this come suddenly am I mourning in the dark
to hear you, here, over and over, you here you
suddenly dark I am hearing this, this over here
over hearing one breath too many, too winded
wind along windows, over and over, pushing the frames
and I have to stop, I can no longer be this, over and over
do you hear me, no longer this here in the dark
suddenly one breath too many
I’ve forgotten something and I don’t know quite what it is, I know it’s missing been missing for some time and although I cannot trace the beginnings of it I am sure it’s been growing for some time this forgetting, this leaving of something, some things, some thing vital, my vitals behind, along the floor, further back into the dark and I cannot see it despite the daughter I have brought in to this world, despite the woman who must love me desperately and patiently I cannot see it for them, to make sense of this, of what I am becoming.
I have always feared the night and the passage of time. I sat huddled against my window sill overlooking the highway on nights just like this, hot still humid the sounds of cars jetting across the on ramp and I listened to Pink Floyd and classic rock that spoke to me and sometime I would even make tapes and I cringe at the things I might have said. And sometimes I cried for the child I had been but somehow I remember that being mostly during the winter, where there was no air and only cold frozen. And the nights then were incredibly longer than they are now and there were such interesting things on TV: I have and will always have a love affair with the television, from Hawaii Five-Oh to Columbo to Kolchack the Night Stalker and the Prisoner. Nowadays there isn’t much late night watching that interests me; I don’t know if it’s me or the times.
Category Archives: words
this strange lightness
this strange darkness in life…
The truth is there isn’t any more darkness in my life: it is buoyant, light, strong.
I have a wife, I have a child, I have what seems to be career more so than a job. Outside of purchasing a home, it cannot really get better than this. But buying a home brings up a certain fears about job security and financial comfort, i.e. if I lost my job, could we keep the house afloat on Mari’s salary and if so, more than likely so, then for how long? The idea of unemployment, still sore in my memory from 2001, is too scary, too visceral and feels far too likely.
Still however I am afraid of growing up and it’s happening faster: first child has already arrived and then the next and who knows maybe another, and at some point I will have to begin to look older at the very least, my youth has to start to abandon me. All I see right now is a new crop of grays, but still slight. My friend Mike has lost his hair and shaves his head now, as does Pete the Foot and even Watersport Pete show signs of wear around his skull. Still thick head full of hair, no deep lines embedding themselves, no hardening or leathering of the skin. The weight sure but that’s more of a sign of excess than age.
I haven’t been remembering my dreams of late: with a job like this I wrestle myself into and out of sleep, there is little to remember in the exhaustion. And I’ve started hitting the gym again, although with a different purpose in mind. More set on losing pounds than pressing weight. Running now for the last two weeks six days a week, 2 plus miles at a time. I work with free weights three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, Fridays while running around the nearby park the other days. The progress I’m making surprises me and encourages me. I’m trying, trying to build the health I’ve taken away through over eating and smoking.
And the writing, save for a few ghost sentences here and there, the segment of an idea, the piece of something not broken exactly, but definitely not a piece of something larger, is entirely gone. I don’t know if it’s a question of discipline but I can’t seem to break through or go on in any sort of prolonged manner. There’s a spark or two, but then that’s it, nothing sustaining or maybe sustainable? Not a good idea in any of them. Or like I wrote somewhere else, “I get bored” and lose interest.
But what if the problem is not the idea, or finding a fresh idea, but rather, the impatience in taking the time to build something better than a gimmick?
shudderspeak
imagination dead imagine. Imagine this.
Shudder speak, a bone breaking across the chin. Did you see that,
could you have seen it
any better. Shudder speak,
the moment of greater things.
I once believed this, I believed you. Like this,
a tender breaking.
Shudder speak, the crawl from here to there, orchids across rooftops
could not have said it any better
breaking a silence two fold without walls
Here the shudder speak between the blades and muscle
bone picking
would you have dreamt it differently
had the ocean slung fingers backward of surprise?
forgotten stretch of street sweat
And there he was, dancing in the rain and looking for sewer pipes. He would have been blind if not for the stench of cut glass. Bloody fingertips along curbs, a kind of snaking along. Half serious, half alone, a slight tremble where her spine could have been. Lots of this there, he said, lots of this, he points, …there.
Stumbling to gaslight, bent on the knobs on his knees, he wretches. Gags on bits of hair and worry. Lots of this, he says again and holds his place where she could have been. He yanks and shudders, twists up into a crawl, standing. The blue shingles of an awning long forgotten and stretch of street sweat.
unmarked, unmarred, unblemished
how many keystrokes to nirvana, how many keystrokes to break through this wall of despair and silence.
The emergent sound of my daughter’s laughter, the half start, pre-giggle of an incomplete chuckle. It is like fresh apples, it’s like sun after a chilly night. It is her standing on the oh so tiny musculature of her legs, pigeon toed, steadying her by her forearms and her looking at you, toothless smile, all clean, all pure joy, unmarked, unmarred, unblemished, and the opening choke sound, the rise of laughter and just trying it on for size because it’s beginning to feel like the right thing to do, a thing that she can now begin to do so and here’s the occasion to try it out.
drifting
we had been waiting a few and really didn’t know what to expect. Jennifer was running her fingers through her hair, racing them around the edge of her glass, fidgeting with the loops in her earrings. This was going to be her first despite the fact she told us otherwise. We all knew she was lying but we would rather she was with us when she broke into this business.
Okay, and what business is that? What utter crap.
He has been sleeping, walking, jogging, farting, living, smiling and he then fell, kissed, slapped, promulgated, signed the waiver, which more or less, rather, supposedly, definitely, hesitantly sealed the fate, lives, plastic, hemorrhoids of his car, fiancé, boyfriend, couch, curb.
Ok, what the fuck was that?
You have to live to write but you cannot write while living. Always the furthest away from a pen or writing instrument of any sort and the voice or voices, sometimes a gaggle come and drift and whisper things that are prophetic and beautiful and meaningful and something you’d want to write down to leave behind but no in the stillness of this night of this rampant boredom and mad desire to go home, so unsupervised, I can’t get a bloody decent word out.
Make everything normal again
1. I need to find a way to make everything normal again. I’ve been looking at my life and all I see is emptiness. Yes, we’ve had a child and she is the most amazing and fulfilling thing I have ever seen, but everything else about myself seems hollow and empty. Downloading movies, an insatiable need for ripping dvd’s (so disciplined I am, as if it was a business), endless and recording and encoding of movies… I don’t know, there’s a hole and I’m in it and I don’t know which way is up.
2. She’s gotten into the habit now, after an angry spell where she’s been jolted suddenly or picked up when she didn’t want to be, that as she settles down a type of complaining sing song language comes out of her. And at first she complained off to the side, as if talking to an imaginary friend, but more recently she talks to us directly, letting us know that we upset her greatly and how she felt about it and even how it frightens her still. It’s not total nonsense or the aftershock blubber of a crying fit; there’s a cadence, specific stops and starts and the movement of a mouth on the verge of articulating language.
And we laugh and laugh with a glee that must be maddening to her: This is serious business you two, are you two making fun of me or what?
3. Things between us worsen then strengthen then worsen again. I think my condition is worsening and as I am getting older, while the edge of sorrow has dulled, I feel as if the schizo-ness she mentioned in recent days is the indication of a greater breakdown. I feel as if I’ve been decomposing for a while now and I really don’t know how to light the darkness that is my heart these days. I am so frayed and terrifying alone and I wish I could have been a better man, a better writer and not live like this in an apartment above my parent’s home and not work nights like some addict and never see her for hours at a time. I wish it had all been different and pushed myself off course of this career track instead of being afraid of failure, of this I am certain I would have failed as a professor. I would never have gotten even past the dissertation part, I did not have the conviction for it.
We should have left Albany first chance we got, but I was greedy for you and our time together and weak for not going further on my own, so delusioned to take Michael Blitz’ foot steps.
4. Ah, such as it is, leave it be, leave it be.
Children beyond our imagination
and so we lived quiet lives of sweet subjugation to our children. Lives of rustling grass and soft cars faraway on asphalt. We spun tales of the big city as night fell and dreamed of the daily routines our children fell. We nursed them and tossed out into the wild when they thought they were ready. Oh sure, we clung to them the way a rock climber the sheer of a cliff but their legs and voices grew stronger than our brittle bones, we were far too old for them anymore. She struck the big city upside its head and it dances to her tune. He, on the other hand, much kinder, has Thoreau’d himself further than we have, writing in and of the emptiness of Montana. This is what I dream of, write of, breathe of, of children stretching beyond the you and I we could have been. Children beyond our imagination.
And here we were, holding and dreaming, holding the last vestiges of our youth, cuddling our daughter while she took our youth from us. It’s bitter, but it is true. Our daughter will never know us as we are now, will never know the zest and heat of our ideals, the silliness of our bodies. She’ll be embarrassed of us at best and perhaps wonder how we must have squandered a youth that she will make better of. She’ll never know.
Mommy’s Day Note
mommy mommy mommy
new in world what a place harsh
light sharp sounds the scent
of peach calm skin swaddle
diamond eyes so sweet
mommy mommy mommy
tender coo coo soft lips across
finger touch feather my scalp
warmth envelope rocking
stave worry fears away
mommy mommy mommy
one love true love all love giant
burst into tears full longing
arms wrapped around suddenly
this calm thing this mommy thing this everything
mommy mommy mommy
can I love you this way?
can I be you for a day?
Dear Mommy,
I hope you like your presents. I picked ’em but I didn’t have any money to paid for them but daddy did for me. He said he would take it out of my allowance later. He said you said you wanted just jeans but I told him he was just being cheap and picked out the tops to match them. Anyways happy mommy’s day mommy I’m glad you made me before mommy’s day so we can play together on mommy’s day or you wouldn’t be a mommy just a lady with a cute little belly that’s me!!!
Love,
Ioanna
What does allowance mean?
peach tracing paper before it tears
as she’s all limbs and angry mouth and her skin is peach tracing paper before it tears and she is the not-me that I’ve been dreaming about since her conception and even before, the not-me that can be all the things I could never have been and will no longer be.
Serious eyes and perfect fingers, lips that sharpen into ‘O’ and the mock surprise of raised eyebrows. This little bundle that fills heavier and heavier, this reach of flesh apart from myself. Personality out of nothing, out of gestures, out of a nervous system that still doesn’t know the difference between night and day.
This past Sunday I had not slept the night before on shift, nor throughout the following day. I could not, too excited and forward looking, the day with my daughter after missing her for so long, missing the not-me that she can be, the not-me that I can pour myself into and keep pure of the mistakes and fears of my own.
Even the first nights in the hospital and home, she cried in her sleep. So little time on this earth and already the nightmares have begun. Who was it that said that the normal state of the human mind was one of anxiety’ I held her close to my chest through the shudders wondering how much of my sadness have I already passed on’
Washing dishes over the sink, my wife wept today. We’ve been unbelievably strained. We miss each other, but I think we are also different to each other. How much of it is has to do with change, with the arrival of our daughter, or fear of own future together, a sense of anxiousness about how long will this center, as if, now having brought a child into the world, no longer just a couple, but now a ‘family’, the clock is suddenly ticking to an end.
How ridiculous to fear an unimaginable future.