and here i thought of nether regions,
of dark places i would wonder just how soft, how wet, how dark
like lips before speaking, hands before kissing, something tense like a foot raised on its tippy toes
fingers to the lips, like praying, sudden like holding, to lock the eyes, to lock the jaw, to grit the teeth
passion like spit, like cursing, like mad as hell for being kept out of the dark, kept out of the wet, kept out of the soft
spent before anything else, anything further, like legs entwined, like a lazy hand on a breast, like a tangle of hair caught in the mouth
i oscillate like wild
i am the last frayed ends of some child’s dream. i am the lust that comes after denial.
i am the withered thing in the corner, i am the crawling sound between gasps.
i am the sweat and the euphoria. i am the swallowing of the whole and the pining.
i am the clasp of your hips, i am the unfulfilled desire.
i am the wounded tree, the tooth through the broken lip.
i am the snarling beast when you’ve said you’ve had enough.
Category Archives: words
no liquor apologies
don’t apologize.
never apologize for the liquor.
many a ramble on the liquor, many, many, many a ramble.
sometimes i think i’d like to see them all again when i’m on the liquor. the lost ones, the dead ones, the ones that i miss so terribly and i know they no longer know me. the ones that don’t remember. that’s the ones i want to see when i’m on the liquor, the ones that don’t remember.
that way they not remembering won’t matter at all.
i’ve been out of lately
i’ve been out of my mind lately. it comes in waves, i think
(in waves i think, in oceans, in drowing, i dream of drowning in wakes, funeral processions stacked atop of each other, held aloft by dirt and flowers and crabgrass)
there so much talking instead, so much body language and the wearing down of the body. sometimes you have to dance without a tune to figure out it’s rhythm. i’ve always been guileless, i’ve always been two left feet.
blitz said i had a habit of putting together incredibly complex things and then going backwards to figure out the simple stuff they were made up of. as if, why did i even bother. i miss him. i miss being a writer-in-becoming, artist-at-large.
now i’m just large. i’ve grown ridiculous. l’ve grown lazy. i’m just not hungry anymore. this is not the life i imagined, not the life i wished for. and it’s become this steamroller of a thing, perpetual motion machine, bringing me into this life i never thought i would allow myself to succumb to.
but then my daughter comes to me, still early in the morning after i’ve just gotten home from the night before, and she tugs at my fingers, pushes the hair out of my eyes and looks for my face. she pokes her fingers around there, finds my eyes to wake me up. and even though i can’t even keep my eyes open, i want nothing more than this, half dead from lack of sleep, flipping between day and night and night for day, nothing more than more she poking for my attention.
or when my wife has this look on her face that’s only for me, when her faces juts and curves like classic sculpture, something permanent and something permanent for me and only me, and i become her bear and we touch and it’s like water along stone, every fissure, every crack, every crevice bridged, covered, healed.
if only we could split ourselves, divide out across time, across each fork in the path, to have it all, every outcome, every possibility, every lost love, every lost child, every lost utterance, all at once, at all times, to live, to live, to be a pertpetual motion machine instead of being trapped by one.
and with nothing there are words
and with nothing there are words, plenty, all over the place, out of the corners, out of the cobwebs, a swirl of words, a haunting, a cackle.
with them there is nothing, only them, no words, only them-as-no-words, them-as-no-words-needed, them as everything.
and here i need to lose myself, to obliterate myself like the old days, myself-as-once-was, myself-as-lost-within-the-cackle.
myself-as-all-draped-in-noise, myself-as-looking-for-signal
were you only just a ghost, figments. i don’t sleep, i twist into and out of a state of consciousness like a worm in dirt
disneyworld madness or is that just the world?
walking right in, just past the castle in front of the carousal, on the floor screaming, a child and no one listening
and hear, grey matter
and hear, it becomes all grey matter, wet matter, slushing through the tears of this thought or any other. i’ve been here before, it never gets easier, this is the state of anxiety of my smile, or my tenderness, always on the verge.
it still whispers, these voices, one of many, echoes back and forth and takes turns just beneath the surface, like a soft murmur, like commentary. it glides and stops like a conversation. it’s not a pretty thing, but it’s alive and that’s got to count for something, like a battery charge. charging, saving up, building, what the fuck is building up there these days.
and i thought it was all dead matter, still matter, that all that mattered was before me, all the inside dried up, bare grass, bare soil, bare sand, barrenscape.
comes and goes, but it grows.
generalities
bbq burger secret = boar’s head meat marinated with peter luger steak sauce.
sat tv (or lack thereof) = inspired, i got a hold of an rf-modulator (takes s-video and rca audio cables and pipes it into coax) and some remote extenders and now all the tv’s in the house can tune into channel 3 for shredTV (the tivo pc in the basement)
cherokee = it drives like a car, which is deceiving and have to keep the curb corners in mind. five minutes at my parents’ house, already bird shit on the windshield. but i think it suits me. it’s got a compass. 11 miles on the odometer, ain’t that fresh?
and hear, this for her
his child by the shore, by the rocks, jutties striking the sea, against the rocks, he watches her there, hair wild like her mother’s, she prefers it that way
he does not want her to lose the spittle, i do not want you to forget what it means to be angry and full of fists and an impossible sense of urgency, of there’s something wrong with all this. he wants her to have these things, this beach, this sound of the shore, the taste of the air caressing your lips, the warm tug of a forgiving sun that laps the sweat of your skin.
he wants this for her as well, the fury of the night, the sense of inexplicable loss, of having lost something vital and precious and that this life was for finding it again. the mad search for something to protect, to find something worthy, to be worthy.
he prefers her that way, wild all the more to temper but never tame, all the more to keep the anger up and the spittle.
and hear i thought
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
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.