i dreamt of an ocean that did not know the trespass of any land, no jetties broke its surface, no island climbed out of its depths, and the sky was a dark and thunderous violet just before nightfall or dawn, and in the distance there was a rumble that growled across the horizon and streaks of lightening shocked everything into a pale white, and i did not know where i was but i looked for signs of my body, some stray limb, some motion, some sense of nausea and i found only a perfect stillness with all that it threatened.
Category Archives: internals
thoughts, musings, life, etc
and I wish for new things & old
and I wish for new things & old, for simultaneity and purpose, for an end to grief and despair, for the hope of daylight, for the promise of a bright and clear dawn.
write about him
write about the cold and wet, the chill and the unshakable feeling you’ve been here before you’ve grown tired of it. write about the sound of this voice as it gurgles up what you so desperately want to hear but cannot make sense of. write about the feel of his limbs, the flap of skin as it wraps around the bone as you grab hold of him before he goes. the soft feeling of new leather that’s been beaten over rocks and casino tables and the touch of women who forgot his name. write about the few strands of hair stuck to his skull and impossible to clean. everything begins with a promise he breaks but ends with you keeping it.
the little one chokes
the little starts to cough that turns into a choke. playing poker i am frozen looking for the color of her face. someone says, do the heimlich and i get cross the room looking for color and see a face full of panic. i wrap behind her and tilt her forward, two fingers just below her sternum and wonder if the placement is right but i push anyway. once, twice, i don’t see anything come out but she starts to cry. can’t cry without air, she starts to cry and i am relieved. i pick her up and hold her tight and she bawls that she can’t breathe. i laugh a nervous tension and whisper in her ear, if you couldn’t breathe, you wouldn’t be able to tell me.
merry christmas
presents torn open and mouth agape, the little one says, over and over, i wanted this, i wanted this. and she goes through the pile, a wasteland of wrapping paper. my sister-in-law announces her pregnancy, eyes welling up, the family grows. outside my brother-in-law says, it’s nice today but i wish there was snow. and i wouldn’t have minded a snow storm either, something to cover up the lawn, the sidewalk, the limbs of trees, one big push before the new year and have winter move on its way.
beneath my station
a house full of children yelling like banshees while adults mill about in their clicks. the hosts meander from site to site, checking up, filling glasses, offering cigars. santa gently handles each child on his lap while people of a better class than mine snap photos of them little realizing that jolly old nick has a full sleeve of tattoos down each arm. but he shows incredible kindness with my son who sleeps in his arm as if he was the real thing. we sit on the patio and talk of the politics of the world and the economics of our children’s future. i say little but am filled with anxiety. i ask him, your father owned a business, you are a partner in a law firm, what do you hope for your daughters? he says, i want them to find out what they like and get good at it and we’ll be well off enough that hopefully the money will come one way or the other. i think of my daughter’s fine hand and her penchant for photography and how she rambles prose that sounds almost right and i think of all the wrong turns i’ve made that the other is not an option for her.
a wake, awake
a sight for sore eyes, eye sore, sores on the skin, whore, teeth clenched, more, i wanted all of it, site of infection, inflection, seduction, a gnashing of limbs, doors within cracked frames, panting, ranting, raving, craving, separate the nail from the finger, knuckle crack, fracture, rapture, rupture, piercing, wailing, i want none of it, all of it gone, used, abused, fallen apart from disuse, a wake, awake, just wake the fuck up.
effortless, very own
i sleep without dreaming, a restless pitch into darkness, into the void. i see nothing. i feel nothing. i am nothing. nameless and faceless. disembodied, all my bruises gone, all my scars a figment of someone’s imagination. there is no past, no future, no hope, no despair, no sadness, no fracture, no comfort, no rage, no desire, no strain, no peace. perfect and effortless, swallowed within my very own absence.
letting go
as we leave class, the little one says, i want to sit on your shoulders. so i hoist her up.
we cross the street & she says, i want to run. so i put her down & she runs, laughing.
she runs away from me, little legs dancing, she runs past our car. i say, where are you going?
she doesn’t even look back. she just laughs & laughs. i ask again, where are you going?
unadulterated glee, she runs even further away without stopping.
city grudge
the city is, of course, brutal and unending, pure and ultimately relentless. circumscribed, the city inevitably consumes itself only to reproduce itself. the faces change, the strides, the fashion, but they are all the same, split apart and recombined, a gestalt of the city, of its desires and nuances, of its fickle and harsh method of living. it is infinite within itself, a fractal pattern that subdivides over and over until my eyes water from the strain of discerning the swirls from the limbs, the gesture from the act, the concrete from the skin, myself from it. i was born here. i made love here. i bled here. but i will not die here, i know this as sure as i know my own name. and the city most likely holds it against me.