_abril_ about a bout of budbursting

 

Orchard in Blossom [detail]
(April 1889) Van Gogh

The transcendent wonder of regeneraion.  Not yet fully awake, the man pries himself from the naked entanglement when the woman mutters "the front door has blown open."  Gropes along the hallway, the soles of his bare feet unpleasantly chill on the talcum-coated floorboards, around the weathered rainments of unsorted winter laundry, past the dark portals (two bedrooms). Everything still unreally real, the early light falling in unaccustomed corners, bookshelf edge as sharp as a hacksaw, the sullen coatsleeves on the communal coatstand.  His hand on the latch now he sees the branches rising toward the just-starting-to-bluen sky, the topological intermingling of solid wood, branch and dewy dawning sky.

A new day.  Blossoming in the open air, an ecstasy of effervesence.  Driving to the city past fields of [those] high-wattage trees bespotted in tiny buds. Tiny buds shaped like hearts, opening into petals stretching as if to grasp the all of the light, each new leaf lurching out. Lurching up to leave no gaps in the shadows beneath.

Amidst the towering buildings downtown "g-d this sunlight lowkey slaps" says Pete then pauses mid-rant for breath, looking down the barrel of his big nose to the phone on which he's texting about broken bonds, shorted bonds. That big bloodhound nose that bigots have for more money. That big nose sniffing its way out from the ivy [league]. Where are we? We three, then we are joined by my sister and my nephew.  We five. I take a hand as we approach the crosswalk - keep hold after we're through. My hand is the warmer. Differences among bodies... Inside a wide-windowed coffee-house we collect ourselves from the noise and the wind, order bread and honey tea.
Sirens blare, "the surly sullen bell give warning to the world"
My voice is full of strangers. My voice is deranged with desire. Outside the starlings, confused, invisible, but audibly alive.
Cornsilk hair, she bites her lip and frowns off to the side sulkily. She has infected me, not in the sex without a condom sense, although I wouldn't put that past her.
"What are you working on?"
I pull out my notes on Jewish mysticism's concept of Language as God's Tree, ripening toward consummation, before returning to Nothing.

Slowly we perambulate down the hall lined with paintings of the long dead, faces gazing into mirrors, some curatorial sleight of hand, a show called Reflections.
"Can we go now?" asks my nephew petulantly.
So concerned with how much time will be left that we forget to use it. My sister, endowed with endless compassion, suggests viewing the fish.  "Why do they call them walleye?"
outside someone is shouting, who was it who described this city's streets as a calamity of love? The crowds swarm the vast grid of streets, the wind howls against the honks and whine of cars, lights flickering.  Where is the wind going? Wither go these unreal millions? Of course, each is as real as me, but they are all center of their own stories, as I am of mine, differences among bodies, and so the countless crystalline fissures grow in complexity, incessantly ripening as a flower stretches out to everything from nothing.

At the venue my agent has asked to meet me I am disapointed to learn that it is open mic poetry night.
Miss Kai has brought out the spring collection of blouses, and her fleshy arms burst out from this one, made of the same pimply texture of a plucked chicken skin. For months now she has been hoping I'll eschew the anonymity and publish as myself.  Cresting a righteous yawn, I narrowly catch her eye and note that she seems to require something of me, seems to be silently asking me for something, some tacid understanding perhaps.
"I won't be reading" as if it's a matter of settled opinion.  It's not exactly an elocutionary artform I practice. And routine humiliations need not substitute for daily life any longer. We're past that, some scar imprinted deep in the roots from whence we burgeon.  The arduousness of winter has ended.  

Music so loud your thoughts stop trying to yell. She takes me by the hand and we winnow past shrill voices to a hall where muffled drums through the walls like the a metaphor for imminent annihilation.  We smoke our way out, like an emotional trapdoor.

The conventions of the medieval chanson d’aventure dictate that spring is a time for communion with nature, good cheer, and lovemaking.  So candid, desirous, vulnerable, bodies meeting each other, leveling out the differences among bodies, in fits and squirts and starts, it's not perfect, but like perfection it's something worth striving for. I feel down to my toetips that I am on the precipice of great achievement.  The horizon is beginning to look like land.

"Why don't you let anyone know the real you? Are you afraid that they'll judge and hate you?"
"No, I just consist of secrets and lies." 


In the pre-light of morning, mirth returns to the old frozen playgrounds now shrouded by darkness, the burgeoning leaves emanate, life germinates, replicates.

I grope my way back to bed, slowly and quietly, in case she is still asleep. Her flowerlike softness, a dream worth preserving.