Ecstasy & Stars

The memory of that night with you in the cold, dim warehouse in Oakland where the lights glimmered and danced through army-surplus camo netting is like a dream, surreal and fluid, vivid enough to swim in, a velvet robe or tropical bath. Our furtive, ecstatic hands picked the lock to my tongue, an unhindered vortex of ugliness, and hurt. . .

. . . reminding me of another night where I sat up talking to a boy until dawn, the sky filled with orange blossoms or was it dust falling through the stars, landing on parched corneas, everything appearing through a scrim, edges softened, like we were underwater. His hair, rolling down to shoulders in dirty blonde waves, catching the light, becoming momentarily golden while he set up guitar, amp and mic on unpaved desert street where at six o’ clock in the morning the blues overcame us. He bled 5-chord progressions from fingers nimble and adept which, moments before, held my face and neck in gentle caress and my mouth opened wide to howl out sadness or joy, I wasn't sure which, but then again, the blues never are. . .

. . . soul splayed out for me and the world to see in the dawning desert and Saturday night on dilapidated, soft couch in dim, cold warehouse in Oakland with light glimmering through camo netting like so many moonbeams and stars dancing across a still lake. I imagine redwood trees and home, almost able to smell the ferns and you. I imagine so hard that suddenly we are the forest, wet bark of ancient giants in your skin, moss and dirt packed under my fingernails, a beetle on my toe. . .

. . . seratonin bursts forth in waves. I am being licked and loved all over from the inside of my skin, falling deeper into the meridian of you. These explosions come in waves now, m-80s blasting through barricades with the shock and immediacy of a brick thrown through a window. It is almost too much, these images you give me, the ones that are my own. Shooting at a dance club, body folding like a pressed shirt to collapse under the strobe light, runaway train stealing a lover faster than a blink or a seizure, endless horse hooves and plastic surgeons deconstructing and reconstructing this maze I call my face. All this overwhelming. I can’t breathe, begin to drown, and feel your soft hands, low voice, and I come back, and I know who i am, my head on your shoulder or yours on mine on this dilapidated couch in the cold, dim warehouse in Oakland.