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
All posts by manny@savo.us
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?
real trick
the trick is, he says, is that there is no trick at all. it’s real because it simply is.
weekend snuck out
cross-eyed and stinky toed my son wraps one hand around the other like an evil mastermind and i am his henchman, i am his fool. how astute and he cajoles us all into carrying him around in front of our bellies as if he was directing us this way and that. the cold settles in and seeps around cracks and under doorways a chill that snakes ups calves and tongues the back of our knees. my daughter lunges herself from thing to thing, from watercolor crayons to dvds to the couch to chips to the bathroom before she poops in her pants. undeterred my wife goes through chores with a wariness reserved for those of us whose weekend has ended and the work week has snuck up on us. and i lounge and lounge with my music, with my wife, with my children, with my computers and do a little writing before the day ends.
he says, you need this as well, you need this to keep the madness at bay, this is yet another thing that makes you who you are.
always have been
the beauty of her, the slight dark within her, the pureness of her, desire and kindness, lust and forgiveness, a day alone, a day of skin on skin, without children, without interruption, to talk in the light, to talk of brownstones and empty rooms, to talk of then in the here and now, to begin again in the here and now, to dream again, to be living again, to be with her again, here and in the past, to begin again at the beginning, to fit the fragments to make as whole as we were, as we could be, as we always have been
stillness
as the dust settles after the penny has dropped I feel a stillness that has eluded me for far too long denied me for too long thwarted me everytime I’ve reached for it and even in my grasp it promises nothing it tells me nothing it leaves me a silence that I am to make my own it leads to make peace with myself
welcoming
and i dance with her and i dance with my daughter and i sing to my son and dance with him as well and i move through the house my home and i listen to the song and i feel moved and i move and i listen and i dance with them each in turn and i sing to them each in turn and i am trying to tell them something about what i am feeling by what i am listening to and although the words are not mine i try to sing them to make them my own and i try to fit my body into the rhythm between them and i am home it feels like i am home it feels like they finally are welcoming me home
across the divide
the burnt offerings of her heart like shark’s teeth blackened by selfish anger and the skins of snakes left abandoned on your doorstep. you try to fit the ashes together into a coherent whole but instead breathe in the soot of all that you were and could’ve been. old. older. sitting by the window along the highway watching cars skid through the onramp as hubcaps shot out and clanged against the curb. tears welled up in your eyes because you knew even then that your innocence was gone, you were already gone and it was only going to get worse. remorse without regret, regret without remorse, or something else entirely? he had married your mother just before thirty and all this violence that you now are has been rearing it’s head since you did as well. when will he stop dying? when will you learn to live peacefully and without pain? an accumulation of wounds and the wounded, of guilt and clenched teeth, the rage goes on indefinitely and your children grasp at your fists to make them into hands to hold across the divide.
ruiner. faker.
there has to be a way to rebuild a future and pick and choose pieces of the past. did i not say this already, i didn’t i say this before? didn’t i wish for this? i’ve destroyed so much. ruiner. faker. crippled. how to begin again, how to begin without a beginning? nonsense, pebbles in the mouth, dirt between teeth. mumbler. liar. stain. carved out, hollow, even in your son’s eyes, looking at you for something, looking for anything. your daughter on the other hand sees delight, your daughter calls you, your daughter hugs you impulsively. dreamer. believer. hope.
scissor slice mouth
the scissor slice of her mouth