my throat was slit, very slightly, but just enough that if i spoke too loud, or said too much, i would bleed endlessly, easily. there was a bandage of sorts, from the tunic of caesar whom we had betrayed. i don’t know why or how, but i realized much too late that we had done him wrong and were deserving of whatever punishment awaited us.
mine was death and they had begun with slitting my throat, just below the adam’s apple, where there’s a bit of loose skin and maybe that’s why i was living a bit longer.
but my day was due and i was setting my house in order. i had a son or a newphew or a stweard or squire or just some idiot man-child who admired my scheming and cunning, who modeled himself after my ambition and ego. he would not leave me alone, asking me if i needed anything, a woman, a sword, an army, anything at all to survive, to overthrow the counsel that had sentenced me to death.
i longed only for rebirth, a change in identity and as impossible as that sounded, i somehow thought, while inspecting the sliced skin at the neck just above the collarbone -it looked like a papercut, i swear- that i could make some sort of appeal at humilty, not beg, no, no never that, but an appeal in logic of some sort, to talk my way out of this, knowing that talking just might make the wound bleed out and i wouldn’t do any one any good.
and i was thinking this while in the bathroom, modern of course, not ancient at all, shower stall and jacuzzi and marble floors and tiled to the ceiling, and they wouldn’t let me lock the door for privacy, lest i escaped down the drainage pipe. my stewart was just outside, chomping to come in and wipe my ass, which disgusted me. he was too willing, too craven, too depraved and i was angry and stiffled because i could not tell him off, i had to save all that for the end, for the appeal, wait until the right moment where i could blurt out for leniency before they sliced off my head entirely.
and there i was in looking in the mirror, with shit in my hands, because we didn’t have toilet paper then, only papyrus, and my tunic stained because i could not fully reach around and clean myself properly…
i realized then it was a dream and i woke up. i was in our apartment in albany, eating dinner with my family: maritza, ioanna and our adopted son from nigeria. the mail came and in with the bills was an envelope from the court. within it was a legal summons: i was getting sued for a camera i had destoryed during a yankees game in the bronx in october of 1997.
i don’t even like baseball.
Category Archives: words
to recover
recovering for a week now. he’s not recovering. a phone in the middle of the night, saturday into sunday, while playing cards my grandfather slumped onto his brother-in-law gently, upbruptly, as if reaching for a dropped chip. he was no longer breathing. my grandmother, his wife of 56 years, tried to give him mouth-to-mouth.
15 minutes of not breathing, not recovering. in hospital now, some glimmers of hope, but more or less, no change. he winces at pain, but it’s a reflex, or even worse, an imagination of what his children want to see. my father is there, literally putting his father’s house in order. he swings from resignation and acceptance, to disbelief and despair.
a week agao, when he called, he had said to me, “it’s the phone call i’ve dreading to hear. it’s the phone i’ve been expecting…”
some time between then and now, i had lost everything in the last year i had written. a year gone, and lately it was getting good, rolling into May had some steam. but with a server crash and stupid user error, i could not recover it, only everything from before.
to recover, to salvage, to save, to cherish again, to prize again, to ignore again, to cover from pain, from illness, from abject and senseless randomness. a week later and they say he’s not going to recover, my grandfather in the one in a million shot he pulls out of his coma, will not be the man we had known. i never really knew him, who really knows their grandfather, much less on who was introduced to me when i was late in my teens, nearing twenty.
if, when or ever he opens his eyes, he will have little memory of the man he once was, if any at all. nothing to recover, nothing to forget, nothing left to live for. another ghost for this life parade.
i’m sorry i never got to know you when i should have. i’m sorry i did not devote enough time to you and what you could have meant to me. i’m sorry i let language and shame stop me from doing so.
Sometimes you have to feel fucked with
ok, sometimes you have to feel like you are getting fucked with: I just lost a year’s worth of writing, not that it was much, you know how it’s been. But there were some real flashes there, some shimmer of something that I could eventually have gotten around to or something at the very least to look back on and say, yeah, I did that, it could’ve been more but I’ve moved on to bigger things.
A year’s worth, from June of 05 to May. And this week of all week’s too, where I was doing, doing and doing it wild for the last five days.
I blew the drives on Planetary, the server, and almost lost EVERYTHING: music, photos, my makeshift dvd of our wedding. Almost. I brought those back and just when I had though I had all my bases covered, I had never backed up the web log and now it’s gone,
to make matters worse, this is the second time I am starting this. The first was cut off right there in the middle of the third paragraph, right at the point where…
I was writing about how writing like this was a better thing in the end, or the beginning, or a returning to the roots, what bullshit- it never mattered where and that was the point, remember the typewriter, that bulky menacing thing, even taking it outside to write in that little enclosed porch your parents had, writing in the night, mad mad poet that you were are will be again.
How about just plain old mad as in crazy and not mad as in angry. How about that for the next year or too.
A whole year gone, little that it was, but it was there, it was something and now it’s gone. I don’t feel sad about it, just stupid, stupid because I should feel sad because I should have written more to be upset about. But because I hadn’t because I didn’t, I don’t feel much of anything. Only a vague sense of loss.
2:00AM My grandfather, after whom Ioanna is named after, after whom a number of sons in the family are name after, has just had another heart attack and quite possibly a stroke. Although his condition has been stabilized, he was awoken and there’s talk of brain damage. My father is leaving for Florida as soon possible.
Why do I feel so stifled?
I don’t quite know what I am angry about, but I’ve been angry for some time. And lately, I’ve been flying off the handle over nothing and sometimes even less than that, perceived slights, not even real.
I’ve always prided myself on having a very keen and precise sense of perception and recall.
But it’s been off and sometimes so way off that I’m filled with shame afterwards…
Dude you went off on a kid because he insulted you, but he did have a point, you never even had to respond to that email that started it all.
And you went off on a rant the other night that again, you didn’t have to.
What’s wrong man? Why do you feel so stifled?
I’ve talked to myself as if I was real
for most of my life, actually, for as long as I remember, I’ve talked to myself as if I was real, as if there was some other me right beside me, listening, offering counsel, differing to me from time to time, sticking his nose where it didn’t belong. Perhaps it is you.
Last night the solid realization that I was never going to write another story and I was resigned. I have nothing to say anymore.
Having a children eventually grows into having another function of your body. Just as you treat yourself, you treat the child and obviously if you don’t love yourself, that child is doomed. My little daughter, what a burden we are going to place on you, all of our disappointments and hopes, our lost futures and regrets, are going to be put squarely in your path for you to accept or overcome: either way, it’s going to hurt us more than it’s going to hurt you.
Yes, yes I do find solace in food, I find joy in junk, I find comfort in the things that I know are not good for me. I’ve given up smoking, I’ve given up binge drinking (although I do take a bit of single malt from time to time, just to keep the valves honest during a poker game), let me have that at least, a little KFC and Taco Bell, a little grime to hold the whole operation in one piece.
And there was a time when I wrote behind steering wheels, blaring through red lights.
There are still many voices, but so awfully shy. Perhaps I’ve integrated them all and that’s why I fear the dark to come. The main problem is that I feel like I should make sense, that writing more and more should lead to something, a structure that comers to the surface and is instantly recognizable, if not admired.
All the good shit took WORK and I don’t want to be bothered anymore. I’ve lost faith in myself.
I’m just fucking lazy aren’t I?
Words sputtered, half eaten
she is growing beyond measure, she is growing. I see myself, I see her, her self, growing, a thing becoming, a child becoming. Words sputtered half eaten: nana for banana, riangle for triangle, shtar for star, appu for apple.
There is hope in her, no that’s not right. That’s what’s expected. I fear more than ever now. The strain between mz and myself pulling tight and loosening with such frequency that it has a tune of its own.
I was recently arrested for drunk driving and I am mad at everyone else for it, ashamed and oddly enough I feel martyred. Everyone is laughing at me because of it.
Lay Claim to Them
Moonlight, I was tired. Even waking, the shore was distant and on edge, ghost rim nearing blue. I could make out clouds, finally I heard the gulls and they were swirling, maybe I was meat. Sand in my hair, clumps, my fingers gritty. A face looking in the dark.
She was sleeping, fire crackle along the chin line. Hand beneath hand under cheek under the weight of the sky. Ashes just inches from her hair, embers and flicker. She breathed and I stopped, I had been waking the sea.
Our son sat on the bank, jetty rocks, wishing for storm. He turned, flotsam, hair at all angles. “When did it get so cold?” he asked, “Daddy, when did it get so cold?”
His sister balancing at the edge of waves, crashing. She laughed and he pointed, crouched knees. Blue snow drifts in the sky the sound of dust.
She stirs inches, pushes up against the sand, notices the waves come to our daughter’s feet. She smiles, stretches, leans forward. The hint of teeth at dawn she says, “did you sleep well?”
Had I slept? I rub my face, brittle hands, weathered skin. My son points away from the jetty, clouds running from the horizon, trick of light at the edge. “Yes,” I say, my voice full of sand, “yes I did.” I stand and joints churn, sea salt. “But I’m still tired, you?”
She closes her eyes, breathes, I can hear our son complain about the shells. Edges and grooves, red porcelain and shards. Sea gulls scatter from our daughter’s laughter. I look behind us. Spatter of green blades, tufts for yards, lush embankment cut by sudden stone, then the rest of the world. She opens her eyes, asks, “Didn’t we have children?”
“They’re playing, I think,” I nod towards them. “Terrorizing.”
She sits up, folds her legs as the horizon begins to slowly burn. Hands on hips our daughter scolds her brother for splashing the waves away from the shore.
“At some point,” she says, hair dancing an imaginary crown, short whipping, strands clinging to her jaw. “At some point we will have to own up to them.” Arms resting on her knees, head resting on her arms, my eyes resting on her back, brown and red in the sunrise. “Lay claim to them.”
“The world’s already claimed them,” I say, and my throat trembles from an emptying sky.
The sound of rustling; of thick, bitten nails folding into the darkness. One hand cradles the other before it disappears, comforts it. Wet sand suddenly pressed, sturdy feet.
I knelt beside her, ran hesitant fingers from her hair to her neck to her spine. Our children waged war on each other, armed with the sea, bursts of laughter. In-between the quiet, she leans backs, I steady her. She sighs, “we never stood a chance.”
she has
she my feet and short temper, and you have to wonder if the two are connected, whether or not our temperments are tied to the shape and contour of our feet.
behavioral predestination.
my eyelashes but her mother’s eyes, pleading and mischievous at the same time, brillant browns speckles of gold dancing behind the irises. she yelps and runs and bops her mother in the face when her mom and i cuddle too close for her liking.
it’s not jealously exactly, she’s fine as long as she’s a part of it. left out and she goes ballistic.
she spins
around and around she goes whipping frenzy
she sways between street lights
“its utter shit now” she laughs, arms asunder
and i’d like for her to stay awhile before the rain
to catch a glimpse of her tongue, an edge of her teeth
before she rockets out of here
how wonderfully meaningless
how wonderfully meaningless to be in the world, to be her world, to be their world only. the house is coming around the bend, hallway done, frames being primed and eyeing new doors into and out of this place. we’re shopping for BBQ grills and patio sets that we cannot afford. she says, “our tastes are just too good.”
i am trying, desperately, to be here, to stay here, the here and now, where my daughter calls me to chase her, to teach her how to run. i’ve lost the ambition for this, been losing it for some time, but to love this, to love a family, to learn to be a father…
there is no ambition for that, but there is yearning and hope and fear and laughter at the madness of it all…