All that is Holly

She even covets with style, that Audrey Hepburn. Standing outside Tiffany's, munching on her breakfast, she is ambition assembling on the sidewalk. My understanding of Ms. Holly Golightly has evolved over the years, my embrace of her has widened. She is pitiable ofcourse. She is shallow, she is flakey, she is greedy, she is a gold digger, she is a prostitute, she is a depressive, she is a coward, she is an abused child trying to forget. Holly Golightly, born to the wrong parents, born to poverty, born to a life begging to end. Runaway at 14, and married at 14 to a man the age of her grandfather, she runs away from him as well, with dreams of marrying a rich man (chosen through thorough perusal of a list of the 50 richest men in America under 50) and accommodating her brother in her good fortune. Holly Golightly is an invention - from her name to her hair - she is all mask, fingering into whatever face will get her through the door to Tiffanys. For Holly is the quintessential outsider. An outsider to the dominant class, an outsider to the dominant gender, an outsider to the dominant narrative of her times. Her desperation to get in only confirms her place outside. She will knit and pretend cook and parrot Portuguese her way in. She will fuck, she will marry, she will sell kidney her way in.

She is almost paedophilic in appeal. She is flimsy in size, a girl really, ever so clutchable. And her great suffering has taught her to make flimsy of everything around her. How can she take life so seriously if it has been nothing but shitty to her. So she makes fun of it, laughs in its face, sticks her thumb out at it. Enjoys it, almost rebelliously. Holly will empty you of the heavy molten of age and fill you with titter and patter. She will make you forget, atleast for the moment, the fucking fragility of it all. She is child, unpossessed of the past and the future. Men want, at that time, to possess her. Then, to her closest, she is the death of child - a broken innocence, a fledgling identity, a growing vulnerability to the savagery of time. Men want, at that time, to protect her. She is never actually fully adult. 

(this description can only grow)

Breweries of your mind

If the walls of your mind are beset

with the milling about of many-legged creatures

trying to crawl down corners that

keep unfolding away from them

If the floors of your mind don’t mind new feet

walking cautiously, toes tinglingly,

the earth underneath their soles

quietly taking their shape

If the skies of your mind are made of rain

that fall into still wells of meaning

because they need the churning of

fresh moving waters

If the winds of your mind are gentle

in which the smallest holds of thought

can frolic unswept

by the gathering storms of understanding

If the seas of your mind can imbibe

the many different sands

of the surrounding shore

without forgetting the taste of its own salt

If the forests of your mind have light enough

for the bold assemblings of truth

but also shadow enough

for the mirage making of fantasy

Then invite me at such time

that the breweries of your mind are open for drink.

Original Valentine

Under covers of cotton and skin,

A stirring undid a stitch that never stopped tearing

Blood bettered into bones, bettered into fingers, bettered into nails

One heart taught another the notes to the Original Verse

Suspended, warm, protected, my world in your breadth.

It gave you something to do,

my designing and making.

You are the Original God

From your feeding hands, did my fingers find length

From your watchful face, did my eyes find difference

On your laughing belly, did my line find squiggle

In your eloquent speech, did my words find sentence

In your close embrace, did my heart find friend.

It gave you something to do,

my cradling and caring.

You are the Original Love

Your much moisturised hand would lay upon my cheek

Counting my many fears, then remembering the math

Finding my stray doubts, then housing them

You stuffed me every night with a song and a kiss

then had me for breakfast every morning with a knife and a fork.

It gave you something to do,

my breaking and mending.

You are the Original Heartbreak

That imp in your mouth, never one to suffer calms

That want in your arms, always looking to hold storms

That wimp in your heart that gave up too soon

And ran out with you and baggage - half packed and

tearing through thread.

It gave you something to do,

your living and dying.

You are the Original Void

I have to scavenge you from my heaping past

All those multitudes of you, crumbling now, 

hampering ants, encrusting my feet, 

making it difficult

to walk.

Dedicated to my mother, the love of my life, the ache of my life