Tuesday, September 11, 2007

BLACK CATS ON THE SATIN GREASEWAY

I held Peter’s cold trembling hand while my silver seabirds glided over a silver night time seascape, and when the moon fell just about right, the sea was mercury and the buildings became shimmering jewel studded silver silk, like a New York of the films.

I saw a black diamond sky, a mercury sea. I saw black cats on the satin greaseway.


I held his cold hand, he who spoke so much he had long ago run out of things to say but kept on saying them all the same but, if you couldn’t have thought once, you shouldn’t have thought twice.

You carried it all too far and fell into a profound, empty depression, and you were simply incapable of making beautiful sad works of art out of it all. Tragic art might have saved you.

Nor were you capable of leaving it all alone. Leaving it all alone might have saved you too.

I came to realize that never had there been a glimmer of imagination or understanding behind those dark eyes which always seemed to promise so much, and so you lived in a world where there was no sense and everything was nonsense, no rhyme nor reason, only blind faith and submission.

In our quiet, respectable London suburb the mantis of fear and fever never allowed you to sleep, nor to act or react, not even a fragment, not a line of rhyme or reason. The mantis sowed living room claustrophobia for you. You, curled up, paralyzed on the bed brought down from upstairs, and everything out there rang a bell but nothing made music.


Under a black diamond sky, I watched the silver milk mercury sea, the shimmering jewel studded silk and the moon coin tossed heads and tails, and everything rang a bell for you but nothing made music like the black cats on the satin greaseway could have, like a silver night time seascape could have, like the magic and poetry of reality could have.

I tried to bring it all together for us for so long. I was the heroine who sowed red roses across the divide. Under a black diamond sky, I was the black cat on the satin greaseway.

I was the only jewel in your life.