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?
Category Archives: words
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…
bloody hell time flying
she’s willfull in ways that would make her spoiled if she didn’t share her food with us. this is what she does now, feeds me as I feed her. and i think terribly some day the roles will be reversed but I won’t be feeding her, just her feeding her old man, broken finally in all places, mind gone, body gone, wife gone, nothing left but a sack of misery for her. will she be changing my diapers.
and it’s not easy to think of another child while this, not wanting to take away from the singularity of this one child, with her pony tail atop her head like some martian and her gut busting laughter. it’s something to be ashamed of, not wanting to take the spotlight away from this child.
redoing room by room
there’s a light to all of this, transforming a house into a home, little by little. lots of echoes still, but here as our youth ends before our child, i hope there will be at least one more thumping and spouter of gibberish to fill up these empty halls.
hear it coming
i hear it coming again, the broken again, the soft scatter of will never come back together: it holds longer for this sound, longer than for any other, the longest it has ever held.
i’m holding it together with bared knuckles and twine for her and i don’t know what it means when she keeps pushing and not moving back, not budging at all, and its cutting the tendon from the bone to the point where it isn’t worth holding together anymore.
i would have done anything for you, if you held it together for me, if you kept it safe. but no where is safe with you, nothing sacred or holy. anything is a target, as long as it can scratched and pierced and cleaved away. eveything is ripe.
it’s a new kind of something to see your life peel this way.
Engagment note for Mike and Mina
It’s about time and finding time. Squeezing time between work days and weekends, snuggling up to time to keep it still. And sometimes, time seems to stop at the right moment and stretch out in all directions, but then others, it just runs away too soon.
It’s about time and making time. Cutting through chunks of it just to be together a little bit longer. As if somehow, through sheer force of will, we can make time out of thin air and keep it safe, tucked in our pockets.
But in the end, it’s about timing and the right time. Having enough time to start the things in life for which we promise the future. Timing your life to match the perfect pace of another’s. The right time to pop the question and make their heart yours.