Prose
Just a sampling of some words that scratch at the front of my brain asking to be laid out on paper - followed by what caused me to write them.
------------------------------------------
Brasserie Mouffetard
I caught myself
last night
looking for your face
through steamed windows
at Brasserie Mouffetard.
Drawn into the cafe
past coats, mufflers,
cigarettes.
Something envelopes me.
A warmth which is not yours.
Sitting,
I stay longer than I need, really.
A pause
for you to appear,
smiling that you've seen me.
Together or maybe alone
I huddle with coffee
and it's not clear if you're here.
The searching seems familiar.
Waiting, drinking,
listening from my chest.
And it starts over as I
look up from
a chipped table.
You are standing,
smiling again
and I'm wishing you here.
The Brasserie clatters.
Cups and chairs.
Paris.
Life.
Swirling about through
clenched hands, entwined legs.
The Brasserie Mouffetard.
I'm getting up
emptying my pockets of francs.
People smile but not you.
Still I pause to hold
the door open
just an empty moment longer.
- (c) Lisa Girolami, Paris, 1989
(written on a napkin after a woman I desired had just left on a train back to Munich)
-------------------------------------------
Down the Long Hall
Everything you did
Everything you said
It all seems so foreign to me now.
A black and white movie
That I don't understand.
You're off in your corner
And I'm in mine
Struggling with the truth
That has slipped past us.
Fragile as the leaf
On a river current
Running deep and swift
In a piercing cold.
It once was within our reach
But we waited a heartbeat
Precision in truth
And it was gone
Now I am left with
Empty hands
And silent hours.
Angry words take form
In sharp silhouettes
Repeating, repeating.
The screaming still echoes
Down the long hall
That separates us.
- (c) Lisa Girolami, 2004
(Break ups suck)
------------------------------------------
The Fabrication Shop
In the midst of a dust filled chamber
tremors of awareness danced ethereally across my back.
It was then that I knew your eyes were upon me.
Watching me.
Sizing up the conquest.
And I turned around.
Foam particles floated upward
seeking escape from the immobility
of their too recent cubic tombs.
Through the hiss of the machines
and the overspray of Plochere green
I caught your eyes in supposition.
What might happen in the delicate balance
between this pettish distance we at first experience
and the immediate thickness of what's coming over us?
You were thinking that.
And I knew it.
I was guilty of the same meditation.
While machines turned out shards of metal
grinding against more steel
with a metallic moan that screamed for more oil,
planks of wood surged past the edge of my attention
and served only to block my view of your hands
forming functional shapes from slick, wet clay.
The same hands that will pause to point out a detail to someone else
in an attempt to feign attention to what was least on your mind.
And as another breath of dank humidity lumbered through our province
clearly cognizant in its intractability,
I watched it swirl between you and I
and it was now unmistakable that we were,
at that one exact moment,
feeling the same thing.
- (c) Lisa Girolami, Florida, 1998
(dedicated to a woman I met while on a business trip to a fabrication shop that produced props and other themed creations)
-------------------------------------
Fly
You need to fly.
The desire fills you
but the frustration
spills out in tears
against the bonds
that grip you.
In your bedroom
of serenity and shelter,
in solitary reflection,
away from control and limitation,
you see what you have built.
And you're thinking
Of the choices made long ago
Forgive yourself those choices;
for all wishes start out unfailing.
They swirl around you
sometimes falling away to
failed assurances,
and failed expectations.
Now,
drift back to the place
that you found when you
searched for a shelter
for your spirit.
It's still there.
Where there are no battles,
where you don't have to resist
all the restraints
that have been imposed.
From that sanctuary
touch your hand
to the warmth over your heart.
Hold it there
and find the power.
You've had it all along.
In the seeds of your soul.
The strength inside you
running deeply
in your belly
in your veins.
Sense my hands
reaching out to you.
The rush of the wind
marks my presence
as I envelop you in a twilight embrace.
I'll be there.
In your breathing.
When you touch your hand to your chest.
You don't have to reach
too far
for me to come.
- (c) Lisa Girolami, Los Angeles, 1999
(I suppose everyone has known someone who was in a horrible relationship and wanted to encourage them to set themselves free)