I rearrange networks and set up firewalls and it does nothing to keep the damage out. it strikes her suddenly, a slap across her face and nothing I can do will undo it, she bears with, she rides through it. and all I can do is bear it with her, hold back my own frustration that nothing I ever do from beyond that point will wash anything else I do clean.
Monthly Archives: January 2008
relentness need
and the madness of babies and children lies in their relentlessness, they need you, and only you, and no matter how inadequate you truly are, how worthless and inept, they need you because you are there, and will always be there, always been that pin point where every mark begins, where every other word will echo throughout their lives, it all begins with their needing of you and what you do with it, how you respond to it, how much you give into it, and in the surges and pitfalls of your frustration and despair, you will make them into what they will be one day and i bite my lip when my son cries with abandon because he is hungry yet again and i bite my tongue when my daughter asks for something other than what i’ve made her and i sneak off every chance i get to take a drag and the moments are fewer and fewer but then the boy smiles at me once i come in and it’s like the sun and my daughter runs into me and hugs me tightly like summer and i want all this need to keep going, i want all this need to wipe me out, i want this need to erase me so that they can grow into something beautiful in the void i leave.
mad money
something about
anger two folded fists, knuckles ripe
like gripping a steering wheel and jerking it off road
into blooming fields rife with bone dust and lilacs
laughing i said to her, all it takes is money
all we need is money to make everything alright
and barely holding onto our children in the back seat
she asked, is that all?
and i veered back on road and nodded my head viciously,
damn straight, damn fucking straight
state of the union
i dreamt of a presidential state of the union where the union suddenly mattered in the aftermath of catastrophic war and dismal economic projections and white old men with yellowed teeth stood and applauded and sat back down and stood and applauded again and again until the dreaming stopped and black women stooped over onto their hands and knees to let the wives of these men with their wide hips and taut faces step over them into gnarled waiting hands and in the dark i reach over to her because i am afraid of the world i have found myself in where the state of my own union with her is barely keeping me together
when someone you love steps
you have to crack at it lest it crack you into porcelain shards falling from a wall that’s been plastered over and over and you become the scratches the pieces make on the floor when someone you love steps on them and slips and you become the wound in that thin patch of the sole and the chips of paint from the crack in the plaster and the sound she makes as she lands on her elbows to keep her head from splitting
been one of meat forks
i had always been one of meat forks and bludgeoned lips and badly healed scar tissue an internal rage expressed through a foul mouth and an affinity for mortal disaster that fell on my knees weeping for something to break this seal of thick skin while my thoughts snow balled into dark and wet masses of moss and mud and shit i had always been a pin point of the roar that hummed in my bones and crackled around the edges of my ears until i screamed until i coughed out my tongue and stamped it into the dirt lest it wiggle itself free and find someone to tell all this to lest it escape and make sense to someone other than me
monarch
and in the shower i had the idea if only i had seen it in a dream and it would’ve been better but i was naked and the water finally turning hot and i split-imagined a river of ants coming out of my penis, a stream of roaches and bugs crawling out, snuggling out, dripping out, marching out and down and around my scrotum and thigh, pulling free, pushing through, one over another, until at the very end, and the only moment i felt any pain, a monarch butterfly struggled free, as if from a cocoon, and spread its wings and fluttered away
more or less likely
the less likely you on harps, the less likely you strumming along a note slammed sideways through your fingers, the less likely you had been an adam’s apple bitten by an eve entrenched by the river where factories dump sludge and remains, her ankles cut by tin cans and an admirable achilles heel before a bloody calf, the less likely you would remember, the less likely you perched with fishing hooks and throwing a line, the less likely you would pitch yourself forward, more than ever you towing out to past the river banks, unsteady but sure, broken glass and the stench of leaving, or arriving, whatever is more likely.
sudden harvest
suddenly angry welts on my back and just behind my ear, a throbbing walnut tucked under my jaw, embers just where my throat downturns and escapes my tongue. i am suddenly over and over again, highly aware and improbable, my skin reminds me, my body fails me, large boulders rumble from side to side within my skull. and she says in front of our daughter, do you want me to laugh like your bimbo? and there aren’t enough hours of sleep to put myself behind me, to put this behind me, to repair, undo, past due, time’s up, perhaps the body is finally taking it’s toll, stealing a pound of its own flesh, harvesting itself for i owe, for the damage i’ve done
orange killing
and the moon was this haunting orange looming over the horizon and i was driving towards it unstoppable undeterred and i thought of her how she wept of her father’s death how she held my hand and then kissed my lips and the night seemed to catch up with us and we were too far away to ever return home and all there was one empty gas station after another one abandoned motel after another and her skin was dusty and my eyes burned and i wonder now if he hadn’t died if she hadn’t asked me to bury him if she hadn’t asked anything of me at all would i have delivered the killing blow would i have begged for her forgiveness eventhough i had done exactly what she had wanted me to do?