black love is forever

black love is forever

like the dirt kissing you everywhere

you could never asked to be kissed

it is not black

and soul sucking

tormenting in a self-satisfactory 

way

it says i will love you

and i will never understand

let's pretend

i.

these days i do a lot of pretending 

it feels sometimes like i fool myself enough to believe

that it is real (but then i catch myself in fear)

i pretend to work, i pretend to know what i am doing, i pretend

to go grocery shopping (i'm very good at it by now, i pick things up

and put them down, i put them in my cart, i do not ask any questions,

and i bring them all home and set them on the shelf).

i pretend to sleep. i pretend to be a grown up. i pretend to have it

all figured out or more often i pretend that i do not have a clue and that is 

an act i am so good at that even i don't know i'm pretending.

ii.

other times, we pretend

spinning cotton candy silks, tasting sugar with our eyes

we change our voices, we say things that do not make sense

and it is delightful! how little sense they make

we are other people we are ourselves we are each other

until life knocks on the door

and comes back in

iii.

prae tendere

before stretch

stretch the truth out like a piece of bubble gum

the gaping holes only a millimeter thick

from your mouth to mine

iv.

in pretending 

there is confidence

there is a path

to not pretend

thursday

from my work table I can hear the sounds of a rooftop playground

all day long—cheering, screaming, laughing—yeah we did it, 

oh no! good job guys that was amazing, okay that's time

(and then it begins again, and again, and again)

all day children playing - I think the noise must be good for your soul

even if it's loud, even if it is a background not curated by spotify

it takes me to this summer recording House the delighted screams 

just right at the right moment 

next door someone in the jazz band does his scales

how inaccessible and reachable the past

how foolish to deny the existence of a righteous god

 this morning, the honey is inching slowly

I look away and when I look back

it is on the precipice, there

I reach out my spoon - still 

                                            I must wait longer

                        

                                what would it be like to live days

                                thinking not do I have covid? but I

                                do not have covid

the banana is already ripe

I looked away and time overtook it

I wrestle with myself - should I eat the 

less ripe half now and enjoy it?

or eat the spoiled half today knowing tomorrow

the other will be the same

                                    like the beatles in their studio themselves

                                    and not themselves, together and not together,

                                    playing and being serious, cigarettes and tea

                                    inspiring a generation of misspellings

already I wonder how I will be perceived

already I try to angle myself: I am smarter than you

                                       like realizing the similarity between my second grade teacher

                                        and a friend I made in college - how despite distance, time, situation,

                                        they are the same, their humor, their voice, their motherly ambition (my motherly ambition)

what would it mean to have faith

to believe in one and infinity?

                                        

                                            even knocked out flat crying in a headscarf in my dream

                                            the truth: it's called faith for a reason

            

                            

you’re not going to tell me the truth because it might hurt me

(these things often do)

The fact that I choose to be

vulnerable

to be naked

out of my mind

out of my skin

The fact that I choose to be

brazen enough

to pretend that it is anything else but this

embarrassing intimacy

passing between us

under the guise of cool glances

it is you who hold the power

the reins stretched out across the stadium between us

I have spent so much time trying to find a way

to cut them

(from a while ago with a little tinkering)

In all the streets of Paris the sirens are sounding
Notre Dame is burning, Notre Dame is burning
And then in chars suddenly
all the holy stone in chars
white stone ashes
heavy palms
Notre Dame is burning in the calm

The little boy on the bridge, the woman 
on her phone. Notre Dame is burning,
there are flames in our home and it is no
fault but our own. (The willow is weeping by the Seine that flows idly by, 
Notre Dame is burning and we don't know why)

a deep fear of the future
of the names of shadowy children
coats that reach our ankles
to hide them from the sun
all the windows are mirrors that don't
reflect my face
director of my mind
lost here writing half poetry
tiny bottles of five year old rum
the face he makes when he comes
up to me and holds my face
his kisses sucked the breath out of my lungs
chewed it slowly like a yellow sponge
in and out we jump and plunge
the scales that sway, dart and lunge
in a lance straight through the heart
the message rolled up tightly
I still love you, this is all a farce
I pull it out and let the blood run out

Why do you keep clawing my skin
if you don't want to come in?

The sirens are sounding over Paris
in waves of goodbyes, life continues as
though there was no fire, as
though there has never been any
burning

 so this is life

in Iowa they tell me

eat more

nourish the body

drip the fat in the hip creases

let a farmer kiss it tenderly

his hand in his back pocket on his keys

i'm waiting for you to come home

like a housewife

reveling in my anger as the greatest motivator

so this is life

loving you and afraid of it

the closeness when we all feel we can't be known

being lonely when you're alone

writing cliches even if, there the truth

specificities about things no one cares about

so this is life

crying on a street in Des Moines

ready to jump

look at my poise

cover my ears

can't stand the noise

 the thing is

doubt everything

lose all your friends because you're too busy

writing lists of things over and over again

they're all the same thing even though each one

feels newly horrifying

repeat them to yourself

almost in a mumble

tell yourself you are being reasonable

even as you feel so unreasonable

caution is not a think you can check off

and you think what about love

there is too much authority

and none of it feels like 

it is yours

trust until you make a mistake

and then tell yourself you couldn't 

have known better even as you

want to take it back

take it back if you can

want to give it in again

can't make up your mind

and it never feels like

there is an answer that

leaves it calm

doing everything you can do

is exhausting

yet you do it anyway

and it wears away

your patience

and you do it anyway.