What Came Before Me

What came before me
Is still present
It still swirls around me like the wind
It still weighs me down like giant ocean rocks
It still whispers at my ear like an inflamed lover
Eager to be touched once again.

I speak of the me that is today
The me that can only be today
in this moment
sweating in the old living room
that still swarms
with the old ghosts of other lives.
The memories of those lives
Are now like liquid tendrils
that pull and splash
at the edges of my vision
calling for my fire
chewing on my bones.

Long slithering tendrils
That reach out from places far away
That try to insinuate themselves
Into locked chambers
And open doors.
Tendrils of sight and sound
Of midnight moonlight
And dusty sun that seeps
Through open windows
Of haunting songs
In unknown languages
That fall like marbles
Over white sheets that blow in the wind
And slide down their soft surface
To come to rest on my hungry ears.

I stand today in the dry fountains
The dry husks of music that has long fallen silent
Empty receptacles of ancient memories
That have already been consumed,
Digested and left behind to rot.
And I remember walking here
Once so long ago,
With Dilcia at my side
Dilcia when she was the one
The one that I had found
At the end of a quest for death
That started with great gusts of fire
In the middle of desert highway,
And ended with desperate kisses
And another silent fire that burned from the inside
Where the source could not be reached
Where the flame could not be touched.

I had found her, the one
But she was also
The one that had found me
The only one that mattered
The dream that pushed all other dreams away,
The horn that sang so loudly
That all other instruments had to fall away quietly
Defeated and finally at rest.

And I remember that my heart was pounding
As we walked together
Crashing against my ribcage like
A giant ball of heavy stone
Against fragile pillars of thin wood
And as my heart pounded
Harder and harder
I remember that suddenly it opened
Completely
Painfully
Irrevocably
Finally breaking down the walls
That took so long to build
And letting the storm come through
Fierce, powerful and unrepentant.
It opened
To her
To her sliding voice
To her words of silver
And her silences of gold
To her childlike wonder
And her womanly lust.
To her laughter tinged with sadness
And her honest tears of joy.
My hard and heavy heart
Opened
To her
It opened for her
And it opened with her
With her little heart that was so fragile
That at any moment,
It threatened to simply slide off her chest
And burst on the ground
Like a giant teardrop
Made of shiny golden dust.

As we walked down the dirt path
The dirt path of the fountains
The same that I had walked to dream
The same that I had walked to escape
The same that I had walked to return
The same that I had walked to continue
Our arms were interleaved
And we moved forward
In a solid careless march
And as we marched, she sang:
"The one who doesn’t stand aside,
we will knock down!"
And she laughed
In great golden goblets of ecstatic abandon
And I laughed as well
In sympathy and in wonder
At this crystalline creature
Who gave herself to me
More with every word that left her lips
More with every time that her eyes closed
More with every smile that I invoked
More with every flutter of her eyes
More with every time she said goodbye
More with every time she said hello.

In her innocent beauty
And her beautiful innocence
She made me more loving,
She showed me how to weaken the defenses
How to stare at the simple building blocks
Of stone and cement and skin and nail
And let the Other come through,
Sliding and gnashing and howling,
Present and dripping with life,
In all its fearsome glory.

In my hunger for darkness
And my fleeting moments of light
I made her stronger,
I gave her the need and the way
To stand above her hesitations
And walk onto a world
That had pushed her and battered her
Right from the very start,
And stand solid and precise
To rest her weight on what others set aside
And find a new way forward
Into a strange new realm
Of endless questions
And unspeakable thoughts.

I love her still,
As much as my heart will allow
And my heart grows stronger by the hour
But she has turned her strength against me
And her newborn anger and hate
Digs into me ever more deeply
Because of the love that still burns
In the deepest caverns of my Being,
For her,
Through her
With her.

Now I walk by the dry fountains
Alone
Taking pictures
Letting thoughts and visions
Slide through my consciousness
Like rapid fire movies
That end before they start.
I see the dust like I never saw it,
And the grass, and the faded paint,
And the dirty shirts and the shaking buses
And the thin little men with their thick machetes
and the forgotten stairways made of stone
And the palm trees that sway gently in the wind
and the cars that swarm down the main street,
like hell hounds on the run.
Just then
two girls call for me
To take their picture.
They stop their car in the middle of chaos
And they eagerly call for my attention.
My heart opens
Spontaneously and without hesitation
The pain is there as always
But I don’t run from it
Not like before.
Now I know that I don’t need them
Not them, not the dust, not the grass, not the leaves,
I no longer need
any of the liquid tendrils
That reach out from the past
Still pulling
Still splashing
At the edges of my vision.
I don’t need them
The bright eyes
The moist lips
The soft skin
Or the memory of their presence
I don’t need them
To keep on pushing
The bloody gates apart
The gates that let the oceans out
And bring me up from the world of shadows.
My heart will open for them
But it will not close when they go away.
I am not attracted
I am not repelled
For now, today,
My heart just opens,
Like it did so long ago
And the world is fresh and new
Once again.

The tendrils will keep on pulling
Always
Splashing and pulling
Pulling and splashing
But their need recedes into nothing
And their calls resemble nothing
And their touch, is the touch of nothing.
And as I feel the nothing against me
Under me and around me
I have come to see
Naked, open and alone,
What truly came before me.

Palm trees swinging gently in the wind,
above the silence of the fountains.

Dilcia as she was when her mask had fallen

and her heart had exploded in a rainbow of color.
A ghost of stone that still sings the dreams of glory
of a long forgotten past.

Sweet golden star opening to the
endless mystery of the darkness.

Four more Dilcias travel down
the long road of accidents,
open to possibilities,
unbelieving of defeat.

Lustful innocence that beckons
a Voyager into a world of mystery.

A shaking bus that will take you to unknown regions,
eating raw flesh and spitting black smoke
as it speeds into the deep well of desire.

Innocent lust that stands guard
at the door of real knowledge.

Two girls that called for my attention
in a moment of childlike playfulness
and flashing recognition.

A stranger that beckons
across the unbreachable wall of time.
How I would want to talk to him.
But what would I say if I could?

Years later, after she had disappeared
into the void once again.