you run with it, leap one foot in front of the other
& dash, across busy streets, uneven rooftops
you avoid tripping over orphaned cables & broken glass
barefoot to feel the dirt & the gravel, the crunch
of having tread over time accelerated, your body
flung at high velocity, your mouth a smear
of laughter braced by yellowed teeth
& arms willing to grab hold of anything
Monthly Archives: November 2007
angeliki vlamakis
i am sorry my friend that i could not extend her life by giving her some of my own.
garbage man
garbage piles up, the scattered refuse of toilet paper and pizza boxes, the lost hope that we will be clean, that someone else can take this all away. the streets become mired with sewer rats and roaches, crawling up the thin veil of my skin as i lay between cool black plastic bags, my legs trapped between steel dumpsters, green and hard. i would speak if my voice wasn’t sore from swallowing the dregs of beer bottles and pulp from nearly empty cartons. instead i twitch to keep them all at bay, to keep them from my nostrils, the stench of having thrown away something vital and necessary amongst the heap, wet and unusable.
echo through time
i tell her, “these things echo through time.”
and we look at our daughter and talk of the little i remember of my father, the four or five memories of him beating my mother, throwing me aside, the night he raped her, the feel of his palm on my cheek as i was terrified of him. these scant moments have circumscribed me, defined certain limits and obviously have opened doors within me that i might have been better off if they were closed. perhaps it is those open doors i fear the most and pray that i am never the one who opens them for my children.
the malaise
sometimes the malaise comes over me and although i know it’s a sickness of the mind, it is difficult to think through it, to imagine the other side where i am alright and my thoughts are not tinged with rot. that there is a dawn where i will be able to take deep strong breaths and fill my lungs without sharp pain or a heavy sense of futility. i curl up on our love seat with my newborn son cradled in my arms and i want to stitch him there, safe and sound and smelling his father, a buried memory he will always carry within him even after i am gone. i kiss him and in turn reach out to my daughter to kiss her soft cheek as well, and each time she veers near me i whisper, i love you, because one day i won’t be able to say anything at all. i only remember fear and the sickly sweat of my father’s death. it is difficult, despite everything, despite this new thing i have become, to abandon myself effortlessly, to hold myself still enough and breathe it all in.
promises of a calm winter
down to 250ml, my friend’s mother gasps for air at a quarter of a liter throughout the day as he watches over her until she falls asleep in the early morning. another friend brings his daughters, all three of them, and they fill my house with squeals of laughter, running between and over us. my father pines for the earliest recording he has of his father singing, his voice tinny, hum and hiss filling the speakers, the distance between the microphone and the music. in our room, my wife brushes aside my hair to kiss me, our son cooing in the same bassinet our daughter once slept in. the night is cold and clear and the fierce wind has died but holds no promises for a calm winter.
aren’t enough skewers
there aren’t enough skewers in the world to stab out my eyes, pierce my tongue, pin my hands from reaching out and stealing everything from it, stuff it all into my head, my heart, pack the little piece of a soul i have left until i vomit happiness and kindness and love and all the things that make any life worth living.
home lost
you say, i’ll be home later
and you wander between the streets and the moon, tucking away the night inside the bottle between your lips, warm and drowning.
you say, i’m coming home
and you get lost, having made a left turn instead of the right one and you find yourself waiting at the corner as you pass yourself by.
you say, i’m home
and you cross the threshold and lock shut the door behind you, knowing that you’re still out there somewhere, waiting to go home.
just like this again
sometimes my head is so full of bricks and my mouth so stuffed with mourning that i am short of breath and the wind whips the skin off my bones and my muscles ache and my knees crack and i can barely stand up to it all, this swelling up and over, this drowning of the dam, that all i can think of is, and tomorrow will be just like this again, and the day after that, and the day after
hooliganism
i remember going to the mall, the odd assembly of stores packed tight, robbing kids of their beepers because we knew someone who could tune them up and resell them. i remember smoking in between subway cars, flicking open my butterfly knife and cutting the rubber seal to the conductor’s booth, announcing stations somewhere between here and hell. i remember chasing down the two muggers who snapped off our chains in the bronx and pounding the head of the one we caught into the sidewalk until it was wet. i remember firing my first gun, a .22 raven off in the dark of forest park, not hitting anything but wishing there was something to catch the bullets in between the trees. i remember running across queens boulevard and someone saying, it’s him, it’s him, and we had guns drawn down our sides like mad men, then suddenly, when the guy at the pay phone looked at us, we stopped abruptly, turning away, it ain’t him, it ain’t him. i remember learning they finally snatched up into a cargo van the kid that had stabbed me and that they broke both of his arms. i remember the rage and the clear detachment, the grief and the guilt, and the curious sense we were all toeing a very dangerous line and at any time it could have gone either way.