WINTER 2023
1:2:2024
Some days, all I can do is
pray that I'll outsource the gall
to try again tomorrow:
the sun sleeps me in
and the moon loves to wake me up nagging,
haven't you been dead long enough?
Some days, all I can do is
pray that my joy makes good use of my fears
whenever the kitchen brings me to tears
as a mother might bring her sick child
warm soup
and the crest rounds so steep
I forget that the whole thing is
spinning out years.
Some days, all I can do is
pray— but the harder I pray,
the softer Fate answers,
(the louder She pounds)
and then music starts to sound
like somebody absentmindedly spouting out
a dictionary, and I hate being trapped
and I hate being free.
Some days, all I can do
is thank God for the reasons We told me:
for the crime of the sun
and the joke of the moon
and for family and friends
who can carry the tune
when the burden's too heavy
to hold me.
Mandala
(1:7:2024)
I'm in the center
as often as I can stand it;
as much as any two magnets
can stand being held
to each other:
eventually, inevitably
spitting opposites back out
like bad food.
I'm in the center
as often as I can stand it;
as much as those darts
can stand up to bullseyes:
luckily (if accidental),
temporarily, however victorious—
counting on the odds,
betting on each other.
I'm in the center
as often as I can stand it;
as much as the eye
can stand still
winds in sky while its border
wreaks bedlam beyond it:
a nod to the rhythm,
the tremors to come.
I'm in the center
as often as I can stand it;
as much as my heart
can stand out
from these incessant beatings:
teasing out function
from perilous form
as an atom from atoms,
or Mourning from Mourned.
1:10:2024
No creature on Earth
is more miserable
than the shadow who refuses
to let The Light bask:
unimpaired by sweet Sun,
he believes in no God.
All he knows for certain
is that often,
before he has time to fight back,
he contorts or contracts,
acts against his own wishes,
wishes against his own acts—
and even more terrifying than that,
the shadow holds dear
the belief that he, too,
will one day disappear
(alongside all of his other
itinerant facts).
I'm sick of not writing— and now that I am,
I think that's how a lot of the nasty change gets done:
you have to get to the point where
it feels less like you're doing something new,
and more like you're just too damn sick of
doing what you've done to do it again.
What's funny about change to me
is that it never happens how I think it will.
Which is silly, of course:
by definition, it always eludes me.
I remember (too often) that there is no real reason why
something should happen again
simply because it has happened in the past.
I forget that this can be positive, too:
when one tells stories, she does so from this limitless space,
from the kind of potentiality that only comes from, ironically, a great deal of practice.
To surrender to such potentiality is
to sacrifice the old in service of the New.
It's an offering up of one’s identity:
a transmogrification to the uninitiated,
an honor regardless.
Please, be careful with your words.
Do not conflate your words
with your comprehension of them.
We have a very powerful tool here, you know—
and who is to say that the tools of today
will still have any say come tomorrow?
2:26:2024
I had to kill my god
because it loved me so much
that I became disgusted by it.
This killing, this ongoing sacrifice,
the price I barter
to live another moment longer
purges death through me,
and I oblige happily,
drunk by my own stupidity, discontinuity.
I had to kill my god
because I hated it so much
that it fell in love with me.
That birthing, that temporary enterprise,
the wealth it boasts
to die one single lifetime shorter
merges life from me,
and god refuses angrily,
sobered by its own sensibility, gratuity.
God had to birth its you
because you weren't it so much,
so that love might hate
what hatred loves
as a feeling longs
for that which is touched
or a being cause
demands time’s laws
or a pregnant space
be-comes be-cause.
The Greatest Magician who Never Lived
3.12.2024
To let someone love you
is to agree to them saying,
gently, routinely:
There is something rotten in you.
And, assuming you love them, too,
you’ll have no choice but to
return to the scene of the crime,
extract the poor molder,
and cast it away
as the farmer casts shit o’er his fields.
You want her to love you,
yet you wonder a bit too earnestly
whether or not there will be anyone left
once this loving is over;
you reason that surely, it would take
more than one lifetime
to unwind all your mattedness, so
you both carry on weeding out pests,
whittling yourselves back down to Love,
to Nothing.
Some Rot loosens easier than other.
Every so often, you forget what’s pulling who—
at the last second, recall that you’re you—
and that anything else risks the chopping block,
and you love her, you do,
so you learn
to whisper goodbyes just like prayers,
mourn your dead before it mourns you
and seemingly out of nowhere,
the head that meets your pillowcase
dares to dream anew:
What if your center is anything–
hot like the Sun’s alchemical core?
What if you are the greatest magician who never lived,
however pathetic, however sore?
What if the One who we love is the same
once surrendered to shame, and our rotting, this loving, its pain
is a self-guided tour?