the need to go about the grind, pushing it, like a forehead against the bars, the pipes. like rubbing rust against the knuckles. the need to make it through the grind, to make it matter, like tightening teeth.
as if there is an other side, a way through. as if there was respite. ever the quandry. he says, “wow. you obsess”
you bet your ass i do. i commit. extreme. i ponder it all around the gums, i pluck it out, i study it, run under my chin.
this is what you do to find a pace, a rhythm, a way of going about. like listening for the beat before the leg lifts from the floor, before the toe taps. it’s incredibly awkward until it’s there. and finding it again and again, like hands in dirty laundry if you can stand the stench of what you’ve worn before.
but i never go back these days, i never fix anything. like unfinished doors and torn off bits of skin. all i try to do is open things with a hammer and thrash about. i never go back.
Category Archives: words
and she says
and when she says, “c’mon, let me be your pet,” there’s a cat grin like she was perched before a canary.
she’s the dream that turns and grabs your cock and twists it tight until it can’t get any harder.
and you want to grab her, her hips, put her over, under you, turn her around smack her behind, pry open her mouth. you want to brush the hair from her lips and devour her, be devoured by her, again and again.
you want to find at what point does the grin fall away and you see something raw and broken and real. to find something worth fucking.
and this is how you build a wall
you start with lines on a page scatter shot up and down, left and right. a rough idea of rough corners and rough openings with rough measurements.
then you get the numbers, drag the tape measure across this way and that, fiddle and squint for the numbers. you jot them down, you make notes, you try to file it away in your head and redo the lines all over again. cleaner, neater, more precise.
you look up in books how doors sit in walls, what holds what. the difference between a king stud and a jack. how many cripple studs should be wedged between headers. you research what type of closet door you want, how wide. you remeasure again, try to account for the expected deficit of a 2×4 (which is really 1.5×3.5) and the thickness of sheetrock.
you’ve measured at least four times, and you still have yet to lay a single piece of wood.
you buy the wood, you lug it upstairs. 20 pieces of 2x4x8. it’s a bit of strain. but you do it knowing that it’ll sit there for a day or two before you actually do anything more.
just at the cusp, you ask around, things to consider, others that have done this sort of thing before. your father almost talks you out of it, but comes around and realizes that building a closet between the rooms is the lesser of two evils, the other being tearing down all the walls on the second floor and repartition it entirely.
and then you start. this piece against that. measuring, cutting. this piece here holds up this one. the weight travels down to here and spreads along this flat piece along the floor. you measure and cut and sometimes cut again, to shave off an eight of an inch here or there. in some places, you use a hammer to wedge one into another. every once in a while, you grab hold of a stud and shake the frame. you tighten whatever you hear is loose, you shake the frame to be sure it is sturdy.
you shake the frame until its done. you pull it this way and that, think of how your children will bump into it, push furniture against it. will it hold? can it hold?
you cut open the other side of the wall, where the other half will be shared with the younger sibling. within the opening, you prop another frame, careful not to break the wall, but wedging it, securing it all the same until the framing is done. the rest is window dressing; sheetrock, tape and spackle; sanding, priming and paint. tedious work, finishing.
but before that, you grab again one end of it and shake. you move across the room and grab another and shake again. it does not move. and while you’ve gotten to the point where it no longer moves, it still moves you.
first day at sort of school
so the little one started school the other day. not really school, a summer program, 2 days a week. mostly to prep her for the real thing come september.
we’ve been prepping her for it, mentioning it every other day or so. trying to ease her into it. and the day of i had worked the night before until early the same morning but i roused myself up and out, ready for a fight because my wife had begun back-peddling on the whole idea to begin with. tried everything, from questioning if the little one was really ready yet, the cost of the summer and subsequent pre-school in the fall, and even promising to take the little one to the park every day. and i was ready for it, schlepping up the stairs, out from the basement of my lair and there was the little one, ready, smiling, unaware of what was really going to happen.
so we get there and there are of course other parents lined up. we wait for a short while and then we go right in. we find her room and a crowd of other parents hovering at the door, their hands still brushing their children’s shoulders, keeping them near, keeping them out of the very classrooms they were supposed to go in. and at one point, the teacher welcomes one child in, and the little one kind of gets swept into it, and the teacher gently separates her from us and the little goes in thinking we’re right behind her.
but we’re not and she suddenly knows, as much as she wants to get caught up in these kids and the tables and the paper and colors of the classroom, she suddenly knows we’re not there and we’re not going to be. a stray finger finds itself at the corner of her mouth as she turns tentatively back to us, bowing her head. and we walk away because it’s for the best and we feel terrible and guilty and proud and afraid.
yet we had forgotten her snack and a change of clothes. we went for them from home and came back to the school again. the wife tried to sneak back in and almost did, she walked right past the classroom where apparently children were still crying, but she did not see the little one, did not know, even the director of the program was at the door because these children were still crying while others were not.
of course we never left at that point, never really had the intention. it was the first day, our little one’s first day. and we were parked right outside, in view of the playground in case they came out as some others did. our cell phones on the dashboard, coffee, books to read, light conversation about how the times were changing. we saw a little boy from the crying class leaving with his parents. the wife mentions she had heard there was a boy standing on top of a table, he was so upset, maybe that was him.
and two and a half hours afterwards, it was time to get her. the little one was alright, eyes a little puffy but holding her makeshift butterfly, a clothespin, some sort of fuzzy cloth wire, a scrunched up tissue with painted spots pushed up the center of the pin. she did not cry with us, she hugged us both and she wasn’t angry or sad. it was as if she had understood that there was a threshold that she had to cross here, and she did so, she wasn’t happy about it, but she did it, because she knew.
p.s. as we quizzed her about how her day was, she says, the boy was crying, he stand on the table, and they were crying, the girls, the boys, and the teacher said, don’t open the door. ‘did someone try to leave?’ and she says no and she says, again, the teacher told me not to open the door. and we ask her ‘did you try to open the door?’ and she nods her head and adds, i wanted my mommy daddy to leave with me.
wow, am i scared these days or what
so mike drives in the point that well, 35 is really middle age. i mean, he says, what’s really the quality of life past 70?
and it’s bad enough that growing up terrifies me. i can’t stand it. it puts me into a panic. time is fucking irreversible.
the problem is of course there is much too much alone time around me. between working nights and just staying up late because i have always been that way. too much night and tv, youth replacing youth, growing old with the newscasters of my youth, seeing them replaced, hearing how another just past away (Roger Gimble and Bill Beutel and Peter Jennings; although Jennings was a shock).
and another child on the way; a boy and the panic rears its head quicker and harder and blunt.
in the moment of making love to my wife, in the moment of playing with my daughter, where time stops and i no longer think of myself and my place and the time that has left me and the time head that is leaving me, there is sudden and abrupt delight and peace and i am alive, i am young, i am forever.
all i have is them and they are becoming all i need and all i will ever want.
“As I imagine you”
told from yianna’s perspective things i cannot say to her from her eyes, as i imagine her.
ie,
“the first memory i have of my father was his eyes and his breath. his gaze was steady but his breath was sour, always the slightest uncomfortable hint of bile at the edges. he was a big and often times mean… ”
etc
goddamn 35
turning 35 today and he has to admit, he is no longer a broken man anymore.
the cracks might still run deep, fissures deep beneath within the very core,
he had to admit, he truly was no longer broken. he was married. he had a wonderful child
and his wife was bearing another. he had a home, he had most of the things he wanted
he had a father, his mother still loved him and his family dearly, a few good close friends
he could no longer be broken, although perhaps still be moved from time to time
while running, thinking of his death, think of lifelines not pursued or thwarted
moved to reflection, to the oddities of life, of how he got there, of where he could still be
he wasn’t broken turning 35, he had to admit and he still had yet a way to go
but he was going to be whole getting there.
every blank page
and every blank page is
a mark of failure
a badge of honor
of not having written it down
of having lived every minute instead
every empty page is
where nothing will remain
where something has happened
a life about to be forgotten
a life worth living
every measure of silence
a moment lost to time
not a moment lost to living
for my father, 2007
i see you with ioanna and i am filled with a kind of sadness. i wish you were my father from the very beginning. i wish you had held me in the hospital when i was born and i wish it was you that brushed my first set of tears out of my crying eyes. i wish that it was you who had a hard time changing my diapers and it was you who laughed when i ran around the house naked. that taught me how to ride a bicycle. how to kick a ball. how to use a hammer. how to fix things. i wished that i was young again and it was you from the very start. i wish it was you from the very start and you could have fixed me before i became broken. i see you with our daughter and there’s a little smile on my face as i think “how lucky she is to know her grandfather from the very beginning.”
father’s day, 2007
with another one on the way, i look at ioanna, our first daughter and measure up the father i have been so far. i think i got most of it right and there are areas in which i can improve. i can give her more of her type of time, i.e. dolls and the like. i could take her out to the museum more often as well. make it a point of teaching her things, like numbers and the alphabet.
i look at her and measure up myself and for the most part, as much as i want to find myself lacking, as i often do with so many other things, i am proud to be her father. i am happy. i could be more, but i’m happy with how she’s turning out, which i n turn means we’re doing alright as parents, i’m doing alright as a father. not bad for someone like me.
she gave me a card today, approached me slowly as if she balancing a bowl of soup in her hands. and handed it to me barely, her fingers still at the edge of it. ‘lemme show you’ she says and takes it gently back and puts a finger between the folds of the envelop and tears it open in little rips. she was delighted in opening it, revealing the big reveal, that the card was a bear cub exploding her arms to give her daddy a bear hug. squeals from ioanna. pure delight.
i hugged her tightly and smelt her hair. i could do better, but i’m not doing so bad either.