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.
Category Archives: internals
thoughts, musings, life, etc
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.
split level
he says, it’s a good thing, in the long run, to be as shattered as you are.
and i said, why is that, you must be fucking joking.
he says, because if you tried to reconcile all the pieces you’d only find out that none of them fit, that you in the end do not fit.
and i said, i already know that, i’ve known that for quite some time.
he says, no, thinking and knowing are two different things. there is no way to unknow something, but you can unthink something. you can stuff it away, push down and stop feeling that. you know, the sort of thing you do everyday.
and i said, you’re mocking me.
he says, i’m trying to teach you something here, something about yourself. you’re no longer becoming, you already are.
and i said, i’m not done yet, you’re out of your mind.
he says, you realize, of course, you’re just arguing with yourself here.
and i said, yeah, you’d think i’d be used to it by now. how fucked is that.
tunneling
panic in the tunnels, we are all waiting for the end, something abrupt, something like a flash of lightening. none of us want cancer, none of us want to drown. make it quick, make it when i’m not looking, make it when i think i’m going to live forever.
stuck underneath tunnels, we dream each other a friend to hang onto, someone to give us comfort when we have no comfort to give. we look around, looking for that face, someone familiar in the crowd and all we get are crowded eyes looking past us.
i’d give anything for a wailing wall, just one sheer moment of rage and pain and sorrow and broken teeth and split lips and skin cracked over knuckles and a single breath of exhaustion flung against a pile of perfectly set stones to take us away.
the little one asks me to stay
i don’t always get along with the little one, she is tempestuous and ornery, has her mood swings, sticks her tongue out when i tell her what to do. but there are moments like this one, when she is suddenly frail, where even her frustration collapses her, when i get up to walk out of the room for some odd thing and she asks, where are you going? and i reply, do you want me to stay? and she nods her head and i stay and am overwhelmed with the sense that one day she will learn of all my sins, of all my crimes, and will want me to leave instead.
the little one knows
and its like the little one knows, she insists
that i sit with her, play
these games on the laptop,
puts an arm around me when I join in
to hold me still