Risks

Love, as defined by Robert Heinlein:
"the condition in which the welfare and happiness of another becomes essential to our own."

This definition of love makes me vulnerable.

I have to be careful with people. Generally, in an effort at self-preservation, I find a way to love them without needing their love back. I am surprised, then, when I find reciprocal behavior. I am touched and made somewhat uncomfortable. I know that my friends, my family, certain people love me because it was purposed-- that is what the pact was upon entering the friendship. I am struck by the surprises. What happens if you exceed the limit of people whose lives you can be consistently and constantly entwined with? What if somehow along the way, their happiness and welfare becomes so important to us that it drastically affects our own? I do not like the idea of a temporary fusing of hearts and lives, mostly because I have not found a way to love temporarily.

I was disturbed by a comment from an old teacher of mine.

He hugged me, and thanked me for 'who I was,' and mentioned that I was the 'most complete' person he had ever met.

I was 12 or 13 years old when he was my teacher. I was scared, and lonely, and overwhelmed by how I processed the world. I was too skinny, I was insecure, and I was very, very sad.

Fast forward to now, and I am grateful. But if who I was was someone wonderful then, who am I now?

I have not written a thing
for a moment
and sometimes I am afraid that the magical recipes that brew in my head
will get bored of me always saying, "Not now" and " this is not convenient"
and "I love you but later" and "we will see" and "I should do this other thing because this is not realistic"
and they will scowl
and grimace
and sob
and quietly or turbulently exit my mind.

Much. Like. You.

Violets are crushed in a petri-dish, and liquid is added to them,
you take your pinkie finger and dip it in, smearing the brownish purple liquid on a piece of paper you crushed into a ball
making the art you can with what you have
and your fingers grasp around the edges of the plastic,
it is turning some color you didn’t know existed, and you taste it expecting it to be sweet
but it is bitter
crawl
your elbows scraping the ground, shielding you face from the other faces
they are always looking
and you grimace
where is this enemy? you wonder. where is the enemy we were supposed to have
haggard men-boys and girl-children and steely eyes and
you left
made your chemicals and put them in pouches and let them go from the tops of trees and on the bottoms of planes.
you told your wife, (soft hair, so soft) that you wanted to make her
a perfume and would
name it after the child she lost while you were gone crawling on the grounds and getting your elbows dirty and trying to keep you hands clean.

The sad ones they
see.
How some things are harder to embrace.
Dear one, you are loved, it will get better and I know it is hard to see how. It is hard to see when the dust settles, and you are surrounded by the ways time stretches and suffocates you.
And it is so easy for you to laugh, and I am so jealous sometimes because of the crippling consuming emptiness and sadness and awareness that you do not have.
Why is it so hard for me to be light?
These clothes don’t matter. This body doesn’t matter. We will be gone and everything you are will be gone and what matters? What matters?
Maybe the tree shouldn’t have been eaten from. Maybe it would have been better not to know. Instead of the gasping,
I am always gasping. And it hurts so much.

It’s not that
I am sad or want to be gone or want to have pain.
But I have looked at a length of a belt, and snapped the black leather between my palms, and thought of the agony of waiting to cease to be and watching those you love cease to be and thought maybe I can’t handle this– all the waiting and watching and maybe in some ways it would be calmer to ebb away now on my own time.
my own choice instead of waiting to see when I couldn’t have this and them any more and being oh so sad it is ending instead of being able to be present instead of just watching it end.

I wish I wasn’t aware sometimes
it would be simpler not to be noticing
the way everyone is going about around me like a life is  a thing that doesn’t end like they are
on the track moving and running and I am hoping and hoping

You were it, the treasure that I’ve always searched for, golden beautiful love of mine.
Even if it is one year, maybe two– I can feel wanting your lips more than I’ve wanted any type of honey or mangoes or even water when the air is thick with how much I need. I am suffocated by the extent of my need for you. I can breathe in the ways in which I was clear- ah the clarity! I loved you, dear, I loved you oh. How I did.

hush now, mind and words floating around trying to explain away
the feelings and the way may chest constricts and expands breathing you in, even now.
so much time, and I wait
for your smile and spirit to release me from the way you clutch onto me.
sigh gasp, I know, you don’t want me the way I consume you (oh, how you consume me).

“I like to think of you in that little town,” she said. “Happy and frozen in those photos of you and the sea.”
if I were just a little bit wiser I would have
been troubled so much sooner by this.
It has been a hellish year and
shouldn’t someone who says they wish you were “we” want to at least
know the truth?

My body is a stranger
It unwillingly lumbars from place to place aching all the time under the strain of having to carry itself from the garden back to the concrete and swelter under the heat of airconditioned vents and the keys chattering away on a keyboard.
Sometimes we shut our eyes and there is the burning when the oxygen hits them and every breath is ours and we fought goddamnit for it and sometimes
the only thing I can say I’ve done is made it until I could crawl into my sliver of a bed and move the dog to the right side and, stretch out my muscles and tendons and all the other things the body is and
try and recognize my life as mine and not some distant life that I keep watching happen to some distant girl, like a movie that I have muted on in the background while I
iron my clothes and yours too, and make food for the men in our house (because that is what the women do)
and clean the food scrapes and scraps off of the table and sweep them onto the floor until the boys then step on them, barefoot, crumbs sticking to their toes and
trying to sleep after a long, long day of apologizing
(because that is what the women do).

13. 
    
    I am never raunchy I always
    say the polite thing and make sure the polite feelings
    flicker across my face
    fuck
    I am a deceiver
    I plan it I plan
    the way you will react to my subtleties
    I plan the way you will see me flinch or see the vacant expressions cross my face I plan
    the tiredness and the revolving door slamming in your face
    and the way I shudder away from you or have distance and
    I know if you are smart you will see what I’ve laid out for you
    When really I am just blank and
    the politeness in every fucking day makes me want to
    rip off the heads of magazine people and
    shove their smiles into bottles of empty cola and
    take another shot of whiskey so you can feel like you can finally decode what isn’t there.
    I’m sorry it isn’t and I’d
    try a little harder if I could.

From my insides wretched and writhing, I have been told.
Wretched, writhing creatures and
when I imagine this I think of exploding faiths and dogmas, the way you took my heart and scrambled it, sizzling my mind and interweaving truth and crunchy apples wrought with worms eating the flesh inside and out;
and brie (soggy on the cracker) fatty and savory, melting on the sides of my tongue. Appetite (yes), but
Sopping wet with entrails and telling me that it was caviar (but from the insides again)
How do you disentangle your own morality from the dead and expired bodies lying on the ground, rotting and seeping back into the earth?
In the pictures painted on doors and houses and on the sides of the walls, the lambs were always wholesome and cradled and protected.
This was never the whole truth, was it? How could it have been when the things we take we’ve deemed more precious broken into parts and pieces than as a whole?
How could you not mention the pieces of chipped white paint underneath the nails of those clawing at the images on church doors?
These pieces are needed to construct an entire portrait, yet they are splintered in the fingertips of girls with long hair that hasn’t yet had time to be twisted into braids.

Every bit of me tries to stay in the present even though
I cannot help but race around the time in my head, the pounding maniacal self inside this skull that refuses to be content with the things a life are made of;
and I know of heroin that you are engulfed by pleasure waves streaming through your veins and that is why white women in their mid-thirties berated us to choose wisely and
what was I but someone who could choose.
Gratefulness is always expected of those allowed to be. My issues with God always came down to this, the measure of where my gratefulness should be and where it was and is.
I am only afraid because I never let myself slow down and it is tiring, and now I take sleeping pills to sleep and then I can never quite manage to be awake.

The way you move against me even when I’m not there and you are lost
no, not lost, just
a little unwilling to be found,
shudder, sigh and a lisping fan sputters the honesty we couldn’t
my hand feels for how soft you are, yearns for it, my ribcage melts under the pressure of everything you keep demanding from me
taking more, taking more
and sometimes the games end in sweaty limbs huddled next to each other, hoping the fire in the room won’t singe the eyelashes from our bodies.

Listen.

I have infinite respect for the capacity we have.

Float spit spin twist

fire and chemicals move the beats through you

sing move let down your hair, and 

turn your door knob.

Make an appointment and be on time.

Don't be late.

Make this matter.

Songwriting sessions

She said that only red wine and Spanish

guitars would make her live the way she wanted

and somedays the only ways you could get that one smile

was by reminding her of the day she laid still for hours

or more on that shore

I'd say dance with me, but baby sail with me

salty water on your lips your hands your face

sun gracing those shoulders, lull with me,

sail with me, watch it float away with me

Time for quiet and time to watch us, stop

know this will end and be joyful it began

Let me get that smile

and 

let me remind you of that day at 

sea,

bay, you and me,

dance with me, baby sail with me now

I'm not afraid to ask for a taste

of the sea.

On your lips (sail) your hands (away) your face (with)

me.

It is hard for a loud, bumbling, moving and talking and rushing creature to be bound and gagged and made to be
above all else
silent.

I'm concerned the sad thing is coming back the
hopelessness and duplicity and the this or that you or them them or me
me or nothing.

Walking in a field is not extraordinary but
walking in this field with you,
the pheasant speak and the scratches on my ankle are inconsequential until later tonight, when there are hairline red streaks that itch like hell, and the raised bumps from feasting small insects, delighted and drunk,
and you, plunge your hand into the lake, tadpoles plump and plum color swim with gangly half-formed limbs into the murky algae; the reflection of you, pulling up a fish with rainbow scales, bare hands muddy and cut up and you squeal as the fish makes it out of your hands and into the dirt, gills heaving and make sure we get it home safely,

and the wildflowers can't help but brighten, downy and prickly fauna cling to the hem of my jeans, and this field is no longer a destitute thing, but oh so alive.

Banksy makes art of some sort,
we agree on this,
flowers in place of grenades, the room nods, and we admire the picture of a picture of someone's conversation with

an ally or enemy much stronger than canvas and

(roses, jasmine, lilacs)

you remember in a city somewhere, the powdery makeup of a woman, tapping her keys, her heels, her fingers on the slick glass-- picking petals off the tulip centerpiece at the restaurant, blonde hair, glasses, and

your nephew tumbling with chubby legs up to you with a fistful of crushed yellow dandelions, grinning and drooling and collapsing into your arms, and

the way he showed up, suit, tie, trembling hands and a single rose, and

we have conversations in many ways, I think.

Surprise, sparkle fire brigaid,
rushing to the next one, and still
there is time for someone to paint the engines red;

Feel the matches light up, and anchor your memories to only
the brilliant,
and remember me--

I looked out windows and saw white mares looking through the gauzy curtains,
lying in the fog, looking in and that is when I knew that this was all magic,

We feel it, don't you, think now. Softness on your lips from her lips, can you feel the moment before you touch when you are already there and your

bodies are only the curtains, but past this if you wake up early enough, and the morning is still just a little bit night,

and you see the spark and
you feel the warmth
and if you inhale if you
dare to hold your breath

you might catch the campfire from her veins, the scuttle of little night creatures hiding back in their flowerhouses and

you wonder, at the waking that you never could ache enough to believe. Surprise.

What it is like to hear opera, if you love opera and you don't even know it:

The words might be meaningless, and for someone who loves the interplay of words, this is an odd concept.

It might be playing on a playlist, depending on the sort you surround yourself with. And it catches your attention, with it's small building and bubbling, and

you (grumpily) tell everything else to step aside, this is our trump card. We've found it,

you quiet the dog, you hush your conversation, you turn the fan off.

If you are me, you have a cramped apartment but suddenly the room is so full.

You like this, no maybe,

you find, you

must hear this, and there is a thundering thumping brilliant swelling in your lungs and it starts in your belly and spreads slowly, building and moving through the tips of your fingers and

you are no longer thinking in words but in feelings,

and you remember as a kid your dad had tears in his eyes after a beautiful piece of orchestra,

and you can't help it, you are not crying really but oh! that is not noise, no this is not pop artistry or catchy limericks, this is talent and passion and beauty,

and maybe you have not really ever heard music, not really, until now. 

My knee smacked the ice and I felt the cold liquid seeping through my jeans,
and I cursed,
and a small man with a small bag looked befuddled, and he laughed at loud, patting the place his leg used to be, tipping his cap,

and I flushed knowing he knew I should have a little more eloquence.

I saw you there, chastising me, with those blue eyes.
I breathed in the entire small country in that big continent with that first tired sigh off the plane and then you couldn't watch me have the hope that would drive the rest of my life (just one of them) and
your dusty shoes matched their shoes
and your pale skin matched nothing.

And you shook, and I saw it, and I was home but you were very, very alone because
I knew this was made and you only knew that this was temporary and
what terrible thing to know;

I buzzed and moved with life and! I knew! that you did too. And I played cards in the dust and stirred clay with my hand, and I whispered for you to do this work too and you
spoke with lofty words about how the coins in my hand would break systems if I put them in other hands
and you spoke with the confidence of someone who read and understood words,
and I looked at you and then the boy and I walked away;
(I didn't buy the roses. I didn't buy the roses);

you thought I didn't see you slip him the crumpled bill from your khaki pants and you think I didn't see you confronted with the reality of facing individual suffering,

and you think that I didn't know that you felt the responsibility but you did and I did and sometimes I go to the grocery store to buy bread and butter and there are packets of roses and daffodils and daisies for $9.99 and I know that

of the regrets that will pass over me, when I lie down on a dusty continent and look up, some things will flash through me--
(I should have loved my brother. I should have bought that plane ticket. I shouldn't have hurt that woman. I shouldn't have played games with my words and the way I read you and

I could have paid three cents for that rose.

One day, sometime last year, we spent not a day but a whole slice of life (maybe the most relevant) naked in an ocean
and your hair was curly, and floated like jellyfish luminescent
not quite aware but definitely awake and
I was awake too and
the algae lit up the water and I looked forward and backward into the sea, my feet dragging but not touching the bottom of anything,

but,

my feet were dragging and dear,

it took far too long for me to brush my hand along your side.

Get up, and kick the wasp nest until you have red welts on your toes,
your ankles, your legs,
your stomach. Honey salve, don't you know.

When your father says, no son,
we watched your brother die but we didn't know how to stop it without, moving beyond our frames,

and we built this house on a graveyard but, don't we know how to keep digging, mother,
you are blind but,
you will fold your hands and read the devotional at the table(isn't that where it is supposed to be read).

How do you get up?
Get up!

(Please, I am asking- no begging--
No.
Asking.)

I've seen you laugh and here is the way the music moves me,

I'm

feeling like;

I need to ever. so. carefully. 

pay 

attention.

It's coming it is going and it is now, look out, oh love, look out. We are the graffiti on the sides of trains,

we 

are looking out and we are a blur of color we are the tattoos on the moving vehicle carrying precious cargo to places made by trampling down dirt

and we are curves, and green, and red.

I've seen those eyes make questions out of spray paint and,

I've seen the artistry in profanity,

and the profane in your art.

You hide your voice, like something you are ashamed of, move and move faster.

God if you

can sing,

then sing.

On the mundane becoming the extraordinary

It might have been easier to write when I was younger (old! Getting old!) because the sad things were tragic  and new and devastating; and just as one finds out oh! look! I am living—you also are finding out about the tragic horrible things and hunger, sadness, death and poverty, are all the tropes of the inexperienced. It is sad. People will respond yes?

Then, you get older, and somehow the sadness refuses to leave, and someone says to you, “Sometimes we just need hope. Write about that.”

There are true struggles instead of imagined ones. And they are not so black and white. The world is not constructed of the “good guy” and “the bad guy” and instead it is the homophobic parents whom you actually adore and cannot give up; the unrequited love of a girl with curly hair or a boy who is now living in Sierra Leone but is still dating his long-distance girlfriend in Boston. I think her name is Heather. And the boy has probably contracted Ebola at this point, and the girl wants to marry her girlfriend, and suddenly, you can no longer rely on the pretty and tragic tropes of your youth to make your writing mean something.

No. Now you must understand and figure out a way to live alongside villains, and maybe go to their birthday parties. Now you must figure out how to relate all of your sad poetry about bones and dust to living and breathing creatures who do not have the option to live or perish, but sometimes are just trying to be in between, because the reality is, it is this in between where we all have to reside.
Maybe you had to teach yourself how not to fall apart because it is now not the grandiose that makes or breaks you—it is not a tragic death or an overwhelming romance. It is the semantics, the nuances, the realities of what it is to be human in this world and that, sometimes it is embracing the droll and that sometimes it is making the tragedies known and acknowledged without adding stevia or honey or whatever it is these days that we are supposed to use to sweeten up the bitter.

Life is comprised of individual tragedies. They may not seem like tragedies originally to the naked eye. They may not seem overtly life-shattering. But you and I both know that the pang you have when you look at your daughter and you know that she will someday not be that pudgy 5 year old with the weird affection for vanilla yogurt devastates you. The things we push to the side—the aging, the nursing homes, the fear of not being able to contribute or lose your “gift” whatever it may be. So now—the tragedies are not as “other” as the burning house or the girl that dies when she is 16 of leukemia. They are not things to sob and cry about in the comfort of your bed before you shut the book and log on to your Facebook page or Post Secret or Reddit, or watch the 10’o’clock news.

Somehow, the work and writing that has to be written has at once become more mundane and more confronting. It is the art of controlling the kind of seeping emotion you want your reader to feel. Your writing and style and understanding of what true romance and tragedy and irony are have aged like a wine or a whisky in the cellar of your experience, and something much more frightening and subtle has  emerged.

Your grandmother is 84. She has blue eyes and white hair. Her fear is not death. Her fear is irrelevance and lack of function.  “Katie. I don’t like being here… everyone just seems so… old. And I am not…. at least I don’t think I am.” The quiet sobbing that comes at night or in the shower from her is not of a tragic and abrupt end, but a drawn out lack of participation or piece in the world around her. The “lonely shiver” that comes out of no where—and the little voice in your mind that reminds you of the utter largeness of the universe and the utter smallness of you.
This feeling—the one right now, the developing one that your mind tries to shut down—do you feel it? The subtleness of it, the resistance, the gloom that starts in your belly or chest and makes you feel slightly colder.

Or: the much harder and more difficult and complex combination of words that need to come together to incite some other feeling in your reader. Maybe it isn’t survival, any longer. Maybe it is not that the protagonist lives, because as we have just seen: living or dying sometimes is not the climactic end to our writing any more. Maybe it is hope, and what a lofty order.
You know that you have lived, and lived authentically. You have invested in friendships and maybe saved lives in ways you didn’t know were possible.

10 years ago, you were called to jury duty, and the 16-year-old punk kid who was so inebriated that he clipped a cops car—maybe you were the sole hold-out for his not being charged with “assault of an officer” in court.

The mundane becomes something hopeful. To you it was a three-day trial, a nuisance, and you haven’t looked back. However, because of you and the way you decided to stand-up, he was not given 28 years in a federal prison, and instead he became a counselor for troubled kids. He may not thank you or bow to you and you may not feel the intense joy of a romantic ending or the nicely wrapped conclusion of our cancer patient in remission. However, 5 years later, a kid named James comes to you and tells you the boy you stood up for in court became a man who opened up his home to the homeless. He thanks you, clasping your hand and tells you that this thing you did, this mundane and small and not-life-shattering thing has affected his life entirely.

So now the writing has changed because the experience has changed and you now recognize that the bones you wrote about are not dead dusty things, but smaller clusters of living capillaries and veins and have more nuance now.  It is these clusters that make up what it is to be a living body, muscles and sinew and names and a more complicated realness and, now knowing the back-story,
When a little boy says, “I love you, you are my best friend” to his grandmother in that short story—is that not more real than a romance?

When she says, “I love you too, James,” and reads him the bedtime story, and her eyes perk up, and she holds him closer, and her cheeks turn rosier and flush with purpose, is that not more, somehow?