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 -
a prayer during nap time
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”
// againand GOD, if YOU would, see our sails are all out
please take a big breath and blow us about.Amen.
-
,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 -
demipansexual
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 meHoly 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.
-
potential
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
meaninglook // 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 wayfollow this string
to be all
all they say I can
all they say
I will
all I have to be
-
him along
I still limp him along
he in my head
words on my tongue
half are mine half are his
hard to say
which is whichI still limp him along
when I get drunk
when I scold the young
or love someoneI limp him along
in the sounds that I make
wishing all my pain awayI limp him along
through the cries of a cat
the smell of his clothes, and the cloves that he smoked in them
I wish came backoh I limp along
oh I limp along
I would think more of it
and of after it
were it not for himI’m glad to know he knows its answers
& glad to know I do not know them -
to say that god is good
To say that god is good
should feel to us, it seems to me,
as thanking stovetops for burning fingertips
and water for flooded lungs.To say that god is good
is to hold a world of suffering (with smattered lightness)
and wish into existence
rather than
completely extinguish.To say that god is good
unironically overestimates
the weight of human kindness and love
on every scale of suffering
we think up.We should sense the tables turning over
in our rebellion to the heat
of everlasting suffering (we are destined to create)
when we look out at all of this
and wish for more of it.To say that god is good
is contradictory on purpose —
it is Sisyphus happily
seeing stone-rolling art
as what the human soul can do
when in the image of god.To say that god is good
should sound as wrong to westerners
as every eastern religion does
when we are all the tao and the tao is everything
and desire passes over our bodies.You have to live a little while,
I think, to appreciate the claim.
Three-year-olds don’t know yet
that their pain is not okay.
They cry just to be heard
and all we do
is wish they wouldn’t.To say that god is good
is what we knew at first:
that it does not matter how long we live
or if we trip and fall
because existing was always suffering
we just didn’t mind at all. -
(someday)
i want to (someday)
be alive for the joy
of living//not for the other people
not for the other sake of
not letting all of all of the people down//not anticipating
some payout
not for the hope of
not for tomorrowi want to (someday)
be alive
for the sake
of being alive
and wanting to be -
the kauffman center, kansas city
the cost of heaven
I scoop her up
my two hands are open
let me drink
the soul of the earth
the spirit of wind
her heart wet and eternal
JESUS is on record
saying I am worth it
my edifice says
in delight “I am”
this entire city sees
my shape swallow us
in art and love
in love and attention
I’ll hold her in
I’ll hold her up
nathanael.ink 
