Sing For Me

I wonder sometimes how I can listen to "Goodnight My Angel" over and over again...how is it that I never got tired of it, that voice, reaching into me, comforting me, in some inexplicable way.

I finally figured out that I was the child being rocked to sleep. I needed to be rocked to sleep, and to feel there was someone out there, watching over my sleep, loving me, someone who's finger I clutch in my baby fist, as I swim through dreamland, reaching out to comb the mermaids' tresses, listening for their songs..."each to each..."

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I know why we're afraid of great literature, why sometimes it bores us to tears, or sometimes we avoid...it opens up those gummed up places inside and for a moment, we see, we see...what the welcoming dark shut out.

We dart our eyes, willing ourselves to look anywhere but...

But we see, anyway. An image emerges, clear and dark and cold. An image emerges that won't be denied.

And I know now, I know...that I died a long time ago...that all this...activity, is nothing more than my corpse hiccuping.

Things have not been real for a long long time.

Sometimes I think the sadness is real, the pain is real...but they're all shadows aren't they?

Just phantoms floating in and out of consciousness.

Just phantoms.

And sometimes I see someone, and I notice how the shadows etch out cheekbones, how the hair falls across his face....and I think, if you kissed me, I would feel something. If you kissed me, you would make me real.

But I don't know who you are. Just a shadowy form. Just a few details. I don't know what your soul tastes like. How it would feel if I inhaled your heart. I don't know what your insides feel like. Whether you have shadows flapping about inside your head.

Like me.

But I'm not normal...living this half life is not normal.

It's enough to get by.

I stare out at the other grey figures around me and wonder how many of them are actually alive.

You're alive.

I know you're alive.

And I want to feed on your life.

Like a zombie.

Like a vampire.

Like a curve of blackness carved out of the air.

I want to feed on your life and I feel guilty for wanting to feed on your life.

And so I avert my eyes. Dart left and right and don't look at you, not in the face, not really so I don't have to see who you really are. So I can imagine you whichever way I want.

So I can turn you into a phantom, a shadow, a half life...so I can have conversations inside my head.

So I can, for a moment, pretend to be real, pretend I know what's it like to feel something.

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.

But you sing to me. Do you know you're singing to me? Do you see me?

Or am I as invisible to you as I am to me?

Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent