OPHELIA'S DIARY, extracts :

On Her Last Day

A day in the life
On her Last day
Wake
Wash
Turn
Listen
Eyelashes flicker in the light spots on spots widowed water
Drink
Touch the floor
Put on her shoes
Licked her lips
Brush her hair
On her Last day
Look out the window
See the trees
Hear the birds
Smell the grass
Wonder at the clouds- see forms
Walk down the corridor-footsteps follow
Walk to the water
The sirens sing
See them dance in the water
On her Last day
Floated a ways and walked the path
Paused at the water to hear some one singing
Fell singing herself back in the water
Her clothes thirsty for the drink and the water thankful for the swallowed song
Walk the path one step leads to
The echo of the halls
The ghost of her father spoke in soliloquy
She argued with Hamlet
Numb to the arrows of his words
A universe of silence
On her Last day

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I woke up this morning and looked out the window hung over from my last nights bout with Hamlet and a whisky bottle.
I have this feeling as I roll to the edge of the bed and make a first contact with the earth that it speaks to me echoes of a message like the ripples in a pond gently touch the edge.
I have had a similar feeling ever since my father disappeared, but today it made me swim.
This swim swim swim with him him him. Why is he he he and we wee wee wee.
I am 4 years old again and father is kissing me on the cheek and rocking me in his powerful arms and I am drifting between states as lightly as a butterfly. And all is well except the book. I feel that I have I been written so. Is there destiny at play or is it all just a book?
I feel a wonderful pressure rising in my breast I can feel that today will be a today like those wondrous in childhood.

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Story from john, the neighbour

My name is john and I live in Brooklyn on 2nd ave. and 7th street. I knew Ophelia. She was a nice person. She always took out her garbage and I would see her every morning at 7 am walking her dog. Hamlet, I would always see him in the stairway grimacing. He never smiled. (it was like that face was painted on him.) Every night at 7 their TV was always way too loud. Last night I woke up I could actually here them arguing over the TV about what they were going to eat for dinner. tomato pasta tomato puree tomato … and who should cook. Then I must have dozed off cause I woke to the sound of the old ladies on the first floor screaming, there was glass all over there balcony and then I heard Ophelia screaming louder than Hamlet, something that I never…than a loud slap? The door slammed three times and Ophelia ran out of the house Hamlet shouting after her” Tis brief as a woman’s love, get thee to a nunnery. Ophelia “Taxi”. The next part of the story I heard from burby, who’s brother drives a cab. He picked her up and at 42nd and 5th they ran over someone I think it was Polonius. Then he dropped her off at the airport, he said that the last time he saw her she was dancing in a fountain at LaGuardia. I didn’t know that LaGuardia had a fountain.
Next day I saw Hamlet, his face was swollen and it looked as if someone slapped him and left a delicate hand print. Well that’s the end of the story

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From my window I can see the meadow and here the birds sing me the praises of the misty purity of morning.

It is 7am now and I have washed the sins of my last nights dream away, the sins of freedom, and the sins only a wicked woman can have. But in the stillness of my bath I can feel that it makes me stronger. Maybe that is why the body of a woman is so forbidden.

The water on my lashes I have mistaken for a ghost, the ghost of?

My shoes bite the feet that carry them, down to a breakfast filled with tensions that do not resolve themselves with a walk, but still I lick the last bit of nectar from my lips and wonder.

I am in the field now and the smell of the grass; wait is there someone following me. I look back at the tower, and in the window I see a shadow I will never forget, it is a pregnant woman . Now I believe that shadow, it was I, Ophelia with child.
But the birds sing to me and soon I fall back into a dream of powerful women and peace on Earth and all is forgotten.

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Song -Remembering the dream September 9

I love them all
So how can I leave them here to there own devices
Have we no choice in what we do can I not run
Why have I been written so
Can you chose a destiny or
Was it all just a book
In the end who is the master of the word
And who has written me
And can I be unwritten
And if so
Is it alike to a tattoo
Who when once removed
Who’s ghost
Always remains as a shadow
Was it all just a book

I could her there voices echoing in the halls
Like my fathers
Only not
More like a disgruntled lover
There was a woman
No it was……….
Me
And the room was to small to
There was no place to sit
I think that
No I did belong there
Except I wasn’t
How should I say this
Guilty
Was it all just a book

There was a man
He Was very angry
Why was he so angry
He was sort holding back his scream with a kind of chocking whisper
Get the to nunnery
Tis brief as a women’s Love
Why did he
He seemed to want to make me
He wanted me
No He believed I should be
Powerless
Shaking his speak
Holding his Hamlet
Jousting his word
With word and deed
So Unjust
As to unmatch
The crime
Have we no choice in what we do?
So I ran?
Him shaking his speak
I remember running
Falling
Running
Falling

Water, Water , Water, Water, Wetter

Was it all just a book

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The strangest day today… Sometimes I really do feel like I’m loosing my mind. Life is slipping from my hand without my notice.
I banged my foot hard on the big stone doorstopper as I was coming through the front door today. I was still floating from a vision I had on my walk , I didn’tknow that sirens or nymphs could dance on the water . My eyes sting from the sharp stabbing in my big toe. I see Mary Louise is coming toward me and I’m trying to tell her what happened and that I am desperate for contact, but time is moving way faster than me and before the words form on my lips, she has disappeared and the dogs come tearing through the hall, hand over hand they almost run me over and I find my self stumbling through the parlour door to find Hamlet, but screaming... and at me??? Again I’m trying to form the words of my morning and before….he is yelling at me. I must have been there for a few moments cause my eyes are clearing and the throbbing of my toe has moved from sharp to dull and hamlet is now well into his rant. All I can think is ‘what’s he yelling for?’, ‘what did I do?’ It felt like a funny dream, one minute my hand is turning the door knob and then in a whirl, by my own hand I gues, I land here defending myself from I’m not sure what… and in the hurricane of his words, I am responding but I can’t hear myself. I barely see him. Again my eyes water, even though I am numb now to the throbbing, and I am seeing the room as if from just below the surface of a pond. I see his lips moving now but hear nothing. only his hands leading him further and further from the shore of his control. He is waving his hand, is he saying good by woman in the tower? Then I manage to hear myself say, “tis brief my lord,” and before I can finish with “ that I have such a pain in my foot.” He’s screaming “ as a woman’s love”. I stand there speechless and a bit confused because I swear it was my father’s voice that followed with, “ get the to a nunnery.”
I just went out for a walk this morning, now I find myself pacing this small room looking out from this high tower, recounting what just happened and not being able to distinguish the real events from the dreamy images in my mind. I’m sure that shadow was me.

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Walk down the corridor-footsteps follow
Walk to the water
The sirens sing
See them dance in the water

Walk the path one step leads to
The echo of the halls
The ghost of her father spoke in soliloquy
She argued with Hamlet
Numb to the arrows of his words
A universe of silence

Floated a ways and walked the path
Paused at the water to hear some one singing
Fell singing herself back in the water
Her clothes thirsty for the drink and the water thankful for the swallowed song

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Tomorrow I will marry the world

The sinners
The rabble-rousers
Politicians and Grandmas
TV sitcom actors
The mountains & canyons
Suicide bombers
And waves
Armies of the starving
And children of all languages
The tall and short thinkers
The concrete jungle dwellers
Prostitute musses witches and cops
The rich of heart
And the secret mysteries
Tomorrow I will marry the world
The sun and the moon
The cat
The idiot
The Artisan
& the monkey
Tomorrow I will marry the world
Tomorrow I will marry the world
Spaghetti
& mountains of chocolate cake
Intelligent materials
Quantum lovers
Simple methodical winners
Super heroes & filmmakers
Dancers and punks
Warm socks
& cold blustery Fall bullets
Hair & horses
Boxers & singers
Suits and guitars
Losers & samplers
Lawyers & listeners
Dinosaur psycho preachers
& lonely cooks
Tomorrow I will marry the world
Storytellers & fingerprints
Blood and ladders
Arms and fingers
Glamour girls and shooters
Foxes & daughters
Time keepers
Athletes
Cocks and kunts
Tomorrow I will marry
killers
& gods
Gigglers & poets
Windows and short short
Skirts and tempers
Msp acs pds rns php aspca cdusa
Led love death Lemon colds&
Sexual harassment shoes
And starlet
Trusses
Roses
& rust Trust
Hits hats
Keys & mirrors
Beard & brawlers
Whisky and wish lists
Strippers for peace
& Spanish for Atlantians
Beginner hair die for hustlers
The abc’s of table tennis
Tomorrow I will marry the world
But will we get along
Tomorrow I will marry the world
Coffee champagne dads and porno
Sweat snot boobs and tears
Teeth aches & terrets
Birthdays and brunches
Skin & tap dancing elephants
Potatoes and pimples
Candles and doors
Symbols and sand
Swimming peaches
And bobbing apples
Lipstick & madness

But will we get along