The
Poet is talking to himself in the apartment next to mine. i
can clearly hear him speaking in prose through the glass I’m pressing
against the wall. it’s not very good prose I might add.
he’s mad.
not angry, insane.
i watched him shed
his clothes piece by piece along the sidewalk this morning. he
left his socks hanging on the shrubs just outside the building. i
suppose sadness kept him from entering. he was naked, well, half
naked – he left his boxers on. How could I help but stare?
i suppose he went
round and entered by the back door.
The Poet is pallid,
eyes red. he doesn’t sleep; he reaches deep into his mouth and
scoops out limited words whenever someone passes him in the hall.
evidently this building has become a language trap. he once spoke
in diamonds but now he uses crude alphabet sounds, misery crowding the
violins out of his words.
The Poet seems to be
tumbling into emptiness since The
Singer left.
The
Singer arrived in a cloud of chanel no. 5. she had a
limousine body, a champagne voice, and she moved into the apartment on
the other side of mine. she’s the sad beauty men toast in supper
clubs and bars. you know the type, deep cleavage and red lips
wrapped around an alto vibrato.
i suppose it was
inevitable that The Poet and The Singer would meet. after all,
they were only separated by one apartment, mine. walk down the
hall and it was her apartment, my apartment, his apartment – all on
the right. the longing arcing from the poet’s apartment to The
Singer’s apartment was a hungry force.
at a glance, The
Poet and The Singer appeared disparate, but before her curtains were
hung they were cozy and kissing, fondling and fumbling with their keys
at – first her apartment, then his. the noises i heard through
the plaster and studs unwittingly evidence the forces that bind them.
together they had a kind of dash.
i listened at my
walls to the rustling of angel wings all spring.
then came august.
what i am certain
of: the hovering sun made everyone hot and prickly that tuesday. i
was on my balcony watching a summer breeze push woozy clouds across the
sky when i hear The Singer bawl, “you bastard.”
i froze.
and in that moment I
imagine the tenants in the building freezing as well; old lady alma in
the apartment at the end of the hall stops, hands submerged in a
sink of dirty dishes. joe mechanic in the apartment across from
mine clenches his pee so the lemon-colored water falling into his toilet
stops (a nigh to impossible task), the landlord, mr. greeley, muzzles
his poodle’s perpetual whining. we become manikins.
we – all of us –
each of us – everyone of us – listen to The Poet and The Singer
quarrel.
“yougoddamndog”
The Singer skillfully projects from her diaphragm.
i move to my door.
i’m peering through the peep hole – all i see is the oblong shape of
The Singer, one hand on her slouch hip. my front door becomes an
instrument, vibrating chords of angry music.
“you love your
damn words more than you love me? those silly poems mean more to
you than what they’re supposed to be about.”
“i do” The Poet
un-poetically ripostes.
“fuck you!
fuck your poetry!”
living things hold
their breath for the razorblades in the air. inhaling feels like
bleeding.
“but my poems are
about you.”
“you love the idea
of me more than you love me.”
I can see The
Singer’s runaway face as she hurls all that is in her at The Poet,
“fuck! you!”
i can see this is
semantic acrobatics: The Singer needs to hear The Poet say he loves her
more than his words, The Poet needs to know The Singer loves his words.
they collide midway, plummeting without a net.
the next morning
there is a riot of perfume and sequins in the hall, all that remains of
The Singer’s gowns hustled away in the middle of the night like the
toys of doe-eyed children in a too sudden divorce.
presently, I am
here, listening to the vacancy of song in The Singer’s apartment and
the death of poetry in The Poet’s apartment. The entire building
is wrapped in cotton quiet.
i interiorize the
soundlessness.
like a frog in a pot
of bowling water, it dawns on me too late: there are no couples in this
building. we – all of us – each of us – everyone of us
– live alone. this realization is a thorn pressing into the pith
of me, a wound that won’t seem to heal. days pass, lonely.
and in the lengthening hush, lingering in this life without poetry and
song becomes unbearable. the aloneness chokes. i resolve to
become my own assassin.
i tenderly loop the
nylon, wrapping spiraling coils, tucking the end of the rope through the
top eye, a noose. it collars my neck perfectly.
kicking
the kitchen chair, i am the hanging fruit of isolation.
the weeping rafters
hold the rope while i coordinate my kicks. the evening becomes
more hushed than i’ve ever heard except for the pinching noises of the
noose – a kind of poetry, a sort of song.
there was an affair
in this building.
