thought i heard this mouth with my name in it i practice this many times she says my name forwards and backwards by the mirror by the bed by the window she says my name until it’s a house i turn my back on the corners the blinds a little to the left until the doors bleed through the frame i’ll pare it down to the point of lumber of sheetrock of joists i fit her saying it to the house being uneven i fit her saying it to the dust on the walls i fit her saying it to the gap between floors boards i fit her saying it inside and out

because it will come to you in your sleep, because you will never see it coming and you will be old and gray and your children out in the world and their children just coming into the world, because you will grow old and your life will weep out of you the way color leaves a stone left in the sun,
because of this, because you will live a very, very long and painful time, not that the living will be painful, but it will be painfully long the way walking in a new pair of shoes over a great distance is painful, because of this, you need to live, you need to do the things that make you, YOU,
and enough of this bullshit, enough of this cowering, enough of this fear, enough of this anger and hate and self loathing, because you will be rattling around your head for a very long time and your youth will never leave you, only you will be leaving it if you leave yourself like this, leave yourself like your father did and you were never your father’s son,
you will not die alone, he was already dead before ever got there, he died waiting in the hospital, he died waiting in the emergency room, he died of any aneurysm before you ever got there, he died on the craps table or the roulette table or in the night where his fears beat him and your mother into submission, he died long before you could ever start living and you need to start living now and stop this utter shit you seem to think you deserve.
you’ve done nothing wrong. not yet anyway, but you’ll do them all harm, her and she and any others you might be lucky enough to have, you’ll do them all harm if you keep insisting on dying this way, as if youth wasn’t eternal, as if your youth wasn’t endless, as if your living wasn’t worthwhile,
why stop now, why worry about it now, make yourself worthy, make this living worthy, you’ve always known how, you’ve always known how to live, my god, it’s always been easy for you, stop making it so hard.

really having a hard time with the grip this morning, i feel the edge of claws, i feel my sternum yawning, i have to keep moving, i need to keep moving, i can’t let my mind stay still, work and work and tv and noise and the shaking of the head.
let me be rid of this, please let me go, let it go, accept it, accept it, grow old gracefully you bastard.
and i am having the damnest time as fuck, the worst it has ever been, wide awake and clawing, wide awake and almost right there, right in the waking hours that have always been safe, nothing is safe, i thought the waking hours at least were safe, the busy time was safe, but even this is eroding, even this has begun to wear away.
i can’t even bare to look at my face anymore.
is it because my youth has left me, is finally leavng me, right there at the door, hand on the knob, ready to abandon me, and it reminds me with one foot across the threshold, you were never cool, you were never one of the cool kids?

he dreams of cavernous walls of swelling, he dreams of color and fear.
how can i be both? heartless and warm. lustfull and cold? not heartless and cold, but warm while being heartless, you get it? all part of the grand manipulation scheme that i’m a back seat driver of. like i told her:
2 competing impulses: to nuture to grow old with my child, my wife, to love them endlessly in one small room. and the other, to want to scream through the walls, to self destruct, annihilate, to no longer be, to be empty of all this.
screaming mad along the highway, waiting for the right backdraft to sweep me off my feet.

i want this to work, i really do, right around the edges, i want it to bleed, bleed softly, like little petal drops that’ll float up to the surface of things and make it all right, clear these left turns all up.
would it be that bad to wish inside out, have her be me and me she and baby as some three headed hydra wolf of all things and spit and smiles. she climbs slides twice her height and says tada, look at me, look at me, better than any tree.
it’s just a matter of roots isn’t it? of growing, digging into soils, digging into place, staying in place, learning to stay in one place long enough that you can grow into some bark they’ll learn to write on and you in turn will learn to live off the sun.

you want you to say all those things that haven’t been said before. you want to stick a stake through it and let it squirm pinned right to the floor. you want to tell her that it’s been one time too many and she could easily have been anyone.
you want you to get in the car and run it against rails and dividers, sparking all the way to the furthest bar you can get to before it all goes to shit. you want to out drink every single drunk and call them an asshole while you buy them another round.
you want you to feel the steering wheel go tight in your hands and keep the car out of a tail spin.
you want you to feel the gums of your teeth peel back raw and scream your throat dry. you want your eyes to stay open forever and not miss one second of it. you want your hand on her thigh and her tongue in your ear and her hand in your crotch, grinding it into gear.

furnerals are long, tedious and full of grief. they’re an endless procession of procedure, of hearses and caskets and priests and pallbearers and weeping and flowers and goodbye.
there’s a fountain of ritual after dying and before burying. i could not imagine burying my father. someone asked him if he wanted anything.
I want my father, he said, a little boy again, lost in the woods or a department store or somewhere where he thought he could find his way back and now realized he couldn’t. he was suddenly small, not frail, but small and burdened and his clothes too big for him.
at the wake, during the day and the evening, it all seemed easier. my grandmother wept, bursting with each new arrival. my uncles stood around the casket with sunglasses, guarding it. the casket itself was beautiful, a rich and deep red mohagany with easy curves and sharp lines. people came, some well dressed, some out for lunch. in the evening it was all black and sorrow. you could walk right up against it, feel it press itself on your chest, almost not give way. i was in and out, my grandfather’s corpse was ice, my daughter played outside, picking flowers.
the actual service was even more difficult, my aunt could not stand, my grandfather’s sons wept, my grandmother told my grandfather to look, that we all were all here, to come back, look Yianni, we’re here, we’re here, come home, how could you leave me?
we were a procession of twenty cars snaking through island park, oceanside, east rockaway. we drove past his house one last time before leaving for the cemetery.
in pinelawn, competing cemeteries have acres, lush and thick, the size of golf courses. along the shoulders and inbetween them are stores selling tombstones one atop of the other, like vegetable trucks. dull and grey and somber, you can almost sense the near hysterical need to throw out some color.
no one walks the sidewalks.
at the burial we were exhausted. we said good bye at the wake, we said good bye at the church, we were saying goodbye here. we were spent, resigned, submissive. we do not actually watch the casket be put into the ground. and then we were done. and as we all made our way back to our cars and drove one by one away, the funeral director stood alone by the casket of my grandfather. he stood there, watching us leave, waiting. he did not wave, he didn’t even move. he stood there even when we were all gone.