always suffering time and body and music

*


Over and over I keep hearing myself say

I am a song I am song

I am language and not language

The fracture inside myself is enduring

loyal and unconditional

Is this not love

my devil is the next moment

it hangs me with rope of blue sky

I am always swallowing a bat of light

and everything smells like silver inside dirt

when I introduce my children

to our separateness.

No matter how loving the delivery,


it breaks their tiny hearts.

If the heart is a succession of opening and closing, then the heart sings.

mine is singing and weeping and choking

For Emmie. (who is almost born)

darling

I’m here to tell you our ancient secret,

life is only abundant

all of this is yours

guilt is a waste

fear is ludicrous.

we are nonsense

temporary

fragile, lovely things

everything you do is beautiful

and brief

you are a sun

just like we are all partly star

but you were born glowing

sailing,

darling

the world is just your dependable ocean

Reading is deeply laborious for me: I say deep because I mean it's labor not of my skeleton but of my identity and soul. It demands that my selfhood climb. Reading stirs me. Maybe I am just one who is particularly sensitive to the bowl of myself. My body is mostly space and liquid in a hard case. And language is always a giant spoon. Its movement is always uncomfortable, maddening, and also thrilling--but I have to prepare for it. As if reading is an explosive lover. When I read I'm always thinking I shouldn't live in this house.

carve; reflection years later

my therapist
on one of our first sessions
asked me to do a free association
with the word: carve

because i told him
that my desire to carve myself
::surgery::
seems violent

i thought of wood
of men's hands
i thought of the salt nail beach
carving the earth
like scratching its back or
playing with its hair
i thought of erosion
and nature
and history

i did not think of blood.