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

the trick is, he says, is that there is no trick at all. it’s real because it simply is.

cross-eyed and stinky toed my son wraps one hand around the other like an evil mastermind and i am his henchman, i am his fool. how astute and he cajoles us all into carrying him around in front of our bellies as if he was directing us this way and that. the cold settles in and seeps around cracks and under doorways a chill that snakes ups calves and tongues the back of our knees. my daughter lunges herself from thing to thing, from watercolor crayons to dvds to the couch to chips to the bathroom before she poops in her pants. undeterred my wife goes through chores with a wariness reserved for those of us whose weekend has ended and the work week has snuck up on us. and i lounge and lounge with my music, with my wife, with my children, with my computers and do a little writing before the day ends.
he says, you need this as well, you need this to keep the madness at bay, this is yet another thing that makes you who you are.

the beauty of her, the slight dark within her, the pureness of her, desire and kindness, lust and forgiveness, a day alone, a day of skin on skin, without children, without interruption, to talk in the light, to talk of brownstones and empty rooms, to talk of then in the here and now, to begin again in the here and now, to dream again, to be living again, to be with her again, here and in the past, to begin again at the beginning, to fit the fragments to make as whole as we were, as we could be, as we always have been

as the dust settles after the penny has dropped I feel a stillness that has eluded me for far too long denied me for too long thwarted me everytime I’ve reached for it and even in my grasp it promises nothing it tells me nothing it leaves me a silence that I am to make my own it leads to make peace with myself