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.
Category Archives: words
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
An over ripe
An over ripe plum clamp between teeth shiny but old. Should I do this? The disappointment all over again, the hushed silence, from the gut, from an incomprehension. I’d sell it all off for a measure of comfort, a moment of absolute stillness. But it moves, jaws work forward and backward, it’s easy until the core, where it’s all gnashing and unforgiveness.
Mother's day
You’ve heard time and again, that you are a wonderful mother. And it’s obvious, the children adore you, they hound you, clamor around you for affection and attention.
But you are not only the mother of children. They are not the only thing you have given birth to and have nutured. I look at our life, at our house, the things we have seen, accumulated, and enjoyed. I look at the span of time, the stretch of years between now and the time your casual gait across a room changed our lives forever.
You gave birth to all of this, to us. You have cared for us and nutured us and tended to us with such care and grace. While I tore down walls only to put up new ones, you fed and cleaned the soul of this marriage, you tended to my wounds at the cost of yours.
Like any loving mother, you’ve put your children before everything else. You’ve made love the organizing principle of our lives. You’ve made us into a family that can withstand anything.
Worth telling
At some point I have to ask myself, is this life worth telling. Not living, mind you, of course it is worth living. But is it worth telling?
I had said to him, at the very least to leave behind a legacy for my children, a transcription of who their father was and how he viewed the world.
At the very least, is it worth telling?
Re: teeth
With teeth, always the teeth, too sharp but brittle, or the fear of brittle, of peanut brittle stuck in the gums, burrowed beneath until enflamed, until we all pick it apart with dirty toothpicks made of syringes.
The madness
Beats me and beckons me, all the failures, all the sorrow, relived and drowned, resurfaced and effaced, ebb and flow, awash in jetsam and splendor
Missing Albany
You know what I miss about Albany?
I miss living in a hip neigherborhood where I still thought everyone was an idiot but there was good food, friendly people and a park we could stroll in just two blocks away.
I miss being isolated and having an excuse for remaining that way. We dodged so much and spent time pursuing each other instead. I miss locking myself in that little den in the front of the house and writing like mad while going through 2 pots of coffee and an endless amount of ramen noodles.
I miss waking up and sitting on the stoop outside having a cigarette while reading literature and watching the world hustle by. I miss watching people trying to squeeze their cars into spots I knew and they knew they couldn’t possible fit.
I miss the smell of burnt coffee grounds in the early morning.
I miss taking long ridiculous walks to just grab a video or eat some chinese and talking about our future, our lives, our politics. I miss standing in that bathroom and watching you dry yourself after a shower.
I miss that, I miss the tenderness and the time we had to languish in it.
But I wouldn’t change a goddamn thing today either.