the poem has already done what I set for it to do
for me // now all I am wondering is if it can do anything
for you
-
why I don’t care how much a poem changes during the editing processes
-
kind of person
the kind of person who does not like themselves
who does not enjoy spending time with themselveswill almost certainly not like you
you who are the kind of person
who likes spending time
with just the kind of person
they do not like -
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 -
scientific ego death
looking close enough, we know
none of our atoms touchand you
imagining
independencetrip into noticing
a human kindness
how we are all atoms
of some universal beingand we are only ever not touching
in the silly scientific way that nothing is -
when I search your name online
when I search your name online
it doesn’t give me chills
or turn my stomach anymore
my skin doesn’t crawl
my hair etherizedwhen I search your name online
I don’t worry what I’ll see
or whose face will live so near to yours
a dazzling silver ring
a coffin full of lovewhen I search your name online
no one else even comes up
_________________anymore
you ran across the world
you always said you wouldand when you search mine
the way I practice all the time
you’ll see me
and say nothing -
sad is my favorite feeling & home
safe
& comfortable, it sounds so
familiarthere isn’t anything I would do to be free
I keep making
I kept making
kept making so much space
now all I am
is an empty tankmy brain unwraps
when I’m happy then
a sad song on the radio
hails back the cabI don’t like to be away
I just don’t want to die
or be taken completely
I want to be happyhappy
& home -
every every minute
/
Ilove you so
still.//
It is the seasons change you feel
which you confuse for
for me./
I protest I □□□□ never-
theless the…
□□□□□□□□ The seasons are not in motion?
See my loving you
in their always going
notice them
like the satan forth and back from GOD
jockeying for permission □□□ for
for the next evil
of GOD’s season
season seasoning.Do not think
I could not always be in
feeling □□□ they are changing.
Just because we have given them four names…
I could break them
up up as evidence.Just past five hundred thousand
alphabetical, every minute,
I scrawl them out □□ sending you
□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□ sending proof
so that you will always be assured □□ finally
finally
assured
even in it
in lack of faith and
tradition.
I do
I do love you I
and to prove.
I will make sure the seasons are changing
names alphabetical
Aacra to Barnaby
Rosemary, Serendipity
I will find the words
Tarist Thorn, Timid Tom
name them
all of them
name them.
Find them.
You will see the seasons
can always be changing
changing
Wallis to Yuko
changing in me. -
to death / persist
to death
you said it to death, please trust
i have not forgot
it’s just that i retort
in light of all of it
i persist
perhaps because
persisting is all i have ever donelistening? empathizing? making appropriate space
for you to grow
into who you are now
?
no
i lack all relevant expertisebut
persisting
and hypocrisy
leave these to me -
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
nathanael.ink 