March 2012
“
You’re wondering if I’m lonely:
OK then, yes, I’m lonely
as a plane rides lonely and level
on its radio beam, aiming
across the Rockies
for the blue-strung aisles
of an airfield on the ocean
You want to ask, am I lonely?
Well, of course, lonely
as a woman driving across country
day after day, leaving behind
mile after mile
little towns she might have stopped
and lived and died in, lonely
If I’m lonely
it must be the loneliness
of waking first, of breathing
dawn’s first cold breath on the city
of being the one awake
in a house wrapped in sleep
If I’m lonely
it’s with the rowboat ice-fast on the shore
in the last red light of the year
that knows what it is, that knows it’s neither
ice nor mud nor winter light
but wood, with a gift for burning
Kingdom of Bears
They say Madrid is a city with nothing
(not Madrid but Madrith—a distinction)
nothing but a river
Sunning in the jellied green of Buen Retiro
I heard bemused whispers of an American student
Whose body turned up in the Manzanares river
(A later conclusion: an accident)
Between smoked ham and manchego cheese
I realize I already knew it could not have been malicious
A city with nothing—but
Then what are the sprawling pilgrims of buildings
Trembling marble tickling a sleeping azul sky
Twelve months later in a different heat why
Do I think of the drowned boy and not Napoleon’s
Slight Frenchmen in mints and muted lavender
Eclipsing the caged cake of the Royal Palace why
Not Sundays on the train into Atocha reading Hass
Waiting to be hypnotized by the Garden of Earthly
Delights and Goya’s incontinent madness eating itself
On the walls of his house, in the walls of a blistered salon
That was only ever meant to be a museum why not
The choice between solid, strong coffee or wine like
Molasses the choice between pleasure and pleasure
At eleven in the morning or two in the morning
Federico you said you were tired of these new crooners
Who had no dead lovers to sing of
“There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.”
—Ernest Hemingway (via sirmitchell)
Zou Bisou Bisou
Gillian Hills
Gillian Hills | “Zou Bisou Bisou”
Z makes me feel like I am capable of accomplishing anything. If only I felt that way when we wasn't around, too
