I remember
my days of vinegar.
Nowadays I just
strum.
La di da
di da dum
di da doo
doo da da dum...
Oh hell, I’ve forgotten it, the melody in the
dream. The same they stood up and
applauded for, that same applause
I wanted to take, as a glove in my pocket,
from their to this world. But I remember nothing. Isn’t that
just like dreams?
But just let me sleep, I want to ask,
please, moon, find me sleeping beneath your light, please
don't draw teardrops below my eyes when I lay on my side,
please don’t find me awake in the darkest hours. Please
let me close my eyes, and keep them closed.
God help me
I’m so useless.
Some music moves backward, I realized. Sometimes
a part takes your breath away, and you find a second hadn’t passed,
so enormously moving it was. A song that wasn’t in time.
I wouldn’t mind writing one. But what use are songs
for those who no longer dream?
I used to sleep
to noon, sing songs, gaze at her
gazing at the sea. I couldn’t call that a good life,
but it was a life. Now I’m just here, where strangers
paint their footsteps on the street, where leaves run in the wind,
where I hear laughter in the distance. To whom does this
laughter visit, where is the ear drawn
on the side of the face of the girl who laughs? I’m
just here, among the trees, like saccharide strangers,
these shadows like unwanted guests. I tell them I’m healing.
Now that’s a laugh. I’m chained to my bed like an inmate.
How many hours must I lose before I am recovered?
and even if my soul were cured, I would
still be compelled to open the door, I would still be above
...above! this blue-tinged, rain-flattened earth.
I’m still here. They want me to stand up.
I’m beginning to think I should, too. But what
for? To accomplish dreams, to accomplish
ambitions? Is it that all I am are successes,
or the frustrations of? I’m not belief or faith, I’m
pus, I’m blood, I’m muscle, I’m shit,
I’m semen, I’m piss, but today, for this space,
I’m nothing, the nothing that is, the nothing that shall
be. I’m not different than she is,
I don’t deserve to be anything else.
O
Orpheus singt! Everyone needs to know,
huh? Why don’t you climb up the mountain
and your hands a horn tell it to the world
that I sing, of man’s folly, my
stupidity, my inability and total lack
of desire to even get up?
Ecco Orfeo,
cui pur dianzi furon cibo i
sospir, bevanda il pianto. Rub it in,
why don’t you. You want to make a picture
out of every tear, you want to tell me I had seen
worse days, but this, this is
the worst day, because you won’t
shut up.
Ma, oh vano mio dolor!
I tell myself this every day, and yet grief
still doesn’t let up. Go figure. I know now
how defective the human body is, nay,
how defective the human spirit is. I can yell
at myself, Get over it! a million times over,
a million times an hour, and reason goes
shallowly into the deepest plunges of my heart,
such that the only question is, Why
me?
The snotgreen sea. The scrotum
tightening sea. Epi oinopa ponton.
Sea whose horizons should contain hope,
let me sail over you, let me find her
again, her briny mind, her foaming thoughts,
her changing faces, like waves aroused by the wind.
You’re the sea; come fill me in.
You’re rainwater; wash me clean.
You’re the tide; crash onto me.
You’re wine; let me smell you.
You’re light; shine on me.
You’re light; let me see.
You’re light.
Why must I grope through the dark?
You’re light.
Why must I be denied warmth?
You’re light.
Come to me, Eurydice, this night don’t
evade me, don’t slip from me, white thing,
for I know you are here, dancing on the floorboards, bare
foot, dancing to convince yourself you are real.
And
Eurydice, you aren’t dead. I
am. I and this world are dying,
its colors are fading, its objects have no joy,
even the sunlight despises it, it inspires nothing new,
it leaves behind ruins, baked red, left raw in the wind.
I’m the one whose dead, no other conclusion can
be, I’m a ghost, an empty thing, but a breath,
a dream flitting
to and fro
from this world to
the next, and the next one, how can I expect to live
very long? I can’t make up my mind to descend
and see you again. I’m selfish, I know. When they
lowered you, they buried me too. Why couldn’t they
bury the world too? What worth has the world?
Without you, isn't it a cheap thing? Eurydice,
you were treated like a cheap thing, and so being,
why can’t I give it up also?
I just want you to
hear my voice just once, Eurydice, across the boundless
oceans of crying and always dying, I won’t
tell you I love you, don’t tell me
you're ok, just hear, goddamn you, hear the I
who spoke to you once, to the you you once were,
the you that I saw, the you that I sing about, the you
I’m forbidden to hold and yet each finger I can touch.
Eurydice, if it was yours to die, then why was mine
to remember everything about you?
I remember my days of vinegar. I remember my days of anger.
I remember how you fell. I remember that I felt
I should have followed you. I remember those days
of raging at the heavens, asking you too
must strike me with the lightning bolt, you
too must kill me, if you’re not looking for enemies,
else answer yourself why you took the pains to make me,
for I will double that pain. Eurydice, I
fall too, let the whole world fall, let life fall,
from the top of this staircase, lower baluster and baluster,
let it crash on the tiling, let it shatter this
cheap, dollar-store thing, let death come,
O
loathsome death, cowardly, shrinking death, same as
took you away, companion of mine on this dark day,
death sitting on the moon, sitting sickly silvered,
his bloodsoaked hands arching over the werewolf trees,
the merchant iron, their tips like lances, held like
champions shouting and calling for the winds
to let the gashes of heaven bring rain down
from their wounds. Cut the world. A god can do it.
The rain paints the streets black, the rain cuts
the world with its slashing silver lines, the rain makes
bombast of the thunderclap. Eurydice,
I descend,
I descend not for your sake, I descend
as I have always done. I remember my descending, most
of all, the black smoke of hell, the noxious smell of
hell, because I am in hell, and I have never ascended
since the day I followed you. Let me be
a demon in my grief, or let me live
as something so ugly the world couldn’t contain it,
for I have never lived until now. Love looks like Eurydice, but rage
most resembles me. Just ask God,
who created me to be complacent to him. Let
grief become ecstasy, let sorrow sour, finally,
into joy, let outrage be welcomed with open arms. Let
me descend.
Eurydice, the days of vinegar are behind me.
But I remember them all the same. If you are
in this room with me, I am falling; please hold me.
© 2025 Jay Lee