i know we like looking forward to —
and what of
when we don’t?
a force
to wonder what is here
worth living for
and when we wonder
what may we find?
i know we like looking forward to —
and what of
here may we find?
-
it is a wide door
it is a wide door
it must be the city
lighting the uneven wall on the other sidewe manufactured rain
my body fakes to be held down
by fifty pounds of news and papera beachside is remade
by three blades in a humming oscillationi am as awake as you are
whatever eeks into you
so eeks into memy little pinky finger holding this phone up
aches
the spiritual place where everything is
i know i must bedoes jesus ever go on holiday?
i wonder if it rains to help him sleep
and if he made the ocean just for its sound
was he man enough to get stuck awake
or always god enough to sleep? -
An Untitled Poem About Time, Fingers, Praying Fists, Finger Traps, Stencil Prints, Fatty Roads, Craggy Molds, Winter Weather, and Palms Sharing Sweat
time is fingers between fingers
locked in a praying fist
one hand is the present moment
the other is experienceconsciousness is a finger trap
between all the fingers all at once
so that what should always have been separate
we know, for us, never ismemory is a stencil print
on three pounds of fatty roads
we can always run the traffic back
through resulting craggy moldsbut we are winter and harsh weather
in our fight to have it back
and — have what back? after all,
walking the fatty paths
was never ‘what we had’what we had was always fingers between fingers
wishing to be separate
it was palms sharing sweat and us unable to tell the difference
between the present moment
and our experience of it -
spirit of eternity
the spirit of eternity is milky
it is from the breast when we are children
and then we give it upit is a heavy cream
we circle into coffee
and then forgetoh spirit of eternity, we pray
come to us
unfold our notion of ‘a day’oh spirit of eternity, we plea
remember us
as we await to enter theefor your face is long as a sheet
and cold as a galaxy
your words are the sky in the evening
and the earth when we sleepspirit of eternity
you are what we all hope to be:
the stillness
that brought us into being
and the push
that our mothers startwe won’t be finished in our graves
and we have you, we will always have you,
to thank -
the name of happiness
when a single Harper Adams dies
the earth of seeds & petals cry
a low and quiet cry:: cup your hands over your ears
to hear ::the lull of mindfulness we want to feel
in child’s pose
to drink the drink of happiness
from the yellow of the rosewhose name we say is meaningless
unto the content of its soul
but all we want is happiness
& all we do
is name
and name and name
even the naming of the rose -
directions to mattering’s house
mattering’s house is present
it can feel elusive but isn’tyou’ll pass every tombstone and birth certificate
look for its window toward the future
that’s where mattering sometimes sits for breakfastif you pass the moment you have gone too far
but carry on if you still see anything behind youmattering’s house is present
they can’t live anywhere elselook for the mayfly or dandelion seed in the air
they aren’t exactly there but at least you’ll know you’re nearwe’ve passed the house I think a thousand times while reading this
but don’t worry it is still thereoh, and their house has everything in it
you will love being, well,
here -
does my body know
why am I in so much pain
my body aches
does my body know
what my heart’s been through?I want an algorithm to stitch me in a sonnet
I want to be pretty but my mind and words I think are ruinedmy esophagus keeps closing
it is hard to breathe
& hard to breathe
and my esophagus is closingit’s like my body wants to shut me up
but I find other ways
to say my peace
and ruin thingsI want to be pretty & grieve
and lie and cheat and steal for good reasons
I want to be so transcendentally things
that everything I know and believe translates into me
I could read their mind and know
they heard me out and understood
and there would be no judgement
when I am everything
because knowing all the good reasons we got here
would get us all the good will we’d need to leaveleave suffering
and ecstasies
and everything
in betweenso that every experience takes on equal incandescent degrees and specificity
takes on all the meaning an experience could ever beit is not a game of raising up
or thinking more highly of
it is to dispose of scales completely
it is not a flattening
it is where no two things have any two points of comparison
where each experience takes on its own complete dimensionalitybetter and worse lose application
I know this is just the sort of thing one might expect to find in poetry…
it’s just… I’m sick and throbbing and all I want is to stop wishing I wasn’t -
oh that was before the end
oh that was before the end
a whirl dies down
my family and them at some event
some picture I’m not in
I can’t recall the final time
& dates don’t help
forever
I said
eternity in my heart I meant
I heard GOD’s present moment is big
so big my past and future fit in it
I hate GOD
or
I hate being GOD
I hate having back the present moments I passed
I cannot know whoever they are now
I hate how when I am GOD I already know where this is going
I hate being GOD and sitting on my hands to keep from putting the world I want togetherI don’t want them free
I don’t like knowing someone said they loved me and will never say it againthe only thing I like about GOD might be not changing
if I cut my hair I am another person
the old is passing and the new still becomingall of this before the end
one which I still cannot tell is ever coming -
historical now
do you feel haunted?
can you forgive
when you notice
how unlikely it is
that anything we currently believe
is correctare you petrified?
can you feel
free of dreaming of knowing anythingi know we are primitive
to eight thousand years from now
& on our evolutionary scale
that might as well be the same
time as me
even existingwhat would it mean
to enjoy living
& noticing
you, like me, are every living thing -
the purpose of life
it’s hard to see how life could really be about anything other than just enjoying it
people who will try to sell you on being alive for a whole eternity
but I feel like they are assuming that being alive at all is at least some sort of net positive
and even if they imagine that, after this life end, the next life will be markedly better
they are still relying on our minds having some available cognitive real estate upon which to locate such a fanciful view of alivefor if we already enjoy being alive, before someone has even tried to sell us on an eternity of it, well
then I think there is nothing left for them to sellI think once we enjoy life and, I mean, actually living and being alive
as in, right now
right now being alive
I think once we enjoy it we can feel that its enjoyment has completed everything
we find in ourselves no desire either to speed it along or to stretch it out
because, at last, its purpose has been completely fulfilled
by, of course,
our merely enjoying it
nathanael.ink 