re:remembering adam mackie
Memories do not remember experience; they experience themselves.
Forget thoughts of nothing for nothing can be forgotten - remember my word on the page you read, that word you read, then wrote it in your tongue. You wrote it, then you said it and I forgot.
Do your best to remember, picture, just be quiet, aware of your senses, meanwhile, while resting and fearful morning moments follow through remaining far removed from the book that separated, which was everything known. Failure-starved evening glares at success nourishing nothing, as already said, in words written late at night, forgive me; my dreams are realizing themselves. Can you not see just how peaceful I am lying in my bed? Can you let me be already? I am not listening to you. Still, the sound of your voice is present, a reoccurring narrative. I see myself sleeping by my lonesome. Once I dreamt alone in solitude. I have seen your comments, too, however, throughout every line, and all of the sequencings, where I am reading your words once more, you always had a way with these words, especially when I am here sleeping.
Thunder heard cold off in the distance, whatever the case is, there is fear, for everything in the world is always on the verge of an eruption exploding and I find myself still as I sit with myself alone. Hand on chin again, I am not who I was yesterday, who I am now, not the same, no, not the same utterance, not the same hand covering my head and ear, thunder feels closer, a reminder of something beyond, a force far more powerful in the world, even if it is just another dark evening in the kitchen.
Memory awakes several candles lighting my living room; several dark corners spread across the floor while outside winds blow reckless unable to leave the apparition’s ghostly reflection looking back from the glass a face within a furling brow petals fall on the grass where anything could lurk around walking down hall hands rub portraits below grassy ground collecting morning dew my feet recall coldness having had to walk across long fields to find house to find door to enter discovering back door locked.
To tend to the unclear self, spirals splitting shards shearing in feet, two of them hang body, floating above floor, a false illusion. This is the truth I see closing meaning in the dark eye; black of an eyelid is, is, is what there.
Mountains seen are not mountains– I see mountains, they are there, look, I accept this there as farther beyond the majesty my eye sees through a window I left open switching back and forth between perspectives seeing green, seeing brown, hazel dormouse head peeking out through a crack on the board. I see not the flatness of the mountain when I see where my two feet once stood, there where rocks slide down the mountainside before my eyes, birds see; I do not. This is where there has me blind, my gaze returns to the floorboards. I never saw the mouse looking, nor did she see me the mouse never saw the mountains either.
Briefly, speaking to you of sickness I am body. I will receive sympathy eyes, yes, delicate, of course, as I am held up as mortal measure I should not share so much information as I do because the I, I share, sooner changes into what I can forget. If I am to die, I will die for you. The worst part is, this sickness makes me think less of you.
I cannot remember my childhood who I was then the man who lived inside a screen door at the top of the stairs I go back to the same place the raspberry bushes looking around at the fence through the chained links the green grass in the diamond, the rabbit cage, the driveway through the big window seeing the upright against the wall and all the hammers. I remember a picture of myself hanging in my mother's eyes.
Specter, fully visible in the eye, either the lights are on or they are off I can always tell with a single look as they appear similar, all of them empty, in signs of open vacancies, hanging neon faces in a puddle, raindrops falling captive underneath the moon’s reign; I have been convinced no one will steal it and put it in their eye for safekeeping even though I have seen crescents sparkle.
Ahead to the day I will remember my body and blood flowing through my veins, I live these future memories to escape the many years I attempt to forget the things I do. I see the room behind the reflection, the shadowing degradation of what I once was.
I blind the sun scissors sit near morning curtain’s wake, the day’s decision, the darkness splitting tears tearing ground into cracks and crevasses, into recesses. Steps take vanishing below.
Remember forgetfulness remember the blot the line going through erasure erased; I have forgotten birth, my name, when I hear it spoken wet by your lips I turn and look for your calling I recognize tones I once did hear sounds uninterrupted images will, will it. Will air tickle these lashes?
Nothing has changed and nothing ever will – as we await for the past to arrive, as light crosses the threshold of the eye – turning into something immortal. There has only been one generation, only one man and only one woman looking out to the other face looming captured by the gaze between reflections. Forever must be a few doors away I see the depth extending out within extending out beyond the live long day into the words the moonlight has to say returning back to where it all begins.
Over and over I still remember faces that will never be forgotten the same faces seen on faces of others faces without noise of desperation silent looks silent, not really silent, not really every word said has a look.
I dreamt massacre during night’s collage, not a single shred of thinking, not a single idea, while I lay there staring stillness misplaced my dreaming self I resurrected elsewhere to this, not where I had fallen asleep, no, this was not here, not where I trusted my conscious thinking. I remained conscious while I attempted to wake nostalgia's sinking return, made by individual moments, sewn with intricate perfections and cobwebbed colonies, relics of pasts, it’s all I have.
Two faces speak different words with same meaning, harmonizing into one, faces are reminiscent of those now gone, blurring into one face, this image I use fails to capture any essence. Was there one? The face cannot be seen without its shadow. I have to see to see to see
forgotten my sight is failing the world dimly darkening shapes oblivion starkly
to see heart beating, body sleeping. I have forgotten the serpent’s ink the serpent’s silk shaking wounded shedding.
Inside me another me sleeps, a head will wake before me then look to stop me in the eye. Reflection sees a partial self through silences and then magic lies, you know, don’t say it.
As I foresee myself remembering again thinking back about how it was when looking forward I visualize myself judging the person I am now. (I never can predict how I will remember.)
Disremember me, please, forget these lines you read, act as if your eyes are not here, pretend they are elsewhere. But, remember just this, remember the pausing; the times your eyes drift from the page, and the visions you see. You and or, let
may hold a mirror, see your nostrils breathe, just close your eyes and hear it it rest on your ears.
Back to the words at hand I told you forget them bar them from your thinking, refuse them, do not comprehend them. I always tend to fail in my understanding: I lie if I say I reach you, it is you that reaches you. Forget the words you read and any meaning made; tomorrow makes all things new as yesterday foretold.
Ice cold block, frozen in memory could mistake for glass, but never will, I know exactly that chill anywhere, I see it, I see what the eye cannot see all on its own, the melting before it happens puddling inside the drip God it’s beautiful when you look at it, reflecting on ice or glass, it doesn’t matter, what matters is your reflection there, never questioning what you might have been seen as seeing, your expression before seeing it, exactly, you know what when you see it. Shattering objects on the floor have no concern for the life they knew, the newness, these pieces. Can they remember their shapeliness? Sharp and jagged, sheerly severe, cutting through the softness of flesh felt cold walking barefoot and now the jaggedness moves in different directions. That’s why we named jagged, jagged with rough, sharp points protruding … Enough with this jaggedness and, enough with the sharpness,
I never seemed so perfectly suited to remember the smooth ice and glass. The coldness that I felt in my hands--lifting up into the evening air, evening air said too much to say still experiencing it again only too soon. Forget it.
Shortly after awakening, you there remind me I am not to remind myself of the lack; I fall back asleep and dream about a person I might become, a person completely different in appearance, in word, in deed, I never want to be a person standing falsely to tell of the truth and that my truest dimension fails while my truest dimension simply is a cuff link forced through the arm of a sleeve to match the mirrored cuff link’s mirroring.
Memory, I watch decay decay, watching it go; moonlit orchards and graves remember it as something not other.
The best thoughts are spent trying to remember the meaning your face makes without effort a laugh that walked itself to the door inappropriately stares it makes me smile now to think back to the time when you held every piece of your own salt up only to watch yourself get blown away scattered aimless in the wind.
Failure, in this way, unable to see sight used for a lifetime and mistaken for actual seeing so profoundly blind that all answers are seen in blindness not even knowing the right questions to ask a little child laughing face-to-face crying the tears of another child.
Our hearts see reflecting on a page hinting a fated fortune’s luck spilling vase petals water smearing words.
Down where blindness sets in shimmering streaks of light inside my eyelids, I press them fingertips against my skin, I press in, squeeze and rub several times, until I can see nothing but dark incoming image I see anchor’s chain coiled up on boat’s blue floor the strike of head hitting anchor awakening tears hearing mother’s sheer voice hovering over embrace cannot speak cannot tell cannot say I am only able to cry finger still pushing rubbing down on cheek, on chin, here I am no longer, here no longer there no longer here, no longer no, no, no.
If I stop listening, I forget the sound horse hooves make on the ground. I content myself ignoring them ignoring my own heart beating a rhythm I can count. I close my eyes to see the rhythm I cannot.
Staring at the case, seeing aberration, hearing your expressions, all an imitation. Remember? You there, and me, yes, remember the songs of birds and the way we flew together, the way we flew, our migration is real more than desert, you were the burning rising from the dust five hundred years before the ashes now, touch rub them bring soot to nose see that it was always the fire that was lit a few days before. We do not create, nor do we destroy.
This darkness here unaware of light, it never ceases rearing head, rising to perceive the world it created for itself, a world out of maple being picked up and walked with for a short while next to a bowl of fruit with rot beginning; fruit flies come and go.
Sore, about my lost efforts I ripped the page you wrote on I ripped through your deep thought just to see my reflection to to to I could
laugh at the raising glass laugh at the darkly glass darkly laugh at my laughing back. not stand being ignored.
Your syllables on my lips I was planning to forget them staring blind at litanies blind forming your thoughts into these words these black letters on a page. Give me your next breath so I can tear it.
I no longer know pain, no longer know it in my life. Pain no longer stings as it once did, I embrace it as it clenches. Pain was never my chief concern, I met it by necessity and I knew by its creation it would give everything to me. My pain became my reflection, I stared into all the features, into the hollows of my cheeks I witnessed years of decay. I begged night for relief and night said nothing to me, prayers doubled over on my lips, I saw mirrors of darkness. Relief came with no warning, there was never even chance to know what it might have felt like for just one moment without it. The realization came before, it does not come as it happens, I have at times seen it coming, for now I try and forget.
These eyes are dimming, colors are changing, it’s darker. Your face unrecognizable, shadow in the light, shadow on your face, the piercing white of your eyes looking straight in me – “I do not remember your words.”
Forgetting eyebrows raised faces suspicious with judgments these cheap tricks or trains arriving at further stations before crowds disguise in apparition’s black worshipping inks dripping between margins where silk worms hide spinning in leaves while mouths fold back wings where you were when I passed where you were when we did not have time these moments passed pausing on your words and moments passed parsing over mine these moments make our faceless faces crack into each other’s lines.