PASSING FOR NORMAL

Timeless...

Seasons have changed. Have they not?
It snowed and it rained
And it rained and rained
Through the years
My heart remained
With you

Do you not remember?
My Turkish coffee out on the balcony
A tea for you…

You will always be like that
A marguerite in a field of roses
Your light shines through your paleness
I read between your lines
I do not undermine… The language of silence
Do not be petrified by the flick of my lashes
Drawing a lazy interest
In you…

I wore my age backwards and stretched out
My back on the chilling beats of your heart
Do you not feel the change?
Walking down the years…

Longing for you
Before we even met
Young hearts and passion and
The world ahead.
A black box. An Arabesque fountain
Where you danced for me
Drunk with life
Drunk with pride
A red bag. A red roof
An isle that carried words
Lyrics and charcoal lines.
Our room furnished with
Faces and stories
and Callas
A triangle of confusion and tension
And walls of lies
Gods of pastries and cherries on ice…

A glass of white and Italian accents and skinny shoulders
A box of pictures and pages of folded memories.
Some lines you wrote for me
Secretly
And lines I wrote for you
In my smiles

A cabin in a midst of fluff… the world reduced to bluffs
Stone-arched curves, where we carved our voices
A well of forgiveness where we wished for light
Shoulders thickening in the storms
Your body lying on my Bordeaux
Sharing a bath of pains
Cinnamon pine for Christmas and seeds of pine for poison
Our waves at the dock
And he sings the blues
While we invent the rules
Of tenderness

A broken engine… A broken back
You tears wiping away my awkwardness
My elbow warped behind the shelves
And your eyes on me
Telling him to leave me
They said a love was born
They still say it today
And we laugh…

A brown bag on the 101 steps
In the wilderness… with a chuckle
Some broken notes and a tango
Your shoulders became thicker than mine
Do you not realize?

How I held a sentence just enough
Just long enough
To hide your fate behind its letters
To paint your days in five letters
Short of a lifetime
To wane your fears with a short embrace
Warm enough to dissipate your uncertainty
Hesitant enough to keep you packing
And leaving
Have you not understood?

Wooden floors the smell of cement the smell of gas
The smell of exhaustion
The sand washing our worries
The bench on Pigale is where we met
The bench of luck is where I left you
And we always meet at benches
And my eyes will always meet yours
Behind the glass
Of moving wagons, of cold steel,
Of the rushing hours….
Do you not hear the echoes
Of the past?

And when you finally open that black box
When you learn to read my lines
And when I flip through your pages
Long enough…

Go wait for me on the balcony
My coffee will be next to your cup of tea


powered by ODEO - (Astrud Gilberto/Gentle Rain)

(pic. Wilfrid Hoffacker)