in the middle of it all there is the still, the dead sound of someone having left, a door closed softly and irrevocably.
the mad, mad sound of nothing… and, and,
the nagging thought, the lingering memory, the hollow sound of a cliche that’s been written one too many times.
i want to say something new, but i can’t be bothered with the putting it down.
i’ve gotten too used to writing about pain and madness and angst and despair when i am no longer any of things.
my daughter semi-squats, makes tiny fists to keep her balance and blurts out before bursting red something of terrible importance that we cannot possibly understand between the yelps and babbles that came before and after.
in an effort to impress me with her technical savviness, my wife breaks our home built tivo.
this is my life now: a wonderfully lunatic child and loony loving wife. where is the sadness in any of that?
in the middle of it all, the still between tears and laughter, the short breath that comes before relief, the sound of shutters opened to the sun.
Category Archives: internals
thoughts, musings, life, etc
my privacy
i had wished for fame and glory, at the very least, a long funeral procession.
you don’t want this
you don’t want this
you don’t want this anymore
or you don’t want this for now
have it put up on a shelf until you look at it again
and notice how dusty it’s become.
this thing between us is hardening, i’m in love with another statue
and everything can be broken, can’t you see
we’re breaking
and i want to scream at you to fix this
to put this here and that there
put it all the way it was
to put yourself the way you were
when you were still in love with me
this thing that
it was all starting to happen, had been happening for some time (from ‘five days…’)
and what more could happen would have been something else if not for her toothless grin. gum drop we called her because she would smile at the slightest thing that was just too fast to recognize. whenever we thought her all figured out, she’d spit out some rapid garbled pieces of wisdom and we, in return, would garble nonsense.
weren’t we the ones who were supposed to be teaching her something? done up in pigtails that shot up from her skull, she looked like an alien bunny in a one-sy inches long of her toes. the best would be the apple bites, that were always too monstrous but somehow, with cheeks packed, her lips could pucker tight to keep from chewing out loud.
this is life with her, between diaper changes and sleep, this infant turning to child.
if i hadn’t
if i hadn’t then i would’ve and then something or other would’ve burst like a balloon filled with water, stale and poisonous, shot through the air like a stain, and we all would’ve wondered where did that boy once go? he had been filled with such hopes and aspirations. and i would’ve ducked under fire hydrants itching my knuckles and licking the curb, because enough really isn’t really enough with these fucking nightmares of jaundiced skin and tobacco fingers when i sure as hell don’t even smoke anymore.
and where’s the reset button, not restart, re-set, set all this to happen someplace else and if it doesn’t work out that time, set to happen all to someone else. someone who’ll learn how to live and not be the miserable mess of fat and flesh that i’ve become. there are times when i can feel my intestines poke through and i’d love to grab a good handle on them and not yank them out, but pull them a little to the left or the right, in any direction but the one i seem to be going because it’s becoming unbearable and maybe it’s the night, the ghost halls and dead air conditioning, the empty streets pock marked and scarred with flipped cars and hazard lights.
but then my daughter, while i was on my back making believe i was a monster she killed with the toe of her one-sy, bent down ever so carefully as not to lose her balance and kissed my forehead.
if i hadn't
if i hadn’t then i would’ve and then something or other would’ve burst like a balloon filled with water, stale and poisonous, shot through the air like a stain, and we all would’ve wondered where did that boy once go? he had been filled with such hopes and aspirations. and i would’ve ducked under fire hydrants itching my knuckles and licking the curb, because enough really isn’t really enough with these fucking nightmares of jaundiced skin and tobacco fingers when i sure as hell don’t even smoke anymore.
and where’s the reset button, not restart, re-set, set all this to happen someplace else and if it doesn’t work out that time, set to happen all to someone else. someone who’ll learn how to live and not be the miserable mess of fat and flesh that i’ve become. there are times when i can feel my intestines poke through and i’d love to grab a good handle on them and not yank them out, but pull them a little to the left or the right, in any direction but the one i seem to be going because it’s becoming unbearable and maybe it’s the night, the ghost halls and dead air conditioning, the empty streets pock marked and scarred with flipped cars and hazard lights.
but then my daughter, while i was on my back making believe i was a monster she killed with the toe of her one-sy, bent down ever so carefully as not to lose her balance and kissed my forehead.
dreaming seeing wishing
i hate dreaming knowing it’s a dream and yet i still work through it, explore it try to change it no matter the oftentimes confused and confusing series of events and feelings. recently they’ve been powerfully nostalgic dreams, wish filled re-memories, where the past is mixed with the present, forgotten subplots of my life worked into today’s intricacies. and it’s painful in the sense that i know i am dreaming, that what i am seeing can never play out in the waking world, that this imagined past is not dead because it was never alive…
sometimes, even in waking, i have the edging fear that i do not like where my life is going.
and yet, and yet, i cannot see it any differently.
house hoping hunting
things with the house are moving forward, somewhat.
i never thought that buying a house would be this prolonged and complicated. actually, it isn’t complicated as much as it is rife with too many details and particularities that are almost bureaucratic.
in the time that we had begun looking for a house, my parent’s have bought 2 in the tampa suburbs and my in-laws made themselves a home in colombia (i forget if its an apartment, a small apartment building, or house proper).
we started in malverne, took a couple of glances into franklin square, but couldn’t touch lynbrook. headed to oceanside but what we could afford there we were not willing to live with.
briefly, we had a flutter with a cape alot like my parent’s in its exterior but couldn’t bridge the gap between their asking price and what we were willing to pay. came awfully close to that house in west hempstead, but that’s the one with the dug up trees and schools that were good enough for my daughter but not for the seller’s son.
we danced along the edge of oceanside in baldwin where the same house we saw in west hempstead was perched instead infront of a lake. and after we all signed the contract, we were dancing in the interim between signing and committing and closing. however, the seller’s husband didn’t fill out the proper paperwork for the work done to the house, nor did he file the satisfaction of their mortgage, and in the end we were out in the cold between thanksgiving and christmas looking for house number three.
ironically enough, the third house is located on third street and its the biggest of them all while also being the least expensive. lots of room needing lots of time and lots of work.
god knows we’re willing.
this is what i live for
when i come home at night, in the early morning hours after the end of the shift, sometimes she rustles up out of bed and garbles out in the dark, “Dahdee!”
with each crawl, step, gargle and giggle, children mark, and they are the mark of, our mortality .
and i am willing to give myself over to this churning, to this growing, i will finally give myself over to time and let it have its way with me as long as time cares for this one, as long as time makes all the time in the world for her.
when had there
when had there been a time when all the cliches were new?
when had there been a time when every word we thought was clever and fresh and never spoken before?
prowling the night like cats, lion kings on a quest stalking the streets, hopping trains. children old enough to envision just the edges of a future.
and now, mired in the present, disentangling myself from a future that i no longer look forward to, fearing it, wedging a foot between its chin and neck, holding it at bay.
i look at my daughter and i can see my youth all over again and sometimes, especially when she does one other thing she had never done before, sometimes it’s more than well worth it.