Silence.
Break it.
If you leave it here it will rot. She says, if you leave it here no one will care for it, certainly not me. Not me, she says. No, not me I will not care fit if you leave it here and it will go to waste, it will rot, it will become all wither and full of maggots and someone will have to clean it up but it won’t be me. No. If you leave it here be man enough to clean up your mess. No-
He says, no, I’ve had enough. I’ve had enough, thank you but I’m full. And instead they put more on his plate, they smile and insist and place their hands on his shoulders and lean their faces closer to his on each side and smile and coax and bring the plate closer underneath his chin and the table cloth is immaculate and his nails are pristine and their teeth are so very white and the glint of the fork catches the color of the room in such a way that he says, alright, alright, alright, just one more bite. No-
Silence. Break it.
Category Archives: words
Silence. Break it. II
silence. break it.
the ragamirole of his thoughts, spindly legs over rotted wood with floor boards peeling up where the nails were never driven and he had never been driven, only obsessed with details and the limits of what he could know and he wanted to know everything, everywhere, where did she go, whom did she speak with, how were her legs crossed and on and on it went until his father told him he was stupid.no-
Camera shot, exterior, dolly left. She comes into focus. She watches the door to the backyard, we watch her from behind watching the house, watching the door. Slowly pan out, children come into view, both on their knees, picking dandelions, laughing at weeds. Coming into view, top of the frame we see him in a window on the second floor, hand parting the curtains, mostly grey behind the screen. Watching her watching the door while we watch. Fade to black, children still laughing.
e v e r y t h i n g
sometimes i think if i tapped into it and didn’t let go it would overrun
e v e r y t h i n g
Silence. Break it. I
silence. break it.
she sits around and twiddles her thumbs. she sits around and twiddles her thumbs. she sits around and thinks of the affair and wonders if she ever smelled her off him, some rank smell that escaped her noticed but was there mocking her and sitting in her chair scratching her thumbs she wonders if she’s smelling it now as he comes through the door after the rain, sopping wet from her, no-
she doesn’t sit around. she doesn’t sit around waiting for him. he’s waiting for her. long days engrossed with the children, the house, the bills, the mortgage, the car he never drives because she’s always taking it to work and leaving him stranded with all this responsibility. it was sensible, he was sensible. they got by on her alone. her alone and they were getting by with him alone and the children alone and the stray cat that crossed the street in the lonely night looking for vermin, no-
silence. break it.
Six months
Six months into the new year, where did it go? She abounds, cuddles closer to me each day. The boy is unsure but smiles nonetheless. Slowly my love forgets. She says the stars are like pinnacles og greatness that have long died and all we see is a legacy we can only imagine.
And I wonder what will provide a reprieve from a checkered history and an unrelenting future.
not a noose
you’d think it would be easy to end one life and start another. spirals at best. the circumlocutions, the twisting helix, a series of splits and joints and bridges. gone today, here tomorrow. the weave is tighter as the years go. love, family, a handful of friends. even if a handful at that. not a noose, but rather the strength of laced twine.
I dread
The dark days, when the chill begins to set in and never leaves you. When everything around you begins to die and wither and molt. When you find yourself sleepless because the night has arrived much sooner than you wanted and lingers long past the morning.
Always, always, a love of the sun and missing it desperately.
when i taught
the brief time that i taught. the first class was something else. the second i barely remember, literally a blur. the third (or was that the fourth) was a disaster but more memorable than the previous. it was a large class and in many ways it failed. but i think i did something different there and maybe i took on too much. to connect the personal with the global, to connect the power of writing as somehow being intrinsic to the immediate as opposed to the historical. this is not to say that writing does not outlive us, nor that it shouldn’t, but rather that writing at the moment should not be for the purposes of fame. that fame was something else entirely, that there were structures at play that affected what ended up in the bookstores and what ended up in the trash.
always the personal over everything else, even when it is the product of the political.
You want to be
Because in the end you want to be found, you want the limelight, you want the glory.
You want all the people who had abandoned you to realize what they had lost, you want to be redeemed by fame.
But that is the key thing here: redemption. You are looking to be redeemed, to be found worthy.
And ultimately, you are not.
I take pictures
I take pictures:
The man from the suv rummaging through my recycling bin
Her quiet disappointment when I turn away from the children
The strand of gray hair looped over my ear
I take pictures:
My daughter’s boredom perched in front of the tv set
My son’s anger as I lock the door behind me
My mother’s face as I tell her I no longer believe in god
I take pictures everywhere I go and everything I left