Breathe Deep Into the Night
Breathe Deep Into the Night
Dog-ear: June 5, 2024
6/5: Buoyant, breathing, I am a believer near the sea. I write of yesterdays in the morning, in the morning, muddy time and too open to write of Now. No predictions here, only weather and waves. In bright red on the door of a bathroom stall, a poet wrote, Breathe deep into the night. Transient hand, sage advice. For a moment, w/ blood on my G panties, I thought it was only for me (no only, never only, the beauty of that in true).
On the other side of the door, my friends here in the restroom, a camera and dressed in all black. Red and MC taking polaroids from against the sink. I couldn’t see but I played along saying, Yes grrl, look over your shoulder and hunt me like an animal. They thought I was the one w/ the red pen, the red words. I said, Nah, I’m only bleeding. On the other side, the other side, a bar full and hot for the words in the wind, poets wrangled into the red room. I walked into the world again and let the fringe sway, bronze and silver and spirals down my back. It was something I thrifted off the street at M’s inspiration. At work it got in the way but in my city, it flew on the wind, swinging over cobblestones in the middle of the road, shimmering on stage.
✺
After dayjob, I took a j and my leftovers over to the Zoo to meet the Wizard. Between A and B I was caught on the street and asked about God, given a business card that read, Let’s go to Heaven! When I saw Benjamine, I gave it to them.
We schemed our dreams, picky about the words, pulling bottomless from our brains a thing of glory and potential for movement and meaning. We want poetry in the world as naturally as a bird and as striking, a thing made of paper. We sat in the sun in the afternoon. I took the tin foil w/ pizza crumbs and made an ashtray like a volcano in the center of the table and we tipped ashes. Sweatshirt on over fringe. Benjamine in red and brown and when J showed up, she was wearing cobalt. She says she could always write about colors.
Time was catching up and I had two aunties meeting me in town. We were scattering and coming together. They were parking down by the water, paying to park in a lot. I met them seaside. I see family and I stop looking around me. Maybe there are cars coming and lights changing but my blood is over there. I have family in my city, coming to see the show.
I hug my aunties tight tight. My city surprises them, the sun over salty brick and the trick of the speakeasy, Door Number 3. Though my mother isn’t here, though she is sweating w/ the Atlantic on all sides, I am my mother in many ways. How I talk and how I move and how I laugh. My aunties ask if it’s usually this busy for poetry and who here I know. I say, Summer is especially feverish. I say, I know everyone here at least a little and most people much more than by name alone. They look at each other and say, just like your mom.
I am proud, simply myself in my city. I am soaring and a little sad, understanding immortality clearer and clearer. We create and carry each other into nothing as open as the world. We promise you nothing, nothing but love, if you’ll take it. Blood in the soil is what makes the mud of you and me. We rub up against each other in leather seats and leave little gifts to see who holds on and who lets go. I give all of me away when I believe in love.
I am spread out to my city like manure over mulch. Mine is yours, I and I and eye to eye in the red room too dark for photos. We spread ourselves out in the sun, stones and roots and shells opalescent in the gunk of sediment. This is hands and knees work, this dig digging we are doing. Use yourself for all you’re worth, say, If love is here, I am here for it. I am looking and you look something like it, like how I imagined you’d look.
My city, we found each other, we found you, when you were slick and unstill, when everything in the world was shaken up and you, you simply spiraling, center of the world, my little corner.
We were on the couch, saved for us by friends, all introducing themselves. All day I spent w/ one foot tapping into Future, trying to be careful w/ it. The momentum that comes w/ dreaming, dreaming w/ Desire in the room, hope batting its eyes and passing the torch around. I settled soft into leather and reminded myself to slow down. J tangled fingers in fringe thoughtlessly. The poets were electric, static to touch, a storm coming.
Red opened the show and Zeus closed us out, my friends & family & I all sitting up near the front. M signed up but gave her spot to LIZ. It was LIZ’s birthday and her twin’s birthday and her twin was here, flowers in their hair. LIZ riled up the room and thanked M, called her an angel. And it was true, it was true, sun rays coming through. Benjamine gave M an invitation to Heaven. She took a photo but left it behind. Carl says, It’s great to be here, it’s great to be anywhere! I listened to my city as she breathed. She said, I’m changing now! I’m changing now!
When it gets too thick in Lincoln's, when it all swirls together and gets drawn into center, something has to break. A poet stumbles on their words and forges ahead, slower, stronger. I’m telling you, as the lyric was riddled out, as the fire was building, building to the point of empathetic ache, the words - for just a breaking moment - the words tripped out like over cobblestones. The poets recover quickly. We aren’t going anywhere. The emotionality hovers in the most human moments, when language is faulty and we are busy feeling things. I noticed this first in my own readings and have been paying attention since. I can ride the poem diligently until the sky goes red until there is one word all swollen w/ meaning. Burst clumsily and carry the words through stained teeth. The energy breaks for rain so we can stay listening, we stay right beside you. I remember a short poem I wrote last year, the line that said, when the candles are lit, don't worry about the spelling - whispered to me in a dream.
My aunties stayed through to intermission so I made sure I was in the first half, hoping for more time but understanding. A little while is still good. By 9 o’clock, we had to call it, not everyone getting a chance to read. Time w/ family too short and I am left a little pink again, laughing off the brevity, little fireworks in the sun. I am a child again, not believing in last times. Little me in my city and friends right there to pass me around shoulder to shoulder.
Achilles couldn’t get on the list so when the doors opened to the dark, a small group of us formed a half circle around him facing the alley. The alley all blocked off now w/ heavy metal, protecting only trash and unused fire escapes, the ones J and M and I climbed on a warm night a year ago. Achilles let his paisley words paint our city. I lay on dirty sidewalk stargazing his verse.
The poets swarmed on the slouching sidewalk of Market St. My family hangs around my neck. We carry each other everywhere we go, w/out even knowing sometime.
Then it was Mash Tun at the picnic table in the back. Red ordered one of everything and that song from Monday was still stuck in my head, I had to tell MC. It was a night of directionless coming and going, uncontained. There were small miracles and kicking feet bouncing knees. We know each other in the sweetest, strangest ways. Who drinks water and who drinks beer, who sits where, whose words become worms in our ears.
It was muggy under the moon and I listened to that song again, winding home, window open and the air fragrant in the neighborhoods and farmlands. I was a rope untied, an open door to my city and home again, home empty again, T’s mornings freshly dark while we dream, while we dare to. We dare to dream on an unfair and unfastened emerald night. I breathe deep into it w/ all the red of me.
My ego still weaves / through the grass, finding / the small holes / we are so / porous. It is the way / I let my ego in the / garden, to romp w/ / the rest of them / a sign that says / DON’T FEED THE ANIMALS / Here, symbiosis, the / insects, a little devilish, / pests, getting in everywhere / getting through, through / every which way / getting through and eating / tiny bites, a grain of salt / at a time. We are digesting, / always. I am I am digesting / always. I will not abandon / even this part / of myself in the / light of new grass.
A page I dog-eared from my Nightmares & Morning Pages series ~ thank you for reading