what to do to pass the time

being an artist certainly

seems appealing 

in that regard.

panthères, 1977 - gilles aillaud

their spots blurred in the act of moving
as though they are always moving
stalking, flashing

we can be vicious certainly
but do we have to be?

what can the camera
or the painter capture

what can it?

last night he says the thing that really hurts

last night he says the thing that really hurts

which is the simplest thing almost cliché (and yet why are clichés still used because

they must hold something, some kind of meaning, even broken and cheap as they are. we

draw away from the unabashed expression over and over again of something true.)

it is just horrible. and maybe there is nothing more.

maybe there is. maybe there isn't.

we must live in a world where we will never know which is true

so why not decide?

your acceptance

as though I have a say in anything––
the power to accept or not accept

these days I am a wisp
a waif perhaps, though nothing about it
feels sexy

and if I fight it feels trite and 
pointless, like I am angry and all you see are 
little boxes with question marks inside

in other words:
you do not get the meaning

in other words:
it does not compute

in other words;
I do not have other words,

my brain is a fog these days
and it takes me time 

to even come up
with these ones.

There is such a strong silence
  here today
It takes over my room
My jackets on the hook
  my pictures on the wall
It says everything without words
  It holds everything without words

I am not simple
  I never promised to be

The danger of intimacy
  is the pain of misunderstanding
and that is such a
  cutting wound

healing does not happen
  quickly
and it will not happen
  all at once
Fear is the enemy
  of all resolution

Please I am begging 
  you in the only
  way I know how

To try.

I sit and write sad songs

where I meld my lovers into one

and cry about the overlap

all the moments I will not get back

I do understand the gradations of knowing 

careful your vulnerability is showing

and I'm so afraid of what I might ask

of all of this shattering like glass

do you love me

do I matter to you

do you think about me without meaning to

what is this thing we've built between

will it hurt me for years like an evergreen

saturday morning odes to sadness

SO MANY EMOTIONS

ROLLICKING THROUGH MY SKIN

HOW DO PEOPLE STAND IT?

THIS THING CALLED LIVING

I DIG MYSELF GRAVES WHEN I GET LIKE THIS

I WILL TAKE ANY HILL TO DIE ON

--

I am breaking

I am breaking over and over again

Like a wave or a muscle

or the day or silence.

I am beating the shore hoping

for an end. I have had enough

of this endless repetition.

--

Rain cannot scare me

Jane (Yevheniia) says,

I am from Kyiv.

And what is unsaid is

war is a horror no one

can understand.

I don't even understand 

now as a metaphor.

How life would break down

so fully. The French

fucking through the revolution.

Weird friend social groups

becoming pandemic pods

in the most apocalyptic thing 

I had ever witnessed

(at that time)

Also horrible: your first love

dying at 25 of an overdose

without ever getting to say goodbye.

(As though there was a 

peace you could have reached

as though it were right around 

the corner as though you might

have made it if only)

(Are the goodbyes we know

are our last any less painful

than the ones we don't?

what I mean to say is

is our ignorance bliss?)

And another question:

how do I turn this sadness

into joy?

--

How does the sunflower

find the strength to lift its head

towards the sun

every single day?

---

I don't want to be alone

in my grief

but that's what sadness is

    mourning is

      an ocean

that no one else can ever truly

                                 comprehend

it's your ocean

           that breaks in waves

        that exhausts

                beautifies

                    sharpens and shatters

         placid

                    choppy

                 rhythmic

              swimming some days

              some days drowning

respect

we used to ask the children what it meant

to respect themselves, to respect their fellow farmers, to respect this place

(at this point we would have them crouch down and touch the earth which meant 

sticking their hands in the gravel that they were not supposed to play with, but would inevitably

giddy and gleeful with the rocks and gray clouds of dust).

I walk the streets of Madrid listening to Aretha Franklin sing 

Amazing Grace––suddenly unasked for the song comes to my mind

I once was lost, but now am found

Was blind, but now I see. 

(Aren't we all just searching for salvation?) And this is a live recording

even though I didn't realize it before

and the people are hooting and hollering and cooing and cackling and

Aretha is taking her sweet time between notes

and they are loving the space between the notes

almost as much as they are loving the notes themselves

they are roaring for the space between the notes

they are living as one with all the trust in the world for her 

with the deepest respect one could imagine

for her, only that which is everything, and how does one do that

for oneself? I wonder.

the lesson of the broth

to some things

only time can add

depth of flavor.

You can’t give me what I need
You can’t give me what I need
You can’t give me what I need

Do you respect me?
Do you know what it means?
To loosen your defenses in the face of
painful inquiries
Shed your aggressive tendencies
Like cracking autumn leaves

You can’t give me what I need
You can’t give me what I need
You can’t give me what I need

What I need is love
What I need is no wavering on the us
What I need is to be seen and heard
What I need is to be held to be adored

You can’t give me what I need
You can’t give me what I need
You can’t give me what I need

I see

You can’t give me what I need
You can’t give me what I need
You can’t give me what I need

you can't give me that
and would I want you to?
can I yearn for ungivable things
from you?

I wish I were brave enough to
have my bare chest out at the beach
let a boy take a photograph of me
arms out like I was flying

you can't give me what I need
you can't give me what I need
you can't give me what I need

There’s no use pretending
I’m not prolonging the ending

You place me in an emergency
Then bounce back into normalcy

I will not let you disregulate me
With your constant drowning

I want to kill you kiss you 
Never see you again 

Get your smell out of the air I breathe
The sound of your whistle

Triggers me.

Saturday morning

In many ways it feels easier to lose it than to keep going. You say to Luis lying on the hotel bed, how hard it is to tell someone you care about that they can’t mourn their own situation, because they are not yet safe, it is not yet over, they cannot yet put down their burden and accept the harbor of another’s arms. Do we ever reach such a point? Or do we carve out moments of peace amidst the endless barrage that is living?

What is it you gain from being sick? An excuse to not participate in the world. A way of living that does not also serve you. 

This morning I look closely, at the objects in the garbage can, at the orange petals, half the bunch hanging down, and the other half still reaching for the sun.

a moment of heartbreak

Luscious fields I want to lie in
Out the window as we’re passing
Give me a chance and I’d go back in time and
Bask there in that moment that we had

It’s so lovely building a home in a rut
Til the river comes and turns it into mud
Makes one and one out of two of us

We always knew it would

But that grass it looks so green
Glowing like your skin pale and clean
In the morning on the sheets
The smell it comes back to me
And the wheels keep turning

If you don’t let go of some things they will kill you