Let me be your heroin/e

Perhaps it was lack of sleep, or my frustrations with where-I'm-not, or maybe it's just your garden variety PMS (You notice how these three letters explain away most of our weirdest moments? "See, hon? It's all chemical."), but I was feeling woozy and lost empty inside without the usual spinning-room complement of my vertigo attacks.

So I tried to look for an explanation, but it wouldn't come. Tried working backwards, too: experimented with different explanations hoping it would lead me to identify whatever lack it is I feel but can't locate. It didn't work either.

So I gave up, and tried to forget about it: replied to the backlog in my Inbox, slept for four hours, called my best friend. But in the background, that nagging was still there--like that pain below your shoulder blade during days you know you've smoked too much. So I looked for a word to describe how I felt, and ended up with a whole excerpt:

(Tangina, ang haba ng introduction, ano?)

*****

Heroin/e
by Cheryl Strayed

Three years after my mother died I fell in love with a man who had electric blue hair. I’d gone to Portland, Oregon, to visit a friend, seeking respite from the shambles my life had become. I had thought that by then I’d have recovered from the loss of my mother and also that the single act of her death would constitute the only loss. It is perhaps the greatest misperception of the death of a loved one: that it will end there, that death itself will be the largest blow. No one told me that in the wake of that grief other grief’s would ensue. I had recently separated from the husband I loved. My stepfather was no longer a father to me. I was alone in the world and acutely aware of that. I went to Portland for a break.

I'll call the man with electric blue hair Joe. I met him on his twenty-fourth birthday and drank sangria with him. In the morning he wanted to know if I’d like some heroin. He lived on a street called Mississippi, in North Portland. There was a whole gathering of people who’d rigged up apartments above what had been a thriving Rexall drugstore. Within days I lived there with him. In the beginning, for about a week, we smoked it. We made smooth pipes out of aluminum foil and sucked the smoke of burning black tar heroin up into them. "This is called chasing the dragon!" Joe said, and clapped his hands. The first time I smoked heroin it was a hot sunny day in July. I got down on my knees in front of Joe, where he sat on the couch. "More," I said, and laughed like a child. "More, more, more," I chanted. I had never cared much for drugs. I’d experimented with each kind once or twice, and drank alcohol with moderation and reserve. Heroin was different. I loved it. It was the first thing that worked. It took away every scrap of hurt that I had inside of me. When I think of heroin now, it is like remembering a person I met and loved intensely. A person I know I must live without.

The first time they offered my mother morphine, she said no. "Morphine is what they give to dying people," she said. "Morphine means there's no hope."

We were in the hospital in Duluth. We could not get the pillows right. My mother cried in pain and frustration when the nurses came into the room. The doctor told her that she shouldn’t hold out any longer, that he had to give her morphine. He told her that she was actively dying. He was young, perhaps thirty. He stood next to my mother, a gentle hairy hand slung into his pocket, looking down at her in the bed.

The nurses came one by one and gave her the morphine with a needle. Within a couple of weeks my mother was dead. In those weeks she couldn’t get enough of the drug. She wanted more morphine, more often. The nurses liked to give her as little as they could. One of the nurses was a man, and I could see his penis through his tight white nurse’s trousers. I wanted desperately to pull him into the small bathroom beyond the foot of my mother’s bed and offer myself up to him, to do anything at all if he would help us. And also I wanted to take pleasure from him, to feel the weight of his body against me, to feel his mouth in my hair and hear him say my name to me over and over again, to force him to acknowledge me, to make this matter to him, to crush his heart with mercy for us. I held my closed book in my hand and watched him walk softly into the room in his padded white shoes. My mother asked him for more morphine. She asked for it in a way that I have never heard anyone ask for anything. A mad dog. He did not look at her when she asked him this, but at his wristwatch. He held the same expression on his face regardless of the answer. Sometimes he gave it to her without a word, and sometimes he told her no in a voice as soft as his shoes and his penis in his pants. My mother begged and whimpered then. She cried and her tears fell in the wrong direction, not down over the lush light of her cheeks to the corners of her mouth but away from the edges of her eyes to her ears and into the nest of her hair on the bed.

I wanted it and I got it, and the more heroin we got, the stingier we became with it. Perhaps if we snorted it, we thought, we’d get higher on less. And then, of course, the needle. The hypodermic needle, I’d read, was the barrier that kept the masses from heroin. The opposite was true with me. I loved the clean smell of it, the tight clench around my arm, the stab of hurt, the dull badge of ache. It made me think of my mother. It made me think of her, and then that thought would go away into the loveliest bliss. A bliss I had not imagined.

There was a man named Santos whom we called when we wanted heroin. He would make us wait by the telephone for hours, and then he’d call and instruct us to meet him in the parking lot of a Safeway. I sat in the car while Joe took a short drive with Santos in his yellow pinto, and then Joe would calmly get back into the car with me and we’d go home. On some occasions we went to Santos' house. Once he sat in his front window with a shotgun across his lap. Once he clutched my thigh when Joe left the room and told me that if I came to see him alone he’d give me heroin free. Another time he held his baby daughter, just a month old. I looked at her and smiled and told Santos how beautiful she was, and inside of me I felt the presence of my real life. The woman who I actually was. The kind of woman who knows the beauty of a baby, who will have a baby, who once was a baby.

This is an excerpt. The entire essay can be found in The Best American Essays 2000, edited by Alan Lightman and Robert Atwan.

(Cut-and-pasted from http://www.cherylstrayed.com. See her other work, The Love of My Life, from The Best American Essays 2003, too.)

Turnabout is fair play

Turnabout
aaaaTo a Dad Leaving Home

I have left you many times.
The first, perhaps,
was when I began to root
for a different basketball team,
or argued that Dominique Wilkins
was better at the dunk
than Michael Jordan.
Or was it when I listened
to damned noisy music
and started to slam doors,
muttering that Vedder
didn’t scream as much as Callas.
The next was on my birthday,
when I insisted
on a mean mountain bike
and lessons without training wheels.

But it was in college
that distance became real.
I didn’t have to be back
at my apartment by midnight,
or two at the latest.
I learned that cigarettes are good
with beer. I fell in love—
it wasn’t with you anymore.

You, on the other hand,
have always been home. Waiting—
first, for my dreams to come true,
and then yours. Now

I want to cling and cling—
bow to His Airness, dish the dirt on Grunge,
lock every door against your own quest—
but I remember you said
that to learn to ride a bicycle
takes two people:
One to pedal like crazy
and the other, to let go.

*****

Something I wrote recently, in an attempt to sound more generous than I actually am.

When in doubt, quote other people.

Because love is often not love, and freedom not freedom, and all these words should come with government-issue quotation marks, but then you ask yourself, "Really, what's the point?" And maybe I'm just angry because we look up to Fox Mulder because he's cute, period, and sad that his truth out-there, has become elsewhere--a too-small star we don't even bother to search for during those quiet, lonely nights when we can't sleep.

And because we look for different things in our heroes...

Here are two poems:

Leaving the Motel
W. D. Snodgrass

Outside, the last kids holler
Near the pool: they'll stay the night.
Pick up the towels; fold your collar
Out of sight.

Check: is the second bed
Unrumpled, as agreed?
Landlords have to think ahead
In case of need,

Too. Keep things straight: don't take
The matches, the wrong keyrings--
We've nowhere we could keep a keepsake--
Ashtrays, combs, things

That sooner or later others
Would accidentally find.
Check: take nothing of one another's
And leave behind

Your license number only,
Which they won't care to trace;
We've paid. Still, should such things get lonely,
Leave in their vase

An aspirin to preserve
Our lilacs, the wayside flowers
We've gathered and must leave to serve
A few more hours;

That's all. We can't tell when
We'll come back, can't press claims,
We would no doubt have other rooms then,
Or other names.


Hard Rock Returns to Prison from the
Hospital for the Criminal Insane
Etheridge Knight

Hard Rock was "known not to take no shit
From nobody," and he had the scars to prove it:
Split purple lips, lumped ears, welts above
His yellow eyes, and one long scar that cut
Across his temple and plowed through a thick
Canopy of kinky hair.

The WORD was that Hard Rock wasn't a mean nigger
Anymore, that the doctors had bored a hole in his head,
Cut out part of his brain, and shot electricity
Through the rest. When they brought Hard Rock back,
Handcuffed and chained, he was turned loose,
Like a freshly gelded stallion, to try his new status.
And we all waited and watched, like indians at a corral,
To see if the WORD was true.

As we waited we wrapped ourselves in the cloak
Of his exploits: "Man, the last time, it took eight
Screws to put him in the Hole." "Yeah, remember when he
Smacked the captain with his dinner tray?" "He set
The record for time in the Hole--67 straight days!"
"Ol Hard Rock! man, that's one crazy nigger."
And then the jewel of a myth that Hard Rock had once bit
A screw in the thumb and poisoned him with syphilitic spit.

The testing came, to see if Hard Rock was really tame.
A hillbilly called him a black son of a bitch
And didn't lose his teeth, a screw who knew Hard Rock
From before shook him down and barked in his face.
And Hard Rock did nothing. Just grinned and looked silly,
His eyes empty like knot holes in a fence.

And even after we discovered it took Hard Rock
Exactly 3 minutes to tell you his first name,
We told ourselves that he had just wised up,
Was being cool; but we could not fool ourselves for long,
And we turned away, our eyes on the ground. Crushed.
He had been our Destroyer, the doer of things
We dreamed of doing but could not bring ourselves to do,
The fear of years, like a biting whip,
Had cut grooves too deeply across our backs.

There are things I'd rather do...

I'd Rather Dance With You
Kings of Convenience

I'd rather dance with you than talk with you
so why don't we just move into the other room
there's space for us to shake, and hey, I like this tune

Even if I could hear what you said
I doubt my reply would be interesting for you to hear
because I haven't read a single book all year
and the only film I saw, I didn't like it at all

I'd rather dance than talk with you

The music's too loud and the noise from the crowd
increases the chance of misinterpretation
so let your hips do the talking
I'll make you laugh by acting like the guy who sings
and you'll make me smile by really getting into the swing

I'd rather dance than talk with you

*****

My friend was complaining about a zemi (Japanese Engrish for seminar. Sounds German, doesn't it? "Ve hav ze zemi today. Zis is korekt, ja?") he has to present a in a little while. Something about some algorithm or other, where he has to present proofs, analyze algorithms and conclude something. (I'm a regular fount of information, aren't I? Check it out yourself, you lazy bastard.) Anyway, here's plan A: his presentation is supposed to be two-and-a-half hours long. He plans to bullshit for four-fifths of that time, and leave just enough time for the proof-analysis-conclusion part. Sothathe'llappeartoknowhissubjectwell. And no time at all for any questions his sensei might have. Oops, there's the bell. What's plan B, you ask? He's practicing a twelve-minute song, a capella.

Not unlike that space-filler above, eh?

But it's true. I have stuff to do, but I'd rather go dancing and drink whiskey. Who's with me?

*****

Happy Independence Day! If we can be happy about our state of "independence." But. I don't want to get into that. Maybe it's better this way: I wish everybody independence! And the only independence that matters is that we can say what we want, make our own decisions, and pursue what we really want, without being afraid or apologetic. And if we don't know what we want, then I wish for the freedom to know what it truly is, instead of just waiting for someone to point us to something, somewhere.

It's not mine, and that's why it's sooo gooood...

Tenderness
aaaaStephen Dunn

Back then when so much was clear
aaaaand I hadn’t learned
young men learn from women

what it feels like to feel just right,
aaaaI was twenty-three,
she thirty-four, two children, a husband

in prison for breaking someone’s head.
aaaaYelled at, slapped
around, all she knew of tenderness

was how much she wanted it, and all
aaaaI knew
were back seats and a night or two

in a sleeping bag in the furtive dark.
aaaaWe worked
in the same office, banter and loneliness

leading to the shared secret
aaaathat to help
National Biscuit sell biscuits

was wildly comic, which led to my body
aaaaexisting with her
like rain water that’s found its way

underground to water it naturally joins.
aaaaI can’t remember
ever saying the exact word, tenderness,

though she did. It’s a word I see now
aaaayou must be older to use,
you must have experienced the absence of it

often enough to know what silk and deep balm
aaaait is
when at last it comes. I think it was terror

at first that drove me to touch her
aaaaso softly,
then selfishness, the clear benefit

of doing something that would come back
aaaato me twofold,
and finally, sometime later, it became

reflexive and motiveless in the high
aaaaignorance of love.
Oh abstractions are just abstract

until they have an ache in them. I met
aaaaa woman never touched
gently, and when it ended between us,

I had new hands and new sorrow,
aaaaeverything it meant
to be a man changed, unheroic, floating.

The Drought

Say, if I told you,
I’m listening to sad songs,
songs of departures
and I’m drunk and I’m alone.
Would your chest fill, too
as if with swirling winds
of a storm; your heart,
will it clutch in desperation
as before the tearing?

I have tried and tried,
and I wanted to tell you:
I want to wake up beside you again.
Or, I want to feel the rough
stubble of your cheeks on my skin.
And, I don’t want to forget
the sound of your laughter.

Inside, my chest
is an ocean of tears,
rolling and pitching and never still.
But my eyes are dry,
and my throat is parched.

And we are both silent.

Nostalgia

Here, take a seat
with your grandmother and listen
to her breathing:
Does the rhythm sometimes falter?
And with it your heart too, stutters.

Fast forward to the time
ahead. Days, weeks, months, years
when you sit on this same bench alone.
Suddenly your heart roars in protest,
and you have to stop the hands

from grabbing her; clutching her
to your side to make her stay!
But I tell you, listen.
Her breaths whisper, Be calm,
I am here yet with you.

Take this time
now. Imagine yourself
Odysseus on the shores of Ithaca.
The journey must occur.
And home, home will always wait.

Different Versions

I wonder why it comes as a surprise: It's difficult to write when you've just come from a workshop.

I guess the critic's voice is still too loud in your head, or you hear your poem crying everytime you try to touch it. (Oh god. That did NOT sound right.)

But still. You did something wrong the first time (or even on the seventh, eighth version...) and you need to take a step back before you can get a handle on it again. Or so this is my excuse.

I've been re-writing, kind of. But only those poems that were not tackled during the workshop! Haha. So here's a couple: I think the older versions are buried somewhere in this blog.

*****

Forgetting is an Erosion

So here, now, let me paint you
a picture: There is a fountain.
The girl, her head bowed
as the coin flips in the air,
is in the middle of a wish.

The morning is blue and gold,
and a slight breeze is stirring
the leaves of the trees.
On the corner, the baker’s
wife sweeps their storefront.

With this picture, know:
I am the unseen baker,
as I am the wife.
I am the girl; I am the breeze;
I am the fountain and its eternal flow.

Yourself, re-paint this picture
in your head, in your heart
for I leave all this to the rain.
But as the colors wash
and bleed to nothingness,

picture the coin, that glimmer
of promise suspended,
the wish spoken, though yet unfulfilled.
This is for you, what you want most
to last forever.


How to be Cold

How cold begins: a mass
in contact with a hotter entity.

How at a touch, at an instant
heat is transferred, absorbed, sucked
into the frigid body
desperate for equilibrium.

How my fingers steal
the warmth from your cheeks.

How, at that touch
you flinch
and register nothing else
but the difference in temperature.

*****

There you go. One good thing about the end of the workshop, though, is that for a moment, you can call a timeout to all the criticizing. If only you could get the voice in your head to shut up, too.


PS. This is the ultimate cop-out. I had a poem called Different Versions which got butchered in Dumaguete (I was called a culprit for this one! I think its earlier self was published as Stories or something in this blog). Both need a major overhaul. Instead, I re-write these other two poems which were never tackled, and had the nerve to title this post "Different Versions." Haha. Sometimes I kill myself. Somebody slap me!