i was lost in the city that i used to know so well, around and around the same block, it was getting later and later and a simple cup coffee with old friends turned into some nightmare where i couldn’t find a phone to call you, to tell you i was so lost, walking into the same bodega asking the clerk behind the counter if i could use the cell phone he was talking into, and he kept smiling talking into the phone in his native language while taking condoms, batteries, cigarettes, cheap cigars off hooks from behind him and offering each in turn to me and i wasn’t smiling and he didn’t seem to mind and it was getting impossibly later into the early morning hours, over and over, until the doors of the bogeda were even locked and he no longer paid any attention to me, knocking on the other side of the bullet-proof glass.
Category Archives: internals
thoughts, musings, life, etc
he breathes
he walks into a room he looks at her she weeps
he moves forward he says her name she moves backwards
he breathes
he touches her face she looks at his hands he closes his eyes
he moves a stray hair she weeps he draws his hand back
he breathes
he pulls away she opens her eyes she says his name
he weeps shes draws her hand back he opens his eyes
he breathes
ach, crap. let’s try this instead
he breathes her into a room where she is weeping and finds her beautiful. he moves a stray hair from her cheek and she touches his hand. she says, don’t. he moves across the room where she is breathing him weeping into hands that are calloused from rubbing sandpaper into walls. she says, don’t, again and he opens his eyes. she is still beautiful breathing and he pulls away into the corner where the lamp sits on a dresser. he says her name and she moves forward around the corner of the bed by him. he breathes her touching his cheek but he is no longer beautiful. she takes his hand and pulls him to where the sheets meet the bed.
gambler’s anonymous
according to the poker site’s stats, in three days time i’ve played over 2000 hands.
blunt piece of metal
the day ends with a soft chill that traces its way up my leg and stops short. in the middle of the night i heard a thump and i snapped out of bed grabbing a leftover tool with a metal edge whose name i didn’t know. i prowl around peering into mirrors, waiting to confront some one, any one, to put these goosebumps across my skin at ease. i work through hallways the way a mouse burrows within the veins of a corpse. hungry and sterile, blurry eyed and angry. hundreds of times i’ve done this and it never wears out the tread. alone with a blunt piece of metal in the dark, waiting for an excuse.
spider song
i dreamt of spiders coming out of my hair with lilacs and orchids and they each sang a song i once remembered and i tried so hard to separate the orchids from the rest as they rained down my face carrying with them the words i couldn’t put my finger on and a part of me wanted to cover my ears to keep the song out of my head but i didn’t want the spiders to leave they were so graceful and soft but they had much better places to go and sing their song and the lilacs kept sticking to my hands
a tremendous sound
alone, bottlefeeding him for the first time
my son gets into a staring contest with me
raising his eyebrows, then furrowing them
until a tremendous sound
fills the bottom of his diaper
& he embarrassingly buries his head
spectacular car crash
sometimes i wish
for that spectacular car crash
-the happenstance of metal
& horrific force-
to put me out
of everyone’s misery
frayed ends and dust
she says, “you’re not who i thought you were and i mourn for him”
standing by the window, i drown in frayed ends
and cough up only dust
dreamt of snow and worms
i dreamt of snow and worms squirming to the surface finding only cold light and a bitter wind as my face cracked the ice i felt my lips harden and my teeth go numb and the worms dig their way back through the corners of my eyes frozen open
breast stones
my daughter collects stones and fits them into my breast
pocket, such weight to unburden me