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.

at some point to return, in lilacs, in dust, in tumbleweeds and tufts of matted fur. how about that, how about lice and lace and mesh and barbed wire and the tongues of children caught on the pointy bits like we were all massacred before someone could care. or perhaps past caring, perhaps we had deserved it all: towers set aflame by the wild desire of middle eastern boys promised haughty virgins and a seat at the right hand of allah, of god, of jehovah, of yahweh.
yes, yes, a return to all that; and your children sleep and dream and whisper if there are tooth fairies even in greece.

kick my teeth in with your love, your rambunctious living, your laughter, your tears. little girl, little boy, you strike me into nothingness, into meat. i am pale and stricken before you: you run me in circles. i believe in you and fear your future. you are everything i could’ve been and never can be

the worst of it all is you now live for others, no longer for yourself: all you could’ve have done, all you could’ve amounted to, is done, in the past, wistful and soon forgotten. there is nothing more for you: you’re merely kindle at this point, for your children’s fire.
if at that.

did you ever think it would get easier? panic abounds. gritted teeth and an excuse to wrestle the pillow. too hot, too cold, too soft, not hard enough, not dead enough, too much alive, too fearful to let go, and time slips, time presses on, time abuses you, time mocks me, molasses the days but lightening quick nights. she will leave you one day. he will look at you with disgust. she will find no way to console you and tire of it herself.
panic abounds, panic abounds, and makes marbles of you.