already too late

Feels like it’s already too late,
Missed all my chances,
Ran from my own fate,
Couldn’t wouldn’t cope,
Wished I was wished I had,
Now I stand upon regret,
Clinging to the only thing I know,
Self doubt and all that other crap,
Not wanting to voice my views,
Kept it all inside kept it all tucked away,
Too afraid to even try,
But it’s always screaming to get out,
Need to find a way need to find my voice,
Before it’s really too late,
Before I’m six feet under,
Or ashes scattered to the wind,
Never to be heard from again,
Wasted my entire life,
Wanting to be something,
But never daring to even try,
I keep shaving of all my hair,
So I don’t have to see the gray,
Trying to stave off tomorrow,
Always living in the what-ifs,
Wondering if I had what it takes,
What if I just started living,
Stopped waiting for something,
Stopped looking for someone,
And found my own way,
Stop hoping and praying,
To gods and ghosts I don’t trust,
Yell it out shout it out,
From the depths of my lungs,
Just to hear my self for once,
Just to feel alive while I still can,
Stop wishing for a different life,
Stop wasting away my short days,
Find out who and what and why,
While blood still flows through these veins,
Before I’ve grown angry and bitter,
At imagined foes and imagined affronts,
Before I start believing my own stories,
Of how I shoulda been coulda been,
When there is no one left to listen,
When everyone else has moved on,
Before I realize it’s never too late.

waking up in the middle of the night

Waking up in the middle of the night,
Head covered in sweat,
Sinus migraine roaring to the fore,
Stumbling out to the bathroom,
The smell of mold and neglect,
The sharp shock of the fluorescent light,
Boards creaking under my feet,
As the house and city sleep,
Bodies shifting under blankets,
Fidgeting and kicking in the night air,
Fighting off the weight of the day,
E quietly giggling at some imagined joke,
Some crazy shenanigans on the t.v.,
Deep asleep but kicking his blankets free,
Sweat box child emanating heat,
Running and kicking deep into the night,
Until the day light starts to trickle in,
Until the cardinals outside wake him,
When he whispers for them to shut up,
Then he gets up and goes to the bathroom,
Wanders off to see what’s on Nickelodeon,
I lie on my bed trying to hide from the light,
Shielding my eyes with a musty pillow,
Remembering the million things I need to do,
The things that take up all my time,
That wakes me up in the middle of the night,
That I run from every waking moment,
Only to be caught with my guard down,
Rotting me from the inside out,
Stealing precious moments,
Wondering when it will end,
Wishing for a way out,
Nightmares and day terrors,
Vicious circle spinning around.

7.14

I just got up from the table and walked out,
Didn’t say a word to anyone,
Didn’t even turn to look when my son yelled for me,
Just kept walking away from the Tim Horton’s,
Hungry and thirsty from the early morning swim,
Sick and tired of everything,
Sick and tired of the whining and bitching,
Disappearing into the apartment complex,
Then skirting the drainage ditch just beyond,
Walking through the tall weeds toward the soccer fields,
I hit the bike trail in full stride never once looking back.

Hatless and wearing a black shirt in 90 degree weather,
I was soon covered in sweat as I pounded down the asphalt,
Bikers and joggers eyeing me warily as they passed,
Apartments and offices soon gave way to open fields,
A small stream hid off to my right,
Down a steep heavily wooded bank,
I could hear bullfrogs proclaiming their supremacy,
I was running away again just like a child,
Maybe I should just keep running this time,
Just disappear into the haze and never return,
Just keep walking from town to town.

I never even wanted to go to MP,
Too much drama too much angst,
Just heard about a murder/suicide,
The murder was a case of mistaken identity,
The funeral for the rape/murder victim is tomorrow,
And I heard the neighbors found her in the yard,
Thinking it was a mannequin,
Rigor mortis distorting her form,
Her 79-year-old grandfather sent into shock,
Shockwaves rippling through the community,
And Little Man still AWOL since last week.

Life begins with so much promise for all of us,
Then fades away to emptiness right before our eyes,
All the things we thought we believed in,
Turns out to be nothing but half-truths and lies,
Myingan tells me Ivy, the victim, was just over at the house,
Early last week visiting his woman and their baby,
And now she is just a memory and nothing more,
Lying in her coffin like a mannequin once again,
Fresh out of chances and whatever else,
Just a crazy story for people to tell their kids,
About the haunted house over on Ojibway Dr.

Just give me the word and we’ll run away,
We’ll just hit the road and see where the wind takes us,
But I’ve got some baggage I need to bring along,
Just a couple of things to drag me down,
A little self-hate and self-doubt to keep me company,
A little something to help me kill the time,
As time kills me ever so slowly every moment,
Waiting for the final one when I breathe no more,
Cold lifeless body rotting away waiting to burn,
All the broken hearts I’ll leave behind,
All the promises I never intended to keep.

I will let you down just like everyone else,
I will hurt you given the chance,
There is nothing left inside this empty shell,
The breath of life wasted on me,
I would call but I don’t want to hear your voice,
It gives me hope when I know hope isn’t enough,
Makes me want when I know that it won’t help,
All the damage that I’ve done to myself,
Can’t be undone no matter what,
Just wasting away the days until I die,
All hope is gone, all hope is dead.

I’m all thought out with nothing left to say,
Spent five miles stewing about everything,
An hour plus along bikes trails and sidewalks,
Feet killing me in my 10-year-old Nikes,
Sun burnt head starting to burn,
I stumble into Aladdin’s to eat falafel,
The A/C hits me just through the door,
And I order more food than I’ll ever eat,
Double-fisting ice water and Mt. Dew,
Staring out the window at the parking lot,
Mind blank and quiet for the moment.

What is love what is life,
Just a mystery to me,
A part of the Great Mystery, Gitchii Manidoo,
Manitou: spirit/mystery, somehow becomes God,
What is it that we pray to then,
But the great unknown and unnamed,
Christians insisted upon a patriarchy,
Hierarchical authority amidst the void,
To control and cajole what we can’t grasp,
But it is sexless formless egoless void,
It is and it isn’t at the same time.

But why is my life as it is,
What choices have I made or refused to make,
How did I get to where I am,
Why do I choose to torture myself,
All good questions with few answers,
None of them easy or plain,
So I pound myself into the ground,
Annihilate my senses with drink and sweat,
And hope for a happy outcome somehow,
Despite the fact that I deserve nothing of the kind,
Spinning my wheels and wasting my time.

My mind gets unhinged in the night,
Phantom fears and worries pile up,
Otherwise I feel dead all of the time,
Another’s death brings me back to reality,
Reminds me of how close we all are,
To our final moments and final chances,
But none of this brings me any closer to you,
And none of that matters to anyone else,
But you’ve got your own issues as well,
None of which I can help you with,
So powerless I will remain.

Nothing else left to say,
Stuck in a holding pattern for some time,
The wanting and needing never goes away,
Know that you are buried deep inside me,
Just need to let the words flow,
Write down the bones and see what happens,
Need to learn to just let go,
But need to steer my life in some kind of way,
Stop hoping for things to turn out right,
Stop trying to waste away my days,
Before I convince myself that it is too late.

in the field

My grandmother’s house in Ban Nong Sai sat on stilts like all the other houses in that part of Thailand. They had been built like that due to the massive flooding that occurred during the monsoon season. You had to climb a ladder to get to an open deck area and there was just one large room where everyone slept and a covered area where they did all the cooking.
Grandma had these huge clay vats sitting outside the kitchen area which collected rain water for cooking and drinking, which was supplemented by daily trips down to the canal. I remember men in a huge diesel truck delivering two of these vats to grandma’s house when I was young. The guys and the truck must have been from the neighboring town of Udon Thani, as no one in our village even owned a car.
Converted Toyota trucks would pick passengers up several times a day to take them to Udon so they could go shopping or to movies or whatever. The truck beds were equipped with wooden seats on either side and a canopy overhead. A short ride on the “dollar bus” would take us from the Bronze Age into the twentieth century just like that. Udon Thani had such luxuries as electricity and running water which the villagers of Ban Nong Sai did not enjoy.
The cooking area was where the women would stay while they were in labor and they usually gave birth there as well. One of the family members would start the fire and they would keep it going throughout the labor. They even called it “sitting next to the fire” and supposedly the heat somehow helped speed up the process. My grandmother was the village midwife, so I guess I had seen her helping to birth all the kids a few years younger than me, including my sister.
My own birth was a little different, as all things about my life seem to be. My mother sat next to the fire for hours, starting sometime around noon. About dinner time, my mother was still having labor pains, but my hairy little head had yet to poke its way out into the world. She was having extreme cramping and decided at some point that she really needed to go to have a bowel movement. No one in Ban Nong Sai had a bathroom at that time, but each family had a designated area for people to relieve themselves.
My grandmother’s house was next to my aunt’s and uncle’s, all three of them in a little compound. There was a family garden for the three to share and beyond that was a shitfield as well. My mother made her way down the ladder and walked slowly, stopping often to catch her breath in between contractions. She finally made it to the field and squatted like she had done thousands of times before.
That’s when I decided to make my grand entrance into the world. When my head crowned, she had no choice but to keep pushing. So my mother, the daughter of the village midwife, sat in her family’s shitfield and gave birth to her first child by herself. I landed in the field, at my mother’s feet, covered with the ancient detritus of my family.
That’s how my mother explained my nickname, Hua Ki.
Shithead.
She only started calling me Tony sometime during my teens.
She explained to me that her people are very superstitious and that they give their children nicknames to confuse and ward off evil spirits. I guess that makes sense. My grandmother gave birth to twelve children and only five of them made it to adulthood.
But shithead?
I don’t recall my cousins having nicknames like that.
My mother has made the mistake of calling me by my nickname at Thai functions and you should see the looks I get. My people are ethnically Lao, from the northeastern part of Thailand and many of our customs are viewed as being a little odd by other Thais.

birth certif

My birth certificate lists my father’s name as “America.”
I’m not sure why.
Maybe my mother didn’t remember my father’s name.
Or maybe she didn’t believe him.
My father had left Thailand sometime before I was born and my mother tells me that she never told him that she was pregnant. So he went off to Spain or Iran or wherever Ford-Philco had sent him to install microwave dishes and various communications hardware. Ford-Philco was a government contractor but some of their funding and some of their jobs came straight from the CIA. Like the month my father spent in Vientienne, Laos, bugging the U.S. Embassy.
It seemed a little strange to him, but he was just following orders. Just living it up overseas while the Vietnam war raged two hundred miles to the east.
An Ex-Marine, Mohawk/Polish kid born and raised in Detroit living like a king in a huge bungalow just outside of the U.S. Air Force base in Udon Thani, Thailand.
That’s where my parents met, I guess. She was his housekeeper. Or so they say.
I’m not sure how they communicated when neither of them spoke the other’s language.
In my mother’s broken English, my father’s name would have sounded like “bad” and “good” combined.
“Bah-dee”
Good/bad?
She must have thought it was a joke. He’s bad at being good? He’s good at being bad?
So my mother listed “America” as my father’s name.
She listed my first name, Tony, phonetically in Thai. Not a real word but two sounds.
“Toe-Nee.”
She didn’t realize that it was a nickname for Anthony and for years, teachers and acquaintances would ask or assume that my first name was Anthony.
Nope. It’s just plain Tony.
I always wondered where she got the name from—I guess she knew a G.I. named Tony or something. She’s never given me a straight answer and my father always gets a little pissed when the subject comes up. Maybe it’s an ex-boyfriend or something.