to death
you said it to death, please trust
i have not forgot
it’s just that i retort
in light of all of it
i persist
perhaps because
persisting is all i have ever done
listening? empathizing? making appropriate space
for you to grow
into who you are now
?
no
i lack all relevant expertise
but
persisting
and hypocrisy
leave these to me
there is a torrent in me
and i am at peace with it
i have not been afraid of death
since the time Judah entered it
since then
i have not been afraid
i have not been afraid of death
i know now that he went before me
that i outlived him
and i refuse to say his life was short
short lived or changed
he lived fully then
a full life, like mine, then
meaning, since i have outlived him, already
i too then
have already lived
an entire
and full
an entirely-mine life
i have nothing left to do then
in order to feel that my life is full
all i remain here for
is to make life more wonderful
for whomever i can
when i’m let in
i have not been afraid of death
since he entered it
i know that whatever i face
he has already faced it
and if souls or ghosts gather there
on the other side of the seal
he will be
if there is any “there” to be
and if nothing
nothing is there
i’ll be glad to be extinguished
in the way he has already been
for so long now…
i have kept him alive in my mind
but my mind too expires
and all minds, in time
all minds even when they hold me in them
when i am in them
they still expire
and if subsequent minds hold them
no matter what tradition we catechize
time still expires them
our minds
no matter how long we manage to keep it up
whatever it is
to die
i must eventually know
i cannot keep up my wondering
as cancers and throat sores keep scratching our families
i have imagined all of them gone
gone a hundred times at least
one gone in each of my dreams
one family, one friend
as if preparing me to endure
enduring watching every one
go off exploring that demon door
leaving me alone
to wonder
why we even call it a door
when we don’t know
we just don’t know
what it’s like to be dead
(but Judah does)
we know what it’s like to be nearly-dead
and even to believe oneself to be dead
and then live again
we know those, to be sure
but to be so dead
so dead
we don’t report back
we we haven’t known
the survivors on the raft
don’t tell the story of us
who didn’t make it back
i was not afraid again
of it
when i lost my wife
not to it
but time nonetheless
might be time is worse than death
death, itself, just a limb of time’s carnivorous mind
settled to devour us
all life won’t quench its ticking teeth digging into us
death just a means
of many
for extinguishing
i have not been afraid of even it
since the last time we kissed
my wife at the door
just getting the words out
crossing our fingers in different directions
“things get better” did not write the book
fall apart
fall apart is what things do
i have not been again afraid of time
since i lost my wife to it
it’s grip i can sneak through
when at last i observe my being
being here
being nowhere else
not the hanging and sloppily weighted past
nor the crunch of grinding tired must-happen plans that cloud our future looking minds
i was outcast
without a home in the future or the past
and like that
since then
i have not been afraid of time again
i know it will claw at me until i cave
and pretend to be a friend
in the way Judas is
but i play along
letting it win
because it doesn’t know
that i know
i am not afraid of it
so death and time
like the last kiss of my wife
i know what you say to my face
and i’m not afraid
please forgive
every wasted minute of my life
wasted wishing I had not wasted them
please forget
all the fears you couldn’t face
fearing facing them would not erase
your father’s face in a half sigh
half frown
looking down
wishing you could make him not
ever wish, like your sisters,
you’d keep a marriage down
or, like your brothers,
make a child right
but // I say
forget the face
and forgive every spec of wasted space
between you and your beginning
you’ll see more by the end and
I hope when you’re in them
you’ll notice there is no such thing as space
that is wasted
when you’re in it
i’m not as angry as i used to be
with age, some say,
perspective comes
my view of a world
twice removed from me
fleshy weak infant souls
cast into the same old
recurringly foreign world to me
i’m not as angry as i used to be
at the satan
and the demons
and the god up in heaven
doing next to nothing about all of it
except writing stories
about what he could do
if he wanted to
but there is a sidewalk for chalk art
and a mountain of love in our hearts
friends, the few alive, still visit me
if i scream they hear me from hades
when i dream they see
my entire life ripping and rebuilding
and the veil’s final cutting
will i be
will i be alive to see?
i held hands
with them feeling love /
where did it go?
Sam Amidon and my swollen tongue
i can’t say what he’s saying
however hard i wish
for that to be what god is like
i’m happy to worship them
if only in gratitude
for the finger tips of leaf prints in the man-made mud
I am not as happy as I once was
about all the the man-made mud
that god says belongs
we just hold hands until one of ours goes limp
and we start again
how did it end?
insects at night
in my mind
chirp the endless thought
how did it end?
really end?
it felt so close to lasting forever
just one failed moment after another
it accumulates, they say,
but it doesn’t feel that way in the middle of it
you just think
if we get through this
through this one
then forever on
we will maintain
if i could have just guessed the right words
her soul wished so to hear
words she could not tell me
words she needed me to know
without her ever saying so
then after that
maybe I…
I’d never have to again
maybe then
I could be loved without condition
maybe if I…
if I…
‘if I’ must be indicative of some special misery
like bats in a cave
‘if I’ bounces around my brain, together and alone
the same
i never learned i could have been enough for someone
without even trying
i never knew i was allowed
to call me beautiful
before now
my only remaining goal in life is to leave
many meaningful things behind
so that in the way seeing a lost loved one’s
formerly cherished things
confronts us with meaning
—
the glass chess pieces
this particular bass guitar
the yarny blue cardigan
—
my number of cherished things will increase
so that upon my leaving
they will all bleed meaning
and
ideally (if it is available to me)
the things I love will keep increasing
until including the entire world
so that then, when I leave,
you will still have the entire world
saturated with me
the way it would occur to me
is “what would GOD think?”
“what does HE think?”
but what i meant was
“what would you think?”
“what would they think?”
if they knew
knew that i did not know
what they meant by it
when they say we are all sinners
when they say deep down
they hate each other
i have never hated anyone
until you told me the word to use
for when I am dancing
and interrupted
for the feeling that comes up
when someone is disgusting
on purpose
to me
i wish i never learned it
they
like everyone
behave out from it
from their own basic
primal
primitive
perfectly human needs
i wish you would have known
to teach me that instead
to see every action
as mere expression
of some underlying
unconscious
motivation
to serve life
in them
even when the strategies they use
show up in the most offensive ways
unproductive
unimaginative ways
missing out on us
on me
missing out on making life as wonderful
as it could be
“imagine” does not get at
as concretely
what is needed
believing does not
happen
if we are
mere imagining
believing
is what we need
so say it convincingly
and concretely
and in a thousand years of this
we will bind it all together
we shall call it a bible
GOD forbid someone would ever
force it all
down the throat of GOD
and thus reverse exactly
who is writing about what.
I get the feeling that I am
what one might call
a seasonal friend
or
allergy
I have never met anyone
who had space for “all” of me
in perpetuity
or even “most”
OR EVEN “some”
I would settle for
as
long
as
they don’t
leave
nathanael.ink 