Blog - Page 2 of 141 - Breadcrumbs

how a body learns

to walk around it

The break never begins with noise,
but beneath buckled paint
behind the calendar we stuck
in hopes of growing unto faith
on walls, for blessed are the
fools, drunk on anticipation
of belief.

When it went, we learned to walk
around it, tremors disguised
as ordinary time, Baldwin’s history
sitting in the room until someone
notices the uninvited guest.

No siren sounds, no one is named.
Gravities are rearranged this way.
Pisa’s tower looked just fine
at ribbon-cutting time.

How easy it is, to mistake the wreck
for aftermath, never beginning.
Survivors find the hairline crack
and make a home in the months
before the flood runs.

Blessed the believers who
never
chart the damage, who lean in to
what’s left standing, call it home.

like water, eventually

notes nearing an edge

the pressure to bear the witness asleep
at the wheel all of us far
from the valley
who becomes the river

start somewhere I meant to
listen I meant to
hear you as you left
the land I meant to record
at least your sands running out

take this—we say of the body—
the opening notes of each of us in turn
going fast act fast you have to give it
all away

echo chamber

mistaking the voice as capable of hearing

Hello?
Hello—
It’s good to see—
It’s me! Let me tell you about me.

Yes. It is you again.
Whom I meant to welcome.
Around whom I now cannot breathe.

Your voice filled the room before you entered.
Your stories, hungry as fire, asked to be fed.
I mistook the smoke for mystery.

Sometimes I miss the kind of silence
that didn’t need my attention
to exist.

bones of the suns

view from the updraft, suspended

The bones had to set when we broke them—
we set them in ash after each burn,

beside skeletons of former homes, still smoking.
We needed new cells to grow. Hold still, they said,

teaching how to manage the waiting period.
They meant faith—but without the work

it looked half-dead in our mirrors. We listened
for wolves. We saved their prints in boxes

for someday—for sorting, for display. But what
do you name the waters rising high enough to jump

to the next roof, hoping that one holds? Other questions
scratched outside us. Siri, what do you know of shelter?

It was something to do; knowing you had no service
didn’t stop the need to speak. We reached ready

for the next ledge, and she might have said, You can wait
until dark. Siri, we might have answered—I believe,

to heal our unbeliefs. The ghosts before us pointed next
and up ahead. We had begged to see it. But one wing,

caught in the updraft, suspended—still looking back—
It was the wreck we marched from. It looked away.

We looked away. It was possible, then, to keep wishing—
merrily down a lane to the land of the dead.

Tracing its thread against honey-slick tongues, we offered
first milk. Some kept their breasts bound for harvest moon.

And when it came, there would be blood, and money—
enough to say: we’ll be okay another year

until time
comes to pull it back again— the sun

of our once
and future sons.

say there was a window

on the other side of the wall

For coral to take
the long-submerged chains,
something living
had to cling.

On the dry side of the wall,
someone asked
what the babies were eating.

No one answered.

Another question:
Did their eyes look back?

But who
are these
circled moments
in the widening arc?

Look.
Down.
What moves—
low,
ready?

A body bends
against sorrow,
unsure which world
it woke in.

The bars
held only flesh.
What else
we were sometimes
slipped through.

how to keep watch

a theology of attention

In 9th grade English, we had a fairy tale project.

My hero was the youngest of three princesses.
Unlike her sisters, she wasn’t especially smart, or strong, or beautiful.
She only knew how to look and wait.

The plain-looking, unremarkable princess found an egg one day,
by the banks of the stream where she used to go for long hours,
to breathe in wonder while she sat.

There was no nest nearby, as far as she could tell.
There was nothing so striking about the egg.
It was small and brown and plain—larger than a quail’s,
slightly smaller than those of the palace hens.

She picked it up, wrapped it in a handkerchief,
and walked it back, carefully cupped in her open hands.
She kept it warm, and it grew—into what, I can’t remember.
But it wasn’t a bird or a lizard or any of the predictable
reptilian-amphibian-avian creatures that come out of eggs.

It was beautiful when it hatched.
And what it revealed at the end was the power of her waiting gentleness,
so far removed from other attributes.

Since then, I’ve sometimes questioned if there might be
some pathology behind this sort of thinking—
but I was raised on fairy tales,
Hollywood rom coms,
and a worn copy of The Lives of the Saints.
So, it’s likely impossible for me to discern
with any reliable level of objectivity.

When it came to imagining the thing inside him
that was more or less invisible much of the time,
I liked to picture it as something almost too fragile
for survival in the wider world—
like an egg outside a nest,
or the tiny flame of a birthday candle.

Easy enough to snuff out,
but it’s all you need, really,
to start a blaze hot enough to roast a pig,
or scorch a hillside. Or to smelt iron—
which was the better metaphor, as far as I was concerned.
I’ve always been partial to the idea of love
and patience as shaping forces,
when applied with a deft hand.

“Dreams are like that,” I would tell the students.
I thought about calling them mine sometimes,
but in their lives they were their own selves—
which simply were, with or without
any influence I might or might not have
prayed toward or against, in weaker moments.

This is why you’ve got to keep watch all the time—
against wind, infection, suffocation.
They are always dying, losing face,
forgetting what they are
until they are nothing but trace whispers of light
in place of something that used to burn
a liquid dance.

Round with promise
like a wet pear.

notes from proclamation season

“One must not be too romantic about stability.” – Simone Weil

I sought stability, to make it out of love.
Which I did, and continue to do.
While the ones who never knew

its substance, or how to make
any of it for themselves, come
barging in on missions and leave
a mess. I clean again, then rest,
and breathe relief.

One of these warriors, gone off
again now, would make better
company if he were ever here
or anywhere close to here
or now.

Who still keeps proclaiming how
he means to make it his next mission
to care for me. If there’s one thing
I don’t need to be, it’s another man’s
mission toward eternity.

He’ll return to see he’s made
another mess of another failure
of grand proclamation.

This is why I prefer the cat’s company,
her present immediacy, attention.
Who teaches me in her steady gaze
that I am not yet half as grounded
as I mean to be, as I keep being
pulled away.

at the tree stump

in a loud forest at a new cut

Kneel, then, upon these roots, listening before the offered body, to the language of this ancient tree, cut now, far from canopy and now a waiting map of exposed flesh, etched with the record of seasons. The wound may sprout a new tree from inside the cracks of her severed body if the roots are intact, if disease does not kill what would.

give me a web

to reject another tired hero’s story

Yes, I see those stories, too, all around me. The location and abundance of which some will exclaim, “are everywhere!”

No matter where I go, the one that interests me most is not a story, for it is made of what would not be recognized as such. It tends to feature a non-hero whose non-feats go unnoticed by being what they are–– more constant labors, and no less common than the fact of the web appearing between the branches of the fig tree overnight.

Many of those who proclaim most loudly that stories are everywhere! are in fact looking for the same story––as anyone armed with hammers for hands, might learn to see only nails. This much-sought-after tale is another version of the hero with his labors, slaying or banging on whatever he can’t pick up.

Lately I have grown very tired of its droning echo, and I do not think I am alone. This one, I think, has gone far enough. Give me more spider, more web, more patience, less noise.

Lately, I think, give me no more of these old stories, only quiet tending: of the careful meal, the clean floor, fresh sheets, attentive care.

It is possible I live at the beginning of the end of the age of an old story. As someone still alive inside it, I lack the perspective I would need to confirm or refute this suspicion with any presumption of accuracy.

Finding the ability to make those quiet and non-storied, daily events happen is the only narrative I can find valuable right now. This is partially because I could use some help with these things and also because I have grown very tired of that other clamor.

I am also weary of those who make, as a habit, a racket to entertain. These are different from those who make an entertaining noise for reasons they have not intended. I am weary of those who throw plastic affirmations when it is clear that all their expression can do is reproduce the old pain.

The makers of these pseudo-joys, in an effort to to capitalize on the coin of the realm, regularly add to daily misery by their steadfast commitment to cellophane-wrapped optimisms.

Meanwhile, so many dead. And also, so many able but unwilling bodies, who have made their non-decisions with brilliant sheens of glamour, who feel justified in their non-decisions to leave unwashed those dirty sheets, who unprepare the careful meal whether or not they will eat it, or to remember what hour of what day it is, now.

tour of the interior

wear galoshes

Enter anywhere you like. Doors line trick walls, retracting roofs, fallaway floors. Aerial pads, underground tunnels—each in some state of readiness for guests.

The place is under perpetual construction, crowded and damp. Leaks drip from every seam, so bring galoshes, not dress shoes. No formal affairs here. And though it’s wet, you’ll still need extra water for the heat.

Why come at all? Many arrive tired, unsure they can continue out there. Stay as long as you like. Art and music are scattered everywhere: prayer cards, crayon drawings, kitsch beside relics.

Characters roam—escaped saints with haunted eyes and wild humor if you get them talking. Leave them alone, and they seem freshly returned from some dark night of the soul.

You’ll find huddled masses here, but also divas—ancient figures with jeweled hair and hand-stitched clothes—who survey the chaos and sigh. Couldn’t we sweep, add lights, host a proper feast now and then?

The real joy comes from otters, birds, and babies: downy hatchlings, tiny hands slapping water, the gleam of a pup riding its mother’s belly. Cats, too, offer wry humor and disdain for our grievances.

One wing belongs to Klee’s angels. Walter Benjamin mutters through his notes while others drift in and out—some long dead, some not yet born. Lists of names dissolve as fast as they’re written.

In a far corner, unnoticed creatures nap: a dingy unicorn, withered lion, small dragon, chimera. A harpy perches nearby, cracking bawdy jokes around an unlit cigar.

The gift shop is closed. The food court changes with mood and season. No ID, no admission fees, no security.

Resentments fester like gangrene, fur and hair matted in corners. I mean to clean, but it’s tiring—feeding all these guests who never leave.