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.
Category Archives: frags
abandoned pieces, fragments, scraps
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
disneyworld madness or is that just the world?
walking right in, just past the castle in front of the carousal, on the floor screaming, a child and no one listening
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.
and hear, this for her
his child by the shore, by the rocks, jutties striking the sea, against the rocks, he watches her there, hair wild like her mother’s, she prefers it that way
he does not want her to lose the spittle, i do not want you to forget what it means to be angry and full of fists and an impossible sense of urgency, of there’s something wrong with all this. he wants her to have these things, this beach, this sound of the shore, the taste of the air caressing your lips, the warm tug of a forgiving sun that laps the sweat of your skin.
he wants this for her as well, the fury of the night, the sense of inexplicable loss, of having lost something vital and precious and that this life was for finding it again. the mad search for something to protect, to find something worthy, to be worthy.
he prefers her that way, wild all the more to temper but never tame, all the more to keep the anger up and the spittle.
and hear i thought
thought i heard this mouth with my name in it i practice this many times she says my name forwards and backwards by the mirror by the bed by the window she says my name until it’s a house i turn my back on the corners the blinds a little to the left until the doors bleed through the frame i’ll pare it down to the point of lumber of sheetrock of joists i fit her saying it to the house being uneven i fit her saying it to the dust on the walls i fit her saying it to the gap between floors boards i fit her saying it inside and out
because it will come
because it will come to you in your sleep, because you will never see it coming and you will be old and gray and your children out in the world and their children just coming into the world, because you will grow old and your life will weep out of you the way color leaves a stone left in the sun,
because of this, because you will live a very, very long and painful time, not that the living will be painful, but it will be painfully long the way walking in a new pair of shoes over a great distance is painful, because of this, you need to live, you need to do the things that make you, YOU,
and enough of this bullshit, enough of this cowering, enough of this fear, enough of this anger and hate and self loathing, because you will be rattling around your head for a very long time and your youth will never leave you, only you will be leaving it if you leave yourself like this, leave yourself like your father did and you were never your father’s son,
you will not die alone, he was already dead before ever got there, he died waiting in the hospital, he died waiting in the emergency room, he died of any aneurysm before you ever got there, he died on the craps table or the roulette table or in the night where his fears beat him and your mother into submission, he died long before you could ever start living and you need to start living now and stop this utter shit you seem to think you deserve.
you’ve done nothing wrong. not yet anyway, but you’ll do them all harm, her and she and any others you might be lucky enough to have, you’ll do them all harm if you keep insisting on dying this way, as if youth wasn’t eternal, as if your youth wasn’t endless, as if your living wasn’t worthwhile,
why stop now, why worry about it now, make yourself worthy, make this living worthy, you’ve always known how, you’ve always known how to live, my god, it’s always been easy for you, stop making it so hard.
is it because, i was never cool?
really having a hard time with the grip this morning, i feel the edge of claws, i feel my sternum yawning, i have to keep moving, i need to keep moving, i can’t let my mind stay still, work and work and tv and noise and the shaking of the head.
let me be rid of this, please let me go, let it go, accept it, accept it, grow old gracefully you bastard.
and i am having the damnest time as fuck, the worst it has ever been, wide awake and clawing, wide awake and almost right there, right in the waking hours that have always been safe, nothing is safe, i thought the waking hours at least were safe, the busy time was safe, but even this is eroding, even this has begun to wear away.
i can’t even bare to look at my face anymore.
is it because my youth has left me, is finally leavng me, right there at the door, hand on the knob, ready to abandon me, and it reminds me with one foot across the threshold, you were never cool, you were never one of the cool kids?
he dreams of caverns
he dreams of cavernous walls of swelling, he dreams of color and fear.
how can i be both? heartless and warm. lustfull and cold? not heartless and cold, but warm while being heartless, you get it? all part of the grand manipulation scheme that i’m a back seat driver of. like i told her:
2 competing impulses: to nuture to grow old with my child, my wife, to love them endlessly in one small room. and the other, to want to scream through the walls, to self destruct, annihilate, to no longer be, to be empty of all this.
screaming mad along the highway, waiting for the right backdraft to sweep me off my feet.
thank you gnawing
why thank me? it’s a thankless job isn’t it?
the gnawing, the waiting. waiting for thanks. fasting for thank you.
fast thank you’s out of car windows speeding along sun burnt shoulders.
thank you for comfort, thank you for rest.
thank you for words of encouragement, thank you for saying, thank you for kicking around.
no thanks to the time you offered me something a wee bit more than a frozen magarita and a night of light kisses.
thanks for slinking around my skull like a wet piece of rubber i can’t pry my fingers under.
no ‘thank you’ matters more than the time you thought nothing of me at all.