Distilled

Distilled

By Tom Sottomayor

Elegy X: The Dream
"Image of her whom I love, more than she,
Whose fair impression in my faithful heart
Makes me her medal, and makes her love me,
As Kings do coins, to which their stamps impart
The value: go, and take my heart from hence,
Which now is grown too great and good for me:
Honours oppress weak spirits, and our sense
Strong objects dull; the more, the less we see.

When you are gone, and Reason gone with you,
Then Fantasy is queen and soul, and all;
She can present joys meaner than you do;
Convenient, and more proportional.
So, if I dream I have you, I have you,
For, all our joys are but fantastical.
And so I 'scape the pain, for pain is true;
And sleep which locks up sense, doth lock out all.

After a such fruition I shall wake,
And, but the waking, nothing shall repent;
And shall to love more thankful sonnets make
Than if more honour, tears, and pains were spent.
But dearest heart, and dearer image, stay;
Alas, true joys at best are dream enough;
Though you stay here you pass too fast away:
For even at first life's taper is a snuff.

Fill'd with her love, may I be rather grown
Mad with much heart, than idiot with none."
John Donne's Elegies










To my grandfather.



"It's such a stupid question, in my opinion. I mean, how do you know what you're going to do till you do it? The answer is, you don't. I think I am, but how do I know? I swear it's a stupid question."
J.D. Salinger, the Catcher in the Rye

Sonnet XV

"When I consider every thing that grows

Holds in perfection but a little moment,

That this huge stage presenteth nought but shows

Whereon the stars in secret influence comment;

When I perceive that men as plants increase,

Cheered and checked even by the self-same sky,

Vaunt in their youthful sap, at height decrease,

And wear their brave state out of memory;

Then the conceit of this inconstant stay

Sets you most rich in youth before my sight,

Where wasteful Time debateth with decay

To change your day of youth to sullied night,

And all in war with Time for love of you,

As he takes from you, I engraft you new."

William Shakespeare Sonnet XV

I emerge from my dreams in a pool of sweat and restlessness.          The pale eye diminishes the eternal stars into tiny dots of forgotten men. The curtains danced their ghostly song indulged by the hissing wind of the dark.
5:30 a.m., I must have been sleeping for twenty minutes now. The sun will shine soon, and the curse will dilute itself into electric orange claws that stretch themselves from beneath the grey clouds of the morning, and I will rest.

As I looked at the boy lighting the candle, I saw his eyes covered in sludge, always weary and thinking and hoping, not knowing that I could always torment his river of thoughts, like a shipwreck in the freezing nights of the North, sipping the voices of the colorless people.
He woke up at 4:00 and dragged his feeble body into the bathroom to take a shower. As the water fell I made the voices come, and he turned off the water and saw himself as a specter in the mirror.
The boy thinks it is all his fault, and so as he looks right through me, he sees himself, the tongue of lies is the lie itself; soft...Barely there.


I question myself if I am becoming insane. That same old voice echoes in my mind even after it is gone. It all began when I started to understand the things that happened in my surroundings, then all the days became bleak and I lost the ability to surprise myself. Sometimes I think it is all in my mind, the voice of my older-self, creeping my youth away. But I don't believe in ghosts, and maybe mom is right. Maybe, I am losing it thanks to my genetic heritage. My grandfather was sick in the head you know? He used to wake up saying there was a strange man playing with a pair of scissors in his brain. Once we took a walk to the old side of a town, where the oblivious palace stands like a statue of a forgotten war veteran. As we were passing by its rusted green gates, he stopped, a shadow seized his body, or at least that was what he told me when we were heading back home. For a minute back then I believed, he truly seemed possessed by a veil from the inner world, beneath the dirt and fire and bone. Mother explained he had a rare mental illness that the doctors couldn't find, and then he got covered in dirt lying besides my grandmother, and none could slip in his inanimate head.
When I was born mother stopped working and father went to war a couple of years later and never came back. We lived for a couple of years from her father's money and from my parent's savings and when I turned fifteen mom found a job as a maid in a rich man's house downtown. She would get home exhausted; the distance between us started growing every day. I know she loves me but she started to act a little like my father before he went away, maybe it's because she got heartbroken.

I remember when two men in uniform came to tell us he was dead. Mom started holding tears,
"Go to your room!" , I was six but I still understood.
"Daddy was a brave man and went to heaven for our country."
How I hated our country! I hated it more than God for taking my father away; I can't say I knew him and I don't know how I am supposed to feel about that. I feel angry! God was made up by cowards to comfort us in our failure.







I was above the bookshelves looking at them. The older one was in a wooden chair spinning over the oiled axis. They were talking and the little one was hearing with attention. I couldn't understand the way the old men looked at him with his eyes wet and shining. He put his wrinkled hand over the kid's shoulder, and the kid settled into his arms.
The old men said, calmly, looking down at the boy.
"Son, he went away before you could remember him. You were two years old; he never became too close because he knew that the love that brought you two together would be his doom in war."
"But how could he leave me and mom here? How could he have a son and not love him?" His lips jerked off; Sour and bleeding.
"He loved you. He chose not to become affective in order to not complicate more the situation."
"What situation?!"
"Your dad didn't have a choice, like many other men hadn't either."

I climbed up the chimney in a dark cloud of smoke, and was replaced into the night, my home in eternity.



I pick up an apple and leave home. I avoid the way to school. I'm skipping it. I arrive at the park and sit at the bench beneath the oak tree as I usually do. The birds shriek in a sustained sharp cry. Birds. Birds in my dreams; one of my only obsessions. I don't know if it's their tiny bones, their ability to fly and sing. I've read about them; Books, my world so far away. Maybe that's why I sit here and read. I never understood why words where never printed with songs, like a rhythmic confession of emotion, dripping in bloody ink. But now it makes sense, we need to give some of our own. Doves are my soundtrack, like a puff of air, or a smoking exhaust pipe, alongside with a couple of forgotten phrase in and old book.





When I stop reading the sun is starting to leave the clear blue sky. The myriads of wings, flapping abandoning the trees to scavenge for their ones. Fleets of gulls fly over my head, crying in an acute plead. By the way home children in the back seats of cars look out of the window gazing at me as a stranger, and I look down, afraid of myself. When I arrive mom is fixing up dinner.
"How was school today?"
"Fine."
I dress a clean shirt and sit at the table with her. We don't say a word, we're strangers. I'm strange; I guess I am.

I must be a lost broken piece of my father. I must be a screwed up shard of a dusted up mirror.
Solitude is my gift.
Loneliness is my prerogative; and I'm afraid to give.
I hesitate.          
I stumble.
I close myself in my gloomy casket hearing the howling wolfs like drowning men.
This is always my time of the day, when the moon glows before my tired eyes; the voices back again.

"Shut up!"
"It's not his fault!"
"It's no one's fucking fault! It never is! My life is fucking over!"
I listen. The bang. Ringing hears, sweaty hands, thumping heart...
The last breath of life
The last look
The final scent
I've once felt.













Back in my room I'm feeling small. Thoughts catch up to me, in a web of morbid figures that draw themselves from under my steaming forehead. I remember the dog. Was that real? Did he really end it?
"Miss winter? Miss winter?"
She was not at her office so I went to the woods.
He was bleeding
In my head
A blood bath
I love him.
In my dreams I remember I loved him; but there were no trees here, I was all alone, summoning the creatures in my head that rested inside me. I felt the wall should fall but I was the one falling; only music could explain her. Was it true? I multiplied myself till I was gone. A car faded in the fog, and the dog,
"Awoooo!"
Dripping blood in my hands.



I could always disappear and linger in his dreams, like a secondary pair of eyes that people use when they dream. I figured that I was some kind of family ghost. When Sid went away, at sunset, I always felt so alive and visible with no one at sight. I went to the cove, motionless; and waited for so long. I feel invisible once again now. But I'm somehow responsible for his visions. I guess I'm numb and inanimate; a cloud that only hurts and hides. Who loves ghosts when they aren't there? Who loves ghosts that no one can see?

The sound of the waves still endures in his thoughts; And in me, above my conscience, there's a rainbow as transparent as my skin; waving, unseen. Behind us there's always light, the lidless eye of darkness perceives, mesmerizing the troubled youth, lost away from home, (with voices in the woods).

Birds with puppet strings, floating wings hold us down. In this town they can no longer see. In bed the world around, nothing clearer, I drift beyond reality. He may too; I forget it in an instant.























A sudden flash grips me off my sight, that changes; now I feel awake. I was in a confusing state of trance, with all the images and feelings kicking my guts and eyes. It is similar to living, but I have been resting for too long and I hear mom downstairs, so it's time to go.

By the way to school I watch the little girl passing beneath the oak trees all alone. She is wearing a light blued skirt, which waltzes with the wind saluting the great hall. Should I talk to her? I think she is called Polly, like that old lady that played piano in that fancy restaurant near mom's work. She looks back. Maybe she heard my steps, her head moved sideways as if she was pointing her ears to listen before she turned and saw me. She waited there with a sweet smile drawn in her delicate lips. Her watery eyes meeting the morning sun with all the light and shadow playing with her hair.

"Hi." She said in a girly, nurturing tone.
"Hi. Your name is Polly right?"
"Sure." She answered confidently as if we knew each other forever.
"How do you know my name?"
"I know you watch me going to school almost every day. I know you're always alone at school or at Blooms Rye Park."

How could she know so much? I only listened to her true voice now, and everything is changing. I never imagined her this way, but I guess that is natural; people never are how you imagine them.
We walked side by side until we reached school. She was going to have a history class in the second floor, so she went up and I waited in the cold corridor for Miss Winter. She was the only adult for me to talk to; she loved poetry and she would lend me books and then we would talk about them. We met because I got into a fight with a guy two years older than me. Alex, Alex Hayworth, a prick that called me a nutcase. Simple minded fuck got me on detention, but that led me to Miss winter's office and for that I'm grateful.
She arrived in her usual, long dark blue dress. Her curled light hair and her friendly nutted eyes always got me on a mood. When she was close, about to arrive, I felt alive, like I had been dreaming for years and I'd just suddenly woke up. We went in and opened the window which stole the time that flew Seraphic blowing the crimson leaves that fell in reverie. I was growing and building the wall of character that was glowing inside like she said. For me she was the crystal tower. Her diamond windows carved in ever muting angles would always open themselves for me. I felt home; then the moon caught up to me; I was a rolling sphere of snow.
Miss Winter was talking about a character from one of our books. A little angel looking creature abandoned in a garage. I always imagined him like a fragile featherless birdman; Bony and divinely silent. Two kids find him and its all fine and all.





He is in the peak of darkness sweating bubbles of dreams and thoughts. He shouldn't have seen all of that! It wasn't necessary! Poor Sid... He should never have used me. His son is growing so fast that the shadow is filtering all that he grasps.
He is oblivious yet he knows.
There is a Gun;
He can see it so real.
There is a friend;
A dog covered in a red cloak.
The wait sinks; until it pulls us.
There is a decaying bird inside him, the pilgrimage of skin and feather parading flesh. Eyes always touch our hearts, with melted icicles from the blazing sun of love.
I am the one you can never see
I am the one who suffers alone.





I wake up in the bathroom washing my face in disbelief. Before I left the room we were talking about the boy who found the angel and became his friend, and of the girl that studied home and liked birds just like me. I dry my face. My eyes hurt. I'm thinking alone; this sorrowful place of rest, where I can never rest my mind. I leave the bathroom and head to the main door. I start passing the stairs and see her. I wish I was comfortable with her. She races towards me curving her thin lips softly. She grabs my hand.
"Come to the woods with me!"
"Hmm... Fine."
She unstrains her soothing fingers from mine and leads the way covered in yellow leaves with tones of orange and feeble green marks. She takes the right road that passes by the wooden houses with neat shiny lawns blooming with grass towards the sun. The suburbs; stretched along the asphalt road that beholds the sea. Wooden planks with watery white ink and gulls shouting. Porches with families having their lunch appreciating the salty breeze. Besides the ocean, pine woods; huge trees raising their colored canopies for miles and miles; haven of birds and a vast variety of creatures. She was taking me there. Her shadow was jumping in the trail of dust and earth, with inflaming stones painting spirits in her veil. She found a clearing, and we layed in the forests bed, talking happily.

A red fox ran passed a decaying trees that stood curved, bowing like an old men towards a Tibetan monk. It was one of these things that live beyond pages and words; like Polly's blue gaze towards my almond darkened iris. She was younger than me, I always feel attracted to younger girls somehow. I guess I'm in the right place to help them, in the perfect set of mind to express their unshed words and feelings. But she is different. She draws the circles that my eyes won't dye. She shapes the world that is caged inside me with her lips and kisses the air till the chains are gone and rusted, waiting to be forgotten.












He is in his room once again. Today he seems more distracted than usual. He arrived very late with his pants all muddy and wet. His face all dirty and dusted up. He was smiling a little. It almost made me feel like I was smiling; like I had fleshy lips to lay and call and haunt. My haunting is mans haunting; as they feel and live. As they hear the permanent call. As all that awaits; waits to reveal itself drawn from the eastern night's raying yellow sprayed moon. Today maybe we could be transparent, certain, carried in the envisioned swell of the experienced ever learning mind of a kid.
A kid
A vision
A drip that forms a drop that is seen and not.

Distilled

From the waters in which he bathed his soul

His perfect muscles caped in velvety skin, pouring wine into the cup of God that hides in the distance between us. []

I write a little before I go to bed. A whirlpool looks through her eyes, spilling crystalline water in my shoulder; heating me up. I remember what dad did. I remember it all. All is clear in my head.

I hear a girl singing;
We won't feel it the same.
He shot the dog.
The dog crying
I remember it all.

Miss Winter woke me up and Polly set me free. It is different when we have people to care.

I remember you grandpa and all our walks by the sea; the old lighthouse with the Latin inscriptions.
Your smell
Your wrinkled skin.

Father you made me, life isn't a walk...
It's a shot in the dark.
Hate only holds me.

Mom... (Words in colors)
Tangled in your hairs I get smothered by your lovely perfume.
Give me your hand.
We can see each other now.



















I sit waiting for him. Yesterday I started crying and it was a little strange. His eyes calm me down.
His voice.
I see him with his mom. They look happy and he kisses her; how cute. He turns and looks at me.
The cloud dissipates
The clock pauses.
Everything shifts sometimes.
Everything we perceive placed in harmony.
And sometimes, not often; our impressions guide us well, and we feel people then, as vividly as we feel ourselves

Polly

Elegy X - The Dream

. Source:Donne, John. Poems of John Donne. vol I. 
E. K. Chambers, ed.
London: Lawrence & Bullen, 1896. 119-120