Animus

Driving home from Los Angeles. Stream of Consciousness

 

i.

I am listening to Bright Eyes and TOOL and Stone Sour, and animus animus animus, I ground three daffodils to paper thin powder and torn petals to drink you in. To eat your soul. I have eaten your soul and amid all these curving mother mountains I am feeling you in my bones. I am shorn down to angles and planes, to bones and muscles and the dry ache in all my joints. There is not enough rain in the world to fill me up, not enough showers or baths or rivers to quench me. I am scared of the ocean. Maybe it will quench me before it blinds me. And if I stop aching inside these ribs and these shoulders and shoulder blades and elbows and wrists, what am I? Bright Eyes aches like me. Its this ache that makes me want to play violin to your (different ‘you’, a Marina ‘you’, an ocean-worshipper, moon-girl, painter-frozen-in-silver-gelatin ‘you’) acoustic guitar, that wants to split apple cider on a freezing dock talking about mythology, that wants to drink coffee at Denny’s at two in the morning, that wants to drive aimlessly, that wants to be quiet and poetic and soft and seamless. I want to sneak out of your house before school. But then, sometimes, I want to be a fury, I want to slam poems like punk kids, I want to run in the moonlit streets, I want to argue the dharma. I want to chant kirtans and draw down the moon. Don’t you see? I am not meant to exist in sunlight. Why in the world am I going to sunny southern California? We find ourselves in the sea. I am terrified of being held in the surf and tide. Animus animus animus you ebb and flow, you are the sea of my soul and you makes me fall in love too easily.

 

ii.

I sit in the car looking out at a rapidly darkening landscape and I wonder about you. I wonder if you think about me now, and what colors those thoughts are tinged. I wonder if you ever think of me anymore. I wonder if you ever wonder. I wonder if you ever feel an ache like this (it is just inside the ribs, emptier and a bit more indigo then the smoke-ache of cigarettes) and I wonder what you feel about me anymore. I wonder if I can get in your head the way I used to. I always needed to be needed by you. I think that’s why, when I’m being honest, I have this hard edge of hate inside me, safety-pinned to your name. You don’t need me anymore, you don’t dream for me anymore. I’ll wake up in the morning and read this and be appalled by my desperation, but I need a best friend on BART trains and at Denny’s tables. I need eyes that tell me that they ‘get’ me because I’ve never been ‘got’, I’ve always left first. Do you get me anymore? I would like to treat you better (see this, animus is being honest with you, because animus is honest when I’m lying through my teeth, isn’t this what you asked for?) but I am so awkward with magic.