i want nothing of this madness. i am everything of this madness. this madness has become me. this madness will leave me. this madness is utterly complete. this madness is so undone.
all they do
all they do is take away. they come one by one and sometimes in droves. they come smiling and sometimes they come with knives. it’s all the same, they come, they wait, and they take away. they take so much away that sometimes you think you’ve got nothing left. but you’d be surprised, you’re a well spring and they keep coming back for more. and you give it to them, you know better, you’re no fool, but this is the way its supposed to be, this is your role. you’re both the chaff and the wheat, the desire and the regret. they come and take away like it didn’t matter at all, like there was no end in sight and you were just a speed bump.
there are very few good friends
after a while you accumulate all this armor, you defend yourself from all sides. you have wounds that have scarred up nice and thick, and your joints begin to creak. you forget how to laugh, how to forget yourself.
but then there are those few friends, the ones that knew you when you were whole. that you knew when they were still all in one piece. the ones that you fought the night with, the ones you drink away much of your liver with. the ones you shared women with, the ones who stole you from a woman or two much too soon.
they are the ones that remind you who you were and who you could be. they point out your stupidities and teach you again how to laugh at yourself without feeling timid. they come back with the comebacks that make you choke away the dust of the day. you say to him, “even at seventy, drunk on miami beach, we’ll be saying the same shit, i swear.”
self doubt
self doubt is a niggle of a thing, it disrupts you, violates you. it’s the mold on the crust of bread, it’s the maggot in your meal, it’s the thing that’s gotten hold of a thread and starts to choke you with it.
it’s gentle at first, like it’s teasing you, like it’s only a joke, but you turn to it, acknowledge it and then, well, you might as well bear with it, ride it through. it’s like a virus or stomach cancer, either you get over it or get done by it.
(there were times where the panic was so strong that i had to lock myself into rooms and lock the windows because i was fucking convinced man, i was fucking sure and i knew i didn’t know shit, i knew i was just imagining the worst man, i was seeing fucking ghosts was all, but i couldn’t let it go, the fucking lies i have heard come out of the least expected people, its fucking drained me and i would turn on the radio and the tv and crack open a book, do a fucking puzzle, shit i would even jerk off and on and off again until i would fucking forget about it but i just couldn’t man until i just sat in the dark and thought up some other sick shit instead like dying like watching the thoughts go out like fireflies one by one and i couldn’t stand that shit, still can’t, and that’s how i got the maggots out of my head man. just by thinking of something far worse than how fucking ugly i really was.)
night sick fear
when the night is at its most peaceful, i snap right up. i am sick with fear. my stomach churns, my bowels feel weak. i touch my child and the terror does not abate, it worsens. i reach even further, i touch my wife’s belly and still no comfort. my life is escaping me, i cannot hold it between my fingers, time pushes me around. it is so ruthless. so unforgiving.
haven’t you heard this all before?
there are times i literally shoot up and try to catch my breath. horrified i need to rip my heart out and hold it in my hands to slow it down. it beats too fast with fear, it is much too loud, it careens around in my ribs. all i wish for is a way to stop time, to stop this beating in my chest that leads me closer and closer to inevitable grief and madness.
i will outlive you all and i cannot bear it.
the last time
and he says, do you remember the last time?
and she says, this is the last time.
and he says, annoyed, no not yet, not this time, but the time before last.
and she says, this will be the last time you ask me that
this will be the last time you do this to me
not since the last time have i felt this way
and he says, tell me this is the last time
tell it to me like the last time
one last time
she asks, do you remember the last time?
and he shakes his head, it was too long ago
and she weeps one last time
just like the last time when he couldn’t
there’s something here, but ach, the rhythm is all wrong and the attention seems to go off too fast in one place and stops abruptly somewhere else. it’s really not good enough to leave it alone, and there’s something to work with here, between these two different meanings of the phrase “the last time”: one being a memory and the other the finality of there being no more memories. i’ll have to get back to this
treacherous
it is of course, the first cliche: he lights a cigarette….
“we were in paris. it was night and we were pretty drunk.” he inhales, lets the smoke drift out of his mouth like slow serpents seducing their way to heaven. “she wasn’t much older than seventeen.” he looks at us, smiles, “but she told me she was twenty three.”
and he knows that we know that we’ve heard this all before.
“oh, if you could only have seen her!” he leans back, eyes wistful, “she loved the meringue, even danced to it when it wasn’t playing.” snaps the ash off to the side. he leans forward suddenly, “even shopping along the champs-élysées, in and out of every store, with her hips, magnifique!”
he leans back again, not breaking eye contact this time. his smile does not reach his eyes. we know what’s coming, we’ve read the reports.
“but,” he held the cigarette just before his lips, humming the tune before he actually says the words to match them. “…’she was just seventeen, if you know what i mean’…” he pulls the last drag particularly hard, as if he is remembering something vivid and even perhaps something painful. we know he had bitten off her ear and one nipple. we also know she managed to give him a good scratch down his neck that required stitches.
we don’t exactly know, yet, if he bit her before, after or during her dismemberment.
“the tragic thing is,” he says, carefully putting out the cigarette in the ashtray he had been ignoring so far, “the tragic thing is that i had to pollute the seine with her.” he points a finger as if he is imparting a lesson, “the same sacred river that our victor hugo has the ‘valiant’ inspector javert throw himself into.”
he laughs, looks at all of us in turn, “do you not love it? only in the sewers does a coward and whore meet! it is quite beautiful, no?”
it is obvious
it is obvious that something has cracked open, my chest has been cleared of leaves and cobwebs, things long abandoned and dead. i can never hope to catch up to it, in many ways i think it is already gone, but i can only follow it’s trail, listen to the hushed distant whispers of its voice.
sometimes it’s a grizzled old man who has much too much fight left in him. sometimes it is a woman marked from head to toe with the words i’ve yet to say.
sometimes it is my dead father. sometimes it is the daughter i lost.
but i’ve been cracked open to listen, to write, to rub my eyes open with ashes. to openly mourn and grab hold of that, to no longer push down and stop feeling that. but to bring it to the surface, bring it to my calloused fingers, to smear it here, to let it live, for whatever it’s worth, for whatever it’s meant to do, for whatever it can be.
good times
i can imagine how someone reading through this site would imagine that there is nothing happy here, that there is no hope. but there is, there is. just because you write of broken things does not mean you are always broken, or that your life is.
i have a son on the way. i have a beautiful wife who loves me despite of my faults, and they are immense. i finally broke through to my future goddaughter. she went from crying at the sight of me to holding my finger and pulling me along. of course this will all change when i dunk her in september for her christening.
i’ve been given more responsibility at work and work has gotten even more busy than before. my daughter, completely on her own, hugs me and tells me she loves me. i think she actually misses me from time to time.
all in all, it’s a good life. not the life i dreamed for myself, not the entire life that i would want to be living instead. but as long as i can write about damage and pain and suffering, as long as i can engage with everything writing allowed to happen for me, then it’s enough. almost more than enough.
there is a tear here
there is a tear here, where things scramble out in to the world and roam. there is a tear where his mouth used to be and he cannot find enough fingers to put in it. he cuts them with his teeth and they escape him. they crawl around. there is a tear where her eye used to be and it leaks thorns down her face. break the skin where its tight along her cheek, opens her jawline before she can speak. there is a tear in the sky and it bleeds on everything.
and the little one breaks down into pieces, crumbles before me. i scoop her up and try to put her back together but i have no hands so i do it with the stumps of my wrists and my teeth fall into her face like tears and the thorns have ripped open her sides and i bleed on everything, i just can’t stop bleeding.