I got home at midnight.
The sky was red and
the whole world smelled like dog food.
Why?
Everything was melting. Water bubbled up from the puddles and the black trees concealed they’re knowledge of the coming spring in tightly wound buds that I couldn’t see but knew were there,
probably.
Because I’ve been through 26 springs.
And every one of them has come on time.
It makes a person consider their life.
Right?
If I’m not separate from the nature or the cycles… then how could I really ever fight the current that carries me?
And since I know its brilliance, won’t I be pleased?
And how could I ever think that a storm could last forever, that my whole life might be dark, when I know that spring comes every time?
I don’t know why the sky is red or why the whole world smells like dog food or why people, sometimes, will take their own lives
but I know with utmost certainty that I am a moving part of this strange and unending world
and that when I die I will become another part, continuing to move and grow.
When I think like this I find more time… more time to learn, to get it right, to understand, to flounder, to make mistakes, to fall and get back up, to wait out the storm.
If I have a million lives to learn guitar and create my family and love my siblings and carry on
then what makes this one special?
The sky is red and the whole world smells like dog food.
Before there was you there was we…
a central star,
a sun like any other but it was ours.
and you may not remember it as you pray to unknown Gods or tell stories of the past that you think frame you, box you, make you…
but one day you will melt back into the cosmic soup and the spirit that now calls order to your flesh will know it’s way home.
and this in every moment is the truth;
never did we forget you or leave you alone,
part of you rests here and when it is time for you to return we will call out your name by tone.
Over and over and over again I die
and over and over and over again I come alive
I’m feeling more of the deaths today.
I wish I could write with my eyes closed, speak with my tongue tied.
I write poetry in my mind while I touch myself alone at night but never really, both hands busy.
I know some people think of the things that make them feel the most guilty…
I greet my questions as they come, “Hello darling. Yes, you deserve to be answered.”
And I wonder how it is that I should experience all the wonder of this one of life in just one.
If I can have everything I dream, truly, when to pick one passion over another would not truly be living at all.
I wonder if one life will ever be enough and in the moment that I whisper orgasm to the stars I choose to die and live a thousand more.
When it rained,
my grandmother would clutch her rosary
and pray on each bead.
Anxiety would fill her as her children would sleep
all safe. All strong. All taken care of, all along.
She spoke to the mother who she called Mary.
The mother of life.
If you overheard her it might sound like a chant,
a rhythm,
a dance.
But she didn’t dance, she sat.
With stillness in her bones, shaking muscles and aching eyes.
And yet the rain would dance between her inhales and exhales and take her heartbeat in it’s hands
Polyrhythmic thunder.
Sometimes leaving crops alone but sometimes stripping land
the rain made the decisions, “How calloused be his hands?”
So, when he’d rub her back at night,
those nights before the rain,
she’d feel every prayer to mother that she sang
and if releif should find her now, in death I hope she knows
that she was only ever praying to the rain.
Faith belongs to the living.
One day we all die.
Bodies become a burden, we leave them behind.
We choose not to be limited.
It takes much compassion to borrow life.
It takes none to take one.
It takes wisdom to see that either way, you’re going to have to give it back.
I heard her cries for help without ear-buds in.
She wrote in blood because tears weren’t thick enough.
and pity, to her, is the last thing she needs.
She wasn’t ever asking for it and isn’t now.
Her quest for nightmares to free the monsters she trapped has since passed.
She eats vegetables.
She mows the lawn.
She goes for short walks because she wants a body that listens to her SCREAMING
“…please, just let me live without pain.”
“FUCK THIS PAIN”
she finds the ways to make it go away.
“I love you for meeting your needs in whatever way you can.”
“I love you for being resourceful.”
“I love you for continuing on when you’ve never had to.”
“I love your shape, the way you express yourself in movement, the sounds that you make, the love that you give away, the effort you put in your day, the things you care about, the colors that adorn your frame.”
“I love the cozy places that you’ve built to hide.”
“I love your walls. I love your pain. I love your voice on all those voiceless days.”
I heard your voice on all those voiceless days.