the creaking slats
of the house by the sea
have peeled off
like fingernails.
ghosts catch themselves on them
and tear like sheets.
the long whisperings
of the tall grass surrounding.
peter & she
went down to the sea,
buckets swaying
in their tiny fists.
lightning skewered the sky
and the slow children howled
as the wind shoved them.
she held to her hat
and set her jaw.
at the beach,
in the furious rain,
she sliced her sole
on a broken shell.
the ocean vampiric
sucked it out
from between her toes.
beyond,
the hulking silhouette
of a small ship foundering
on groaning waves.
peter's hand
fastened to hers.
she looked at his eyes.
in them reflected
she saw a storm
and could not distinguish
between the two.
now, ruins,
but sun.
neither peter
nor she.
the long whisperings
of the tall grass surrounding.
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
tired
i am a marauder who
dropped his scythe,
shrugged off the sword,
sat down in the easychair
to bite his fingernails
& stare moodily
out the living room window.
my wife is terrified of me.
she clings to the curtains
and edges around the walls.
sometimes,
just to scare her,
i touch the steak knives
the same way i touch her,
just run my fingers over
their blades.
we're having steak tonight.
my delinquent teenage son
is in his bedroom,
playing with a book of matches
and listening to noise rock.
i tell him all that static
will warp his hearing,
but he doesn't listen.
once i told him if he didn't
stop crying,
his face would freeze
that way.
he didn't listen then
& now it has.
it rained all night
(tiny drummers)
when my assassin caught up with me.
i was reading ian fleming
by firelight,
smoking my last cigarette.
he came at me from behind,
i didn't see his face.
carelessly, my head falls
to the floor
and in my last 3 seconds
i can see boredom's shadow
slink out the front way,
disappearing as a rustle
between the tulips
& the peonies.
dropped his scythe,
shrugged off the sword,
sat down in the easychair
to bite his fingernails
& stare moodily
out the living room window.
my wife is terrified of me.
she clings to the curtains
and edges around the walls.
sometimes,
just to scare her,
i touch the steak knives
the same way i touch her,
just run my fingers over
their blades.
we're having steak tonight.
my delinquent teenage son
is in his bedroom,
playing with a book of matches
and listening to noise rock.
i tell him all that static
will warp his hearing,
but he doesn't listen.
once i told him if he didn't
stop crying,
his face would freeze
that way.
he didn't listen then
& now it has.
it rained all night
(tiny drummers)
when my assassin caught up with me.
i was reading ian fleming
by firelight,
smoking my last cigarette.
he came at me from behind,
i didn't see his face.
carelessly, my head falls
to the floor
and in my last 3 seconds
i can see boredom's shadow
slink out the front way,
disappearing as a rustle
between the tulips
& the peonies.
Monday, January 28, 2008
tracheotomy
the quiet roar of whisky
in the mouth,
swallowed, repressed,
folded into the stomach.
the billiards
hurling into one another
violently -
they sound like teeth,
colliding after a blow
to the jaw.
i wired my jaw shut
and nodded mechanically.
i felt gears rusting
inside of me, their
once-hearty movement
jarred, hiccuping.
i handed you the scalpel
and grimly motioned
to my chest -
where my heart
had been punishing
the inside of my ribcage,
where my skin was livid
from the
repeated pummeling
you nodded,
took another shot,
and crouched down
to make the incision,
but a ripple of anxiety
sloshed in my eyes
& you noticed.
you shook your head.
disappointment's powerful odor
filled the room,
and i limped out of the bar
right into the street
and turned west, following
a yellow line
& its doppelganger.
years later,
the snicker of whisky,
the clutch of loss,
and a gasping hole
in my throat
where the words i didn't say
burst out of me
and hit the sidewalk
with a sickening slap.
in the mouth,
swallowed, repressed,
folded into the stomach.
the billiards
hurling into one another
violently -
they sound like teeth,
colliding after a blow
to the jaw.
i wired my jaw shut
and nodded mechanically.
i felt gears rusting
inside of me, their
once-hearty movement
jarred, hiccuping.
i handed you the scalpel
and grimly motioned
to my chest -
where my heart
had been punishing
the inside of my ribcage,
where my skin was livid
from the
repeated pummeling
you nodded,
took another shot,
and crouched down
to make the incision,
but a ripple of anxiety
sloshed in my eyes
& you noticed.
you shook your head.
disappointment's powerful odor
filled the room,
and i limped out of the bar
right into the street
and turned west, following
a yellow line
& its doppelganger.
years later,
the snicker of whisky,
the clutch of loss,
and a gasping hole
in my throat
where the words i didn't say
burst out of me
and hit the sidewalk
with a sickening slap.
clutch
it never goes away,
something you've said before
but just for effect.
it suckered your soul
in a rigged con game.
you can't believe you
trusted those shining eyes.
now you tug at your own elbows
in winter's dark bedroom,
slam your eyes on the
hulking shadows in the corners.
your skull is full of echoes
like clumsy bats in an attic.
cut to:
tilted, askew angle on
the blotchy sky above -
mottled white & shocking blue.
this is the moment,
hungover, scarfed, ruddy,
that she appears
in the movies -
this is the moment,
distracted by graffiti,
that you run into her -
you turn off the television
suddenly
and find that you
prefer the silence.
something you've said before
but just for effect.
it suckered your soul
in a rigged con game.
you can't believe you
trusted those shining eyes.
now you tug at your own elbows
in winter's dark bedroom,
slam your eyes on the
hulking shadows in the corners.
your skull is full of echoes
like clumsy bats in an attic.
cut to:
tilted, askew angle on
the blotchy sky above -
mottled white & shocking blue.
this is the moment,
hungover, scarfed, ruddy,
that she appears
in the movies -
this is the moment,
distracted by graffiti,
that you run into her -
you turn off the television
suddenly
and find that you
prefer the silence.
loss, regret, the past
your old picture
in the box
under the bookshelf.
the yellow crept
into our lives
stained first our teeth
then our fingertips.
stained the sky
stained the bathroom walls.
i went blind casually
without complaining.
it grew cold in my bedroom
and i forgot to pay the bill.
sleep became a five-second shudder
between one and
two in the morning.
alcohol took up
most of the rest of it.
yellowed my lungs,
my stomach.
in the dream,
i am naked
beside you.
we do not touch.
i can see your closed eyes
moving like typewriters
beneath their lids.
you are writing a story
in your sleep.
it develops inside of you.
the white snow.
our white house.
the white, white lakes.
in the box
under the bookshelf.
the yellow crept
into our lives
stained first our teeth
then our fingertips.
stained the sky
stained the bathroom walls.
i went blind casually
without complaining.
it grew cold in my bedroom
and i forgot to pay the bill.
sleep became a five-second shudder
between one and
two in the morning.
alcohol took up
most of the rest of it.
yellowed my lungs,
my stomach.
in the dream,
i am naked
beside you.
we do not touch.
i can see your closed eyes
moving like typewriters
beneath their lids.
you are writing a story
in your sleep.
it develops inside of you.
the white snow.
our white house.
the white, white lakes.
a bit from some dreams,
not like a joke bit, not like a funny bit, and yes i know dreams are the last thing that anyone else in the world would be interested in hearing. all i can remember is the distinct image of narrowed city streets, gotham-like, monochrome, with concrete walls skyrocketing to an unclimbable height, disappearing to points - a dim chase through large tunnels that somehow bore beneath the city. the sound of a deluge of water. subterranean waterfalls illumined solely by the stabbing light of a cell phone's display.
darkhaired girls, one whitehaired one. all of them somehow dangerous, though behind the smiles. a group of men in liquid-blue suits and dark sunglasses. the white shred of rain down the pavement night.
other bits, with a crazy-eyed friend, though i am with him he is not with me. i watch him trudging through a wilderness. the pinetrees stab toward the sky. the sky is a radiant blue, seeming almost to burn through itself, to bleed electronic blue - on the other side of the mountain, it's dark and the sky acquires staticky stars. the moon hisses and pulses blankly in their hiccuping midst. scaling down the cliffs, he becomes smaller and smaller, like an ant as it curls into its death throes, and vanishes into all the black.
a droning, reedy sound out of the lake. something about a ghost in the shallows.
so, no real earthquakes other than those during sleep. lately, the hours after midnight are the ones to live for, with the drink & the proper bit of woozy alteration. the comfortable smile. how inhibition falls away. you think to yourself: "maybe if i do this long enough, it'll stick." and it will, you know it will, but not how you want it to.
sometimes self-indulgence gets old.
darkhaired girls, one whitehaired one. all of them somehow dangerous, though behind the smiles. a group of men in liquid-blue suits and dark sunglasses. the white shred of rain down the pavement night.
other bits, with a crazy-eyed friend, though i am with him he is not with me. i watch him trudging through a wilderness. the pinetrees stab toward the sky. the sky is a radiant blue, seeming almost to burn through itself, to bleed electronic blue - on the other side of the mountain, it's dark and the sky acquires staticky stars. the moon hisses and pulses blankly in their hiccuping midst. scaling down the cliffs, he becomes smaller and smaller, like an ant as it curls into its death throes, and vanishes into all the black.
a droning, reedy sound out of the lake. something about a ghost in the shallows.
so, no real earthquakes other than those during sleep. lately, the hours after midnight are the ones to live for, with the drink & the proper bit of woozy alteration. the comfortable smile. how inhibition falls away. you think to yourself: "maybe if i do this long enough, it'll stick." and it will, you know it will, but not how you want it to.
sometimes self-indulgence gets old.
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Oarsman
this morning i woke up and decided to (at least in these pages) take responsibility for (at least some of) my actions, my thoughts, my life. the amorphous, vague "us," "we," and "you" will be seen only when appropriate.
last night, the chill melting around the edges, encounters with Ruth, encounters with others. Leah on the piano at Empire, before i knew it was her, but almost-guessed, even with the drink flooding my veins & making a traffic jam around my heart - her voice, something i didn't suspect but maybe should have. she has notes tattooed on her. the bar was almost empty, and so few patrons clung to the edges of it, all silent, listening to her play. we were loud on the way in, but i stopped short just past the doors, staring at the organized loops of her blonde dreadlocks. was it the music that raked the coals inside of me, or was it her? was it a sublime convection of the two? could i have been so affected by one, but not the other? later, she came by the table and said hello - there, in her regular speaking voice, was the singing i'd heard, but had somehow missed before. she was kind, quiet, and reserved. Ruth, a little less drunk than i was, raked her fingers through my hair & down my spine. she observed, "you need some creature comforts."
all week i have been thinking about fucking. so of course even in my altered state, wandering like i do haplessly around someone else's house (i live here, but somehow i don't allow myself to) i pick up henry & june by anais nin. i storm through it and trip over the unsatisfactory ending somewhere around ten in the morning. all week i have the images in my head: the girl i saw on the street in the saggy, shapeless knit hat & the frayed jeans. the cautious look on her face as she crossed State, as she passed behind that mammoth tribute to Longfellow, as she
i make up lies. in that last paragraph, the girl was an amalgam of a few i have seen, a few that i know. both girls that used to work at the secondhand record & vintage clothing store beneath my last apartment. one with flashing, startling blue eyes & the other with a kindly, near-grandmotherly face. both different animals, somehow the same sex ... the same pulse, beneath their white skin.
but then, it's the brazen girls that i love, the outspoken. the ones which conduct themselves in a hortatory manner, which leave themselves for frantic, Delphic moments, and then come back to themselves. i love the two-faced, the grimaced, the angry, the insouciant, the dispossessed, the crazed, the hurt, the willful & the wanton. i want them to hurt me so that i do not have to feel the guilt of wanting to hurt them in the first place.
about nin: her book was so full of peregrinations concerning 'hurt.'
i feel that i could not write, cannot write, because i cannot be honest with myself. even here, i am lying, i am deceitful, i look for fragrant ways to cloak the distinct odor of my true self, the piss, the banality, the shit. i am ashamed of who i am. i detest who i am.
Ruth's fingers are strong and knead out the knots in my back. i wonder who i am to everyone else if i don't know who i am to myself. she comments that i have a lot of knots. i tell her i keep my stress in my back. i have heard someone say this before. i do not know if it is true of me.
there is one more thing: i would name him if i could, but i cannot, so i seek other ways to reference him. "a guy" fits awkwardly. "a boy" makes me seem like a girl due to the polarity. "a man," which he is not, although moreso on first glance than i, and then i fall short. i spent a drunken amble through the aisle of lust, making eye contact with him. he enjoys kayaking, and sea kayaking most of all. these adventures are thrilling to me. i am thrilled by the passing dream of playing a comfortable role, the newcomer, the beginner, being taught, instructed, educated by him, learning how to work the paddles (the oars?), watching his fingers and strong hands conquer the water around him. i would like to be that image, i think to myself - i would like to own strong hands, i would like to be a man. but somehow i am not. in all my thinness, in all my exacerbated eccentricity, i have disgusted myself, i have fallen short of my standards.
i would like to see him again. i feel as though he could be a friend, a comforter, a solace i could go to. i do not know how i know this. perhaps i am wrong. i can also feel a chilly distance possible in him. i can see in him a determination that is marred with laziness, perhaps confusion, perhaps loneliness. i can see in him that he is bored with this city and its people. i can see him living quietly in the pines of a big mountain with a big sky. i am willing to bet he has hurt people before, and carries it around inside of him like broken eggs, unwilling to relinquish the shells.
meanwhile, the delusion continues, but only around the edges, lapping at me like dark, hungry waves. i can hear it rumbling as an empty stomach would, or a faraway storm threatening as it inches closer...
last night, the chill melting around the edges, encounters with Ruth, encounters with others. Leah on the piano at Empire, before i knew it was her, but almost-guessed, even with the drink flooding my veins & making a traffic jam around my heart - her voice, something i didn't suspect but maybe should have. she has notes tattooed on her. the bar was almost empty, and so few patrons clung to the edges of it, all silent, listening to her play. we were loud on the way in, but i stopped short just past the doors, staring at the organized loops of her blonde dreadlocks. was it the music that raked the coals inside of me, or was it her? was it a sublime convection of the two? could i have been so affected by one, but not the other? later, she came by the table and said hello - there, in her regular speaking voice, was the singing i'd heard, but had somehow missed before. she was kind, quiet, and reserved. Ruth, a little less drunk than i was, raked her fingers through my hair & down my spine. she observed, "you need some creature comforts."
all week i have been thinking about fucking. so of course even in my altered state, wandering like i do haplessly around someone else's house (i live here, but somehow i don't allow myself to) i pick up henry & june by anais nin. i storm through it and trip over the unsatisfactory ending somewhere around ten in the morning. all week i have the images in my head: the girl i saw on the street in the saggy, shapeless knit hat & the frayed jeans. the cautious look on her face as she crossed State, as she passed behind that mammoth tribute to Longfellow, as she
i make up lies. in that last paragraph, the girl was an amalgam of a few i have seen, a few that i know. both girls that used to work at the secondhand record & vintage clothing store beneath my last apartment. one with flashing, startling blue eyes & the other with a kindly, near-grandmotherly face. both different animals, somehow the same sex ... the same pulse, beneath their white skin.
but then, it's the brazen girls that i love, the outspoken. the ones which conduct themselves in a hortatory manner, which leave themselves for frantic, Delphic moments, and then come back to themselves. i love the two-faced, the grimaced, the angry, the insouciant, the dispossessed, the crazed, the hurt, the willful & the wanton. i want them to hurt me so that i do not have to feel the guilt of wanting to hurt them in the first place.
about nin: her book was so full of peregrinations concerning 'hurt.'
i feel that i could not write, cannot write, because i cannot be honest with myself. even here, i am lying, i am deceitful, i look for fragrant ways to cloak the distinct odor of my true self, the piss, the banality, the shit. i am ashamed of who i am. i detest who i am.
Ruth's fingers are strong and knead out the knots in my back. i wonder who i am to everyone else if i don't know who i am to myself. she comments that i have a lot of knots. i tell her i keep my stress in my back. i have heard someone say this before. i do not know if it is true of me.
there is one more thing: i would name him if i could, but i cannot, so i seek other ways to reference him. "a guy" fits awkwardly. "a boy" makes me seem like a girl due to the polarity. "a man," which he is not, although moreso on first glance than i, and then i fall short. i spent a drunken amble through the aisle of lust, making eye contact with him. he enjoys kayaking, and sea kayaking most of all. these adventures are thrilling to me. i am thrilled by the passing dream of playing a comfortable role, the newcomer, the beginner, being taught, instructed, educated by him, learning how to work the paddles (the oars?), watching his fingers and strong hands conquer the water around him. i would like to be that image, i think to myself - i would like to own strong hands, i would like to be a man. but somehow i am not. in all my thinness, in all my exacerbated eccentricity, i have disgusted myself, i have fallen short of my standards.
i would like to see him again. i feel as though he could be a friend, a comforter, a solace i could go to. i do not know how i know this. perhaps i am wrong. i can also feel a chilly distance possible in him. i can see in him a determination that is marred with laziness, perhaps confusion, perhaps loneliness. i can see in him that he is bored with this city and its people. i can see him living quietly in the pines of a big mountain with a big sky. i am willing to bet he has hurt people before, and carries it around inside of him like broken eggs, unwilling to relinquish the shells.
meanwhile, the delusion continues, but only around the edges, lapping at me like dark, hungry waves. i can hear it rumbling as an empty stomach would, or a faraway storm threatening as it inches closer...
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
a new notebook
am i an onion, ripe, vibrating with sadness, trembling before the incisive knife of others, until age peels me to the weird hard core & leaves me bitter, tearless? i am coating my stomach with alcohol so that when real pain hits, i will be numb & fortress-like. i aspire to be inviolable, i want to allow myself to be invidious, i want to express what i feel and how i feel it at the moment that i do, without restrictions. i want to be able to be wholly myself regardless of the judgement of others.
today i saw a beautiful woman walking down the street. later, i saw an ugly young man. both of them inspired the same feeling inside of me, a plucked string, a snapped string. the moon roiled fecklessly in the clouds, illuminating them like a flashlight under the sheets. at times, it cast a wary eye out on the streets below. drunks didn't notice it. a sheen on the asphalt, not quite ice. the light dandruff of snow from an immature storm the night before. i am afraid to meet the eyes of anyone, because i know that i will give myself away as freely as i give myself away in these pages. that's not true - no one gives themselves away, there's always a reserved bit of gourmet cuisine that one keeps tucked in the pantry of oneself, that they share only with the closest of friends. an aged bottle of whisky, a bit of crumbling cheese.
i am frantic by nature, i am discursive, long-winded and opinionated, though i am not any of these things. i am consumed with the reflection of myself that i see in the eyes of other people. how many times i have said "other people" in this entry, lacking another word for what i mean to say ... friends, acquaintances, neighbors at the bar, co-workers, strangers on the street, cashiers, waitresses ... at times i feel like my nervousness is going to overwhelm me, like a tidal wave, smashing everything i've built up inside of myself. i am convinced that i lie so well and so often that i've lied myself into a movie i'm filming about my severely over-dramatized life. though i'm in therapy, i have little respect for my therapist and don't know if she's the right fit - though she has definitely said some interesting things -
perhaps i would be none of these negative things if i simply ceased to give them credence; will them out of my mind, and thus, out of my personality. i could be anything i want to be, isn't that right? well, if that's true, then how i am so clearly not myself? how am i not who i would like to be?
tonight i want to gorge myself on the full moon, but i am restless - i hunger for something more, something new. i should take myself & my notebook to a bar and just sit, look, and write. but the inevitable crashing conclusion of that is impotence, sadness, disgust, and ultimately, rage either quelled or enhanced by the sudden & rapid intake of alcohol. but boredom is the other option, that vast gray nothing filled only by the stale smell of cigarettes and possibly the mindless chatter of television: painless lasers in the eyes ...
i am missing something fundamental in my life, and that something is inspiration. i need a new muse. i lack that center of idolatry in my life, there is no one i know that i idolize: every idol has fallen, and so i am standing in the midst of this plaster ruin wondering if my face, too, will fall off, if my limbs will detach & my chest cave in, and how long will it take for this erosion to occur? too long. i speed it up with dramatic intensity.
i am come so far, and i feel i've not yet taken a step.
furthermore, how does one judge the distance from here to there when here is a mire you're stuck in? is a destination even attainable? is here the destination, achieved, but without my singular, defined knowledge of it?
a friend of mine once told me that she felt she should have died a long time ago, and that she constantly inhabited this hinterland, an odd, abstracted place. she was coping with her feeling of being singular, of being entirely herself, and could not reconcile herself with those she saw around her. once you are dead, you have become yourself, you have achieved apotheosis: you are no longer a continuing being, you have ceased. you become a model for the past tense, you slip in & out of memory, comfortable finally as an abstraction. you are inked, set in stone.
and so here i am, a river continuing to the sea.
today i saw a beautiful woman walking down the street. later, i saw an ugly young man. both of them inspired the same feeling inside of me, a plucked string, a snapped string. the moon roiled fecklessly in the clouds, illuminating them like a flashlight under the sheets. at times, it cast a wary eye out on the streets below. drunks didn't notice it. a sheen on the asphalt, not quite ice. the light dandruff of snow from an immature storm the night before. i am afraid to meet the eyes of anyone, because i know that i will give myself away as freely as i give myself away in these pages. that's not true - no one gives themselves away, there's always a reserved bit of gourmet cuisine that one keeps tucked in the pantry of oneself, that they share only with the closest of friends. an aged bottle of whisky, a bit of crumbling cheese.
i am frantic by nature, i am discursive, long-winded and opinionated, though i am not any of these things. i am consumed with the reflection of myself that i see in the eyes of other people. how many times i have said "other people" in this entry, lacking another word for what i mean to say ... friends, acquaintances, neighbors at the bar, co-workers, strangers on the street, cashiers, waitresses ... at times i feel like my nervousness is going to overwhelm me, like a tidal wave, smashing everything i've built up inside of myself. i am convinced that i lie so well and so often that i've lied myself into a movie i'm filming about my severely over-dramatized life. though i'm in therapy, i have little respect for my therapist and don't know if she's the right fit - though she has definitely said some interesting things -
perhaps i would be none of these negative things if i simply ceased to give them credence; will them out of my mind, and thus, out of my personality. i could be anything i want to be, isn't that right? well, if that's true, then how i am so clearly not myself? how am i not who i would like to be?
tonight i want to gorge myself on the full moon, but i am restless - i hunger for something more, something new. i should take myself & my notebook to a bar and just sit, look, and write. but the inevitable crashing conclusion of that is impotence, sadness, disgust, and ultimately, rage either quelled or enhanced by the sudden & rapid intake of alcohol. but boredom is the other option, that vast gray nothing filled only by the stale smell of cigarettes and possibly the mindless chatter of television: painless lasers in the eyes ...
i am missing something fundamental in my life, and that something is inspiration. i need a new muse. i lack that center of idolatry in my life, there is no one i know that i idolize: every idol has fallen, and so i am standing in the midst of this plaster ruin wondering if my face, too, will fall off, if my limbs will detach & my chest cave in, and how long will it take for this erosion to occur? too long. i speed it up with dramatic intensity.
i am come so far, and i feel i've not yet taken a step.
furthermore, how does one judge the distance from here to there when here is a mire you're stuck in? is a destination even attainable? is here the destination, achieved, but without my singular, defined knowledge of it?
a friend of mine once told me that she felt she should have died a long time ago, and that she constantly inhabited this hinterland, an odd, abstracted place. she was coping with her feeling of being singular, of being entirely herself, and could not reconcile herself with those she saw around her. once you are dead, you have become yourself, you have achieved apotheosis: you are no longer a continuing being, you have ceased. you become a model for the past tense, you slip in & out of memory, comfortable finally as an abstraction. you are inked, set in stone.
and so here i am, a river continuing to the sea.
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