If there were nothing in the mourning
we could not have at peace
then I’d agree
as it is
I think
compassion only grows in grief
compassion only learns another’s name
suffering.
“What about a world with no suffering? Is that not the place compassion too compels us toward? Is it, therefore, no holy aim?”
I’ll answer.
Once compassion finds
compassion’s aiming end — it obliterates
& all its excess energy imparts
itself to life
and living it.
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
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
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
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
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.
indiscriminate
tumult
in me
rowdy mouths
I want to talk to every one
and calm them down
// instead I’m all just
heavy
lungs
in a sickly littered
ugly hug
is there no spirit in me to speak?
no gift of tongues
even when I need them?
8 o’clock
& we aren’t eating
// we said we would
we said at 8 o’clock
but I undid it
us
I knew
I knew I would
Holy ghost in me
I never wanted anything.
I pray more than most, I think.
I heard all design & architecture
is pudendum
simulacra.
// not for the life of me
not me
Holy god in us
why curse our legs to carry
the weight of hell between them?
I was glad to call it sin
until, at once, matrimony
took all the sense
I’d made of it.
I had mine
known from me.
I just wished
this would feel different &
it didn’t.
Holy christ
a ghost
a wind in me —
let me be desired
and desire to be.
Jesus fucking god almighty
let me leave the body
to love without our organs in my way.
her words ran out
and // I wanted to give her more
and couldn’t
and knew it
so I scattered pens
I democratized the lines
to let her complete in the reader’s mind
I saw a veil
where her throat should be
a veil
from before the one that Jesus tore
barely breathing &
peaking out
and behind it all
was everyone
advertising answers
for grief barely begun
I couldn’t tell if she was holding it all up
or taking it down
or if she had integrated it
into who she is now
the strangle
that potential holds
the string
I see // what I could be
it gets away
& lower mystery
is there // something
I know
it leads
to who I could be
down there
must be my soul
my heart
or something
connecting
everything
finally offering
meaning
look // I learned
to never look
up // “a head down keeps the world at bay”
“in clouds we mistake
hope for pain” they say
the Greeks put the gods up there
the Greeks were so confused
we know now
we keep our heads down
we dream the rational way
follow this string
to be all
all they say I can
all they say
I will
all I have to be
nathanael.ink 