Somehow we find a way through it, me myself and I, this jumbled presence of a person with runny noses and bruised knuckles and lungs filled with lead.
Somehow, she says, you talk yourself out of anything.
I choke until we are all laughing.
Category Archives: words
one moment broken free
“one more dedicated peaceful moment
just give me one more dedicated peace moment”
-a perfect circle, “Orestes”
just one moment not out of rage or sorrow, one moment broken free from all the rest, an icicle driven through my lip, limbs into trees into fingers into eyes into love into skin without wounds, scars without pain, laughter without despair.
i drove myself into brick walls to feel bones crack through battered muscle and the swell of my cheek bruised into a bright blue and purple specked with blood and the uneasy feeling that yet this wasn’t enough, still not enough, all this not ever enough.
work the machine
I think in general it’s good to do something, anything that requires some sort of effort/exhaustion: keeps us even keel about ourselves. This idea of progress, of improvement, of staving off the undertow of time and decay. Not to put a too dismal point on it, but the remarkableness of the human body lies in it’s ability to generate, regenerate and perpetuate.
It is the only machine we get to keep for a lifetime.
here isn’t
there is nothing i cannot do. but there is nothing i can undo. the paradox of your heel, the stretch of my neck, this memory that will not leave me alone, tortured comfort. we are all things, skin twisted against the bone, a lip caught on barb wire, a tooth scraped against concrete.
i had held you against the night with some flimsy promise we made to each other but only you made it to the dawn while i shattered in the sun
here isn't
there is nothing i cannot do. but there is nothing i can undo. the paradox of your heel, the stretch of my neck, this memory that will not leave me alone, tortured comfort. we are all things, skin twisted against the bone, a lip caught on barb wire, a tooth scraped against concrete.
i had held you against the night with some flimsy promise we made to each other but only you made it to the dawn while i shattered in the sun
the shore and the world
she says to me, i feel so out of touch sometimes.
i tell her, don’t worry about being out of touch
you will never be out of my reach
i will always pull you out to sea
for far away lands and distant locales
for the strange and the delightful
for the macabre and the unusual
and together, we will return to home
together, we will find the shore
she replies, you keep me in the world
you have always been my connection to the outside
and i wept. who is holding onto to whom?
self fulfilling
try to convince me i haven’t sinned, that i am not wretched.
and he gambles, i start from the point of forgiveness, that forgiveness is possible. do you get what i’m saying? this is very different from where you start from.
and he’s right: here i am pondering what why i am so wrong, why i’ve done the things i’ve done and he turns it around:
why do i begin with what new thing can i do today that i will punish myself with tomorrow?
now beg
wouldn’t you like to break me, she said and fingered her fishnets.
no, he said, i wouldn’t like that at all.
but, she slid a finger to the corner of her mouth, aren’t i pretty enough to break?
no, he said, you’re too pretty.
c’mon, she said and leaned forward pulling at her collar, wouldn’t it fun? you look like you’d be fun to break.
who’s breaking who?
why we’ve been breaking you all along my dear. she sat on his lap, now beg.
with her lipstick
cracked sideways like a lover crossed and molested, having been turned inside and out into streets where the stone curbs are ragged from the teeth. she felt me up, rubbed my back in circular ways that made me embarrassed and yet hard for her. stockings that covered naked pubis, breasts smooth and soft and wasted, hands that were always tired from lying. i was just another in a series of nooses, a line of victims turned perpetrators, flaccid cocks marred with her lipstick.
something to be said
there is something to be said of beauty and grace. there is something to be said about despair and the night. there is something sexy about the way i put my hand on your neck. there is something sexy about the way you look over your shoulder at me. there is something to be said about how i feel inside you, there is something warm and welcoming and peaceful about the thrust, the trust, the need that i must be there. there is something to be said about all of it, about holding you and fucking you and wanting you and wanting to fuck you even more, slower, harder, sideways, from behind, on top, it doesn’t matter, as long as we’re fucking ourselves into something.