Eternal Sunshine of My Spotted Mind

On the steps of
St. Patrick's Cathedral,
helplessly exposed to the sun
and suffocating heat,
her breath leaves her.

Her body spills
to the ground
directly in front of the
heavy side doors.

Her heartbeat slows
to nothingness,
and her brain fires
one last message:

“See? I told you so.”

(c) 2007 by Vvn G

 A little girl with short dark-brown hair,
 wearing a homemade dress,
 walks into a classroom for the first time
 and discovers an alien lexicon
 in the mouths of more than twenty
 other children,
 who stare at her when
 she fails to reply in due course,
 and the teacher,
 who willfully ignores her.

 She struggles to understand this
 unfamiliar arrangement of linguistic elements,
 this odd syntax, these abstract units of a
 phonetic system vastly different from the one
 she knows so well.

 Her enormous dark-brown eyes
 are wide with curiosity,
 and just a little fear,
 because now the others sneer at her,
 begrudging her inability to comprehend;
 so she concentrates,
 focusing on the teacher’s voice,
 noting the facial expressions,
 listening to the pitch, the inflection,
 recognizing just a smattering of words
 that sound akin to her native tongue,
 and so defines just a few words for herself
 in a singular, and desperate, effort to
 make tangible the whole of
 what this teacher says,
 of putting it into a context
 she can digest.

 Kon-nek-shon...
 yes, she thinks, this sounds like conexión,
 and surely they must mean the same thing...
 and in a move that ultimately allows her to conquer
 this English that sounds so harsh to her ears,
 but also wins her the scorn of her fellow pupils,
 she opens her mouth and, like a parrot, whispers
 as quietly as she can,
 “Connection.”
 Again:
 “Connection.”
 Again:
 “Connection.”
 No.
 It sounds different in her own mouth...
 the accent...
 the teacher doesn’t have it, of course.
 One more time,
 listen,
 and repeat:
 “Connection.”
 That’s it.

 Without realizing it,
 the little girl with the short dark-brown hair,
 wearing the homemade dress,
 was not only learning a new language,
 but also developing her ear for music
 by clinging to the rhythmic sequence of sounds,
 and drawing parallels between this foreign language
 and her own.

 The tiny warrior triumphantly
 seizes this first day of school,
 and thus forges her little path
 toward a world of literature she
 would soon begin to devour,
 an unlimited supply of novels and plays
 that would explode her vocabulary,
 trigger her analytical skills,
 and catapult her levels upon levels ahead
 of the very shits who put her down on that first day,
 and each day thereafter, all because they knew something
 she would come to know far, far better than them.


 (c) 2007 by Vvn Gmz

My anguish is green,
purple,
and black,
an ugly bruise
from a deadly blow,
like something delicate struck,
with a blunt object,
repeatedly,
without mercy
and with all might,
right here,
on this
hollow
organ.

Look at it.
I know you don't want to,
and this, I speculate, is
but one reason you keep me
at great distance.

But you should look at it...
not so you feel anything,
such as guilt or pity or the urge
to apologize in person rather than in
an impersonal electronic mailing
(heaven forbid I warrant something better
than that; I only let you into my home,
and into my body),
because you won't feel
any of these things,
or have such an urge,
and I doubt you can--
for me, that is.

No, you should look at
this portrait of my anguish,
raw,
ugly,
deformed,
and instead of dismissing it
as the pathetic melodrama
of a stupid girl who should just
snap out of it,
or pretending it stops existing
if you merely turn your back on it,
you should recognize it
as the work of your own brush
upon the coarse covering
of my heart.

If only I could run away
from it as you do,
if only I could set fire
to the canvas and watch
the flames suffocate
your artwork--
but, of course, this is
impossible
for me,
the canvas being
vital to my
existence;
but this, being your work,
deserved a better audience from you;
you should have looked at it,
instead of running away,
both times,
before the paint had a chance
seep and stick to the
fibrous membrane.

(c) 2007 Vvn Gmz

 A smoky gray haze covers
 Night, as if it were a sheet of
 velum over the usual dark blue hue.

 The orange glow from the streetlamp,
 indistinct, seems more like a realistic
 rendering in conte crayon, smudged with
 precision and skill.

 I breathe in deeply and revel in the delightful
 breeze that wraps around my body,
 the ghostly hands of a lost lover,
 who longs to squeeze,
 but can’t...
 or won’t.

 One last look at the sky,
 so I can have the memory
 burn in my mind, and take it with me
 to my empty bed tonight.

 (c) 2007 by Vvn Gmz

I saw MacBeth in Central Park last night
beneath the threat of thunder
and a light but persistent rain
that quickly coated my long dark hair and folded arms.

And, though my eyes swept the entire stage and
my focus was completely on the lines that
I have been in love with since I was sixteen years old,
I must admit that my mind did wander to you....
I wondered what it would be like if you were sitting to my left—
instead of the old guy who was picking his nose and eating it—
and whether you would put your arm around me,
if only because of the rain.

I wondered if I would then have the courage to relax
into your body and look you in the eye
so that, without uttering a word, I could confess to you that I
have been dying to kiss you for so long.

I wondered if after the play we would linger in the park so as not to get
caught up in the masses heading to the subway, but walking briskly,
pointing at the lightning, splashing through the puddles,
weaving in and out of trees, the hem of my too-long skirt muddy and torn,
your hands suddenly belted round my waist pulling me toward you,
giving into the still-humid night and the scent of wet grass.

I wondered if I would have the nerve to pull you into my apartment
and invite you into a frenzy of flying buttons
and torn cotton cloth, where minutes turn to hours,
where flesh gets scratched and bruised,
where arms get yanked above heads,
where bodies contort and pull and push and slam to the floor,
where mouths search and teeth scrape,
a battle ending with wide-open eyes
that see nothing but white stillness,
and two people remain, heaving for breath, face-to-face,
forehead pressed against forehead, eyes slowly closing,
arms tenderly encircling, lips meeting—not apologetically—but
rather in awe of what one inspired in the other,
and vice versa, of course, as still-racing heartbeats
begin to slow until sleep conquers us both.

© 2006 by Vvn Gmz

I know you're standing behind me.
Even at this distance, I can still feel your humid breath on the back of my neck, your intense gaze meeting the corner of my eye, your determination crystalizing around me, paralyzing me so only my eyes can move, frantic, without air, panicking in the suddenly oppressive fire of your purpose, unable to move against you, but always aware that you're coming even before you show, my frustration, the rage that others see and wonder about, your fault.

You are right behind me, whispering my name so only I can hear, each one you take a reminder that one day I will be able to see your face and evaporate in your eyes, but not now, now I stand in this spot and feel you move past me, it's me you want, but not yet, not until you take them all and leave me with nothing more than the god my mother gave me.


© 2006 by Vvn Gmz

Euphoria is not a racing heartbeat that results from chasing death by throwing yourself from a plane. It's not even the racing heartbeat that results from the adrenaline of being with a particularly skillful and uninhibited lover. These are simulations at best that try to recapture a misplaced memory of something that never happened in the first place.

Euphoria is chasing the dragon and feeling your heartbeat slow until it threatens to stop altogether. It's feeling your eyes roll up inside your head and feeling a distinct thick warmth running down your throat, a vaporous hand that caresses its way to your breast and introduces itself into your flesh so it can cradle your heart and take you to the brink without you having to completely succumb, your body languid and seduced into sweet stupor, your life suspended in the dragon's palm.

© 2006 by Vvn Gmz

I stood rooted to one spot,
with my back to the mirror,
facing the front door,
frozen,
but determined--shocked, though,
that the wind forced it's way in,
a violent blast that sent thick glass flying everywhere,
my cat ducking for cover fast,
my dog safe in another state,
the tornadoes forming inside and
coming closer to me
lifting every book,
every page,
every envelope and
animating all into a wild frenzy,
dancing around me,
twirling,
I could almost hear their childlike singing,
I was trapped inside the eye now,
feeling the slap of thick paper and
paperback bindings and
jackets and hardcovers and cardboard,
a slice here and there and
blood springing forth as if from prison,
dazzling,
like tiny gems decorating me up and down,
this was you swirling wildly,
begging me to stay,
feeling light,
losing--suddenly--the gravitational pull
you used to drag me back until I was
walking in place like a mindless drone;
you almost had me...
fucker.
-vg-

© 2007 by Vvn Gmz

The other day I was in a cab and as we drove through the Fulton area of downtown Brooklyn, we passed by a conEdison. Did you know that conEdison is spelled together as one word, with a lowercase c and an uppercase E? Did you? Do you know how many times I paid that bill? How many times I have held the envelope? Do you understand that it's my job to know that conEdison is spelled together as one word, with a fucking lowercase c and a fucking uppercase E???? And panic seized me in the backseat of that cab, as I yelled at him to stop and gaped at the logo on the awning because up until that moment, I had no fucking clue!!! I raced through the catalog of books I have touched, wondering how many times I had come across it and had failed to check it, to make sure it was correct, to make sure it was fixed. Me! The trademark queen! The one who argues with authors who don't like to see Dumpster with a capital D or Kleenex with a capital K.

I'm cracking.
Am I too young to be so incredibly burned out already?
Or is this double life I lead finally catching up to me?

By day I untangle phrases and slaughter redundancies,
I make ungrateful authors who wish not to be edited
look more… intelligent,
Syntax, flow, consistency, style, flow, sense, trademarks, trademarks, fucking trademarks, copyrighted material, legal issues, is she still wearing the same red sweater, is he still walking along Broadway, did Columbus really sail the ocean blue in 1742, did someone else write this??? These are the things that swirl
in my brain as I read the work of others, cursing them, hating them, wondering
how the hell they got this far. My world is clutter, manuscripts, first passes, author tantrums, Post-its—note the hyphen and the capital P; shut up—color pencils, tape flags, binder clips, and stupid giant rubber bands that keep snapping and flinging themselves at my face.

By night, when I can enjoy one, I cross over into enemy territory, the production editor becomes the writer, suddenly free from having to be grammatically perfect, allowing for the occasional stupid typo that only becomes evident after you e-mail the poem to three of your closest friends, I take out my little notebook and whatever writing instrument is handy—yes, a red pencil, although sometimes it's blue, purple, or green—and begin to scribble and cross out and scribble and cross out. My world becomes a palate of words that are different from what they are during the day—these words, they seduce me, they tantalize me so that I pick them for whatever poem I am piecing together, they flutter before my eyes and I sound them out by wrapping my lips around their syllables, savoring them for hours, swirling them around my tongue until I let them become whole on the page, forgetting to go to sleep because they are utterly delicious.

© 2006 by Vvn Gmz

 No one look in her eyes
 today...
 She swallowed the abyss
 and it has filled her,
 to the point of overflowing.

 Don't look into her eyes,
 once so expressive,
 because you'll think they are empty,
 and let yourself be drawn in,
 but you'll be
 trapped in her undertow,
 your lungs overcome by her
 burned-out soul.

 (c) 2007 VG