The language is so much bigger than I am, so much older, more beautiful. How can I hope to tame it, cram it into a style?
Instead of looking out the window, I cover up the window with a photograph of a window and worship that. Everything I say about You is a lie.
New Year’s Eve, explains the Sufi shopkeeper around the corner, is a time for remembering the mistakes we made in the past year, and for thinking how we’ll avoid those same mistakes in the future. He says, “It’s for realizing that we have one less year to gather energy to ourselves.”
All the things I haven’t done for my daughters march past like all the words I haven’t written they knock knock knock but I wasn’t listening too busy thinking about whatever it was I can’t remember: life struts past oh wow you barely have time to say.
I was married to morning. I wasn’t much of a husband, but she wasn’t much of a wife. I believed her promises.
What would it be like to write the words I’m given? Not to hustle myself, not to be a big-time spender.
Behind my desk, behind my courage and my mockery of courage, You wait for me.
Rudolf Arnheim writes, “Finding the door of my study closed, I cannot shake off the psychotic notion that I am sitting in there at my desk working as I usually am when the door is closed. Hesitant to face my double, I have to master a bit of courage before I turn the doorknob.”
The old Jew doesn’t believe a word I’ve written. He walks the streets of America shaking his head. He sees my face in the mirror and knows I don’t recognize him. He plants a sour kiss on my cheek and turns away.
Be of good cheer, You remind me. The monstrous truth will come and eat from your hand.
Unable to find the words, I waited in the darkness until the words found me. I kept my mouth shut. I learned how not to write. I forgot why it was important to be someone.
The president calls every day. The CIA offers big money for my dream journal.
I make the world into a desk, cleared for action. It crouches before me, an animal willing to bear any burden.
We’ll discover we were dreaming. There never were any computers.
In the empty house, I called Your name out, wandering through the perfect rooms. How was I to know that what is hidden remains hidden?
Lorenzo says my book is too sad. “Can’t you write one called Four in the Afternoon, where you describe the insanely blissful joyous flatout wonderful uplifting fabulous zinger acid journeys and lovenights and kidtrips of your life?”
Not to use language like a ladder, as if the house only needed painting. Tear down the house!
