Les Connards de la Nuit.

So you got me riding this bike with God knows how many degrees below zero although it might not be that cold and I should be wearing a jacket. I can't barely keep balance and you keep yelling Allez! allez! Joel, on y va! and I yell back "yes, it's just je suis tres drunk, c'est difficil" while we cross some bridge and approach rather inefficiently to Bastille.
You point at something in front of us Regarde! c'est un vélo and I don't understand what's all the exciment about, you sound worried as well. There it is, somehow a bike is hanging from the border of the quay and you quickly got off your velib and take the rescuing task quite seriously, then I remember your little sister telling me about how you have saved many bicycles in distress in the past, it seems you keep on running into them like if it is some sort of fate of yours.
You are not drunk and I feel self-conscious because I am, I might do something stupid, you will not and I feel I have got extra care with everything. I think of all the signs I think you are giving me, I think, I think that maybe there aren't any signs and that you have never given me any confusing signals but I wanted them to exist.
Voila, La Bastille!
"Le Bastille?"
Ce restaurant s'appelle Le Bastille, mais nous sommes en LA Bastille
You ride with no hands and look at me, smiling at me and I yell at you "J'ai été amoreux de toi!"
Tu es amoreux de moi?
"Oui, et tu sais et tu as su toujours"
You stop, I stop, the streets are empty while the people celebrate or sleep or are having sex for the first time in the year, maybe in their lives.
Mais tu n'as dit jamais moi que tu
"It doesn't matter anymore, je ne t'aime plus... c'est plus tard"
Tu a dû dir moi que tu aime moi avant parceque j'ai t'aimé aussi
"Dit pas que tu n'as su pas! It was obvious, I was obvious, tu aurais dû entendre je t'aime, de plus je pense que tu as surtout entendu"
J'ai entendu, mais tu n'as dû pas
Now we look at each other, I tremble, I'm freezing and I think we both feel like crying a little, but we don't.
Je detest que il soit plus tard...
"Moi aussi"
Maybe we will hug.

and so it comes

He did not agree it was just a smell, because it had an undeniable flavour. He looked at his cup, sipped, and pondered about the possibility of tasting the cornflower, but its flavour was most probable to fade away quickly. Nevertheless, it was blue, and blue things, he thought, should not only have flavour but taste splendidly, like blue-marzipan or blue petals of any flower except, perhaps, oleander (although why should it taste poisonous?).
Every now and then a petal, or a leaf or two would find its way through the filters of the teapot to finally land on his tongue and he would press them against his palate with the tongue hoping to squeeze flavour out of it. He thought he could. And so he poured himself another cup with scientific accuracy, the teapot a scalpel, the cup a white mouse. He was serious about it for now it was time to think about the last weeks "events:" Monday night, an agressive yet delicate shooting star attack while waiting for a taxi; Wednesday lunch time, a horse in the frontyard; Sunday, a flying cat moving from north to southeast (it could have only been Antarticabound); last Tuesday, the iron fence behaved like a badly tuned T.V. channel -horizontally, not vertically.
The signs were many, the sudden reaction to Plath and cummings the previous afternoon was an example. He sipped again. The mystery was not that difficult to be discovered. However, this time something was not quite right for it was not like the other times, the horse was too shiny and stood there for too long and the minute shooting star had really blinded him. He needed to know if it was something new, or something different. Cornflower on the tip of his tongue. His mood could not have that influence, sometimes out of tiresome shadows passed by his peripheral vision. But he was fine now, and he had just hung up on the telephone without saying before that things were going pretty smoothly.
The tea and the thinking made him sleepy. He took a 5 hours nap.

Embarassment

my gum
hits it--
--my skin twitters,
and I recall how stupid I was in the first place
like to suck too much on the wooden popsicle stick
-the feeling is the same-
but now's aftermath includes external punishment
unintentional painful blushes
because blood rushes twice in my face,
on my behalf, on yours as well.

So I look comfort on windoshopsthatIhavenevercared
and the potential denying you of something
that you reassure me you deserve by right

and I comment on teapots
while you pretend what I did never happened
and I point at stationary with hidden watery eyes
while you agree that pens are better black.

____ March 2004

THE HALF-WAY HOUSE
____ March 2004

1.
Dearest:
And finally, I took a decision, not the most sensible one but it's the only choice I truly have. Before I continue, I wanted to show you the cards that Aine read for me a couple of months ago when I asked her about you, she made a celtic cross? You know I don't really understand this, it was always Aine and you the ones who were involved in this things that I at most find interesting:
1.-Interest: 2 of cups // 2.- Obstacles: Ace of cups // 3.- Knight of cups //4.- Thoughts and Feelings: The Sun // 5.-Past: 6 of cups // 6.- Immediate Future: 6 of swords // 7.- Attitude towards the question: Queen of swords // 8.-Influence of other people: 5 of swords // 9.- Hopes and Fears: Ace of Disks// 10.- Final Result: 9 of disks.

THE HALF-WAY HOUSE

2.
So I don remember what it meant exactly but I do remember that what she said made perfect sense in that moment and I wrote down the spread because I thougth that you would be able to make sense out it. Blunt, it was very blunt.
And now that we have seen that play together the other thursday (Pinter's my favourite) I think this is my line to disappear. I don't know for how long, you know things are difficult for me to cope with and it takes me time so I decided I would step for as many months as it shall be necessary.
As I have already told you (in the pub, while playing pool), this is not easy for me and is not doing me any good and the truth is that the first time we talked about it (November?) I used a lot of understatements from which I apologise, and by attraction what I really meant was that I'm head over feet

THE HALF-WAY HOUSE

3.
and the thing is that with you everything ocurred backwards. Generally I don't made friends with people I fall in love with and I don't fall in love with friends. But your case was different and when I think about it, it seems nothing but logical that I ended up in love with you. You became very important in no time, you did not move from my side when I was going through it and I was fragile then and you helped me making me constant company

THE HALF-WAY HOUSE

4.
and I noticed that you did it with honest and real worry. Sometimes, when I think in those days I'm sorry that you met me when my mind was at its weakest point and I think "It would've been so much fair if you had met me sane" but then again, I would not be sane if it weren't for your help, your company and love. Believe me when I say that there is a big possibility that I owe you my life.

THE HALF-WAY HOUSE

5.
So, after all what you have done for me, it is not only understandable but it is only fair that I fell in love with you. And while I'm writing this letter and exchanging lyrics with you by e-mail I feel sad that I shall not see you anymore in a long time. I will miss you horribly because I love you as a friend, because you make me a little bit happy and because I know you love me too.

THE HALF-WAY HOUSE

6.
But I lost this battle of willpower and I cannot anymore hold this feeling of sickness that feel when you don't correspond me, when I think of the chance that you are with someone else and it is not fair for you that I become and obstacle for you and it is not fair for me to go through this pain, I didn't choose to fall in love with you after all but that doesn't make that I stop feeling that way towards you.
And so I disappear, writing on napkins with crummy eyes, in love and heartbroken.

THE HALF-WAY HOUSE

7.
I'll keep on loving you, but I need to start loving you without feeling like shit about it and not being in love with you anymore. I promise I'll do my best, I truly love you after all. Time to wave goodbye now.
I'll miss you, I love you and I will never ask for forgiveness for doing so again.
Please, accept this hug.
Tristram.

Before Twelfh Night...

...I had not admitted yet that something inevitably broke when you stayed and I did not and the being that you did not care about the pieces nor the object before it broke and now rather that picking up and sweaping the shattered glass we have rather ignored completely the existence of the vase -because, because a vase is a lame object after all? - but I'm cutting the skin of my feet and I certainly do not like bleeding and you certainly do not like stains on the carpet but I blamed you when it was my fault and I blamed myself when it was yours so Laurent had to die, he had to die because you would not and I do not desire to go before you do, so Laurent was the unfair, not sufficient, unproporciate scape goat that stands for (_________) it's funny how the previous one was for you as well even though it was for her too and so many months before who would have thought that Amsterdam was that pub really where I do not remember if I drank something or not
I admit it now, it broke, and it's been a month or two since Ash Wednesday and a week or two since I decided to erase the grey cross from my forehead, it should have never been there, because I am not sorry, I hate that it had to break but there's no more regret than the one I feel for even being sorry about the whole thing.