thought i heard this mouth with my name in it i practice this many times she says my name forwards and backwards by the mirror by the bed by the window she says my name until it’s a house i turn my back on the corners the blinds a little to the left until the doors bleed through the frame i’ll pare it down to the point of lumber of sheetrock of joists i fit her saying it to the house being uneven i fit her saying it to the dust on the walls i fit her saying it to the gap between floors boards i fit her saying it inside and out
Monthly Archives: June 2006
because it will come
because it will come to you in your sleep, because you will never see it coming and you will be old and gray and your children out in the world and their children just coming into the world, because you will grow old and your life will weep out of you the way color leaves a stone left in the sun,
because of this, because you will live a very, very long and painful time, not that the living will be painful, but it will be painfully long the way walking in a new pair of shoes over a great distance is painful, because of this, you need to live, you need to do the things that make you, YOU,
and enough of this bullshit, enough of this cowering, enough of this fear, enough of this anger and hate and self loathing, because you will be rattling around your head for a very long time and your youth will never leave you, only you will be leaving it if you leave yourself like this, leave yourself like your father did and you were never your father’s son,
you will not die alone, he was already dead before ever got there, he died waiting in the hospital, he died waiting in the emergency room, he died of any aneurysm before you ever got there, he died on the craps table or the roulette table or in the night where his fears beat him and your mother into submission, he died long before you could ever start living and you need to start living now and stop this utter shit you seem to think you deserve.
you’ve done nothing wrong. not yet anyway, but you’ll do them all harm, her and she and any others you might be lucky enough to have, you’ll do them all harm if you keep insisting on dying this way, as if youth wasn’t eternal, as if your youth wasn’t endless, as if your living wasn’t worthwhile,
why stop now, why worry about it now, make yourself worthy, make this living worthy, you’ve always known how, you’ve always known how to live, my god, it’s always been easy for you, stop making it so hard.
is it because, i was never cool?
really having a hard time with the grip this morning, i feel the edge of claws, i feel my sternum yawning, i have to keep moving, i need to keep moving, i can’t let my mind stay still, work and work and tv and noise and the shaking of the head.
let me be rid of this, please let me go, let it go, accept it, accept it, grow old gracefully you bastard.
and i am having the damnest time as fuck, the worst it has ever been, wide awake and clawing, wide awake and almost right there, right in the waking hours that have always been safe, nothing is safe, i thought the waking hours at least were safe, the busy time was safe, but even this is eroding, even this has begun to wear away.
i can’t even bare to look at my face anymore.
is it because my youth has left me, is finally leavng me, right there at the door, hand on the knob, ready to abandon me, and it reminds me with one foot across the threshold, you were never cool, you were never one of the cool kids?
he dreams of caverns
he dreams of cavernous walls of swelling, he dreams of color and fear.
how can i be both? heartless and warm. lustfull and cold? not heartless and cold, but warm while being heartless, you get it? all part of the grand manipulation scheme that i’m a back seat driver of. like i told her:
2 competing impulses: to nuture to grow old with my child, my wife, to love them endlessly in one small room. and the other, to want to scream through the walls, to self destruct, annihilate, to no longer be, to be empty of all this.
screaming mad along the highway, waiting for the right backdraft to sweep me off my feet.
thank you gnawing
why thank me? it’s a thankless job isn’t it?
the gnawing, the waiting. waiting for thanks. fasting for thank you.
fast thank you’s out of car windows speeding along sun burnt shoulders.
thank you for comfort, thank you for rest.
thank you for words of encouragement, thank you for saying, thank you for kicking around.
no thanks to the time you offered me something a wee bit more than a frozen magarita and a night of light kisses.
thanks for slinking around my skull like a wet piece of rubber i can’t pry my fingers under.
no ‘thank you’ matters more than the time you thought nothing of me at all.
all these things matter everywhere
all these things matter everywhere, from the sound of your fist slapping the pavement to her mouth opening laughter or weeping.
all these come down like spent ballons exhausted, world weary, liitle more than withered skins succumbing to the weight of it, of them, of you, of me. drifting.
i find no comfort in rest, find no comfort in silence, find no comfort in the swelling urge to repeat myself, over and over, outward, to matter. to make all this matter, the knuckle of my finger, the hem of your skirt.
but then the delicacy of how she holds things, between thumb and finger.
and then there is that, and then there is her. the immensity of her, the nowness of it, her all the time, never yielding, never interrupted, never complacent. so there, in the thick of it, becoming all of it, devouring it, an angel to all things, an angel of all things, blinding light wiping out.
all things between her thumb and finger, what a grasp that would be.
i want this to
i want this to work, i really do, right around the edges, i want it to bleed, bleed softly, like little petal drops that’ll float up to the surface of things and make it all right, clear these left turns all up.
would it be that bad to wish inside out, have her be me and me she and baby as some three headed hydra wolf of all things and spit and smiles. she climbs slides twice her height and says tada, look at me, look at me, better than any tree.
it’s just a matter of roots isn’t it? of growing, digging into soils, digging into place, staying in place, learning to stay in one place long enough that you can grow into some bark they’ll learn to write on and you in turn will learn to live off the sun.