the beautiful thing about children is they simply cannot fake it.

there just isn’t enough to keep up, for the up keep, daughters breaking games for attention, newborn sons mewling for their bottle and the day goes by just like that, and you have to put this desire away and that yearning away and that bit of frustration that would normally have you put your fist through a wall you set aside to show your daughter this is how you hold a slice of pizza to eat it like a grown up and you tickle your son while his mother makes him a bottle and you feed your wife while she feeds your son because her back is broken and you push the rest of the day further back into the night until you can finally get here and jot down the remnants and even so even so despite it all it takes your mind off everything else it takes you away you from yourself you find some peace in the midst of all this noise.

the beast within me is never asleep, it does not know slumber. it always only muzzled and chained, it growls through the night. it makes me restless and angry without cause. it drips hungry saliva as it paces around. it is mangy and unkempt, its teeth yellowed but still sharp, gnarled claws scratch the floor. it sniffs around for escape, it perks its ears for any sign of exhaustion. it is beautiful and desperate. relentless and cunning. it is all the things I keep myself from being.

she asks, do you get off on your cruelty?
and I said, yes, yes I do. it makes me what I am, it gives me strength. it tells me that I am just as evil as what’s out there, it tells me I can keep those I love safe. it tells me I am capable of anything. something I forget from time to time, living this blessed life that I have.

I rearrange networks and set up firewalls and it does nothing to keep the damage out. it strikes her suddenly, a slap across her face and nothing I can do will undo it, she bears with, she rides through it. and all I can do is bear it with her, hold back my own frustration that nothing I ever do from beyond that point will wash anything else I do clean.

and the madness of babies and children lies in their relentlessness, they need you, and only you, and no matter how inadequate you truly are, how worthless and inept, they need you because you are there, and will always be there, always been that pin point where every mark begins, where every other word will echo throughout their lives, it all begins with their needing of you and what you do with it, how you respond to it, how much you give into it, and in the surges and pitfalls of your frustration and despair, you will make them into what they will be one day and i bite my lip when my son cries with abandon because he is hungry yet again and i bite my tongue when my daughter asks for something other than what i’ve made her and i sneak off every chance i get to take a drag and the moments are fewer and fewer but then the boy smiles at me once i come in and it’s like the sun and my daughter runs into me and hugs me tightly like summer and i want all this need to keep going, i want all this need to wipe me out, i want this need to erase me so that they can grow into something beautiful in the void i leave.

something about
anger two folded fists, knuckles ripe
like gripping a steering wheel and jerking it off road
into blooming fields rife with bone dust and lilacs
laughing i said to her, all it takes is money
all we need is money to make everything alright
and barely holding onto our children in the back seat
she asked, is that all?
and i veered back on road and nodded my head viciously,
damn straight, damn fucking straight

i dreamt of a presidential state of the union where the union suddenly mattered in the aftermath of catastrophic war and dismal economic projections and white old men with yellowed teeth stood and applauded and sat back down and stood and applauded again and again until the dreaming stopped and black women stooped over onto their hands and knees to let the wives of these men with their wide hips and taut faces step over them into gnarled waiting hands and in the dark i reach over to her because i am afraid of the world i have found myself in where the state of my own union with her is barely keeping me together

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