blue sweater. gray skies.
<< 6:06 p.m. - Wednesday, Nov. 20, 2002 >>
Read some translated poems of Pablo Neruda and felt bewildered. His words fit so well, a drifting poetic reflection that I have yet to achieve.

CLENCHED SOUL

We have lost even this twilight.
No one saw us this evening hand in hand
while the blue night dropped on the world.

The world is dropped into my lap unexpectedly like so many other things. I stretch the truth and stomp on it till the meaning is lost. I write for poetic melancholy. Feeling out the unfathomable memories, and trying to recreate them.

I have seen from my window
the fiesta of sunset in the distant mountain tops.

Sometimes a piece of sun
burned like a coin in my hand.

I wait for things to happen, and am angry when they surprise me. I knew my grandfather was going to die, I knew my aunt would die. Sadness never ached in my cold heart.

I remembered you with my soul clenched
in that sadness of mine that you know.

I want someone to understand me automatically. I am too lazy to tell my tale of silence. But does it matter anyway? I feel as if I�m exaggerating a pain that I never felt. I�m making myself sound colder than I am.

Where were you then?
Who else was there?
Saying what?
Why will the whole of love come on me suddenly
when I am sad and feel you are far away?

I see myself in a picture of black and white. Grays excluded. I cannot find moderation. All or Nothing.

The book fell that always closed at twilight
and my blue sweater rolled like a hurt dog at my feet.

Always, always you recede through the evenings
toward the twilight erasing statues.

I picked the heart of a dried sunflower and walked with it for a time. Over streets crawling with cars, and people raking lawns clear of golden leaves. It is here on my table. Waiting. A pin will pierce its stem and be looked upon with an admiring eye. No longer touched.