Moebius

My break could have been two hours long but
I had forty-five minutes and the sun
Was shining, as is its ancient custom,
And I was driving slow with windows down
And my left wrist twisting in the warm air
With cheap speakers blaring out Morrissey,
And for the first time in my whole damn life
I thought, “I am going to be okay.”
I suppose it does not really matter.
You can wait too long to be a good man.
I did.

Carmen 55

True, any moon would be a harsh mistress
But some worlds have two or three satellites
While mine has only one moon to obey.
Luna dominates the starlight, then wanes,
Her silver hands heavy upon the tide
Of an ocean that I no longer see.
She has grown deaf to the music of my prayers.

Bukowski no. 40

while I am trudging my life away I can’t help but think
that no one would miss me too much,
so I wouldn’t mind dying tomorrow
if my spirit could check in every couple years for the next few decades
to see if anybody reads me
yet

Autobiography no. 28

Her face annoyed me.

It was an exceptionally pretty face.
It had a remarkable quality of joy or despair or mischief or fey magnetism.
It annoyed me because practically every time she was around
I looked at her and smiled
and I was reasonably sure that this made me look like an idiot.

She was laboriously sculpting a rectangle of aluminum foil
into the shape of a heart
and though her wedding ring was on her hand
and I was sure her masterpiece was not meant for me,
it was easy to daydream.

When she finished she attempted to give the heart to one of her friends,
but her gift was refused with a wry observation that all another heart would do is break.
I said,
“Well a normal heart is useless, everyone knows that. But a metal heart is ductile. Malleable. Catches the light beautifully. Does not wither if touched by hands or time.”
I was unsure if anyone was listening to me
and I was afraid that I would continue talking
but I managed to shut up and after a few moments
she handed the heart to me.
I thanked her and immediately walked to the back room.
I put it into my jacket and shivered.
As the chill passed I rubbed the gooseflesh from my arms and returned to work.

When I got home I tossed my jacket down and kicked off my shoes. I took the damned heart out and it was cool as I delicately pressed it against my cheek and then smoothed out a few creases. I lit a candle and killed the lights and watched the flame flicker for a few moments. I blew the candle out and put the treasure on top of my dresser- a thin metal heart for a thin metal man.

Letter to Emilia no. 3

Did I ever tell you why I hate making mistakes? If I did, I was probably being dishonest.

I hate making mistakes because they embarrass me. Whenever I am embarrassed, I am going to blame someone for the way that I feel inside. On rare occasions this assignation of blame happens to someone else. Usually it happens to me.

In an ideal day, I will not ever blame myself for the way I feel, because it is hurtful and useless and dangerous. But the way I feel is always there, seething. I cannot call it caged because I allow it all the freedom I allow myself. It is a facet of the bargain I have established with my brain- I can tell it what to do and it will obey, but I will not tell it how to feel or try to change its emotions.

Tonight I was working and I made a pasta and I put broccoli into it which would have been fine under normal conditions, except it had been ordered without broccoli. It was my third mistake of the day. Three in seven hours. I was furious. I wanted to quit my job, if only so I would not have to make a mistake there again. Of course I did not quit. You know as well as I do that my passions cannot be trusted.

There’s no way out. I know that. This is the deal that I had to make. And I get to live, you know? And living is so goddamn good sometimes, Emilia. I got to come to the room I live in tonight and close the door and put on headphones and listen to Coltrane and Chet Baker and after a little while no matter what I feel, I will tell myself to sleep and so I will sleep. The next day I will do this again.

I tell myself that my crippling loneliness and anxiety are healthy things. They keep me honest and safe. They are a constant reminder that my brain is a weak and pathetic thing, like the minds of the people it feels such contempt toward. I have joked before that I am in an abusive relationship with myself. It is not a very funny joke and not a very useful observation. You see, I have absolutely nowhere else to go.

It’s one thing if everything is suspended and unreal, but all it takes is one overcooked burger or one overvegetabled pasta to remind me that the same emptiness that is necessary for my survival views me as prey.

Letter to Emilia no. 2

The words in newspapers put a certain book into my hands, again. Night. I cannot say I like the book or that I love it or that it is good, because it is an unholy thing, a monstrous book. I will never forget the first day that I read it. I was eight years old and it was the day after my older brother’s birthday and I began reading the book on the bus on the way to school and  already I understood something of violence- but nothing compared to what I would learn. Night is slim, even someone else could read it in a day and so I devoured it before I arrived to sit in chairs and be taught nothing, all day long, again, as would be my fate for the next ten years.

I spent much of that day bursting into tears. I was still learning what people were like— the way they would hurt and manipulate others, the things they would allow to happen to children, the sweet focusing power that pain possessed when wielded against oneself. When I came to the section where Eliezer was being whipped and writes “Only the first really hurt” and when it is over and the Kapo says to him “Understood?” and he writes “I nodded once, ten times, endlessly. As if my head had decided to say yes for all eternity” … it is not possible to overstate the effect these words had on me. Of course I already knew what it was like to nod my head in such a manner. But I did not know that anyone else in the world knew.

I slept last night, pleased with a day spent working hard and not making mistakes. I woke this morning to read of an appallingly casual act of mass murder committed in Las Vegas, hurriedly checked to make sure the people I knew thereabouts were safe, and felt sickened by my relief. Hateful words like “cholera” and “million” are printed too close together for any comfort and my sobriety makes me feel guilty for everything that I have done and also for everything that others have done. I am aware that my penchant for assigning unreasonable blame to myself is designed to render me powerless but that does not make me feel any differently. The constant assault of tragedy grows taxing, but I would be burdened by the past even if all the world was green.

The only thing to do is take a drink of ice water and feel the unearthly sharp pain of the cold striking the crater of my wisdom tooth. The air outside today is pleasant for what feels like the first time in months. It is the kind of day you would have loved. As is my custom I sit on the porch with the breeze washing over me and I think of the question Vonnegut asked everyone, a question I have been trying to ask myself each day: “If this isn’t nice, what is?”

Letter to Emilia no. 1

How fresh and recent you are in my memory, dear heart, though I have not spoken of you in a lifetime or more and though I would not be writing on this page if there were a chance that you should read it.

Summer turns to autumn but the air is hot. The national conversation is a rhetorical nightmare, my countrymen on the island of Puerto Rico are devastated by storm and sea, and the Rohingya are dying in Burma. I have been spending nights accompanied by thoughts that sprawl formlessly over my bed and sink through the carpet and floorboards.

There is no woman for me now and I find this terribly comforting- without the constant worry of betrayal my life becomes more calm and controllable. I have not been drinking for some time and so I have not been trying to be a poet, either, which is no loss to poetry although it feels as loss to me. I am aware that the touch of man profanes and my own hand seems to have this effect with great speed, and so despite my lost and discarded relics I try to smile as I go through my days.

I have been thinking lately of the last time that I had guns pointed at me. It was a little over two years ago and one thing led to another and the police were suddenly inside my door pointing shotguns and rifles and pistols at me, which I found surprising at the time. I remember the rush of cold as my blood froze in my veins and I said “This is my house, don’t shoot me” and I was aware that I looked like a madman, shirtless in basketball shorts with sweat glistening on my shaved head and an axe by the bookshelf and so much brandy on my breath that even I could smell it, and although I had wanted to die or thought I did I suffered the supreme indignity- surrender to the threat of violence. Though I had committed no crime but madness I walked from my house with my hands over my head and once outside I kept my hands over my head until an ambulance arrived because the police had shot a handcuffed man in the back of a squad car earlier that year just a mile down the road from where I sat and I knew then as I have always known that if a policeman shoots me there will be no justice. They looked somewhat amused or embarrassed or ashamed when they asked why I still had my hands up and I told them I did not want them to kill me. They said they didn’t want to kill me, so I pointed out that they came into my home and pointed guns at me, and that is what people who want to kill people do. I do not know if they were prepared to concede the point but the ambulance arrived and when the paramedics’ boots hit the ground I knew I wasn’t going to die so I started crying and I do not remember too much after that except sleep.

The first question, and it really is the only question, is “would they have shot me if I was black?” My luxury is that I never have to know.

I shall do my best to never write to you again. I may write to you tomorrow.