i have this reoccurring dream
that judah is still alive and all of us
in his inner circle of friends
know well he is alive and we try to respect his decision to fake his own death
and then, in the dream, i find out he really has died
maybe a car accident or something usual
or i run into him in a grocery store or something
and he nervously says hi and gives me the deepest and most sincere stare i’ve seen and I know he’s requesting that I not tell anyone he’s alive
but then, like I said, I always find out later he died. like actually died
and when i find out i always think i wasted what time i had left with him
it’s as if even if he was still alive
what exactly do i think i would do so differently?
i’m not sure.. and i’d say i hate the dream except that the beginning of it always feels so nice..
-
-
*some people i love are dead*
some people i love are dead
i recall
just when i begin to hate my experience
my experience of lethargy
of apathy
of a cold cool depressive state
where i look through all of my belongings
and find nothing
as some people i love are dead
so for them
there is no experience
none at all to wish they were not in
none to long for
none even to recall
for me, at least, i think
i prefer this to that
i would rather crawl into a slow ball completely spent
i would rather wring my hands in longing for
the faith i used to have
i would rather use all of my attention to ensure i am taking at least one more
(and one more)
than not breathe at all
than give it all
than lose any possible chance to see again
someone that i love
and feel loved again
by them -
he asked
will we live again?
i don’t know
i said
but there is some reason to think sohe waited
it’s just that sometimes when i love someone
i get a feeling that i am them
i just haven’t been them yeti have seen myself in clouds and trees
and, i know, i am not them right now
so, it seems, perhaps i have already beenand do you love me?
we askedand we don’t know
and will know
we will know
eventually -
on the experience of grief over time
i experience him gone
but then
i experience him heregrief 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 growthe 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 griefand so we grieve it all at once
from the last look on their face
to the death of the universe -
,sabəˈtər
indiscriminate
tumult
in merowdy mouths
I want to talk to every one
and calm them down
// instead I’m all just
heavy
lungs
in a sickly littered
ugly hugis 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’clockbut I undid it
us
I knew
I knew I would -
her words
her words ran out
and // I wanted to give her more
and couldn’t
and knew itso I scattered pens
I democratized the lines
to let her complete in the reader’s mindI saw a veil
where her throat should be
a veil
from before the one that Jesus tore
barely breathing &
peaking outand behind it all
was everyone
advertising answers
for grief barely begunI 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 -
at the ER because you binged again
it all is around
and you wonder why you cannot stop
obstinate
obstinate
your teeth in your forearm
your heels digging in
I won’t help you
I cannot
lose someone
again to thisthe next thing I want to watch die
is my own crabby pair of hands at one hundred and fiveI won’t be here to watch
an alcoholic spread
it’s not a thread to just tie up
instead, this is the only evidence you have been forced to see
evidence of your entire life whaling
in a turbulent sea of pretense and false beliefs
that there are no beasts beneathyourself a kind of stoic saint, you think
you mock our brittle hearts that scream
all the while it’s you
and
and I cannot hold you the way I want to
the way I would if I was GODwhat I know
is that not knowing what you’re feeling
is not the same as having noneyou are purchased every time that you deny
the entire world alive inside
inside you
floods of needs and feeling words
you’ll find alcohol does not shut them up
it just plugs your ears so you’re even less aware…
which is how, in the first place,
we got here -
untitled 6
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 deathi 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, thenmeaning, since i have outlived him, already
i too then
have already lived
an entire
and full
an entirely-mine lifei have nothing left to do then
in order to feel that my life is fullall i remain here for
is to make life more wonderful
for whomever i can
when i’m let ini have not been afraid of death
since he entered it
i know that whatever i face
he has already faced itand 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 upwhatever it is
to die
i must eventually knowi 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 surebut to be so dead
so dead
we don’t report back
we we haven’t knownthe survivors on the raft
don’t tell the story of us
who didn’t make it backi 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 extinguishingi 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 doi 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 againi 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 itso death and time
like the last kiss of my wife
i know what you say to my face
and i’m not afraid -
i am not as angry as i once was
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 mei’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 tobut 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 belongswe just hold hands until one of ours goes limp
and we start again
nathanael.ink 