1. |
Belief
07:23
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Belief
Through all of my life
I waver back and forth between
a belief and not
believing in anything,
in any solid shape
the unfettered mind,
a deeper understanding that holds nothing
that lets sounds come in the ear
and just pass through without deciding what it was,
if it was a jet
or a dragon.
It was merely a sound without a name or a picture.
It was every possible thing at once.
I barely ever get to be in this state,
just quick flashes by surprise
when I’m like standing by a car,
squinting my eyes,
caught off guard and unpicturesque.
I used to sing this one song all the time
that I made up to try to cut through
when I’d find myself caught up,
entranced in certainty,
staring at a hill.
It went, “Let’s get out of the romance”
over and over
“Let’s get out of the romance”
like “please can I go through this life unscared
to see that nothing stays the same,
no one knows anything.
When I was younger and didn’t know
I used to walk around basically begging the sky
for some calamity to challenge my foundation
when I was young.
So imagine what it was like to watch up close a loved one die
and then look into the pit.
I lived on the edge of it
and had to stay there.
Joanne Kyger said
“We fight incredibly through a hideous mishmash of inheritance,
forgiving for deeper stamina.
That we go on, the world
always goes on,
breaking us with its changes
until our form, exhausted, runs true.”
Out of nowhere love returned.
I saw what looked like a god who walks among us.
I met her. We fell so in love.
She is angelic, miraculous, I totally lost my mind
and poured everything into this sea, this ocean,
and when I came to I saw my face in a store
window’s reflection
and there was fear behind those eyes.
Now I’m back where I was when I was 20,
trying to stop clinging to a dream
and let an old idea of love dissipate
back into formless rolling waves
of discomfort and uncertainty,
the true state of all things.
I want to wade out into dark water
hand in hand with you.
I played this song for you and all you heard were the words
“discomfort and uncertainty”.
You asked “How do we get back to how it was?”
and that’s when I started to know
that I might be in it alone
devoted to an unknown,
homelessness enthroned
us and the kids all wind-blown
courageous as bone
lying down in a storm
steadfast, newborn,
a house with no door
exhausted form
in your eyes I found home
I believed you and dove
Oh my god
when we swam together for a little bit.
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2. |
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When I Walk Out Of The Museum
When I walk out of the museum
the wall of sudden light makes me crinkle up my nose.
Standing coat half on between marble columns
I sneeze into the wind.
When I walk out of the museum
I have centuries of dust behind my eyes.
I hunch a little bit,
from the culminated weight of all these other peoples’ ideas.
I see a tipped over garbage can blowing in the street.
When I walk out of the museum
I think about a snorkeler surfacing
tangled in kelp.
That is me: writhing, wild attention, glancing around.
The huge museum door slams behind me
and I flinch.
In all of these brief flashes of momentary clarity,
the emptiness that cuts through
is like a bowl beneath the sky
empty, not yet pregnant,
fertile, without form.
It terrifies me, the raw possibility.
I want to go back inside
but when I walk out of the museum
everything I see seems rippling and alive,
on a freezing January day,
everything:
the museum
the garbage
the internet
the constellations
all collapse into a heap.
Light floods out
from this compost pile.
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3. |
Enduring The Waves
02:50
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Enduring The Waves
Reading about Buddhism and listening to Xasthur
on the subway in New York City
back when you were my home
not that long ago.
This
life
upends me
again and again.
(This churning life
of avalanches,
it spins.)
Each
night now
my mind in the dark
brings it all roaring back.
(Each day plummets
into night, now
my mind in the dark.)
That you could not
bear me
and the wind that came
in through the door.
(Can I bear the uncertainty
that arrives on the wind
that came in through the door?)
That I can not
hold you,
our devotions mismatched.
(Holding you in my mind,
I don't really see.
Waking up surprised
with no one around
and wondering "who?")
We could have bridged the gap
but it yawned and swallowed
this world of ours
that's now yours and mine.
This life
bulldozed
by ridiculous sensitivities,
seeing your face everywhere
and there's no escape,
(This life
clinging to rocks in wind,
seeing this lost chance,)
except what if we
could go further in?
(we were each others' reward
for enduring the waves.
"The wages of dying
is love."
like the poem says.
As long as the
one last leap
into the dark
is whole hearted.
It almost was.)
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4. |
Love Without Possession
04:32
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Love Without Possession
What would be the use in becoming
a symbol of walking desolation?
Awash in multiple griefs,
elaborating on more anguish.
What glows beneath? (beneath all the pain and anguish)
Love that doesn’t die. (magma embroidering)
“Love”, a small word
unable to hold
while we stretch at its meaning.
Now this:
what’s this new version of love that intrudes
into the peace I thought I had?
This love has no recipient,
but still lies there smoldering.
Indifferent stars in the night sky
watch me while I churn,
still holding this love for you,
without a thing to do
but try to live
in this uninvited liberation
without a home in your life or heart,
without a shelter at all.
Exposed and burning still,
this unattended fire
for no one emanates a wasted warmth on the wind.
Pushing against the edges
of what it means to give.
Lost wisdom in the sparks that rise and die.
Even if I never get to see you again
I’ll know that when we collided
we both broke each other open.
Rose petals were blustering
and I’m determined still to hold this open door
even now as it devastates.
I wake up gasping in the void again.
Speak sky
blow breaths
exhale to dissipate
the always gathering clouds
of yearning memory
of all that we foresaw
laid out before us
unlived.
Dropped from a height
back into the open ocean, it’s all horizon.
This sky mirroring emptiness
is where I first found you.
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5. |
Real Lost Wisdom
04:08
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Real Lost Wisdom
Now I’m frantically grasping
at wisps of dissipating wisdom
as we disband.
This is the wealth I would like to leave to my daughter
when she lets go of my hand.
These words.
These hopes
we almost exemplified.
Wisdom lost,
undiscovered paintings in a cave
we almost went inside.
If any descendants
ever somehow find
any evidence of us
on it I’ll inscribe:
Love vehemently
(like we did)
without averting your eyes.
For love it’s worth it.
Look into the fire.
Don’t flinch away when, no matter what,
monstrous fears will arise.
If there's a cataclysm and you have to go inside
please at least let some wind blow in.
Take yet another breath and stay right there
courageous and kind
with love permeating, your doors and windows wide.
Look right into the fire.
Look right into the fire.
Look right into the fire.
Look right into the fire.
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6. |
Widows
03:02
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Widows
It’s almost Mother’s Day
Me and the other widows will commiserate.
Alone at Montessori again
straddling two worlds
between the crush of single parenting
and the need for wailing in the woods
around a slash pile burning into the night
with tear crusted eyes.
I know I’m overcompensating
in this PTSD disorientation
from my brief time in the rich part of the city.
Now my hands stink like salmon skin
left out in the rain in the ash
of the fire from last night,
I haven’t bathed in a while
and no one’s near me.
(If there’s significance in where you live
let it all go and follow love and intuition.)
Today the tabloids told the world you separated me.
(and see what’s there)
My phone began dinging more than usual.
(in the open sky)
It was just like the day they found out we’d gotten married.
(because we’re all gonna die.)
Unwanted attention
from an inhumane delirious absurd other world
that keeps trying to eat you.
I woke up quivering, raw, and heartbroken again.
I took my daughter to the garbage dump
and rifled through the free pile
and stood next to pit.
The crows and ravens circling spoke to us
and we spoke back to them
but nothing is real
except this one thing:
Please remember at the bookstore in the poetry corner upstairs
I slept with my head on your lap.
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7. |
Pink Light
01:57
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Pink Light
Our bones do blow away
in pink light
and in pink light we found each other
in the spring
dripping with flowers.
Now in wind filled with human remains
the petals won’t stop blowing.
With each setting sun asking
could there be another spring?
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8. |
Belief pt. 2
04:42
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Belief pt. 2
I believed in love and I still do.
I’m not going to seal up my heart.
I still do.
I believed in love and in you.
Now walled away, I know it’s in you.
I love you.
I love you.
There’s an ocean that awaits us
spreading out on all sides.
We could swim,
we could dissolve there.
I love you.
I am for you.
If ever the bonfire that I carry around
could warm you again,
I will be out here in the weather
for you glowing.
I believe
and now I walk to the edge of delusion.
Divorced and estranged,
staying back with my parents.
I believe though
because I know who you are
and that the world we could share,
the one we lived in for a moment
still lies fertile in the dark.
I go there.
Alone there.
I can only offer my love.
I love you.
I release you.
At the edge of this ocean I stand
and pour out the glass of water I brought.
There’s nothing else I can give
but love.
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Mount Eerie Anacortes, Washington
on Lummi, Samish, Klallam, Tulalip and W̱SÁNEĆ land
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