mosques
women in the markets
buying candles for sabbath
blood and screams in your
dungeons too, wars:
this harmony was hard won.

your old bones
quiet deep in the earth
creep under my senses
herb women and heretics,
mystic men and magicians.
sunlight streams between
the walls, calico-covered;
lanterns unlit, caramel-clear
and black iron framed,
twists of vine hang festive
from window to window.

your old tones
bells and cracked voices
sneak under my hearing
sephardic singers wailing
the muslims calling the faithful
to the mezquitas
angelic boys light as feathers
in the cathedrals.

we bury your hatreds in history
we bury your lives
we bury you
we bury you
all over the world
we play this out again
muslim against christian
jew against muslim
christian against jew
again and again and again
we bury each other
we bury each other
for a land
for a body
for a song

one day you will move cities
and we won’t know each other well enough
for you to tell me
one day you will encounter me
in the streets with a young child
and be saddened that you didn�t know
I’d had her. One day I will drive past
some street that we kissed in
and wonder why it feels familiar
but I won’t be able to recall.
one day, someone will tell me
they ran into you in a supermarket
and it won’t hurt. one day i’ll
be able to write poems about you
without tears welling so i can’t
see the screen properly. but not yet.

i want to write
about us, about intimacy
about intensity
and misunderstanding
i want to sob
uncontrollably
in your safety
but you are not there
i rub at my elbows
loose skin and wistfulness
wonder about the future
dwell on the soft comma
of a penis curled on a thigh
wonder if i will ever
again know some man
well enough that he
will lie draped naked
for me, calm, watchful,
loving. you loved
the softness of my skin,
i loved your kisses.
you said always it was
more about the mind
but i’m not so sure now.
twisted words lie
sharp as razors between us
silence and the threat
of eternity.