nocturnalrequiem

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Blue Velvet (1986) dir. David Lynch

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An important PSA to remember!

[ID in Alt]

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Mary Elizabeth Winstead

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Audrey Hepburn / photo by Pierluigi Praturlon, Rome, 1955.

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Jane B. by Francis Giacobetti, 1974

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Aging is cruel.

Pages of a book stuck between fingers.

You lick and lick and they stay attached

refusing to peel apart.

Hair like dryer lint, lifting in the wind

whisping away, fragile thing.

A ghost of years past

and on your face, the betrayal of truth.

Hubris washed off, and confidence broken.

Heart in shambles, the failures of relationships end.

Jobs lost and children angry.

Revealing the lonely ranks of insecurity.

I know nothing.

I am nothing.

I never was.

You are nothing too

but you posture, with your youth.

And maybe, that is good enough

while it lasts.

- Senescence. 2025

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I am hanging from a hook in the ceiling

like animal carcass.

I am splayed open, salted and tenderized.

My fatty bits sectioned off with bakers twine.

Red juices weep from my wounds.

Not blood, but the meat sweating

for better flavor.

A heavy palm comes down hard on my rump.

He lifts from the flank.

He samples the breast.

Hunger animates his body but he knows he must wait until the meat is ready.

He massages oils into the fibrous texture.

Working it in with the strong flat pads of his thumbs and fingers.

The meat is shivering.

The meat is shaking.

I’m told this is a chemical process.

Even once dead and removed from the body,

the meat dances on the table.

Due to the residual energy and nerve endings present in the tissue.

The flesh will twitch.

But it must be ready.

When it is ready he’ll carve it off in slabs,

and drop them into his mouth;

a mouse falling into the mouth of a snake

hanging by the tail.

He’ll glide the knife under the muscle

and it will slide down his throat

but it must be ready.

The meat is hanging but will not dry.

It drips

and drips

more juices.

The air is escaping.

The tendons are loosening.

He ties her off again and again.

Soon little lamb.

Soon.

- MEAT 2024

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Pretty Woman, 1990.

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Then what? Well, then you could swallow it, and it would all dissolve, see? And the moonbeams would shoot out of your fingers and your toes and the ends of your hair. Am I talking too much?

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“The Unbearable Lightness of Being”, 1988

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The early nights are confusing for the soul, but the forced retirement might do me some good. We went to a dance party. We were the youngest ones there and it was beautiful watching people a decade older than me find joy in nostalgia. I loved Anora. I miss New Jersey. I have been making Christmas ornaments by hand for my future family. I have been taking care of my mother. She has good days and bad. All of this in the few moments between the work and the work and the work. Confetti shot out of a Canon once the crowd already left the building. I feel as though it was all for nothing. It’s a dry, cold, itch. Maybe I’ll hide again until a tour when the sun comes back. Maybe I won’t make a sound. Maybe I’ll sleep. Maybe I’ll choose different this time with my restart to zero, my bonus life I pulled from a box. And pull from a box with a needle every 3 weeks. Maybe maybe maybe. Maybe I fixed everything so I could do this one thing again, without realizing that one thing was what needed fixing. I am tired and I forgot how to have fun. I complain too much and I should keep it to myself, I’ve been told a lot the past few weeks. But the thing is that I can’t. I have an unrelenting ache and a never ending whine that must crank out of me like a tornado siren in the dark. That’s what’s been wrong with me the entire time, couldn’t they see? I’ve always needed to be seen to exist. But now they don’t see me, and I’m still existing. Perhaps, problem solved. Regrettably.

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Threads of the Unseen

In crowded streets or open air, Where paths converge beyond our sight, A chance emerges, bold and rare, A quiet shift in morning light.

From distant ripples on the tide, To whispers caught in wind’s embrace, Life changes course, as if to guide Us down an unexpected trace.

Not bound by fate, nor held by plan, But woven softly, thread by thread, These moments breathe where lives began To shape the paths we’ve yet to tread.

--JS

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November night. Brief note to self: time to take myself in hand. To build into myself, to give myself backbone, however much I fail.

Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

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The Sound of Music (1965) dir. Robert Wise

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