Two Windows
a poem from the bottom of a mushroom
For the last week, I’ve been living in Xalapa like a ghost lives in an empty house. When I do manage to leave my bed and rip my eyes away from The Scroll, it is to float around winding streets with little sense of direction and runny eyes. Sometimes, people see me and make the mistake of thinking me a whole man. But if you’ve ever tried speaking to a ghost, you know the moment of utterance reveals the illusion.
I’m heartbroken, and I’m not coping well. You’re supposed to cry until you feel like lifting weights. But I’m shit at getting the liquid out on my own, so I’ve resorted to sloth and distraction; for the past five nights, I’ve ordered my dinner delivery. I journaled two days in a row, but rather than leaching my sorrow and softening the spaces around my ribs, it brought me to a wall I still lack the will to climb, let alone the strength. The wall is part of the hole I’ve dug, and normally you would flood the thing with water of your own making and swim out, but as I’ve said, I’m terrible at making water.
And so, here’s this…a poem I wrote at the start of all of this. Except when I wrote it, I didn’t know I was starting anything. I thought I was ending something: agonizing ignorance, a long spell of mild yet destructive ego-maniacism, emotionally avoidant behavioral patterns, an intense and inward mushroom trip.
I have yet to finish writing the story of my San Jose del Pacifico trip—it shares that pile in my mind where so many other unfinished histories lie, a collection I frequently consider burning. But I will finish the thing; though, it’s now more confession than story, and I’m less certain how to write it.
But allow me to offer another consolation: this poem, written at the bottom of those mushrooms. I read it every day, as many as ten times, for several days after it was written. It’s not a very good poem, but it works on me like nothing else has. Thinking its magic had worn off, I stopped reading it after a few days. But I’ve come back to it again, and not simply because it offers the splinter of routine; I’ve realized that the magic of such things never really wears off—we just become nonbelievers.
And so—in keeping with my new auditory offerings—I’ve recorded a version of my reading it with that magic intact. It may take ten times or twenty to find it, but it comes back, and I begin filling the hole again.
TWO WINDOWS
with rain comin down
thinking out loud
talking to myself—
creaking like a house
laughing like a ghost, cute like a mouse
and two windows with rain comin down
three bouquets, all wild flowers
some dyin—
one white rose, angel perfumin.
two windows,
rain runnin through em
and there you are, just waitin
bein all sad, knowin
and hatin time
cause your fool lover blind
two windows, touchin
gettin wet with the rain running through em
(and i'll send you that poem
which means i've about stopped
runnin—
and you'll tell me if you've not
met someone, and then,
maybe well then—maybe
and I'll say I'm comin,
New York December then,
and you'll say when and if
you still haven't
met someone, and then
maybe well then—
mabye)
and two windows sun dryin,
one was wet and the other
was lyin—
now long later the liar
feels losin, no rain's comin,
on the way to boozin
just to crawl back shinin
after much what-iffin
askin, endin, the wonderin-wishin
but you said no,
and I said eek—
so back on home then, to crawk and creek
now rain's comin, and it ain't stoppin—
and blind lover liar with a fool's head
droppin,
still wonderin-wishin but rather be dyin
while i got breath.
where two windows were, only one is left