{"id":214,"date":"2017-09-03T17:00:49","date_gmt":"2017-09-03T17:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ginabrillante.com\/?p=214"},"modified":"2020-06-05T04:34:16","modified_gmt":"2020-06-05T04:34:16","slug":"summer-pulse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ginabrillante.com\/?p=214","title":{"rendered":"Summer Pulse"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"IMG_1412\"<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Summer Pulse<\/span><\/p>\n

The night danced with discord<\/span>
\n between the green impulse of scratching an itch without looking,<\/span>
\n and the yellow flower you never left on her doorstep.<\/span>
\n The ladies order libations of innocent oblivion and refined sugar.<\/span>
\n The men, strong facades and manufactured smiles.<\/span>
\n All a slightly flat note of disillusionment.<\/span>
\nYou consider the stars that wait for you<\/span>
\n out where the water meets the horizon,<\/span>
\n with a long drink and a short cigar. It isn\u2019t love \u2014<\/span>
\n not even close \u2014 but perhaps a consolation, an injection<\/span>
\n to relieve a little pressure.<\/span><\/p>\n

Instead, an open neon light pulls at your peripheral<\/span>
\n and says I have one more stop: one for Old Blue-Eyes,<\/span>
\n and one more for the road. A familiar salesman behind the bar<\/span>
\n greets you by name, and it almost feels like butterflies:<\/span>
\n a magical ending to a long dark hallway.<\/span>
\n He surfs between smiles, passing out tickets to the last legal drug,<\/span>
\n and you take one like a puppy wagging, wagging,<\/span>
\n and finally the hard drink hits your lips cold<\/span>
\n and nearly swallows you whole. Now a wolf, who no longer belongs<\/span>
\n to the night because you escaped it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Wheels keep on spinning, bottles turning upside down,<\/span>
\n ice clinking like congratulations are in order.<\/span>
\n Then at just the right hour, in just right lighting,<\/span>
\nshe storms the scene like Don Quixote,<\/span>
\n with the confidence of a flower about to bloom,<\/span>
\n and orders a glass of barley and a garnish of fireside.<\/span>
\nShe devours the second and drags the first, like someone who stands<\/span>
\n against the world, romanticizes ideas during the day,<\/span>
\n and needs a refuge before calculating, scheming for the next.<\/span><\/p>\n

You saw this once in a premonition: a woman seeks truth at all hours,<\/span>
\n lubricating and lubricating, one empty glass after another,<\/span>
\n then dies before your eyes, before she finds it.<\/span>
\n That piece of your heart you thought you\u2019d never see again,<\/span>
\n regret, and a chance to make it right, all at once walk into the bar,<\/span>
\n but you pretend not to notice.<\/span><\/p>\n

She sparks like a star and shoots like she always knows her target:<\/span>
\n a trained claw at the bottom of the ocean. There\u2019s no way to prepare.<\/span>
\n The ladies and their sweet eyelashes are not enough to move you,<\/span>
\n to catch you, to pin you wriggling and writhing against the wall.<\/span>
\n Focused on higher pursuits, you can only laugh at their sugar:<\/span>
\n a temporary pleasure in the larger windmill of life.<\/span><\/p>\n

Still a wolf, the moon calls you by name,<\/span>
\ninto a more dangerous\u00a0reflection. You follow her<\/span><\/span>
\nout toward the unknown where a stick lights her fingers with fire,<\/span>
\ndrawn to her mouth with repetition like breathing, like walking,\u00a0<\/span>
\nlike rain. A poem of smoke drips between her lips<\/span>
\nand escapes into the dark air,<\/span>
\nwith words from Byron, Yeats, Poe, Hughes, Stevens.<\/span>
\nYou recall their precedent, their incision, their line breaks,<\/span>
\nas she introduces you to wise men you’ve certainly met
\nbut have since lost their numbers.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Once the fire dies, she turns back to the familiar face of her barley,<\/span>
\nleaving you there to feel like a puppy again, soaked<\/span>
\nby the night, by the dark mist of dead poets.<\/span>
\nShe doesn’t even hesitate. The only other philosopher in a bar,<\/span>
\nin a world, saturated by fools, steps under the neon sign
\nand out of sight forever. The stars, the cigars, the disillusionment,<\/span>
\nwhat does it matter? As some sparkler as sharp as truth itself slips<\/span>
\ninto the night —<\/span><\/span><\/span> already damp with pain — and then disappears.<\/span>
\nIt doesn’t. Except, that you loved her once,<\/span>
\ninside of that sacred moment: the glimmer, the tease of dawn,
\nthe rope that might’ve been strong enough to pull you out,<\/span>
\nto save you, to show you how easy breathing is.<\/span>
\nWhen the wheel is spinning so long it almost looks invisible,<\/span>
\nwhen the bottle stops, when the ice melts and becomes mute,<\/span>
\nwhen nothing is worth congratulating because everything’s lost,
\nthe butterflies leave, taking their miracle with them.<\/span>
\n<\/span><\/span><\/span>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Summer Pulse The night danced with discord between the green impulse of scratching an itch without looking, and the yellow flower you never left on her doorstep. The ladies order libations of innocent oblivion and refined sugar. The men, strong facades and manufactured smiles. All a slightly flat note of disillusionment. You consider the stars … Continue reading Summer Pulse<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-home"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ginabrillante.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ginabrillante.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ginabrillante.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ginabrillante.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ginabrillante.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=214"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/ginabrillante.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":239,"href":"https:\/\/ginabrillante.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214\/revisions\/239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ginabrillante.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ginabrillante.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ginabrillante.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}