Poetry – Page 7 – nathanael.ink

March 21, 2023

nonetheeverlovingless

it matters
// the distinction

between knowing
I have all the right beliefs
&
knowing I do not have to have them

between trusting
what I believe about a person
and
actually trusting them

I would fail
examinations
// her favorite color
her only place she feels at home
what every word
her friends say she has sometime said
and what I make
and memorize
of them

and CHRIST too
I am positioned to accept
that I got every fact // got it all
almost completely wrong
nonetheless
and // and
nonethe //everloving
less
I would trust &
everloving
love
THEM
nonetheeverlovingless

Poetry

faith, god, love, meaning, poem, poetry, theology
March 18, 2023

on the experience of grief over time

i experience him gone
but then
i experience him here

grief makes me know
it is like the physicist says
& grief makes me experience it
how time could all be equally real
& no illusions
as past and future never collapse
instead, it is that grief can make my present grow

the mystics make it sound so odd
but everyone who has lost someone
who has ever held a ghost
everyone who has ever loved and notices how wrong it is to say
to say “loved” in the past tense // knows
they know
how grief makes the present grow
engulfing our entire lived experience
and pulling in the future too
the future we already know
we know will have the same
the same cavity where they should be
we experience it
in the growing of our grief

and so we grieve it all at once
from the last look on their face
to the death of the universe

Poetry

death, friendship, god, grief, loss, meaning, poem, poetry, Taoism
March 11, 2023

our stories
evaporate // all
keep holding out
wishing it to be
eventually
we can wish
everlastingness

what I mean is
all we will ever be
is the story of today
and whether or not
it gets permission
to mean a fucking thing
in us

how many empires
must we see dissolve
until it settles in
that there is no permanence
permanence we keep living our entire lives
thinking of
dreaming up
undying all our buried pains to get us there

our stories all
evaporate
and what is left after that?
I think
is the great Nothingness
who has spent our entire lives telling us
do not hurry along
do not dream of it
do not wish your present moment away
I have held this gate
and this great eternal megaphone // screaming
you are missing everything
wishing for Me

our great suffering // I think
is exactly the sort of thing
we will someday
never experience again
&
&
& wish we did

Poetry

loss, meaning, poem, poetry
March 10, 2023

i feel a heavy cry
pale
and watery
bricks
a sun is setting
dragging out and down
the entire blue sky
why does it run away from me?
what did i do?

i feel a heavy cry
eking barely out
i want release
i want release
my heart is Vesuvius
i wish
to be covered me in ash

//make known to the world
what i hide inside
my heart is Vesuvius
cover me in ash

Poetry

depression, grief, loss, meaning, poem, poetry
March 4, 2023

a prayer during nap time

When there are twelve of them
it is a sea.
I am lucky to be alive
with so much life around me.

We are not sailors
but there is something to the starboard way
// to the wind in our sails we need
more today than yesterday.

So much of their life
is spent in a day —
such a large fraction is
the next thing I say.

They wonder so much more
than all the adults I know —
their appetite for answers
exceeds their patience though.

Christ let me not do what my parents did.
GOD let me not ever say “because I said so”
// again

and GOD, if YOU would, see our sails are all out
please take a big breath and blow us about.

Amen.

Poetry

childhood, children, christianity, god, poem, poetry, Preschool
February 13, 2023

him along

I still limp him along
he in my head
words on my tongue
half are mine half are his
hard to say
which is which

I still limp him along
when I get drunk
when I scold the young
or love someone

I limp him along
in the sounds that I make
wishing all my pain away

I limp him along
through the cries of a cat
the smell of his clothes, and the cloves that he smoked in them
I wish came back

oh I limp along
oh I limp along
I would think more of it
and of after it
were it not for him

I’m glad to know he knows its answers
& glad to know I do not know them

Poetry

death, depression, loss, love, meaning, poem, poetry
January 18, 2023

to say that god is good

To say that god is good
should feel to us, it seems to me,
as thanking stovetops for burning fingertips
and water for flooded lungs.

To say that god is good
is to hold a world of suffering (with smattered lightness)
and wish into existence
rather than
completely extinguish.

To say that god is good
unironically overestimates
the weight of human kindness and love
on every scale of suffering
we think up.

We should sense the tables turning over
in our rebellion to the heat
of everlasting suffering (we are destined to create)
when we look out at all of this
and wish for more of it.

To say that god is good
is contradictory on purpose —
it is Sisyphus happily
seeing stone-rolling art
as what the human soul can do
when in the image of god.

To say that god is good
should sound as wrong to westerners
as every eastern religion does
when we are all the tao and the tao is everything
and desire passes over our bodies.

You have to live a little while,
I think, to appreciate the claim.
Three-year-olds don’t know yet
that their pain is not okay.
They cry just to be heard
and all we do
is wish they wouldn’t.

To say that god is good
is what we knew at first:
that it does not matter how long we live
or if we trip and fall
because existing was always suffering
we just didn’t mind at all.

Poetry

christianity, god, love, meaning, philosophy, poem, poetry, Taoism, theology
January 16, 2023

(someday)

i want to (someday)
be alive for the joy
of living

//not for the other people
not for the other sake of
not letting all of all of the people down

//not anticipating
some payout
not for the hope of
not for tomorrow

i want to (someday)
be alive
for the sake
of being alive
and wanting to be

Poetry

depression, loss, meaning, poem, poetry
December 16, 2022

the kauffman center, kansas city

the cost of heaven
I scoop her up
my two hands are open
let me drink
the soul of the earth
the spirit of wind
her heart wet and eternal
JESUS is on record
saying I am worth it
my edifice says
in delight “I am”
this entire city sees
my shape swallow us
in art and love
in love and attention
I’ll hold her in
I’ll hold her up

img_6961

Poetry

Art, kansas city, poem, poetry
December 11, 2022

10

“We start as small as me,
we grow as tall as oak, “
I lean in,
“we’ll hurt so much forever
and then grow old.”

All the four year olds
don’t know what I mean
they’ll see
we hurt so much forever
then, one day, are seen.

Poetry

childhood, children, loss, meaning, poem, poetry, Preschool

Category: Poetry