a song
on a thousand speakers at different times
one thing
one song
whatever makes it only one
is the way my soul is
maybe a pattern
put it on paper
all you need is
a body
to sing
my soul
again
-
why you shouldn’t criticize poems someone else says they like
just celebrate
that in its reading
this person’s need
for being seen
has been metyou must do nothing now
to compromise this
for themand for you
when you are needing to be seen
you will always be free
to find a poem
no one else likes
and you will both be better for it -
shoe string beautifully
loved beautifully
and she too
__________beautifully
and whatever got undone
did it’s job
like a shoe string never meaning to stay so
knotted
we wrapped up beautifully
and unwound__________ten years
of string tightening
never fraying just
strangling
________and marriage counseling
and the heroin of believing
we could last forever
has its withdrawals but anyone who would forgo it
has never tried it -
which is worse
which is worse to endure?
your lifelong friend taking his life
or the love of one’s life just taking it from you?
both are forever deads
just one is literal
the other cosmological
astronomical and fucking unbearable
one gets a proper funeral
both win constant reminders
one mouth still moves to blame you
the other mouth is in your head
and it fucking blames you toowe are about to find out
in the absolute treasure of my life -
why it’s impossible to count birds
there were two birds
and one ate the other
but the bird survived
just now the one bird
can only do exactly
what the other is doing
but with their wings the same color
and their beaks the same shape
species the same
flight patterns the same
there is now no distinction
and no one knows how often this might occur -
many
could go a lifetime
never asking
could never trace their step or hold up the thread
of ourselves through everything
friends and chapters
we cherish? we let them in? Let out even our littlest wish?
we let them know? we shake the feeling
that we have wronged them. That we hurried through it
that we wished to be on the other end
of experience however small or wonderful
how ever we hope the show would suddenly stop
and some holy city would crush our home
and be suddenly better – infinitely better
do we hold friends to some concluding paragraph of some page in some chapter of our unfortunate lives
do we string the sentence along
and push punctuation down enough to think this could be in
finite could be in
different to time // could be in
our blood to last forever just
not like this not in some forever state today not wishing we were on the other end not wishing we could see the other side
all settled into our eternal place
maybe trapped – we’ll see – if we can hold the reigns
enough to break a piece of it to
sting a little and let up a little all in one present
but then let go in some instant even faster than it came to let us wish to let us
drip our souls into unhappy spaces
and then lick us up in less than a quarter of a second
so that time is the true friend
to give us what God invented
the infinite irregular change and chase
from need to need all gone and arriving
without extra silver spoons or linings to go around
just absence to absence to meeting to absence it’s clear
we have what GOD wants so no wonder He came
no wonder he left his changeless infinite space
to suffer the same unending, ruthless, brutal, and lively and unforgivable change. -
one
the one life
just the one – the this one
and time narrows in on possibilities
just in time for you to notice it
a claustrophobic quasi-openness to meet me in the morning
it’s a small kindness in the sunset to train goodnight
and goodbyesettle in or skip every song enjoying none
for whatever reason we are fixed to play back
free just to rehearse our plans
and play black our past
one could almost never notice the coincidence
it is to progress one way inside a fixed spacefrom outside we must sound insane
revelation after revelation recasting ever intuitionevery breath another push to shape the next new me to see
first to myself then myself again
then to him and her and you and me again
but from whatever place if we can just settle in enough to see
the coincidence we’re all in -
In poetic language I hear us often speak
banter upon banter of what we could not
convey with little human wordsso stanzas pass with very little said.
We let little words spray the page
…little words to trace the wayto my saying she is diamonds
each a hundred thousand cut
casing her incandescentsoul. To see her, my word, is to see her
turning perfect light
into multicolor skies. I…I want this light
I want these skies
for the rest of my life.Lo, who is speaking with words again?
I am but pointing at, unbelievable, divine things
recalling how words betray me likewhen I said she shines bright
but meant just to be painting ebullient rainbows
that fill up canvas nights with technicolored auroras; pouring out of her self…when I said she was beautiful
but meant just
look at her.
nathanael.ink 