A Mirror Floating in Water

Here's a sort of narrative poem I had done quite some time ago. It probably needs editing, but this is so old that I've lost my touch with the soul of the poem. I was in an extremely morbid mood when I wrote this, and despite that the characters are real, the events are entirely fictional, though, in a sense hold metaphorical meaning.

Madam they say she had

“Madam they say she had
Drowned herself in the frozen lake
With her young love
Impassioned
Beyond all desire
To death
She fell”

How is this that she is dead?
To have fallen into the icy lakes
Overtaken by the voracious rapids.
Plunged
Into her despair, her final watery abyss

I am not sure what it is,
We had made phone-calls
She had been missing for two days
Not come home at all.

And now, this final mark
Upon our minds,
A tinkering light inside our heads
going out.

For Her too it is,
Upon hearing, she had thrown an obdurate fit
Frantic upon ambivalence,
A depraved frown and smile, crooked her face
Her temperate dove-like stature mutilated
By the coarseness of the fit

It was as if all nature had been drained
And all that was good and beautiful was lifeless

I suppose that my inaptness has only fed my oneiricy
Hand over shoulder, I held her tight
Gentle, sobbing, the uncontrollable rhythm of breathing and trembling

It had to be
Some incarnate metaphor
Or as such,
A loss of identity.
No, I knew.
For now insignificance seemed to crawl free
Oozing out from the pillars. . .

I gave her five dollars from the shotgun of the seat
And she handed it to the toll,
Practically unable to drive.

As we got out,
I put my arm around her again
And we walked on into the elevator

Silence,
Climbing
Climbing
With each step
As if we had not been on an elevator.

A smooth line came across
And we stepped off
Hurrying, in a state of mind
As if we were to go to a museum.

We went in

“Is this her?”

White, pale white
A whiteness unimaginable
Like ghosts
As if crystallized eternally

She looked down and saw
Then turned around and left

We walked
In a trance,
She the wanderer and I the puppy scampering along

Turning eyes as if mind knew no more than logic
Nothing but truisms to feed.

How is one ever to eat again? I wonder
To be gluttoning oneself with greasy food
After, to eat desert.
To finish the rice and see the fortune-cookie lying before you, wrapped in plastic. . . . .

What was there to do?

We wandered through the mall
So many people there
People passing by,
People on cell-phones
People people

We entered a clothing store
By the hats she silently sat down, and did not say a word
Looking at nothing but straight ahead

Taking my eyes off her
Realizing were I was
I walked up to the cashier
Inquiring of the owed payment for Saturday

The check was given
But there was an error

The girl said that since I usually go during the weekday, except Wednesday
It was an abnormality for me to show up on Saturday

“Well, I did”

“O-kay, I’ll just have to check again”

Now starting up with that bull**** attitude, that excuse
I was biting my bleeding knuckles in my mind

What was going on?
Why was such a simple workplace so surreal?

Stupid clothes,
Stupid hats
Stupid mannequins

I actually had wanted to work in the one across from this one
But they were full and had no openings
No openings no openings no openings

“Okay here it is. Though it isn’t the amount you said, because you didn’t work till eight on Saturday”

****!

Words drained
I was in control, I thought I was the one in control

She looked up at me from her seat and I heard the voice coming from her eyes

“Okay come on let’s go.”

I was somewhere I was somewhere
In a kind of suppressed reality.
I thought in times like these one just looses oneself
And explodes, like some star

I don’t know
No.
no

“Are you hungry? I mean, you need to eat.”

She nodded her head

We were waiting in line,
Never do we usually stand in such a long line

We stood side-by-side
There could not have been more of an infinite space from her
I stood close
But she was gone

We ordered
I had been standing aside while she talked for the first time,
I gave her the money
But she pushed it back and reached into her purse. . . . .