Autumn Collage by Serge Gurkski (online e book reading .TXT) 📖

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I know, the clinic was a house outside the main tract,
about a 10 minutes’ walk away, so I slander
through the major building rather relaxedly still.
The whole hospital is on strike but I think:
for us, addicts in constant emergency the docs
will make an exception: And they would have!

Still am comfortably in time when I stand
in front of the detox clinic. Roll and light
a pure-tobacco cig. A guy steps outside
the building, smokes too nervously, mutters
whatever we mutter when we confront the truth once more:
self-victimization, self-humiliation and the diff:

It is a constant struggle – believe me –
between giving up in isolation and begging
for help. “You don’t make it but you would like to?
What’s holding you back? A long-gone father, you say?
A little rape back ages? Come on! Is it fiction or fact?

And others understand and others cry with you
And you leave them all behind to
get raped by the drug again.
I cannot prove anything but my suffering.

III INSIDE

I ascend to the first floor sharing the
elevator with Mr. Nervous Alcoholic,
the mutter-man. Out of shame we ignore
each other as if we did not know.

As soon as we get out he disappears.
I follow the corridor, the sweating starts again.
There is a small row of seats, 8 to be exact
just in front of the glass cube behind which
the nurses work. I curse myself for not
having drunk more. The sweating is annoying.
Vis à vis my chair sits a young black-haired woman.
From time to time she lifts her pretty face
and sinks her brown morphine-veiled eyes
into mine. A nurse approaches me. There is,
she shrugs, no consultation today, we’re on strike.
She takes a painful closer look at me: Cold sweat!
Withdrawal! – I say, I don’t know. Wait, I’ll see
to get you a doc. The brown-eyed girl smiles at me
and I know I’ll see her again.
I try to ignore her by reading the pamphlets
strewn across the chairs: We’re on strike but
for detoxing call this clinic or that. I know all
of the 5 clinics mentioned. In case of emergency call.
A guy approaches, his body a sigh of contempt,
the only thing I might like about him would be
his addiction. After some rambling he leaves.
I still sweat and want to get out. I’ve been
sitting here for 20 minutes. …


Angry Lamb

Flight from Munich to Cincinnati was dreadful.
Want this Arabian airlines, what was their name again?
Will find out. Now let’s get outta here quick.
E…, something starting with E, uhm?
Climb down the stairways in my new lambskin boots.
It’s May but ice rain greets the passengers. Dig nature’s irony.
Kentucky of all places! I know I’m mad.
Booked hotel room (2 stars) in Louisville.
I’m following my intuition. 2 stars: might serve fresh seafood here.
Cab driver’s a Cherokee. Does he know the alphabet?
Tell him: language beautiful like all the Iroquoian tongues.
Fascinated by the 5 nations ideology, too. We drive
2 hours. Ice drizzle. Hotel room roach-free. Need to sleep.
Too late for breakfast. At noon I have a problem.
My lost lover’s anger has morphed into a
Clump of weakness. In the lounge I order homegrown Bourbon.
Watch a Fox channel 30-somewhat. After the weather report
I have to get outside for smokes. Back I lean over to ask the
Bar tender, a Diné from Alaska appropriately named Paul.
“Paul, if you were free…” He chuckles. “No, no, seriously:
Where dya go?” – “Guess … Chicago.”
“You can smoke in your room, yaknow?”
Tell him to book me a flight. Not gonna see her.
Roam the Blues town instead. Am maybe not acting
Wisely but feel : the anger is gone.
Might turn into a ram if need arose.
“Hey Paul!” I shout, “or maybe: a train?”
———————————————–
Part II (across a bridge)

Am ready to leave. I am not.
Should at least call her once
For a maybe rendezvous,
Belated dalliance. Hugs to make up for the loss?
Flight canceled. Tornado warning.
Instable season. Should have known better.
Marissa, Czech ancestry, serves me breakfast.
I know what she thinks as she puts down the bottle.
I feel guilty. Guilt costs 5 bucks. Her tip, my price.
After she left and right before I drown a glass
I reflect: She still thinks I’m shit. Should stop wasting money that way.
Promise to myself, while gulping down the golden brown
Liquid, to only hand out bucks for open-faced smiles.
Decide also to go from Chicago to Minneapolis. My new
Poetic mission. Need to cross the bridge Berryman didn’t.
—————————————————————
Part III (keeping what flows)

Call her in the end: “Not true!” – “Yes, meet me at the … hotel, room number 32”
When she is here I want my mind to photograph her brown eyes
To keep. We get naked, order oysters. She gets drunk, too.
“Whatcha tell mom and the kids and … Richard?” – I’m,
I confess, not really interested. We exhaust each other. Desperately.
What a gift to watch her walk naked through the room!
‘Keep this forever; it won’t come back.’ I think. “Look,” she says:
“ bought that for you.” It’s a hardcover, 1957 first edition of Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine, her fav.
Of course I cry. “You know,” I tell her, while we watch a porn on pay tv,
“I was really dreaming us into that house you’d once been living in.”
You smile but you don’t turn your head. “Just leave,” I say, “I’ll take a shower.”
Next morning I fly to Chicago hungover by pain, not booze.
—————————————————————————
Part IV (in coherence)

I board the plane and fall asleep. Gonna be a long night
Because I haven’t booked a hotel room. I dream august.
Her house with me, kids, cats. The fish pond outside.
We need no license here. Something greater than you, me, sex
And the sun hidden behind a blue fat cloud is out there,
Is in here, inside my dreaming. SA—TO—RI!
“Sir?” – we land. “Miss?” –“Yes?”
“Sweetie,” she grins, “you need to be taken care of.”
Gosh, I’m not Peter O’Toole; I just need MOM, any.

She’s preparing some kind of meaningless breakfast
While I peruse her CD collection. She is sweet and nice.
Seems, we had sex and she no complaints. “The Sears Towers?”
I know that of course but I play the game. She saved me one hundred bucks.
She smells good but her nose annoys me. I think her nose is a geo-
Metrical figure not yet described by Plato. An N-eder of sorts.
I have not the slightest reason to complain, cleverly avoiding mirrors. “Serge!” – “Yes? Hannah?”
“I’ll leave you the keys. Will be back this weekend.”
I’m so grateful.” Do you by chance have a city map?”

“Ya, sweetie, over there, gotta go!” And after she left
Her Persian cat snuggles up to me. I relax, sipping Henessy,
Will leave a 20 $ note on leaving. I cannot make love to geometrically imbalancedly
Nosed women too often.
———————————————————
Part V ( Almeida)

Once I thought I was deep; Now, gazing at Chicago’s silhouette
I find out about me: shallow, greedy, multiphobic. Old, losing my sex,
My identity, a liar, opportunist, mene tekel upharsim.
Cozy here, love the carpet: when drunk you can
Fall down on it and sleep. Glad I got no gun.
Cats seem wiser. Almeida, Hannah’s, stalks around the app,
Purring preorgasmic, tail curled like a walking-stick.
I can read her mind: the neighbor, who feeds her,
Will be here soon. I leave. Goodbye Hannah,
Wished I recalled what it felt like to commune with your body.
Down and outside it’s not windy at all. I light a cig, read the Tribune’s headline
Walk a while alone, cautiously. I don’t want to fall down again.


Post-detoxified


R.E. Lapsus‘ Notes

[Disaster Versed]

Neither the icicles I let plump
into the glass of rum 54
nor the coke, I drowned the beast
with,
helped to
ameliorate the taste of the brew.
The rum, it tasted better pure.

I loved the pain on the gums.
Deeply immersed in the would-be
of it all, that is:
A laughter-brimming life.

[Restrained]

Helmut, the male nurse with
that subtle and malicious grin
and body movements like a
tipsy ballerina
releases me from my nightmare bed.
There is something like outdoors
wisdom in the gestures of his mind.

[Consolation in green]

So I lapse on…
On Lorazepam, into the green
hitting my eye as I enter the
balcony.
You, they say, were brought by the cops
and you smelled like resistance,
mutters polyphonically the Choir
Of Hebrew Slaves assembled
‘round the ashtrays on said balcony.

A majestic linden tree has spread
its branches for a greeting hug
and an abundance of dark green leaves
is consoling me.

[Blues]

It would take a truck-load of
titillation and stirring adventures
over tea to free me from
that pleasing self-condemnation…
would … truck … con!

[Later in my]

El_el- L_ Life: this is what happened.
It all started again with me breathing, simple,
and then being cornered by three lunatics
before breakfast.
Me with better no head on
but a hole to be fed with
pain killers (need the brand?)
So we did not
(as you might have suspected)
discuss the issue of the blue
of the sky first
but instead
Emily, the once beautiful anorexic
pressed her fingers into my neck
and that makes me

Closing my ears to the mutterances
I watch birds dancing loops in the warmed-up
air enticed by the smell of the green Linden leaves

and I keep on concentrating on not listening
at all
which does me good,
(which would have served me better)

I then hurt

Falling down in
a purple cloud of pain.

[whirled world]

It then – excuse my heavy tongue – happens
unbeknownst to the center of the self of me
that
I talk. Gripped by
a sudden panic that I might have been cut down by a stroke
ebbs down
when
I detect the usual whirls
of illogical life over a smoke
we heal by gulps of distilled water
running down inside
the core of our being:
drops like seconds drop
drop

[Take up the bread of life]

Me is sighing and chunks of memory
bitten off by the drug

I’m a slow syncope waltzing
back into life’s left-overs:
still a magnitude, PLEROMA

the fullness of the essence
spreading out