THE SPRING THAT WINNIE DIED

I miss the seasons. Miss watching the leaves change
Ever wondered Max? ‘Whatever happened to Winnie Banks?’
Winnie of the forget- me- not eyes, eyes of blue, sky blue skies
Blues and all the vaudeville hues; sometimes they were green too
Eyes that danced and swirled, eyes that contained the sadness of the world
But she was my world, Lou
I know. She was mine too
And the ragbag colors of her hair, tawny streaks of night with tousled auburn, so rare
You were so filmy, smudged and surreal, like a cardboard angel
We gave her all the things just to sit at her table
Gave her our youth; gave her our whole senior year
My own clandestine, Martini- soaked, memories of her
Her in a swishy satin skirt with a smattering of Pashmina fur
She was a fragile eyeful in so many different ways
But was going around with Lenny Hall in those days
The dream was over. The dream became you instead
My head was in my hands and my hands were on my head


October rain around the iridescent pain
Postmodern Nihilism, acres and acres of urban loneliness, punk rock volume 2
Bar fights, melodrama, temporary insanity
Introspection galore. Insomnia reigns. Existentialist jargons in thy head
What if everything was one man’s dream?
If everything was nothing then anything could be something
People playing parts, Kafkaesque claustrophobia
A daydream delusion, illusive utopia
Infinite abyss. Imaginary love
Love fades. People drift. Life goes on.
I suppose one has to live. Lambent numbness indeed
Lop sided romantic disease
Traveling Incognito, letting go of the baggage, enraged
You’re the labyrinth. It was all you.
My self often seeped through my writings, like an ink stain
Incoherent mumblings; my notes are muddled and my fingers strain


Teeth chattering January. Snowflakes like confetti
Left the note under her door with a bunch of street- vendor violets
Hoped and hoped that the note be read, forgot that she liked carnations instead
In the spring, a postcard came,
Sealed magenta with her lipstick kiss
And then nothing. It seemed she was finally dead
I wanted to write to her about so many things, things unsaid
And still there’s the hopeless hope that when the rain glides down the windowpanes in her faraway home, it makes her think of me
Home with the echo of many voices, like long dried paint
Time would end
Once, just once before ending, may it go back?
I place a carnation, red and white, upon your grave


The Spring that Winnie died
We were all taken by surprise
She was like old winter clothes, comforting and familiar
Like reading unputdownable novels on Sunday afternoons
Drinking tea from hot clay cups in cupped hands
We were both in love
You’re only seventeen once
You left and it left me with a surreal touch in my mouth on the left
Through the bloomless descending blue, I looked back upon the boy I had left behind
And the girl
Now we look back upon those days with a smile
When restlessness of the mind was the only thing for a while
I forgot and lost her then, but I remembered trying to find her again
Forget it man. We never even touched her
But we loved her!
Love? Is that all what you men think about?
And in the end, all we were left with, were the red and white carnations
We’ll always have the carnations- dried up in old, moth- eaten diaries
Carnations- red and white…. Oh red, ascend. Oh white, arise
With a thousand dreams in those, her velvet eyes
But we’ll keep asking each other, Max
‘Whatever happened to Winnie Banks?’