All posts by manny@savo.us

general, internals

if you were to begin to write

if you were begin to write, what would you do? where would you begin? would you start with the years in albany, where you first felt the beginnings of your life realized? out there between graduate classes and talking long walks with her through the park?

or would you begin with him, with him and his hands on your mother, ripping the phone out of the wall? would you begin with that, with watching Columbo and confusing him with Beretta?

or would you begin with 9/11 that all but shut the door on making writing a life? would you begin with the end of that dream?

or would you begin with how losing one unborn child was not enough, that you’ve lost another? would you begin with how the pain still ebbs and flows and nothing quite feels like it and it persists like it will never go away?

or would you begin with the little one that runs throughout the house and says how big her house is, how this is her big house and when her mother can’t get the channels on the tv to work right, she picks up the phone and says, call daddy, my daddy can fix it

frags, internals

poised as if in mid thought, mid stream, in the middle of

poised as if in mid thought, mid stream, in the middle of.
he is poised as if writing, as if living, as if the day is not already night but still days and days ahead of him when it’s night all around. poised, as if he finally caught his breath -still drowning.
silent, silent killer night, suffocating closure and the nonsense of all that was. how did it come to be like this, he asks without asking, lips half open, stuck open, finger stuck suspension. i had been all of this, he says, i had been at this many times before.
his mother with his child on her lap asks, what’s the matter, what’s wrong. he thinks of his wife, of the child they lost early this year, of the recent miscarriage this week, of the death of his grandfather and the weeping of his father. he says he is tired. he never thought he would have gotten so old this quickly so young. sitting, she reaches out to him across the room to comfort him, sitting. he gets up and he walks away, he pushes down and stops feeling that.
he walks from one room into another. it could be something other this, some fantasy tale and life and slit ends and dovetailed structures. he could make it go this way or that. he lays down on the couch in the basement, flicks through channels, watches a show, all he sees are flaws. flaws in the wall, flaws in the floor, the possibility of mold, cobwebs in the window.
he adds up numbers: 34 and 2. 52 at 20. 46 at 12. he tosses, he’d like to sleep, a little piece of oblivion please, i’m exhausted. his right eye burns open, his left cannot stay awake. so late, we started too late.
i push down and stop feeling that.

internals

darling child of mine, we are at it again

darling daughter of mine, i see you and recognize you. i see your mother, i see myself, i see our beginning and our end. i see us mixed up in you and something else entirely, unrecognizable.
what is this thing, this growing jumble who sits besides me even after i’ve scolded her, even when i was wrong for doing so, sits besides me, climbs all over me, snuggles herself between me and and the couch wants to watch tom & jerry while i’m desperate for sleep?
i’m still waiting for a hard drive for the brain to never forget any of this, to never forget how she rolls her eyes, how she holds up three crooked fingers when she wants to say she’s two, how she tilts her head to the left and to the right and she dips and sways while singing some sing-song nonsense that eventually leads to an abrupt cackle of her laughter.
never forget any of this, not forget any of her or her mother, until the end of days, until my very end, until the end of all of this.
(we’ve been at it again, another baby on the way. please. please, take anything you want from me, leave this one whole, leave them all whole, take only from me for them, leave them whole, i need nothing that would keep them from being whole)

general

CRACKER: Nine Eleven

I got lots to say about TV: I watch much too much of it; between it and the internet, I’ve lost everything I could have been.
OK, so that’s a bit over the top. However, I do watch alot of it, again, like the internet, for distraction, and entertainment of course. But more often than not, I’m hardly ever entertained.
Given that, some notes about the series CRACKER, a British Crime series mostly written by Jimmy McGovern (who later wrote another incredible series called “The Street”) that feature an alcoholic, gambling and philanderous criminal psychologst Dr Edward “Fitz” Fitzgerald, played by Robbie Coltrane. The series was clearly dated, you could tell that it was shot during the nineties, but the stories were incredibly complex in their emotional depth and impact. 
Anyway, this recent episode really just blew my mind: it was very visceral, very hands on. The idea that 9-11 and the global war on terror drowns out, belittles, all previous terrorist activity that people who have suffered first hand almost on a daily basis (i.e. the UK and the IRA), is both fascinating and troubling. It’s intriguing in the sense that the world caught up in this drama that has the US as its lead, but as this episode tries to demonstrate, this is not the drama the world has been living, and the US has usurped the world’s fear, grief and anger for it’s own purposes.
As the antagonist of the episode points out, the US had no problems facilitating terrorism abroad before, but now, suddenly, the US has taken it upon itself to dictate the terms and focus of the war on terror. It is now THIS war, in Afghanistan. Now it is THIS war, in Iraq; etc. etc. How arrogant and selfish, as if before 9-11, there was no terrorism.
Yes, Fitz is an antihero: he is not good looking, slim, athletic or even faithful. He is not driven to discover the truth or to honor the dead. All that matters is finding the suspect and breaking him or her down, to crack them. The rush is not in solving the crime, but where he has to go in his head to figure the killers out. The episode opens with Fitz at his daughter’s wedding arguing about 9-11. Six years later, we’re in Afghanistan and Iraq, Iran wants to go nuclear while supplying Hezzbolah in its conflict with Israel in Lebanon. And, just like the gentleman whom Fitz was arguing with, when it comes to 9-11, we’re still frustrated, angry and, ultimately, speechless on the subject.

frags, internals

and here i thought of nether regions

and here i thought of nether regions,
of dark places i would wonder just how soft, how wet, how dark
like lips before speaking, hands before kissing, something tense like a foot raised on its tippy toes
fingers to the lips, like praying, sudden like holding, to lock the eyes, to lock the jaw, to grit the teeth
passion like spit, like cursing, like mad as hell for being kept out of the dark, kept out of the wet, kept out of the soft
spent before anything else, anything further, like legs entwined, like a lazy hand on a breast, like a tangle of hair caught in the mouth
i oscillate like wild
i am the last frayed ends of some child’s dream. i am the lust that comes after denial.
i am the withered thing in the corner, i am the crawling sound between gasps.
i am the sweat and the euphoria. i am the swallowing of the whole and the pining.
i am the clasp of your hips, i am the unfulfilled desire.
i am the wounded tree, the tooth through the broken lip.
i am the snarling beast when you’ve said you’ve had enough.

frags, internals

no liquor apologies

don’t apologize.
never apologize for the liquor.
many a ramble on the liquor, many, many, many a ramble.
sometimes i think i’d like to see them all again when i’m on the liquor. the lost ones, the dead ones, the ones that i miss so terribly and i know they no longer know me. the ones that don’t remember. that’s the ones i want to see when i’m on the liquor, the ones that don’t remember.
that way they not remembering won’t matter at all.

internals

i’ve been out of lately

i’ve been out of my mind lately. it comes in waves, i think
(in waves i think, in oceans, in drowing, i dream of drowning in wakes, funeral processions stacked atop of each other, held aloft by dirt and flowers and crabgrass)
there so much talking instead, so much body language and the wearing down of the body. sometimes you have to dance without a tune to figure out it’s rhythm. i’ve always been guileless, i’ve always been two left feet.
blitz said i had a habit of putting together incredibly complex things and then going backwards to figure out the simple stuff they were made up of. as if, why did i even bother. i miss him. i miss being a writer-in-becoming, artist-at-large.
now i’m just large. i’ve grown ridiculous. l’ve grown lazy. i’m just not hungry anymore. this is not the life i imagined, not the life i wished for. and it’s become this steamroller of a thing, perpetual motion machine, bringing me into this life i never thought i would allow myself to succumb to.
but then my daughter comes to me, still early in the morning after i’ve just gotten home from the night before, and she tugs at my fingers, pushes the hair out of my eyes and looks for my face. she pokes her fingers around there, finds my eyes to wake me up. and even though i can’t even keep my eyes open, i want nothing more than this, half dead from lack of sleep, flipping between day and night and night for day, nothing more than more she poking for my attention.
or when my wife has this look on her face that’s only for me, when her faces juts and curves like classic sculpture, something permanent and something permanent for me and only me, and i become her bear and we touch and it’s like water along stone, every fissure, every crack, every crevice bridged, covered, healed.
if only we could split ourselves, divide out across time, across each fork in the path, to have it all, every outcome, every possibility, every lost love, every lost child, every lost utterance, all at once, at all times, to live, to live, to be a pertpetual motion machine instead of being trapped by one.

frags, internals

and with nothing there are words

and with nothing there are words, plenty, all over the place, out of the corners, out of the cobwebs, a swirl of words, a haunting, a cackle.
with them there is nothing, only them, no words, only them-as-no-words, them-as-no-words-needed, them as everything.
and here i need to lose myself, to obliterate myself like the old days, myself-as-once-was, myself-as-lost-within-the-cackle.
myself-as-all-draped-in-noise, myself-as-looking-for-signal
were you only just a ghost, figments. i don’t sleep, i twist into and out of a state of consciousness like a worm in dirt

frags

and hear, grey matter

and hear, it becomes all grey matter, wet matter, slushing through the tears of this thought or any other. i’ve been here before, it never gets easier, this is the state of anxiety of my smile, or my tenderness, always on the verge.
it still whispers, these voices, one of many, echoes back and forth and takes turns just beneath the surface, like a soft murmur, like commentary. it glides and stops like a conversation. it’s not a pretty thing, but it’s alive and that’s got to count for something, like a battery charge. charging, saving up, building, what the fuck is building up there these days.
and i thought it was all dead matter, still matter, that all that mattered was before me, all the inside dried up, bare grass, bare soil, bare sand, barrenscape.
comes and goes, but it grows.