Calling the World "Home"
Calling the World "Home"
June 29 - July 7 / Nightmares & Morning Pages
6/29: In the warm lamplight of my transitory living room, I sat sideways and uneasy, plucking one two one two one two, sounding wonky but getting a feel. I am once again at the beginning of hope, nothing moving behind my hands. I put effort forward and root into humility, tearing apart the weightless clouds of dreams to find the dirt underneath, where my hands dig and get dirty, where the music is, where the Future is born out of will and frustration.
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6/30: Yesterday, the sun tucked tail so we spent Saturday in shadow. Today, the sun is impatient on my doorstep, wagging and ready. Do I let it in? I’m trying to write about today w/out leaving me behind, trying to write Now as if I could sit w/in it w/out shaking. The movement does nothing but keep me awake. I can be awake now. Sunday, the last day of June out the door w/ a gentle hand on my head as she goes.
I am my bad behavior and I am always forgiven. Didn’t God teach me that? Oh, I sleep in the weeds of me, consumed and consuming. Do you imagine my body now? Yanked back into the earth, green green and tightening, green turning soft skin red, indents that never fully flush or bloom.
I love my imperfect body, the body I can’t seem to leave, not here in the dirt. I know why I chose the Earth to love me.
I am the sensations of me, living hard in the world like it will bring salvation, salivating w/ the rest of the dogs. It is the last day of June and I leave butts in the abalone shell on my best friend’s porch. Something like indigestion builds the pressure, builds the pearl, spits it in your eye like, Look what my body made.
Keep me like a fantasy. Can your hands be sentimental for me? Fingers of meaning in my being like meant to be or just the touching part.
What happens when I can’t swallow your world? I spit a little version of mine in your eyes. Is it poetry? Do you want it for yourself? Do you doubt it? Am I destined to fail? Hysterical in your arms like it hasn’t just been me the whole time. Can you break something w/out shattering? I am spineless and dreaming and beautiful this way. Bad Behavior under blue lights where I am left w/ the water of me.
As July consumes June, I am licking the grime away, changing out the filter, stepping into the good of me. I have been so good, so good that the sun pats me on the head, all obedient. There is a call from beyond the door where the real world blows in and I am dared to live in a dying world. Eye contact only and always mischievous. Curious, the only way we grow.
I have lived enough w/ my haunches up. I want to stretch out in the dying grass and know where home is.
In the sand reading a novelty beach tee, Only God Can Judge Me. I know whose fingers point at me. Masks hang in the halls of me. I’m steeling now. I’m stealing now. I don’t care how, I’m just living a life like you are. And look at all the pearls of me rolling free in this city; in dark corners, in my friends’ pockets, down to the water. I’ve dug up too much of myself. All that I don’t know what to do w/, I make art of. I roll myself out to the world like an opal mirror, uneven, the raw shape of me. I call the sun, Mother. I call the world, Home.
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7/1: July puts the first half of the year to sleep. Asilke clover takes over the yard like small ghosts. The bees are here, carrying souls field to field, patch of sun to patch of sun, little promises to the Future. I do what I’ve always done, sit naked and pretend I’m part of this big wide view of it all, like, Yes your dreams are going somewhere, taking you w/ them. I dreamt last night of vampires again so my will must be hungry, stomach rumbling like my kitty cat’s soft stomach rumbling, teeth rotting, sensitive and painful to eat. I sit her on my lap and squeeze squeeze creamed chicken and tuna from a plastic tube, repeating, Can I sell you on a brighter future? Less pain if you stay hungry w/ me? Can you have a little more before you fall back asleep in the sun?
Over my shoulders, infant apples peep, green and nearly hidden in the leaves. The first of the season, waiting for me. Do they dream yet of ripeness or are they still in love w/ life as it is? Do they yet know of the rot? And when they are at their brightest, will they welcome it? Do they dream w/ me now in the sun, dream now of the red they’ll be? Like rubies, like tulips, like the cheeks and shoulders of me.
When we first moved here, these trees didn’t grow apples but they’ve sprouted for the last three years. T and I didn’t know they were apple trees until we were suddenly in our yard all the time, spotting remarkable red in the green, my lover and me. We’ve watched each other’s bodies sprout from youth, moles on his back and my crooked spine. When we see each other yesterday, we are home together in the open Sunday hours. We peel and burst in the sun, some kind of bloom, some kind of weightless eruption. What have I learned about loving this long? The body of someone you love will always be the body of someone you love.
These last three years: fruitful and ripe for love as it uproots the world, fruitful and ripe for work while our bodies can still stand it, fruitful and ripe for risk while there are loving hands at my back. And last night, last night, there were hands on my neck and back of me, feeling where my spine jumped its track, where my branches tried to grow lightless and dry in youth, where my head hangs nearly broken and doll-like over my phone.
When I feel like a rotting apple under the boot of the world, I remember the angel of my body is made of where I’m going. I remember I am biodegradable. I remember I am loved even in the ways I bend and break. Oh my god, look at all of you!! Blooms and bees and butterflies and beasts! I burn w/ you, Now July!
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7/2: I woke today, my girl under the covers and my head buried too. The fan in the window brought colder memories to my bare shoulders. Al wore a black one-shoulder top last night so I put on a black one-shoulder top today. I’m a fresh water creature in the summer of the rest of my fidgeting and fearful life and last night, last night I stayed out after work to swim aimless through the blue veins of my city. I locked up at work and Al had something to smoke waiting for me. She said, Come dream w/ me. Together we dreamed of a new girls’ apartment: rainbow flag waving free down neighborhood streets, lush green and yard art and a balcony. She told me how she woke up Saturday and the SWAT team was outside her apartment.
She told me her neighbor had live grenades and something to be angry about. I imagined them on the stairs of city hall. I imagined them going whoops! and exploding apartments next to and below, taking Al w/ them. She told me she had wanted to wait it out but the cops called her & they convinced her to evacuate. Al saying something like, Do I have to leave, like is this a big deal? The cop on the other end asking, Why would you want to stay somewhere a bomb could go off? Hey, this world has made us want to be inactive participants of it. The violence, the fear, the shock, I don’t know, maybe complacency is easier, maybe curiosity is enough. We laugh and laugh about staying put during fire drills and false alarms and close calls. We laugh a little less when the military man w/ the bombs gets arrested, when everything he touched is in a pile on the floor, when the rent is raised w/in a few hours. Whatever, Al says, I want to live in the East End anyway.
We weave in and out of our city where it is populated, the great summer migration, rivers of money and influx of fantasy. We split affogato in a paper cup and sit out of reach, sharing more than secrets in our city.
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7/3: All day I’ve been wanting to sit in the sun w/ my ghosts. Stuck behind a desk, behind wide storefront windows, ice melting fast in my coffee. July 3rd, I rest w/ the restless parts of me. My country is changing, getting worse. My heroes, all artists who stayed busy.
I am in my yard where I was after work yesterday, same time same place. Wednesday, like a fire stoked by uncertainty. Someone came by and stole the wishes in the yard, cut the grass, headless flowers left w/ me under a resilient blue sky. Three horses, Grace, Beginnings & Magic, still grazing in their overgrown field of dreams and my hair whipping the flies off of me. The hammock is back between the sisters but I’m insisting on sun today while I still can. Evil whispers behind doors of gold. My words left out in the open, left for my friends when I go. All the world a stage.
Yesterday, same time same place, the Wizard was here in the sun w/ me reading Ezra Pound. Happiness found somewhere soft, sitting next to us in the defeated grasses, still green. Come, let us pity those who are better off than we are, they read and my monuments of naught gloriously crumbled - a breath I was holding in. I stretch out my hips on the border between worlds, where I’m goin’ and where I’ve been. All this year and the ways I remember I’m not alone. Both the director and the fool, the one riding life right next to you, a beast not yet beaten and Desire, yes, in the room w/ us right now. Our bellies full of Bahn Mi and whatever is created in our collected energies.
On a night like last night, my hips led, too. From the root and the heart, I walked through the doors of the red room in trousers and sports coat and tiny bra like who do I think I am. MC had to miss the show so I had black shoes to fill. I took my shoes off to read my poetry and put my jacket back on to count the money. My math was a clown show, Beer Money and I counting and recounting.
A busy night, a feature for the young Wolf, her platform mary janes and her book of poems under the lights. I believe her voice truly reaches the moon when she reads like that. I believe her when she says she's hungry. When she says she's hungry and angry and so excited, so grateful, so happy to read to you all tonight. It was a new kind of night - reader features were back and new connections were weaving themselves little by little. I remember the Wolf's first time reading. She was impressive from the start, sestinas and sweetness. Then day turned night and the wolf came out to play, celebrating Sundays together in the park and bursting our cheaper speakers w/ her howl. I wish she had read her whole book for us. I sat w Benjamine and M the whole night, stage right in the intimate seats.
In the afternoon, the Wizard and I talked responsibility and dreams. All the world’s a consequence. We talked past and Future & surrendered to Time and whimsy as the night rolled in. Their perfect triptych poems and my meandering thing. Did we switch places or something? (I’m joking, I’m joking, I love this about us, strange and interchangeable). Smoke under the red lights making our words mean as much as they can, undertaking this, too, together.
I fear I overstayed my welcome last night and forgot my glass of water below the lip of the stage. I took my shoes off kinda first thing. I had tried to piece truncated words together all afternoon in the back of Benjamine’s car, so distracted, giving directions and skimming my most recent studies, playing w/ poems and prose like flower arranging. I found something tender and ripe, the darkest cherry, an ode to my city choked up w/ hope, how it feels to say, I love you and needing someone to hear it. I pulled up a seat and spit this muddy heart out. Shaking knees on stage. My sports coat fell, slipped off of the mic stand. Beer Money said, Was that on purpose? Are you choreographed?
It was M and the Wizard and I - the hecklers - at the end of the night until we split up at the red lights. The back of this book covered in M’s doodles from the show. Benjamine found our conversation where we had left it before the sun went down and we carried it to the bar w/ all the maps. We heckled Walt at a busy moment of his night. He pulled grilled cheese off the stove and listened in, he sent me a poem at the end of his shift. I showed the Wizard the winding roads I took home and we sent Bon nuit! up to the strangest of skies, mutating before each other’s eyes.
I forget now, but I was tired this morning, irritable at work. Now I’m weightless, swinging. What I thought was sap is in fact rain, picking up now in the brightest of days. The earth euphoric again. I’m waiting it out. If the sun keeps shining I’ll always wait it out.
The ravens have returned to our roof this year, more than before, calling out to us often. T says, Yeah, I’ve been leaving things for them, but he’s only joking, lol unless… Everyone seems to be chasing something this season. As the rain peters out and the sun roars back louder, I hope courageously towards love. Should I know better? Foolish to hope? A little evil to hope? I’ve always known my own potential. I tell ya Jim, there’s a rainbow somewhere. There is some foreign dawn where things break and there is bliss or at least something sweet to believe in. We live in a time where gods turn their backs to us, everything turns its backs to us, a spiraling generation out of Time and taught to hold onto life so tight, a generation learning to let go, to go get going go, all animal again.
My spine is crooked from slouching through life so I'm working on my posture, sitting up straight like my mother taught me, a certain je ne sais pas, a certain le masque de la certitude. I walk heart-first into life, messy like youth, messy from digging. I walk shoulders down and away from my ears like, stop I'm trying to listen. I walk shoulders back like the clouds moving away from the sun. I step on a thorn and I bleed.
I listen to LA Woman straight through when I get home today. I get all set up to sit in the sun. I am stretching and smoking and listening. My book is open, my fingers stained red and purple. T comes out and says, What a hedonistic life you lead. I say, What do you mean? I am working my body and my brain and my soul and my Future, all at once all at once! He's got that same smile on his face, smug under golden curls, shirtless wearing an apron, says, Hedonistic one more time and lets me get back to work. I do, I do, I dance in my yard while Jim howls into the night all these years later. I am rolling in the green of my city before she burns.
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7/4: Dog-Ear poems, free to read for now
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7/5: Sweetness spit, cherry pits in a bar glass, friends that sit in half circles facing the world. In my worship of Time, I haven’t given myself enough of it. In my worship of understanding, I have been trampled over. In the muggy nights where opportunity gathers in storm clouds, I take myself out and serve kindness by the bottle, ice melting and OK OK OK some kind of magic.
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7/7: We rolled into the rain, into the fog, up the mountains in a caravan of two, all 4 wheel drive lakeside. Hiding out for the weekend. T & J & Orne and I protected by the Bigelows. Half awake in the passenger seat, I watch J’s hand soars out her passenger side window while we wind down, invisible thread between us. Look at all these young pines. However long ago, these woods were cut clear through for lumber. Replanted, we’ve only known green and white, Birch and Pine and a river always running. We trek our tents and tools in a cart down dirt roads until the wheels get stuck on the rocks and roots, on the mud as it dries because suddenly it was drying, suddenly in the sun. The looming threat of weekend rain got shy, a tease, a teen, all that Desire that burns out fast and we are so thankful for it. The lake in the sun!
Flagstaff Lake has a city in the center of it. In the late 40’s, Central Maine Power bought up the land and flooded the town of Flagstaff creating the largest man-made lake in Maine, all for the sake of hydroelectric power. We run wild now on preserved public land, where we sleep, where we swim, all that driftwood washing up over the years. T calls it an active lake and admits to not really knowing if that’s a thing or not but knowing that this lake is perpetually recycling water. All rocks at the bottom. The silt never settles. I am restless and made of silt myself, letting the water move me, alive w/ the ghosts.
We waded into the lake before even setting up camp, campsite #2 on the knuckle of the Bigelows, slimy rocks under foot in water so refreshing. I watch J’s hair shake loose lake water and dry straight. Our hair is the same length these days, same color, same texture, my only friend w/ hair like mine. We look at each other like mirrors, like whirlpools, like, You’ve kind of made me fall in love w/ my hair for the first time…new ways to love myself, new ways to love you. I spend all day in big tee & long skirt, a swimsuit or nothing underneath and barefoot, insistent & muddy barefoot.
The rain rolls in like an old lover and we huddle under the pop-up, pulling oracle cards, making games. J says, I want to go for a walk and the sun comes back out. We sit by the water at sunset under a soft lilac sky, grassy buggy beach. A small fire in the sand. Here w/ my friends where I give my world some freedom, what freedom feels like to me lately, like putting it all down in the sun. An open, feeling thing. Open eyes, open ears, jaw relaxed for once and safe here. Dinner of kielbasa and stir fry veggies and potatoes. I swish my skirt around until the stars come out to gaze down at us, twinkling over the lake by the thousands, shooting one last breath among the satellites.
I am shoulder to shoulder w/ my friends. Our feet are in the water, on the rocks, and we are speaking in echoes, speaking only to this corner of the Earth. Echo to the ghosts. Echo to the sun. Echo to the bugs. The loons howling all night long.
In the morning, we get our promised Sunday sunshine. We pack what we can for the first trip to the car of the day. T makes breakfast burritos. We move campsites when our neighbors leave early, moving further into the sun surrounded by water. We litter the picnic table immediately, where I sit now on the golden seam between past and present. The Future gathers in the clouds, daring constant change, creating new colors. Whenever the clouds move in, we look up and try to anticipate, ants telling the future, roaming around this glass ball. I am topless on the rocks washing plates and knives in the lake. Summer stands still. We are sprawled and swimming and soaring through it all.
The boys float out while I write, while J reads. I can hear T from the water, still saying, Blue skies a-brewin’! We echo it back all day, all summer. I open my chest and the sun does, in fact, come when she’s called, out here where it is quiet and we are gracious. Condensation on the cherries and our voices carrying over the drowned Main St. Ice coffee in copper cups and plastic floats to hold us, all tied up together. We make our way out to the water, tying onto rocks and bopping in the lake like joyful debris.
Gifted days, dirt in our pores, hands outstretched into what we hope the Future feels like. Something warm and natural like this, we hope. And if not, then clean water and a fire to stoke. And if not, at least my friends right here, right here, right here, close to us on our planet where love floods cities.
This entry is a part of my Nightmares & Morning Pages series, where I write every day and share the good stuff. Subscribe to keep up with me & share what you like (please).
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