On the first hour past midnight, the unravelling begins. a subtle sort of metamorphosis if you may.

a man rekindled, sheds off his skin by the light of a dying lamp and wanders restlessly (secure) within the infinite chambers of his mind.

the days of the quill are dead. as are our unborn children.

Tangibility has lost purpose; And the greater velocity of "motion" has brought with it, a subdued sense of commemoration; redress.
Artistic vanity celebrates itself lesser as the quiet softened rhythm of private woes are cast aside for the brute, inarticulate, collective numbness of our present times.

one commemorates on the odd occasion as one fears the loss of truth.
(for we're cunts; whores; sinew, flesh, bone, cathartic impressions of our (once) former selves: we trade honesty for comanionship and never truly feel the pain in those hearts closest to us)

There were no lies between me and you
You said nothing of what you knew
But there was still something in your eyes
Left me helpless and paralyzed

GOD IS DEAD

He has been replaced on that customary makeshift pedestal by deeper, darker human insecurities:

designer labels; pharmaceutical extravaganza; furnished walk-in closets; softcore porn; private therapists; youtube podcasts; digital dreams...

A soft rain hums however, while the fluorescent nightmares subside and the creature he has become slips quietly out of sight. In its place a dank, punjent sort of self loathing surfaces momentarily. and he is reminded of the novelty of loss and regret.

xxx

the northern suburbs of metropolitan melbourne is always in a state of perpetual twilight. for now, it is the home i've chosen. There's a quiet backyard gone dizzy and outgrown; and a humming sense of inarticulate, suburban annonymity.

i'm awake and breathing.
I hold a quiet evening job that requires minimal effort and pays the rent.
Nights always burrow deep, edging on the luminous periphery of dawns (that intimate hour of in-betweens slipped carelessly in a dream). And during these hours of inanimate silence, smoke rises from a fresh pot of ground beans, as i write draft after draft after draft. (i've thrown away the scotch. i need my wits for i wish to speak as i have never before. this new found sobriety has brought with it, preparations for a lifetime of memory and solitude.)
I'd imagine that the business of compromise is less familiar to me. i've never written like this before.
i've written hundreds of pages these past months. I've lost myself to obscurity and surrender.
I've fallen in love with the rhythm of sunlight and the winds and the traces of dust waltzing in a whirlwind. 

I wish to continue to be the creature that i am.
grotesque.
self contained.
articulate.

Please forgive my intrusion.
It wasn't quite meant to hurt.

Pain wasn't the intended currency for this exchange. 

the lie wasn't intended to scathe irreparably; we were never meant to have been forgotten. You and i.

As i speak, Isaiah shifts mirthlessly on a seat in a musty third class train compartment making his way through the ghosts in his mind; the winding landscape of europe; scandanavia.
I once told him he bears an uncanny resemblance to a forgotten sixteenth century poet. (regal repertoire; high nose; strong anglo saxon features; unmistakable intent in a pair of dark green eyes).
Resemblances were always incidental to us.

I watched him as he killed that intent; as he compromised providence for peace. He's dead to the world now. On that fateful evening in a musty, abandoned cathedral, we cast aside our shared histories for a less complicated version of reality; truth. We chose to re write the passage of moments survived.
I doubt i'll see him again.
Some people... sometimes... simply choose to dissapear.

I miss the quiet company of old friends.

I think of them often.

i write of their woes when i cant bear the thoughts of my own.

"Whatever dies was not mixed equally"

If you're a friend... and if i;ve been distant lately... i apologise.

i too, have been lost to this world where i've found no peace.

Its been the dawning of the twenty fifth year of my life. And I've been busy. With my own private preparations.

...forgive me.

In the darkness that surrounds me now 
there is no peace of mind
Your careless words undo me, 
leave the thought of us behind
You could give a million reasons, 
change the world and change the times
Could not give me the secrets of your heart 
and of your mind
In the darkness that surrounds me now 
there is no peace of mind
Your careless words undo me, 
leave the thought of us behind

OFFER YOU MY PULSE...

well i've been reading old letters again.

weird, strange, funny, melodic, chaotic headspaces inhabit odd occasions when these melbourne summers flare up a pre winter rage before tapering off to the quiet deshevelling of winter hours; of moments; of tree leaves.

shanon's cd's melted in her car cause it was out parked out in the heat. "kings of leon". good record.

i never carry an umbrella when it rains. i dont sit by a fire to warm off anymore either.

i suspect however, that i have a rusty old pocket knife (lodged in a crevice somewhere) that the old man gave me (or did i steal it?).

I worry about things.  

simple things.

i worry over tram fines and broken guitar cases and spilled chardonnay.

over rings that dont fit or keys i no longer need. numbers that i'll never dial again. or thoughts that i'll no longer share.  

i worry over bad hair days and dirty socks and undone laundry and shameless tears.

i trample carelessly over dismantled cultures and abandoned friendships... 

I remember insignificant losses whispered to the tiny alcoves of midnight cities when those boys and girls in skanty (skanky) skirts and dancing shoes poured out into the urban ridges into the wee hours of a fateful saturday night in a dazed and drunken outburst.
stripping out of their clothes; their minds; their skin.  

to yell.
to sing.
to dance.
to fuck.
to play.   

"you crawled into my bed that night
like some sort of giant insect
and i found myself spellbound
at the sight of you,
beautiful and grotesque and all the rest of that bug stuff
bluffing your way into my mouth
behind my teeth, reaching for my scars-
that night we got kicked out of two bars
and laughed our way home"

i sometimes worry about the old man.

ex marine; avid golfer; old friend.

sometimes, i do.

he's got a bit of a bad ticker. and he smokes a lot these days.

i haven't seen him in years.

i dont remember his smile.

we do postcards sometimes. and christmas eve phone calls.

i suspect he fires off a few rounds off his remington ten shooter on 4th of july weekends.

i suspect (hope) that he thinks of me. Sometimes.

I worry í'll get a call in the middle of the night one of these nights while i'm still coming down from an emotional acid trip and hear the news of his untimely expiry. That i'll regret not having told the old geaser that i gave a fuck.

i worry. i worry. i worry.

For now though, i've got a bottle of local beer sweating by my laptop.

Present time is 2:52pm. it says so on the clock.

But certainly so, there are times... when the paramter of time becomes as irrelevant and past lovers.

moments resurface and assume the periphery of human longings.

"that night you leaned over
and threw up into your hair
and i held you there, thinking-
i would offer you my.....pulse
if i thought it would be useful
i would give you my breath,
except,
the problem with death
is that we have some hundred years
and then they can build buildings on our only bones
100 years, and then your grave is not your own
and we lie in out beds, and our graves
unable to save ourselves
from the quaint tragedies we invent- and undo,
from the stupid circumstances we slalom through"

.....the periphery of human longings.

ive always thought of this basic need to become.

its imminent.

in each and every one of us.

regardless of the troubles we face... or the regrets that plague our sleepless nights..... it feels to me... as though each and every human being attains what they wanted from their life.

if there is regret... it simply echoes the truth that their desires had contracted poverty... not deprivation.

its feels quite alright today... knowing that my desires aren't poor.

and that i have it in me... to attain what needs to be attained.

the challenge remains... that of the days gone by.

... its juvenile... to try and forget.

so i bite my lips.

i need to move on.

you're right... to not completely accept the absolute lack of meaning in the worlds that i write about.

who am i kidding!

i dont think i ever really beleived it myself.

yes.

yes there ARE things that matter.

there ARE things that are important enough to live for.

most of us... just spend their entire lifetimes... looking ... and searching... and hoping ... and needing.

"and i realized that night that the hall light,
which seemed so bright when you turned it on,
is nothing-
compared to the dawn
which is nothing-
compared to the light
which seeps from you while you're sleeping,
cocooned in my room-
beautiful and grotesque,
resting"

 ... and hoping ... and needing.

 ... and hoping ... and needing.

 ... and hoping ... and needing.

well i've said my piece for today.

i'm back in present time for now. and i smell a bit. so i'll take a shower and drink another beer and put on a clean top and a pair of shorts and flips flops and strut out into the mid day heat to go see someone i care deeply about.

reminiscence will be postponed till further notice and happiness will oddly be restored somewhere... somehow... in some insanely intangible way.

i'll leave you however with the words of an ancient letter that began all this banter on this quiet sunday afternoon.

words i wrote ages ago... words that still (sometimes) hold dear and true.

____________________________________________________________

It all starts on a warm summer afternoon.

At a café on Brunswick street in Melbourne.

Or perhaps memory serves me inadequately.

Perhaps, it started a million years ago.

Perhaps it began in the labyrinth of the cosmos.

In between the spaces stranded ‘neath untouched constellations in hazy summer skies.

Spaces stranded that bequeath a sense of reason midst the shadows that leave human imperfections gaping ajar.

I like to dream. Of “beginnings”. Ever-so-often.

But it would be remiss of me, to fail to add a simple truth; I cant recall when things began, anymore.

Or where things really end.

A child with blonde locks in her daisy hair struts up and down on a couch next to mine; eager; unaware.

Across the table to me, a woman clutches her just born boy with a tenderness that belies the mundane of her weekday morning paper.

Closes her eyes for but a mere second. Sighs a quiet sigh.

Feels to me as though there are sea secrets in her eyes.

Memories of dreams unquenched; promises unkept; memories of a quiet life lived and accounted for.

Quite efficiently, she places the child back in his pram; straps him safe; moves on with her day.

I wont see her again. (and even if I do, it wont quite matter much.)

Maybe it really begins in the eyes of those children. Maybe the spaces beneath those candy-silver irises assume the meshwork of that elusive space where human dreams are born. Borne.

Maybe.

For now, (just for now) I’d love to imagine, that it glitters restlessly in the eyes of a young woman in a waitress’ apron strutting the narrow café passageways with mugs of café au lait and toasted bagels.

I woke up alone in her bed earlier this morning with a vague crystallized memory of her having kissed me near to dawn on her way to this very café where I’ve just swigged my third bottle of local brew near to midday on this quiet Friday afternoon.

I find, that there’s a tenderness in my heart reserved for this quiet young woman.

Hence, for here, for now… I’d like to believe that human dreams begin (,glitter) in those gray-brown irish eyes of hers that are still young enough to glow with a frenzied love and curiosity for this brilliant human life.

A faint whiff of aromatic tobacco lingers in the quiet afternoon air.

Dreamy old blues classics waltz in the stillness that bundles beneath that layer of steady din of café anecdotes as these lingering, forgotten hours gently trudge on by.

Time-woman smiles tenderly at me and sighs a sigh of resignation and sits down on a corner couch next to mine. Together we witness that assortment: the smiling eyes; the concealed sigh; tingling forks; fine china; … as a rustling bustling world about us mingle on, blissfully unaware that time has indeed (maybe just for a little bit) frozen.

(Like icicles on shards of glass – pre spring – patiently bidding a turn to melt away into nothing. Once more. Once more. Once more.)

Perhaps it all DID start a million years ago!

(When the old gods dipped a blazing sword into the waters of an ancient ocean and a few drops of water fell back when the blade was pulled out; forming the isles of languid human desires)    

Or maybe nothing ever really DID begin.

Just lay there stockpiled … redundant inventory, carelessly due for a stock-clearance summer sale.

(Tops; household goods; designer labels; Christmas trees; forgotten letters; severed loyalties; unassumed sorrow… Life’s impromptu garage sale on Sunday, somewhere off the outskirts of the western suburbs; bidding time; smoking cigarettes; fidgeting; impatient…)

The currency of loss, of reason, exhausts me; on most days.

And whilst rare occasions find me, on most days.

And whilst rare occasions still glimpse at me wrapped up in a bundled cozy afternoon nap … my eyes dream still of a lost denied childhood of dreams and promises.

“You can’t fight back tears that weren’t ever meant to me” a heart sighs.

“You can’t lose something you never had”.

(beginnings… ends…)

© Zawad Rahman, 2008

All rights reserved

remember the day i quoted the words of a song... and i felt reminded. there was this beautiful place in your heart where things made sense to me...

" Duchokhey amar,
 tomari maya
 akaaki prohore
 fire aashe bar bar

 Ridoye amar,
 Tomari chaya
 Ghum hin raate
 ... fire aashe bar bar "

...... just thought i'd let you know...  that i truly appreciate
this... wonderful woman you've become...
And I'll forever be by your side
a friend ... in times of need... or in times of joy or pain... or
fear... or loss...

in life...
and in lack of life...

in hurting...
and in rejoicing.

in needing...
in wanting..
in bleeding...
....feeling........... concealing...
... in your darkest dreaming...
... careless healing.


... i'll be here.
i'll never "dissapear".

merry christmas.