All this reverence for life, who does it help
Did it heal you?
keep death at bay?
Nothing can.
L I F E
is precious but Y O U
can’t be too precious about life
our lungs were meant to laugh a fire
blowing out a whisper you will choke
laughter knows not how to heal
yet when you accepted the inevitable you were laughing and healing had commenced.
Death is life is here is gone in a giggle
Time seems to leave first
those who worry so about leaving.
However long is left
choose to stay.
I was supposed to be born on a Tuesday. September 4th. Was made to be born on a Wednesday instead, over two weeks later. I’ve told the story before, I think. Breech baby, umbilical noose wrapped around my neck three times. Had I come feet first into the world, it would’ve been curtains right away. Baby’s first gallows. Unfortunately, my morbid little show was not to be. I was to be. Actually, again, I was made to be. A big inconvenience for me, truly.
I do love that origin story, though. Fits me like the latex gloves that came to get me on the morning of September 19th, 1984. It has been 40 years and it never gets old. Every now and again, when I hear about «healing one’s inner child», I still fantasize about honoring that spirited little fetus by hanging myself. But I don’t. I stay. Hands and feet inside the vehicle of life at all times, which stays running. Oh, but the shifting of gears. A troublesome rumble under my feet. The vibration of dislodged parts, barely doing what they’re meant to.
Who would I have been if I had turn into a headfirst position by week 36? I have never been headfirst about anything. Is this why? «I was born two weeks late, is that why I hesitate». I need to calculate. I need to know. Even when it’s impossible to. Doctors called it, I was never going to arrive on my own. I’d sooner die. I had to be pushed. Just not by my mom, that would’ve killed me.
Lately I’ve been thinking about all the times I could’ve died and didn’t. My quirky array of childhood illnesses and surgeries, that time I should’ve drowned at the beach but the wave carried me to shore instead (SKINNY), the time I nearly ended up painted on the road, red and chrome, by an asshole biker in New York. They did get my leg (with their shoe, I think?), but barely. That save was otherworldly. I even ran into David Duchovny immediately after. Crazy stuff.
I used to think all the times I skirted death had to mean something. As a kid I thought «God must have big plans for me. I must be special». I’m decidedly less religious nowadays, but deep down, kind of still feel the same. Like something must still be on its way, because this cannot be it. Do not tell me I was dragged into this mess, against my will, on a Wednesday morning in 1984 for this.
The cold came all at once
skin felt alert and endless
blades of coward yellow
and lucky green
perked up to the sky
like hair standing up
which I remember but cannot see
I am alive but stock-still
I am awake yet eyeless
I’m but drafts and questions
and the grass you walk on.
Consider your lack, I said
against my backbone
before you ask of me again.
I’ve beat down mountains
to bring you valleys
Sturdy my middle name.
But do you know me
or love me in full?
On the way home
I wrote that poem
None to praise my mind
This happens all the time.
What have we ever learned
of mortal wounds
we truly come to know
better than this
ingrained,
formidable fight
under our skin.
Were we not so dumb
we’d be dying every hour
blade to grave if we knew better
long gone before our time.
Luck be dumb be luck
if only for a bit.
I have always known this to be
f r a g i l e
the house denial built
crumbles
like we knew it would
and yet…
there I sit
a demon
eating my own tail
gnawing back at me from the inside.
Land has parted deep
m a s s i v e
from within
a wellspring of sympathy
gushes out glasslike
unclouded
unburdened
what is ripening here
what has rotten
our foundation.
Ground shakes.
Ground breaks.
It sobs loudly
«I wanted to be
all those things for you»
It wails the world to sleep
a shroud for covers
little blue heart embroidered on it.
Horizon can be seen
its distance can be known
bu t i t s w e i g h t
as unbearable as tomorrow
and always a day
away.
Sixty nine love songs
not one fit you
perhaps the one about
wanting to talk about ex lovers
and however many others
jumping off the wires
like tiny birds.
Have you seen them
not a flip as they go
wings stored away at the jump
they know when to when
they know what is what
nothing special about them
you can find two in a row
even when they’re rare.
I am perhaps ready for you
to whistle your tune
and spring off that wire.
In turn I’ll sound out
nothingness to no one
perched on a clothesline
waiting to when.
I find myself looking for
god with no faith
no beliefs
other than the need for reprieve.
Conversations with myself often turn to
pleas for those I can’t reach
it’s hard for us who crave
control when none exist.
There’s none and never was
so build a god I must
and pray this time he does come through
for patience is not my gift
I need to see him receive
the happiness he so deserves
and I failed to secure.
Patience is not my gift but I’ll wait
for god to grace him first
a bone for me, then
if time allows.
Sinks in a little deeper
each day slowly dipping
from hanging rings.
The more I train this muscle
the less it hurts to shoulder
a perfect split.
Merciless hour glass ran out of fucks
fresh out of time knocked the wind off my lungs
flawed execution by classical measure
o h , b u t t h e b o n e s !
count themselves and their blessings.
Took a bunch of pills woke up soaking wet
a perfect saturated circle under me
so perfect this shadow, how?
bedspread darkened with sweat
the fabric which clothed me, dry as wry
don’t even know what I meant
don’t even think that it meant anything
«God is the sweat running down his back,
the water soaked her blonde hair black»
I think about that,
Elise.
Perhaps I sweated out all color
or slashed the walls of the world with all my clawing
and color slowly drained out
unremembered
Yes, I’ve sweated out all color feasibly in passion
but this embarrassing hue
striking against the grey.
Twenty five years a teen
so much you ask of me
«would that I could»
age out of wanting you
like I did at thirteen
foreseeable routine
to covet those who’ve misaligned themselves to me
stripping me only for parts they need
that I happily part with
as if I had no value no value
no value at all.
Train’s a-coming, you know
if we won’t meet, I should board
but you stay on your side
I let thunder roll by
we stare each other down
we each mouth something but it hits the ground.
Malas traducciones 