nathanael.ink

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.

I get to have a life that is all mine
one that previous me
and my friends
do not get to have
it’s eleven minutes to the grocery store
on the downtown block
on foot
at twenty seven degrees
with a red backpack
to carry my things back.
Sony headphones are effective earmuffs
I can usually listen to four or so songs on the walk.
I’ve managed to find some Shiner Bock
on his birthday
to pour one out for.
There were five people in front of me at the register
and the woman’s card was not working
and I could feel all of our eyes through her
no longer a person
just a glass pane in our way
to the other side of this damned line.
Four whole songs played.
Walking back I’m worried the ice cream will tilt and melt down the inseam of my backpack
and I’m worried of a nuclear attack.
None of this is what I mean
when I say I have had an entire life
and none of this is enough for you to see
my life is not like yours
and your life is just like mine
and we can only be one
if I too am someone.

seen.
In downtown Kansas City
I could almost drink the air
waves of traffic
and pigeons on the sill
I can hear the ocean from here.

Red wind breaker with a hood
I can feel it’s quiet mourning on my face.
I can walk with the galoshes my mother got me
because she loved them growing up in Massachusetts.

I have never felt the world so express my soul.
I have never felt so at home as I do today.

The smell of coffee from a wax burner
because making a whole pot is always a waste.

I can hear the curtain bump the pane
from the cities windy sighs
and my cat in a thunder jacket on my lap
tranquil as the still of my apartment
lit only by the defused sun of a grey sky.

I feel more seen than I have ever been
and all it took
was a rainy day
and a little wind.

I had the worst dream
I saw them
male and female
his voice was carrying
the entire house
and her on a knife’s edge
saying everything
she too regrets

I heard him say the threat
and I heard her say the reply…

and I knew
my parents

and I cried out

and I saw him
old
and praying that his only remaining child would survive
and I felt that my seeing it
was God answering

and I saw my wife
and I told her
I had space for everything she is finding with this other man
and my mind oscillated between
saying I could be what I cannot
and saying he could not be
what I never was

and
when him
and all of us
and everything
all runs out… who will still be there?
and
I’ll be goddamned
if I am not…

and everyone I meet now
knows
if I can still be friends with the dead
then you can still be my wife

today it’s an elaborate set
everything setup to tell me
who one was, and who one once wanted to be
and when I wake up
a whole bedroom to tell me
I am the kind of thing
who acquires things like these
some house
in my mind sends a spark
telling me to walk
to read poems
and to listen
to every recording I have ever made

to draw a line
from there to here

And when it all I have taken in
what now shall we say?

your guess
is as good as this
were you also to wake up here
and be told
that all of these things
are you

who then would you say you are?
and how do you know, that that…
that that is not me?
that you are not me?
and if we could know…
could I also be? both or either you or me?
or could I be
be… incongruence

today
if I could

I think

just be alive
and be
glad to be

as, given the evidence, it seems to me
neither you nor I
have almost ever been

so…
this one
is on us
it is for us

I will, today, be glad to be
alive
and in so doing
I am hoping
it does us both a favor

it is opposition to experience that creates suffering
notice in you
that you have the space for all of it
without even trying
it all has come upon you
and you did not crumble
it tried to trick you
and sometimes you wonder
if it will win
but this too
is an experience
and without any effort
you experienced it
and if your body suffers
and your mind follows
this too
is all yours
to have
and to hold
as long as you’d like

and your breath today
could be tomorrow’s stain
and
this
too
is
yours

and someday
you may notice
you have space
for every bit
of all of it

and when at last
life drinks you up
you
will be all of us
who had the privilege to have
any part of you

I had a very good dream
though I’ve forgot what it was
I awoke smiling though
and I’m hopeful
in my final rest
it will be me
like the dream
and all of you smiling