fifty-three

it's not failure, i mean

we saw failure at the farm, doug was

fifty-three with bleary tears dripping for so much time lost

to whatever it was he did, i don't know

much about drugs, less about him

but he wanted to do and be

better now, he

wanted at fifty-three to be what i am at twenty-three:

i'll bet he never guessed how i ached, oh i ached at failure

not a week before. i'll bet

fred didn't know it in the interview when he said

they're the ones nobody else wants, well

i thought he was talking about me.

but no, i realized sitting this

is not failure, this

is just a long grey dawn, and

there's no telling what dawn really means.



7/3/08 - W had me visit a rehab charity last week and i realized how small everything is for me, how insignificant are my emotions: there was a 42-year-old grandfather whose kids wouldn't come see him because his life was a wreck of addiction.

italian shoes

i lied today, baby, i
wore those shoes her dad gave me
they hurt and they're from italy
and black, so black and
they shine a little,
they shine a little less now
because i was walking, baby, i
was walking in the gutter and
people were looking at my collar
they saw my buttons and my belt
saw the briefcase i carried on the bus,
and people dropped their eyes right
into those shoes, and the shine,
it kicked them all right
right in their perceptions,
kicked them all into believing
i have more money than
the check for $72.69, in my pocket,
and it won't pay for rent, baby, no
he'll come, he'll come
knocking on my cardboard door, and
those shoes will be worthless, they'll
watch him ask for my soul
in rent; i pay in excuses, because
i'm so good at lying, baby, i'm so good.
everyone in the city, they were all
so proud of me: the young american, so
white and successful and male, or
they hated me: moneyed bureaucrat with
all the race, all the luck, all the
hope i never had, even though
i have italian shoes, you know,
from someone's dad, one size
too small for me, and i am one size
too small for their muttered novels
of me. but we liars, baby, we're
used to the feeling, it's part of me,
it's the lie i told today
before i crawled into a dirty bed
and shook with guilt and tragedy.
and i know, baby, i know how
i could change this death, i could
use my luck and race, the money
we all presume i have, i could
cash in, you know: get ahead in
life, as they say. but it's not for me,
because i'm carrying these sins, baby,
carrying the sins of the City on my breast.
we're all, you know, on business
and, you know, we're tired, those are
the reasons we don't, you know, smile
at beggars, you know, we don't spare the
dollar cuz he'd buy, you know, heroin with it,
baby, he'd buy another high with your smile,
so we're careful to grimace, but
that's the sin, don't you see,
those are the sins of
the City i carry in my heart,
refusing my race and money and luck
which doesn't come free, baby,
it costs exactly one failure
and so many lies in
italian shoes.




6/24/08 - i worked in the city for P today. i guess i don't know if i could actually get a job. i figure if i tried harder i probably could; that's what g says all the time and she has a job so she's probably right. something keeps me from trying harder, i can't explain it. this is as close as i've come.

valentine's day

when we think about love and valentine’s day and everything do we ever think just of love or do we, must we, always think of someone whom we love whose love we enjoy—and do we ever think of that love without recalling the brilliant conversation we had with them and the feel of their eyes, or think of those things without also swelling up inside just in such a way that we feel a bit fuller and perhaps more complete; is it possible to separate our love from the person we love, from the experiences we have had together, from the feelings we have for them—probably not—but are any of these things really love, or is love commitment, is love security and trust and faithfulness and all the sappy things those counselors say, is it even that, or maybe is love chocolate (which might be closer to love than anything intangible, in the end) or love could be time, because heaven knows it’s easier to love each other when he doesn’t need to take pills for sex and when she doesn’t doze off in the middle of it (getting old will be wierd) or love could be the dust we’re constantly breathing, which only sparkles in the sunlight (inside the window on a warm afternoon they cluster and trickle through the air on the other side of the book in our hands when we look up from the words and think how quiet the world is right now) or is true love the serene dance of a slow flickering flame lit in a cathedral with thoughts of other altars (“be it flax or temple burn,” she said so many years ago, though true the words remain) or is love the music pulled from an old piano in a quiet room under the quiet graceful gaze of sparkling appreciation—but maybe that’s all just romance and sap and so much vapid hyperbole and love is making dinner in a bad mood with the kids making a mess in the living room, and still kissing in the doorway and asking how did your day go and letting a little bit of the bad mood drift away because, well isn’t that what love might be after all, after byron and shelley and keats and browning and shakespeare, they were probably just sappy and high on something, because love is probably much, much grittier than what they said; and is this a test of love’s grit, this distance, this grueling exhaustion of never seeing each other, tantalizingly abstract voices in tinny phones that can’t hold hands or capture an eye’s sparkle, is this the abused truth behind all those clichés about enduring love perhaps, well perhaps, and anyway it’s how we love each other for this day, it’s the tiredness of waking up every morning alone—but not for too long, and that’s the cleverness of it: endure a little longer, love, and all that is love, beautiful and ugly, we can find together—which is to say, from quite a distance, will you be my valentine?




2/14/08

June 20, 2007

6/20/07
9:00 AM
Flying into London

We're dropping into London now.  After an eight-hour hassle to get on my way to Britain, we're finally arriving.

So that's it.  In the middle of the night sometime I got up to use the lavatory and realized I was over the Atlantic.  It was a beautiful feeling.  But thanks to closed windows I couldn't see a thing to realize what it was like.  You'd think there would be more sense of accomplishment or significance, but as it is I can't think of much other than what's ahead.

I've been sitting next to a trendy-dressed middle-aged Russian man this whole time.  He's mostly slept.  His English is very poor, but I learned that he is on his way to St. Petersburg.  He offered me his yogurt this morning, making motions to imply stomach-sickness.  I thanked him & took it, but I didn't finish my own yogurt even.  I sort of wonder what he thought of our exchange, but I suppose I'll never know.

I wish the man sitting against the windows would open the window I can see out of--oh, there we go.  Turns out I only needed to ask him.  He's a character, too.  Headed to Vienna, he's an older man with long grey stringy hair.  If anything, he looks like a street bum, but I expect he's actually an artist.  He wears a round tan hat that's somewhat like a fisherman's hat.

I think we're landing.

June 23, 2007

6/23/07
8:00 PM
Hotel Ibis
Charleroi, Brussels

The day pauses, so I write.  Rain is falling on the river outside our window.  It's a thin river, nothing like the Allegheny or Ohio back home, and it seems usually smooth.  The rain makes ripples on the water.

This is a rich moment, somewhat because of how far I am from home & somewhat because this town isn't someplace we meant to be, but it makes me curious and shy.

For lack of plans after our plane set down in Brussels Airport, Gina & I found a hotel close by, intending to stay one night and move on to Luxembourg today after changing her airline tickets at the airport again.  Instead, we enjoyed the evening here and looked around for a little while, and decided to sleep in late & spend the next day here as well.  Dinner was odd; we went through 3 waiters before finding one who would put up with my butchered French & his shaky English.  At some point I was able to apologize for not speaking French; I mentioned I studied it only a little but thought it was a beautiful language.  I don't what where he thought I was from.  He mentioned he liked English too, then clarified, "But American..." then he wandered off proclaiming, "Fuck!  Fuck this!  Fuck that!"  I guess that's his impression of the USA.  I'm glad I didn't fit that description exactly.

Today we wandered around Charleroi.  I'm not sure what it is, other than a small town outside of Brussels near enough to the airport to get some traffic from travelers.  As far as I can tell, the main commercial hub is somewhere between a train station that happens to be across the river from this hotel, and a large factory put up on a hill nearly half an hour's walk away.  The train tracks, river, & major highway all seem to run in the same small concourse along the south of the town; the factory is in the north.

There is a university here, though it seems to be from the early soviet era & seems run-down, if not somewhat abandoned.  It's called the Universite de Travail, & it was founded by Paul Pastur, of whom there's a Stalinesque statue standing in an overgrown cobblestone square between the ivy-conquered buildings.  It's only a short walk away from the factory, & I wonder if it's related to the rise of the workers' rebellions from the 1930's and before.  Outside the hotel there's another statue of a worker with some classic soviet-style figurines carved in the base: your common laborer, wielding his hammer or whatever.  I'm curious what happened in this place.

There's also a Waterloo metro station, but I don't actually know (and this is embarrassing) where the real Waterloo was, so I have no idea if this is it or if it's more in Russia somewhere (which is what I thought before).