Io @ the NYC Greek Independence Day Parade 2012

did you dream this? i slept through waking nightmares and sleep through precious moments where i rest and they rest and we laugh but i am gone, absent, ethereal, unreal.
i cringe at the thought. i cringe at all thoughts. i cringe at my thoughts. i cringe at the sight of me: imperfect, oblong, irregular, irrational, unattractive, ugly, obtuse, meat sack sagging through the kitchen, the living room, the stair the bedroom: avoid all mirrors at all costs.
only for the close ups, the face, the bags under the eyes, the eyebrows dense, the slight grey at the temples. just barely looking at, if at all.

there had been a time, a something for the day, every day: visceral and gaunt, toothy and wrapped in sinew. and now, now, silence within a semblance of peace. but it’s all there, under the floor boards, like poe’s beating heart ranting and screaming and bursting at the seams and i dance over it instead, steps stomped out in routine and mediocrity, with dressing the children and washing their hands and holding them tightly as we venture in to the world, day in, day out. bang all you want, tortured demon of mine, but this isn’t your time: i belong only to them.

ok. how to do this? with pliers and will and something sinewy, something that gets stuck between broken molars:
day 3 of SAMe. new week of Unisom and 5 Hour Energy Boosting. Like MZ said, “This, this is what’s going to kill you.”

the sudden sense of failure, of internal implosion: i want to be free of this, i want to stand absolutely still and have it overwhelm me, have it wipe me out finally and completely and totally. i want to stop feeling everything and nothing, i want move beyond feeling broken.

the same again: will i ever find peace? will i ever be complete and whole? work and wife and children and still, still this fucking pain with each breath. working out, chiseling a body long abandoned, reading fact and fiction and theory and science, and still, still: ennui and void, entropy and emptiness, pathos and pain…
are you happier or more pre-occupied? have you found a rhythm to dance to or more rabbit holes to scurry into? zen or distraction?

there are times, late into the night, in this haggard breath the moon coughs across these streets, i feel this intolerable loneliness, this immense and profound sense of isolation: this skin is a prison, my mind a cell and every word i have ever said a betrayal of every word i should’ve said.

I had the weirdest dream: I didn’t know exactly where we were, it could have been Athens or New York, but my father, Savopoulos, just showed up, alive and not dead, alive and just as young as i remembered him. We were all shocked and when he invited to take you and I to the casino, we went. It was dark and I was in the front seat, you were in the back, and he was driving. We didn’t say anything: I couldn’t believe my eyes. How did he stay so young? Where were the years? We would look at each other, but neither of us could say anything. How could we, we were riding with a ghost. But as we approached a bridge over a very wide river, I could tell he was tired and falling asleep. I told him to let one of us drive and at first he would not let go of the steering wheel. When we almost crashed we struggled over the steering wheel and he finally let us drive. This time you sat with me up front and he slumped into the back seat. As we drove back home, I kept staring at his reflection in the rear-view mirror until I finally asked him, “So if I didn’t kill you, who died? Who died for you?”

I woke up with bile in my mouth.

if you were to do it all again, what would be different:
i would have done it all again but with fists and rage and sensibility
i would’ve done it right and made no wrong turns: i would’ve been unstoppable.
i would’ve been a cop, a detective, a us marshal, a professor, a poet.
i would’ve died protecting a judge, died stopping a robbery, disabled because i tripped down a flight of stairs in the projects.
i would’ve died clutching a bottle, would’ve spent many nights alone staring out into empty streets long abandoned by youth.
i would be here all over again, but with nothing.
so no. i wouldn’t do it all over again. i would leave it just as it is. with their hugs and shrill laughter and her gentle touch. i’d leave it just like this despite everything i could’ve been.

a i see them all wither away like stop motion photography, the setting of the gray, the wilting of skin, the time lapse of bones into dust.
i see this and see this and cannot run away, my precious loves, my mother, my father, my wife, my children, my skin, my eyes, my life, gone, slow-fast, in an instant, an eternal forever, just like that.
time, you fucking animal, why cant you leave us alone.