after an hour of sleep waking with the voice in my head-
didn’t need you to tell me that i was ugly as well, but i’m glad you did like everyone else.
Monthly Archives: September 2007
i dreamt nostalgia
i had dreamt the nostalgia of someone else’s life. and in it they were very strong on the inside but the scars on the outside were still healing and she would never yield as he remembered.
and this was why he came back and again because she would not stop, because she could not stop imagining him or giving him some reason for a life that was not his nor mine but i could remember her for it.
the way he wanted to bring things all to an end desperately she would dig her nails into his neck and i could laugh because the love was so big and the lies too small to notice the bleeding on each side of this memory.
until the lies became like love and she believing one for the other or was that the other way around?
i would like to have some version of it that was not sinister but there was something to be said for that and i stuttered myself out of place suddenly when she finally relented and he quietly remembers only this life as his own.
stop polluting my head
just stop it i cant take it anymore all these lies all these opinions all these facts and figures of places and war and betrayals of men cheating on their women and women fucking random men and children beaten like animals and animals chewing the bones of bleeding men and storms wiping out cities and i want to be far away from you all i want to be by myself in some corner of the world undiscovered where no one can speak and the sun forever sets and the tide is always low and someone is always just on their way to somewhere else always leaving and not wasting my time just get out of my head these words that become images too vivid too sharp they cut themselves out from inside my eyes and sometimes i wouldn’t even know where to begin again where to stand so i am frozen absolutely still with it on battered jetty rocks made slick that i would skin myself open to bleed you all out each and every one each and every memory each and every thought until i was dry until the world greys out until the shore blossoms into view until the roar finally leaves me and i am left finally until i am left alone until i am left in silence and all of you are gone.
all liquor conversations
all conversations with the liquor are good ones.
inner dialogs run amok settle down for peace treaties with the liquor.
the liquor lays out lateral logic and associative desire and sets things straight.
all demons are negotiated with, hidden children are brought to light and glorified, unreasonable memories are let loose and forgotten, no one is left out.
the liquor brokers and sorts through real and imagined pain and allots each moment its proper place.
a troubled soul comes to the liquor and finds a way out, be it through violence, tears or laughter, it finds release and the liquor is proud of it.
how about this
how about this? he said and he cut open the inside of his forearm and teased out the tendons with the edge of the knife. when he was done with that, he placed the knife down and pulled the skin open a little more, the edges tearing a bit, there’s so much blood, and he works his fingers inbetween the muscles that drape over the bones. it’s warm and clammy and familiar. of course when he flinches the muscles twitch, and he coughs a bit to keep from vomiting. when he can finally see the space just between the ulna and the radius, he takes the cigarette from his mouth and puts it out in there, inside his arm, the cigarette gasping, him wincing, him laughing, him weeping, because it doesn’t even come close to what’s already inside his head.
her weapon
and in my dream she comes to me, naked and pristine, one side of her ribs cracked open, a shattered window, a gaping hole where her heart would have been and she smiles brilliantly like happiness and i break into a million pieces because i am holding her heart in my own hand and the blood is thick and slick in my fingers and i have to grip it even harder lest it escape, restless, hot and wild, this magnificent muscle, and there she was bleeding out of her heart and out of the wound and i walk up to her and with my other hand, to try to to stem the flow and suddenly she touches my chin and brings my mouth to hers, her kiss, tongue and teeth and lip, and i falter, i ask,
“am i your weapon?”
and i fall to my knees with my head against the concrete and i slam against it but it isn’t hard enough, i cannot beat my skull in fast enough to match the beat of her heart, just this pathetic wet sound of skin having been broken but the bone too stubborn to break and she kneels beside me and caresses my hair and does not ask me to yield, i turn to her and shove her heart back into the wound, scraping it, damaging it yet again but i can not hold it anymore, i skin my knuckles with the effort, bite off the sides of my tongue, but shards of ribs trap my hand, slicing around my wrist as i twist and tug and find myself relieved to see i am spilling open into her, i can see the marrow, i see myself laughing and she touches my cheek and i am not afraid, i am so utterly lost and hopeless, and she whispers,
“no. i am yours.”
soft soft
soft soft like lying, lying beside the ocean, the whisper of a sea too distant to feel the current and yet drowning, drowned, i can’t swim out of it, i can’t find where the sky should be, there is only night and her, the dream of her waking up, the sun rising, there is supposed to be some sort of bottom or else how do i find my way upwards, how to find air, when there is no undertow, just a pulling at all sides, the whip tails of something passing, eyes open but blurred for lack of place, i cannot see her, only feel the weight she carries, as if she had been the anchor to my dilemma and she cut me into pieces, cut me loose, adrift, drifting and swept up just before breathing, and cut and spun, again and again, again and again.
when the panic
and there are times when the panic is so overwhelming that the sheerness of it cannot be contained, can barely be comprehended, how to keep on top of it, this struggle to get a hold of it at least, a foot hold, a toe hold, some sort of purchase, it always runs away from me for one reason or another, some thing, some series of things, always an excuse, never getting ahead of it, never even getting close enough to imagine an end to it, exhausting, exhausted, i never catch up, i no longer dream it, i can only hope from time to time to break the surface, catch a gulp of air and pray that i do not drown in the short run.
catastrophe and change
through catastrophe comes change, whether you want it or not. either you choose to change or live with the changes that other people will impose on you. and they will. look at today’s date, 9/11. everything changed six years ago. writing became utterly meaningless in the face of cracked fate, brutal determination and sanctified hopelessness.
i was re-orientated and re-directed. i was horrified and struck bone scared. i was already bitter with graduate school and this was the tipping point. i was done with it. i decided after the towers fell that the world was going mad and there was no way i could write my way through it. but i could live, i could provide, and i chose that, i chose to leave the world, and start some other life that i could keep manageable and safe.
here we are six years later. i do not feel any safer, with one child and yet another on the way. but i’m writing again. and it matters. it matters for me to be in the world like this, with the world like this, because the world has continued to be this way. it wasn’t the world that had changed, it was me finding a new fear that i could not, and did not want to, understand.
and here i am now, finding myself yet anew, as if with a different set of eyes, back at it again, back to the grind, because the grind fucking matters. it was always a problem with scale, always too worried about the scale of it. instead of focusing on the work. it’s the work that does the work, whether it’s only on myself or the random hit from amsterdam. it doesn’t matter.
just get the work done, no matter the cost, the scale, or even the fear, especially in the face of fear.
there is no story here
there is no story here, only whips and snaps of something that has leaked through, that has made an impression, that has been butchered beyond recognition. you cannot see what is here, a funhouse mirror at best, only the distortion of noise where the signal found is your own. i am my own and only, as ever have been, this lonely fucking place, where there is no sound other than the roar that defined me as a child and set me apart, the curious detachment that i have lived this all before, nothing ever comes as a surprise, even the happy moments, even in tragedy, nothing at all. just the sound of there having been something here at one time, the trace of a breath, the outline of a something better than this, all but gone except for this blood rush, this fucking maddening absence that spills over and over, shits on everything, breaks everything, shows me for what it is, how truly empty every moment, how devoid, how clean, unblemished, pure and eternal, this thing in me that has no home, that keeps me exposed to it all, that keeps me away from you. this is the true always and forever, my own and only, this lovely fucking solitude where i am most at peace in its silence, where only the noise for company and you will never be permitted to see.