only a phase, these dark cafe days

after i've bawled my eyes out for roughly an hour, i groggily went out of my room, my mouth sulky with so much sugar due to the meringue pieces i've been consuming while listening to the ramons and being clinically pathetic.sweets never really do compensate for desolation, no matter what the hersheys ads say. if anything, they make you feel weaker, more pliable to assaults.

so i forced myself to sit in front of the TV and just flipped channels. there was nothing good on, as usual. as i sat there, feeling so out of sorts i started crying again, i realized that this was definitely the saddest year of my entire life.

i am more lost than ever.

******

last wednesday, i watched the prestige with a couple of my officemates. funny how i finally identified with a lead character and she ended up hanging from a ceiling in a room full of birds.

******

this afternoon,i looked in the mirror and did not know who i was.

******

i finally realized that i have no right to be so smug about where i am right now. every action that i'm against may very, very well happen to me so i should just keep my meddling mouth shut.in this day and age, when everyone else seems to find solace in strangeness, it's very risky to throw stones.

******

Two poems by Yehuda Amichai that are fitted for the nearing occasions:

Memorial Day For The War Dead

Memorial day for the war dead. Add now

the grief of all your losses to their grief,

even of a woman that has left you. Mix

sorrow with sorrow, like time-saving history,

which stacks holiday and sacrifice and mourning

on one day for easy, convenient memory.

Oh, sweet world soaked, like bread,

in sweet milk for the terrible toothless God.

"Behind all this, some great happiness is hiding."

No use to weep inside and to scream outside.

Behind all this perhaps some great happiness is hiding.

Memorial day. Bitter salt is dressed up

as a little girl with flowers.The streets are cordoned off with ropes,

for the marching together of the living and the dead.

Children with a grief not their own march slowly,

like stepping over broken glass.

The flautist's mouth will stay like that for many days.

A dead soldier swims above little heads

with the swimming movements of the dead,

with the ancient error the dead have

about the place of the living water.

A flag loses contact with reality and flies off.

A shopwindow is decorated with

dresses of beautiful women, in blue and white.

And everything in three languages:Hebrew, Arabic, and Death.

A great and royal animal is dying

all through the night under the jasmine

tree with a constant stare at the world.

A man whose son died in the war walks in the street

like a woman with a dead embryo in her womb.

"Behind all this some great happiness is hiding."

A Pity. We Were Such a Good Invention

They amputated
Your thighs off my hips.
As far as I'm concerned
They are all surgeons. All of them.

They dismantled us
Each from the other.
As far as I'm concerned
They are all engineers. All of them.

A pity. We were such a good
And loving invention.
An aeroplane made from a man and wife.
Wings and everything.
We hovered a little above the earth.

We even flew a little.

******

because forgetting, even for a moment, is a wave of vindication:

Drinking Song

Silvia Curbelo

In every half-filled glass a river

begging to be named, rain on a leaf,

a snowdrift. What we long for

precedes us. What we've lost

trails behind, casting

a long shadow. Tonight

the music's sad, one man's

outrageous loneliness detonated

into arpeggios of relief. The way

someone once cupped someone's

face in their hands, and the world

that comes after. Everything

can be pared down to gravity

or need. If the soul soars with longing

the heart plunges headfirst

into what's left, believing

there's a pure want

to fall through. What we drink to

in the end is loss,

the space around it, the opposite

of thirst, its shadow.

******

All I know of you is in my memory; All I ask is for you to remember me. -Suzanne Vega, Rosemary

******

it's best to end things with joni mitchell lyrics:

THE LAST TIME I SAW RICHARD

Joni Mitchell

The last time I saw Richard was Detroit in '68,
And he told me all romantics meet the same fate someday
Cynical and drunk and boring someone in some dark cafe
You laugh, he said you think you're immune, go look at your eyes
They're full of moon.

You like roses and kisses and pretty men to tell you
All those pretty lies, pretty lies
When you gonna realise they're only pretty lies
Only pretty lies, just pretty lies

He put a quarter in the Wurlitzer, and he pushed
Three buttons and the thing began to whirr
And a bar maid came by in fishnet stockings and a bow tie
And she said "Drink up now it's gettin' on time to close."
"Richard, you haven't really changed," I said

It's just that now you're romanticizing some pain that's in your head
You got tombs in your eyes, but the songs
You punched are dreaming
Listen, they sing of love so sweet, love so sweet
When you gonna get yourself back on your feet?
Oh and love can be so sweet, love so sweet

Richard got married to a figure skater
And he bought her a dishwasher and a Coffee percolator
And he drinks at home now most nights with the TV on
And all the house lights left up bright

I'm gonna blow this damn candle out
I don't want nobody comin' over to my table
I got nothing to talk to anybody about
All good dreamers pass this way some day
Hidin' behind bottles in dark cafes
Only a dark cocoon before I get my gorgeous wings
And fly away
Only a phase, these dark cafe days.