prose poem

After the last day of school, all those long nights of leisure left me. All those days sitting in humid classrooms, looking out the window at the coeds gone. Now I am on a bike, cutting through traffic to make it home in enough time to catch a plane to Brussels. Of course, the flights not until late, but even so, I have all my packing to do, and my buddy Dan said he's stop by with his truck and pick the stuff up I'm leaving.

I ride low over the bars, keeping eyes on the D.C. cabs, shuffling in an out of traffic, ratcheting my shoes in their toe clips. I grind a little up 17th, sweat burns my eyes, pitch my bike right down P street, and finally stuff it into the elevator, and onto the rack in my efficiency. The machine is blinking so I press the its black rubber button and, after a long shrill beep, its Judy:

"Mike Š meet me at Julio's at six. I hope I catch you before you leave; if not, call me when you get there and have a safe trip. Ciao."

It is about six ten so I shoot down to the restaurant on the corner, hoping she is gone so I can pack. At the entrance, under a forest green canopy, and stand above Judy as she sleeps on a white brittle table, her long shiny hair pooled into the triangle her arms form as she rests on them, so I slap my palms down and she jumps about a mile, almost hits her head on the sky.

"Hey babe," I say while she's in the air.

She comes back down and I take off my courier bag and drop it with my radio down, it screams with static so I switch it off.

"Made it, huh?" she said, "where's your bike and where you off to without telling me!"

"Who told you?"

"Well it was Jess, she said you're out of here, I'm pretty surprised you didn't tell me. I mean, what does it tell me?"

"It tells you that I know you and it would have been better if you'd have found out after I settled," I say and then sit down in the chair across from her.

Even then I am too close as the tables are only a yard across. The molded plastic settles under me and the legs skitter and splay. I lean back and the chair complains more until it braces into grooves in the floor. I can smell myself even over the thick strings of garlic and Parmesan, the tomato paste and olive oil. I really need to take a shower. My beeper vibrates against my hip. I look and the number is Dan's. I click on the radio and press transmit, holding the receiver close to my ear:

"Six-three Š six-three Š"

"Go ahead six-three," answers the antennae'd brown box.

"Hey, beep Dan for me and tell him to meet me at Julio's, over." I wait and listen to runs going out to five-seven and triple- seven, I hear four-oh testing his radio saying copy Š copy? I feel Judy staring at me and I tell her just a sec with my forefinger.

"As good as done, six-three. Out," answers dispatch after a few. I switch the box off again.

"Talk to me, babes," I say a little gruffly.

Judy just sits there staring at me and I wonder about why she wants me to be with her now before I leave. I feel her still looking at me, so, as a game, I try to hold her gaze. Her eyes are black and make her look ghostly; they are deep-set in her head and their dark lashed are as thick, dark, and long as raven feathers. She only wears eye-liner and it's heavy today. I notice these things as I stare, as my eyes get dry and thick and the blood comes to my face. I turn away.

"What do you want, Judy," I say a little furtively.

I slap my fingers in a thick funky beat upon the acoustic table top. She grabs my hand to stop me and I wonder whether that was part of my plan. Just then, Danny saves me with a cup of Café au lait and I roll my eyes at him, he gives me a wink. I pour some sugar in the deep soup bowl cup and stir it in with a spoon from the place setting.

"Brussels, huh?" she says, knowing I know that she knows exactly what the story is.

"Yeah," I say, "permanently and forever and I could say you can visit me, Judy, but I would just be being polite."

"Oh yeah, fuck you too," she says and tries to grab my hand again, though I lift the cup to my lips before she can clasp it. They are clammy in spite of the weather, in spite of my feeling uncomfortable and a little claustrophobic under the awning and wedged into that bear-trap chair. Sweat dribbles from my pits so I press my arms down to try to stem the flow.

"Listen, Jude, I have to pack," I say as I empty the last of the froth and kick the chair out from under me. It tilts over and bounces and vibrates. It emits a buzzing until I pick it up and place it under the table.

I turn my back and head outside, taking a big sigh, and look up at the summer sauna DC overcast. I feel the clouds when I breath and wonder if someone in the clouds sees me in clouds instead, its so humid. I always feel the rivers that course down Penn. and crash in falls down Capitol hill. When I'm finally in the jet, doing the tourist pass over the monuments, I will ask the sky-waitress for some booze and whether she sees all that water covering the capitol city..

Judy startles me when she clasps her arm through mine.

"You know, this is the way lovers walk together in Europe," she says, her head cocked up, her stride lengthening to mimic the flippant Europeans.

"Ça va mon ami la-trah-la," she lilts and presses her hip to mine. I give her the hip butt and she laughs, although I don't want her to and she comes close again. I swing the heavy sack from across my back to her side, and the I get to the entrance door and she gets in, into the elevator too, and then in the apartment.

"What?"

"I just wanted you to know that it is time to tell you that since I met Mark, I hadn't met anybody else, you know, it was no problem. You see, nobody at all and I looked at him and knew it. I mean Mark and I have been together for a long fucking time and all that, but when I met you it was different. I mean, you are the first guy I met since Mark who I like," she said drawing close to me, face to face, her face tilting upwards.

"This isn't fair," I say a little under my breath.

"Wait," she says, "I have to get this off my chest, you know. I have to get it out of me before you split."

I only get out, "but Mark."

She closes in and kisses me with soft lips, on the mouth and presses her hand into the nape of my neck to pull me closer. I finally release me muscles and allow my body closer. I feel the tips of her breasts brush against my ribs and I try to embrace her.

But she wriggles free and turns and disappears down the hall, "Bon voyage, mon ami, la la la!"

By the time I get downstairs, Judy is in her VW Rabbit, pulling away from the curb. Mark, the bastard is in the passenger's seat, his torso hanging out the window, showing me I'm faced by covering his hand with his face.

"Eat it, sucker!" he yells.

I start running after the car. Judy slows the car, teasing me with stops and starts. She lets me get right up along the car, Mark is still hanging out and laughing his head off. I rush up, and in one sweep, pull out my U-lock and smash in the rear window. It crackles and popcorns inward and I stop quick and yell:

"Eat that, you fucker!"

I stand there, U-lock in hand, shaking a little. I hear a bleating behind me and it is Dan in his pick-up. He's laughing but I'm not. I jog up to the truck and hop in the bed.

"Take me for a ride, Dan, I need to cool off."

Dan peals off and almost looses me off the truck's bed, but soon he is down 14th and we check out the monuments for the last time together.

Omens are startling in their persistence. They talk softly or loudly, through others or from within. They are all from you. Omens have never been anywhere else but of you; yet, they are the part of the self which is the Other -- the part that is best ignored because it never screams Essential, neither screams life nor death. Never complains and never haunts. Omens are willing to guide but cannot compensate for the lack of Love or attentive heart of one who travels his Journey alone: without the love of another; without the love of oneself; without the blessing of God; without the favor of the Muses; without the map of the Fates and their wispy destinies.

The sky burnt the sea into a clear sweat pool. The white boat gently bobbed, its bow set and its stern swinging around in the slack current. Emerald rocks spired from the crashing surf not a hundred yards from the blazing white hull; the new rock of pummeled lava showed clearly through prism liquid sea, exposing cracked and creviced valleys and fissures; exploding colored darting fish schooled and angled their mirrored flanks against the sun, blinding and disorienting, expanding and contracting, snapping up mouthfuls of coral and plankton. The sharp knifed wings of the tern sketch parallel lined in the water as the bird skims the waves, eyeing fish shallow enough to touch the smooth surface, dropping its thin beak briefly past meniscus to pick off the unwary.

A sudden release of pressurized air startled the bird and it zig-zagged and arched away from the vessel; rising up and over its close fiberglass helm and stern. From that height, the stern appeared to be filled with brightly colored gum balls, attached by hoses, pressed into rows astride glassy benches. Three men press themselves into matte-blue one-piece neoprene suits, running water between the tight rubber, tugging zippers up and around rough torsos, wrestling body parts into their snug confines. A blond man sits before his pink tank and slips his arms under the metal shoulder harness, securing the belt tightly into his waist. A man with close-cropped gray hair helps him dead-lift the tank, straightening the hoses, and leads him to the back of the boat. There the blond sets the fins onto his feet, their long thin blue planes flexing and bowing into the water. He presses the mask to his face, gently placed the piece in his mouth, checks his air, and flings his body out and away into the

She only came into my life when I was unprepared. Even after making certain I kept it together for months, even a year once, she outwaited me and always reappeared right when I went to pot. Went to pot. Lost my shit. Let it all go and then she appeared. Mind you, she wasn't some sort of angel. She never arrived just in the nick of time to save me from some catastrophy or another. Quite the contrary, she would always fuck me worse than I had ever been fucked before or since. She was no big woops, empirically. She was not the goddess but the vixen. She was not the amazonian, but the faerie.

To my mind's eye (I never got a picture of her -- never thought of the camera when she was around for reasons you'll discover soon enough) she was all hair and slender limbs, she was all middrift and rosebud breasts. She was all addiction and 12-step, she was all drugs and deficieit. Her heavy chocolate hair cut in a blunt bob. The smooth dough of her slender form, the thin fingers, the graceful hands. The bright doe eyes with a sharp edge which never belied the lie of her posturing. She was pale flanks and black cloth cut to her form. La femme tout en noir. Lipstick librarian with glossy lips and wire frame specks. Lunettes. Donna Karan. Yellow slicker -- even the towels in her bathroom are black. In my mind's eye. Petite. Tiny teeth, little cheeks, think neck, slender thighs I can almost wrap with my hand. Hips, belly, and the arch of the back. It was her hair that ensnaired me. It is always the hair that get me.

When she first walked into my life, she was another boy's girlfriend. Whenever she walks into my life, she is always another's -- she has never been mine. I should have guessed. She get physically ill whenever she is away from her addiction for any lenght of time. And since she is not addicted to drugs anymore, she is addicted to her boyfriend. I am addicted to her; I always crave. I am addled by her. I feel the sickness of love, I feel the sickness of hate: they are the same and it is forever nausea for me. It contracts my intestines. I makes me vomit, it pressed the muscles into pressures that make me rush to the toilet and express some sort of Freudian "acting out." Never used to use physchobabble until her. Until she injected me with she, until the veins of my body were infected by the girl from San Francisco until the 12-step heroine.

©10-26-97 04:28p Chris Abraham