nathanael.ink

May 17, 2022

that I am

I am barely alive
when no one can say who I am
without a name.

I could be Kingsburrow
and your subconscious would sense how you say king when you speak to me
and it would bleed into what you see.
I could be Heatherfly
and you would wonder why time with me was always so light.
I could be a subordinate name
like Underheart, Brittleleaf, or Watergrave
maybe you would be moved more easily
with compassion when I am in need.

Whatever the case,
I wish I could know what I was without one;
without a name.

How impossible it is
the Veil of Ignorance.
We could not ever
not know
a thing about ourselves.
It is just as some philosophers say:
Wherever I think,
there I am.

It is just as the LORD GOD has said,
equally unsure of how to answer the question:
I am
that I am.

Who could say more about what we are than this?
Every aim to be more precise
will leave out eight thousand and two things:
our essence,
our beautiful needs,
and eight thousand other things.
May 8, 2022

I keep telling myself

I have survived worse
other people have survived worse
some monks whip themselves
some buddhas utterly detach
some taoists are everything and everyone
and all the suffering
and all the joy
all at once
and I cannot tell
if they are right
or if I just cannot bear the thought of it
the thought that this is all there is
and all the joy
and all the suffering
and I have exposed myself
to some who love me
and when I am myself for long enough
they, so far, have always stopped
when enough pain
for them
accumulates
and not another word
from me
can their soul intake
so to some ribbon of words
I return
after every love has ended
and every soul surrendered
under the weight of me
it would take an army
to love me
I know
and it’s with the heaviest breath I can muster,
what I wonder if I can say,
that it does not matter
and
not because nothing matters
but
if all of us
all together
keep throwing all our words at the wall
surely something could come together
out of one of our mouths
summing up the meaning of it all
tying us all together
little tethers through each other
and it will take
the entire world to love me
I am sure
but I cannot help my wondering
if I should keep trying to not apologize
maybe some cups of love are too deep for one
are too deep to ever be filled up
maybe I have the privilege of being
an unlovable cup
on this side
of whatever everything is
and some monks whip themselves
and go on living
and buddhas sit until they forget who they are
and Lao Tzu remembers
and GOD persuades the west to forget again
and all I remember
is the curve of her back
settling in the slim of my chest
our legs as tied up as any two could think of us
and her neck as warm as velvet in the sun
and the dip of her stomach just before my
hands reach her hips
and a sip of that space below her ear
behind where the jaw dips in
I can feel her hair from here
short but pulled enough to make
meaningful tension in the air
I don’t know what GOD believes about any of us
but I know what I believe
and all I can hope
is that it is enough

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZTdgpdQco/
May 4, 2022

the last poem I read aloud to her

it feels like there is a tumor
engorging,
or whatever it is tumors do,
behind the front wall of my chest
applying pressure to my lungs and my intestines
one could wonder if that is where the heart should be

I can’t think about that though…

the muscles in my arm pupate
I can feel the larva underneath my skin just waiting to unskin
and in my throat
jealous and angry birds
pull the material for their nest from the lining of my esophagus

and every step I take to quench them
enrages every beak and beetle in my skin

I haven’t a clue how I endured it
but it seems I did
and that gives me hope I can endure it again
maybe even another
but GOD knows how long something like this could accumulate
before I am just a lump of beetles and beaks and butterflies
April 19, 2022

empowered present

It’s so easy
to jump off Kansas City bridges
there is one
just feet above where the trains come through
it wouldn’t take much
to get mangled up in one.

Is it empowering
to notice that I could? I wonder
I would, therefore, always have a choice
and am, in fact, always choosing
to be untangled
from the trains.

Can anyone hear
the way I am everyday deciding
life
is still worth living?

I hope that we will never take living
to be such an obvious thing to be doing.

I hope that we can live
without ever feeling like we have to live
without ever feeling like the only option is to live.

I wish that we would never relate to living
the way a Christian woman relates to her husband
always afraid that to leave would risk eternal torment in a lake of fire
where there are no bridges
or trains
to get tangled up in.
There would only be, I suppose,
GOD at a distance
waving
with her husband.
April 17, 2022

and if I write a poem that gets famous

and if I write a poem that gets famous
I will say to Judah
that we did it
though it took us
two lifetimes to do it
and a human sacrifice
to do it
still
I am certain he will know
from whatever place he went
that he too moved my pen
and that his mind still inhabits mine
and that when I see him again
he will not be jealous of any success
because he will know
as I know now
that he wrote it
in the same way anyone
writes anything
when the words are just bleeding out of them
onto paper
or onto some inky silver computer screen
one can almost never tell
if I had the thought
or if the thought had me
April 14, 2022

whenever I write anything

whenever I write anything
I almost always imagine how it will read
when I have been dead
for several months at least
and a loved one
is fishing for some pieces of me
while in the kitchen
or at the dinner table
or on their bedside
or wherever their phone
or book or tablet might be
whatever it is they pick up
looking for me
I wonder
how then it will read
to hear that I am happy
today
regardless of what I will inevitably face

will it console you to hear
that even if a bomb drops on me in the morning
I will still have told my entire story
to the entire world
and everyone heard it
or at least
everyone I wanted to hear it
and
I think
that really must be
all that could mean anything

to be seen
by those we love
and to see
ourselves
as loved

and I wonder
how it will be for you to read
that I know you loved me
and I always felt it despite whatever distance

and I hope that you can still hear
that I did love you
even when I stopped saying it

because I was afraid
that saying it again would feel like a chain
around your throat with your hair caught in it
and all
I ever
wanted

was to see you so empowered
to love the entire world
if you so desire
but

you got held up
holding up in our room…
and everyday I was so worried
what I might see when I got home

I will never be glad about your leaving
but I am glad
that you stayed alive
that you survived
somehow
and perhaps
survived even longer than I will
and perhaps
loved even more of the world than I could
March 28, 2022

holy city atop

my brain
is two cities
one built directly atop the other
each a civilization
that spans the entire globe
all their highways and networks
for information transfer

but a great comet came
and covered the earth with ash
thick as a new crust
and a whole new city grew
and it spread across the earth
but

once in a while
a cavity forms
and a square mile drops
and a cascade
of city blocks collapsing
revealing the city below
and all its networks still intact

and just like that
I can feel everything I ever felt
when I loved her
and wanted to be married forever
and wanted to be old and retired
and the soulmate I made of her
and in the absence of that
no citizens know where to stop
or how to get back
to the holy city atop
March 27, 2022

our feet

There is a vein
of sympathetic joy
I can feel
through my feet.

The earth
a kind of conduit

from me
to the happiest soul that has ever lived

from me
to the most sorrowful seat in the universe.

At once
through my feet
I find
I can take it all in
with love
and a little attention.

I can feel your hunger from here.
I can hear your mourning in the air.
As who I am,
and believe myself to be,
expands
into your limbs
and your mind in mine.

I suddenly notice
that “noticing”
means about the same thing
as creating
a universe
from nothing.
March 20, 2022

I have taken to sleeping in the daylight.

I have taken to sleeping in the daylight.
I wear an eye mask for the sunlight.
I like to feel the sun through the window and my skin while I am sleeping.

It is quieter in the city on Sunday morning
than Saturday night.
Most any night really
is louder than its morning.

I have taken to sleeping in the morning
so that scary dreams no longer wake me
into a gloomy sea
of lightless rooms.

My cats prefer it this way too.
We no more compete for the real estate of sleep.
We no more trade our play for winks and winks for dreams.

I wish the whole world could know what it is like
to always see the sun when you wake.
I found it was always in the cool of night
I’d want to see the sun the most.
And in the absence of being, myself, a GOD
and seeing as how I cannot change the clocks
I just
quit my patterns
and my job
and sleep now the pattern
of all the cats
on the entire block.
March 14, 2022

I like to drive through our old neighborhood

I like to drive through our old neighborhood
just to notice
that I need not be afraid of it.
I practice making space
for the pain of it
and I practice noticing
that I can bare it.
I find the pain validates
how I loved you
and love you still.

We watched them build that Starbucks
up the block
now I drive half an hour
to get back to it
because it is the only plan we made
that I can still keep.

I’ve forgotten your order now.
Something cinnamon?
Maybe almond?
This is the reason I stopped relying on memory.
I try now to trust experience
and
the pain of seeing our garden still in the yard.
I am glad to see it
and I am glad to miss you
and it doesn’t matter to me
if you miss me back.

I have this sneaking feeling
that sometimes
when you look at him
you see a glimpse of me
and when someone wonders
how they could make life more wonderful for you
I have this feeling
that you still hear me
asking it every day for what seemed like, at least, a lifetime or two.

I don’t believe the things you said about me
anymore
though I’m grateful for your eventual apology.

I wish things had gone differently
but if nothing else
I will maintain believing
that at some point
in some past
you did
in fact
love me.