Hope Is a Dangerous Thing etc. etc.
May 1-11, 2024 / Nightmares & Morning Pages
5/1: Dog-Ear, free to read for now
I'm From the Mud Still
5/1: It is May and I am mud. It smells like sweet meats and oranges in the kitchen. I keep dreaming of the parts of love I keep choosing to forget, haunted. I wake a little earlier, as if that’s enough, and I admit it, I rely on simply writing my life to save it. The Magnolia that had bloomed first have gotten pushed down and pulled open by the rains th…
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5/2: The animal is awake, feeding the other animals. The animal feels its way around this morning. The animal is awake and playing, leaving the future half-started for itself because the hardest part is getting started. The animal body’s hands scrub, wet w/ soap and water. The window is over the sink like in all the animal’s favorite places to live. The animal body looks up and sees the animal body of the neighbor and remembers eye contact can be neutral as often as it can be electric. The animal remembers what to do next.
The animal has chosen love and is being hunted still. It dreams, it dreams. The way the world looks perfectly still out the window but the animal knows it’s not, knows it never is, knows time is passing w/out having the words for it. The animal knows there is movement so much smaller than it can see and so much larger than it can see. The animal gets excited when the sky cracks. Thunder, thunder, rain, rain, the world popping wet like oil on a hot pan.
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ALSO: A Poem, free to read for now
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5/3: Angels watch me and I watch YouTube. I don’t think I’ve learned anything new this morning but I could be wrong. I could always be wrong. Humility, my best teacher and comfort, my greatest vice. I was awake when the sun decided to sing but pissed away the best part of the morning. Butter and avocado on knives and in my gut. Slippers on to take the trash down to the end of the road. I feel chic when I am comfortable, indulgent even. Tony Soprano wears his white robe and I wear my black fleece. We both marvel at the viciousness of the world and the ceaseless beauty of birds in our yards.
Trash on the curb like polite suburbia. I could cry at each new leaf sprouting brave in the Spring. I know I am gearing up to put in work because I have been extra avoidant of the things I love most - time w/ friends and time w/ art. See, this is how I’m always late to the party, puttering around. Time rolling on and I am still rolling in bed - slow, slow, restless, restless. I will be sick of myself soon enough, am getting close to pulling down my dreams from the top shelf. I go out into my city to find the keys.
I’ve been finding keys all over the city, known and unknown, often where I expect. Had someone lost one under my bed? Had I hidden one from myself, left where lost things go? One was electric to touch, still hot. And another, buried in the dirt. What doors they open, I’m waiting to see - a feeling too passive to be believed.
When I pick one up, I hear myself better, like the ocean calling a shell collect, louder, louder, closer, closer. Used to be I could only hear my voice zooming past me in traffic, caught off guard and desperate for a word, often lost w/ the rest. Lately, I’ve been dreaming w/ the dreamers. I bump up against myself on the street, a slower stroll, a step or two ahead. I miss the beginning but am pulled into the monologue. I walk in step w/ myself now. I am doubled, tripled, a party, a show, a debate in the bar and people singing.
A taunting calliope plays a circus theme and I hear running water, a river or a drain pipe. Water fills like love, always moving. Coming up to the edge of my city. At the root of it all there is a rhythm, getting stronger. It won’t be long before the world and I sweat together, before we face each other as equals at the bottom of the mountains, wading.
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5/4: Shades of blue like straight out of the tube. The sky stays like this longer and longer. My city lit up all blue and electric. I think I drowned my dirt. I think I’ve been wasting my time again. My dreams nestled like eggs in a passive nest of hair and wires. I am a visionary for a couple moments at a time. I am hopeless all the hours surrounding. Disappointment sunk and sat like a stone at the filthy base of me while I slept, while I slept, wept, poison in my dreams.
My goal is community but I admit, I do want something for myself - peace where there is usually panic, eye contact and money and clean water. I spin chaos gingerly w/ spice on my tongue, covered in blue. I feel better, now that I’ve sat, curled up w/ caffeine digesting, digesting, moving through. My dreams are still raw, wet clay and a spark. I want to cultivate the courage to see them through - to learn myself that way, tactile and unconventional. I am clay. I am electricity. I am trying (It lives! It lives!).
I sit here and I write myself into calm, into belief, headfirst into hope and time still passing like body still breaking down like a student breathing deep and a gun taking aim and babies preparing to be born.
For now, I have to be OK w/ being just a pen moving across a page in a book almost filled. I love beginnings. Writing, acknowledging, naming is always the first step. Look at me, building a life like this, or trying to. I am also inhaling my world. I am also driving to and from work. Also, also, I am reaching for friends and being licked sweet by works of art and the life it imitates. There are so many cows now in the fields, the calves black and brown and curled up like cats in the tall grass safe in the sun. Sleeping, swatting, sweating, and faces all white, generation after generation bred to wear a mask.
The artists are out in my city. Sixty-six degrees and tables out on the street. My city full of art. My city spitting out artists. Last night, I was at the gallery in blue silk and silver. I was behind the bar while a new installation was put up in the next room, performance at 7PM. The installation was made of prefab trash and a mysterious neon liquid, everything painted day-glo orange and acid green. It was a noise machine w/ magic wands plugged into source. It was an electrical storm. An amorphous, fluorescent monument of lights and buzzing. The gallery-goers were encouraged to play. The wands set off reactions of sound and light and energy, liquid traveled through the veins and made something surprising happen. Nests of wires and transformers sat in heaps on the floor. A small soundboard, mystic drums and a cluster of incense. The artists changed the weather, made the sky crack and sent the sun to bed. Chaos came and danced in the white room. Each of us remembered we too were electric.
It was loud in the gallery, my ears were ringing when I left and when I turned out the lights and smiled thoughtlessly in the belly of my city. The art school near the center had put on a fashion show. I hooted and hollered on the street side of the window, peeking in and catching the end where they all took emboldened bows. Tables were getting folded up and loaded back into cars and vans. The unhoused pulled dirty blankets up to their chins in the cool blue. The streets were never empty last night. There was a buzz that felt habitual, the buzz of a promised summer.
I drank something red at the bar w/ gin and girls. We talked about trouble when it is good, when it is short, when it is delicious, and when we were done, I walked back through the blue to get to the Soul. On the ride home, I was still thinking of noise and electricity, of that liquid bubbling up in the tubes and carrying language - whizzing and popping, mechanical cyclone in my city, our blood all alive and reacting together (everywhere, everywhere).
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5/5: The sun streams through my mudroom and yes, there is mud. The sun streams through and I have to go get going go, to go clean a mess someone else left, to drive on drive on, to eat the lamb of Christ off a spit. I have to forget any leftover dreams of children, of having someone take care of me, of having something young and unreal love me like maybe I am the world or something greater, like we are all worthy of being loved like that at the end end end, of someone carrying me like the sun carried life over rivers and through the soil and is streaming now through my mudroom window.
I live this life like a deer through traffic, like the one I almost hit on the highway yesterday. Stubborn and dodging, trusting something on the other side will still be there by the time I show up. And I live this life over the sink and filthy floors, dishes piled and scrubbing - at home and at work and work and work and at the baby shower side by side w/ aunts helping to do the dishes. The crumbs, the crumbs, the messes we make. I live this life w/ the same fears I had as a child in the same odd body, the same dreams I had as a child in the same country I was born in, the country I will leave one day.
There is mud on me now, mud and crumbs and my own blood. I am working but I don’t know what for - not for me, not for my future, not like this. I am working for others. I am being utilized. I am working so I am not on campus or encampments or prisons or hospitals. I am in America, a wounded stolen land, a thing w/ bullets in the roots and still a thing of beauty. I am in America but I don’t know what America is working for - not for its people, not for our future, not like this.
I learned theft from my country but not justice. I learned Death from the poets, weeping, weeping. I learned love through transformation and nowhere else. I am one of the free ones.
Lamb on a spit, the first thing I see after all the clouds. Talking about the ribs like lean, like low fat, like hungry hungry lamb. I watch my lover wipe down the wood w/ olive oil from the bottle. I’m told T yanked the tree from the Earth and carved the bark like an apple, all smooth. I’m told this was the second spit, that the first one snapped under the weight of the lamb. I spent most of the day imagining that moment, thud. This spit is strong. C rotates it steady, a musician keeping tempo. Wire stretches skin and skin darkens and skin pops. We have faith in this spit. We are the architects, the other animals around the fire. The bindings are crude. The tongue is out. Lamb roasted like tradition. Lamb snaps first in death, again and again speared on tree, again and again from bone to table.
There was homemade spanakopita and baklava and watermelon and dirt cake, rain and rain. All the way home I was driving through waves. And at home, more waves more crashing, the kind that feel good. My boy not far behind, just wanted to be told he’s good, in gold and silk. We are young and then we are old. All the years of us have been carried up to the shore naked on the sands, on beautiful broken bits of Earth.
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5/6: Monday dedicated to a new breed of ambition, born screaming. I learn my energy is willful and wasteful and that I need release as often as I need rest. OK OK OK. I work w/ myself and around myself, slow slow w/ love.
I drove the Vibe into my city today, oh just like old times though there are a few scars where stickers once were. I found myself again in my grip on the wheel, winding down the spine through traffic lights and coaxing the sun to come out. I parked across from SPACE like perfect spot, perfect timing. I was there to help w/ the production of a multi-night theatrical performance. The director was passionate and clear, holding the door open before I had crossed the street and saying G! like he had known me for years. I stained and painted, familiar work, favored work. Here, I feel useful no matter how much or how little I do. Paint on my hands and jeans, fumes wafting out the door and into the street.
I hear my name all over my city and I listen, I listen like opportunity is in love w/ me. I want to go slow. I want this to last, to grow. It is not how tall but all the ways there are to find the sun. I know everything has its season. I know we grow a little bit in all kinds of directions. Knots in the branches like all the false starts and something always blooming at the end.
The laundry dries and I lose my train of thought. Celebrities are all dressed up again and bombs are dropped on Rafah, an IDF sanctioned “safe zone.” T is working late late tonight. I have poetry to organize. I am dirt. I am bark. I am heart. I am paper. I blend and twist when it is warm and wet. I move around you, you move around me, here in the same dirt. I sit now empty house, holding my wits loose w/ nothing to lose.
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5/7: Poppies in the sun and the sun in the sky, everyone out today. Everything deserves to be written about and I haven’t given myself enough time. When I locked the door this morning, it was for good. Two tank tops and cowboy boots stepping through my city. I was at dayjob and then I was the the protest, quiet in the afternoon trying not to feel helpless. I sat on the ground w/ flags waving while names were read, an endless list of martyrs. There was hushed arguing behind me and screaming, screaming into the microphone. A student shared poems and I was reminded what poetry is for. W/ the sun directly overhead, I left when it got loud, when anger took over for grief, when my eyes started to itch.
This morning I debated my time and said yes to it all. I walked in circles, walked in the sun towards the Eastern Prom where J was waiting for me. The city turned into outskirts, outskirts to the old neighborhood facing the sea and overlooking the green. Everyone who could be was outside. I remembered J’s blanket from the fireworks here last July, red concentric circles, and both of us carrying books we weren’t going to read, not today at least. We met each other right where we were at, stretching in the late afternoon. We aired out the tightness together. We talked of money as something almost evil and time as a resource worth more than gold. We trust that everything comes around. We trust sacrifice is in the root of good.
Then we are up and walking through the neighborhood as it is now in May, green and blooming, unbelievably blooming. J says, you know about that, right? How they cut down all the fruit-bearing trees to make you buy it? She was parked at the end of Wilson and there was a red Ranger w/ garden tools parked in front and a magical dog sitting among the flowers. There was an older women raking the soil, has been raking the soil for years, forever and all over the city, making a life. She tells us it is possible, so possible to build yourself a life you love, even unconventionally.
I tell J about the book I am reading, the one my professor at Pratt wrote, about utopias and community. I tell her how what started as a project and a dream became a blessed reality and how I’ve been busy dreaming up futures of possibility. The sun peeks around corners, shining bright through patches of bleeding hearts. We wander more sun soaked corners around, blinding intuitive redirection, wandering as children swing and the trees shiver pink and yellow and red and green. Neighborhood cats that weave through fences to nuzzle their heads into your legs. A whole summer ahead of us. J says, Life feels like a movie w/ you.
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5/8: J’s car smells of incense, Nag Champa. A copy of Siddhartha in the passenger side door and a shell of ash in the center console. The clay dice I made sit under the radio, six sides up. She has half her closet between the trunk and her backseat and she carries anything she can think of in a canvas tote. She wants to change before poetry, out of soft shorts and into matching green cowboy boots.
We visit a friend’s apartment when no one is home. We know where the spare key is. Orne, out of town for work. Peach, out of town for her health. J is indecisive. I am distracted, lingering, listening, wandering. I use the bathroom and leave the keys in there. It takes us twenty minutes to find them, like black hole in apartment, like OK very funny, now where did they go? When we find them, I shake the keys just to hear them and J brushes her teeth. No time has passed it seems, the sun’s not even paying attention.
We make our way back to the center the center of town where there is light reflected off cobblestones and poetry. Lincoln's is packed, a line out the door, love is here. I am fruit swollen w/ purpose, blooming here, free in my city. I am bitten only in my city, in the belly of my city, savored by the communities in my city, here, here, now, now.
No seat empty except when a poet stands to read. There are hearts to hold, here. Lives expand in every direction, here. The room swirls with hallelujah and the wait-list gets as long as we can get it. I am on the couch tonight, right up front and slouching, the room full full behind me, all around me. Number four on the wait-list so I kick back, plunging into each poem as if it was all sea. I know why I am here and why I keep coming back.
I am spreading out seeds in my city and look, they are growing, they are growing, reading poems and sharing secrets encouraging life, encouraging love. I am grateful for every one, every one. I dance around the room like maybe they will follow, like maybe we can all dance together. We clap and chant together, Eat The Sun! and we stretch out our jaws. On sweaty days like this, it is all possible.
It is newly blue at the close of the night and I am in no rush, carrying the speakers to MCs car with all the poets in our wake. We head down the street to the bar with all the maps. We make an entrance, and the night is set out for us, empty tables on a Tuesday. GH gets a slice of cake with four forks. J pulls out a deck of cards and I am in my element without interruption, the mess of me at my friends’ feet. When I look up, someone finds me. When I lean my head down, a friend is there to hold me. It's crazy, I feel crazy, how easy love can be. I take risks and lose rummy and pull apart soft pretzels with my fingers, talking nicknames over negronis and adoring with an infinite will.
I felt frivolous this morning but now I feel fortunate, swept up in something like passion, believing in something like poetry. I see poetry without looking for it, always have. Where I see it now is where I surround myself - in my city, in my city - the wind kicks up a rhythm and poetry swirls. Poetry becomes flesh in protest and becomes blood within communities, beating, beating, alive, alive. We find each other here, where the words go, where the words fall, where the words blush and bloom. The weekend is a few days off. The war is getting worse. The poets save me today.
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5/9: The Workshop Podcast, Bonus Episode! LIVE at the Press Room (listen here)
Mud in Drag & A Night All Electric
5/9: I am spiraling still from yesterday, dehydrated and filled fully to a kind of beveled edge brim. I am thinking of the goblets of glass at the Press Room w/ an absurd $13 red wine, but when I tell you everything, everything else was a dressed up dream ~ psychedelic in the overlap. Dream and Awake and the hazy dazy life between the line in the trampl…
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5/10: Afrobeats carry Spring into Summer and I believe in May June July. The rains come but not as bad as predicted, like that week and week and week of June the summer before now and before now, there was sunshine lingering in our doorway and before now I was moving through the doorway and into the sunshine room - stained glass and velvet couch and All About Love. I held pillow to belly where the aching has been, inflamed in early May, a pillow w/ dueling tigers, a pillow used to being on the floor when I come around. I told my therapist, have a good summer, don’t ever change! Mean it! Meaning, see you in the Fall. Meaning, I need to swing on the strings of summer and trust the wind to carry me over water, over flame, over piquant puddles of mud. And when I am dropped and back on my knees crawling, I’ll be back in the sunshine room remembering how to ask for help.
I am home on a Thursday afternoon, this week that swept me off the ground. This week w/ the body of a lamb on the stove while T made stock and we moved on opposite schedules. We stretched sleep like it was a natural gas, like we were unable to yank it from the Earth fast enough, so we just ran on less. My body knows when the sky is at its darkest, comes alive at night. I learn I need more iron - I eat eggs and avocado and dark chocolate. Blood is renewable.
I pull the waistband of my boxers up past the waistband of my jeans when my stomach writhes. I braid my hair in two. I talk to the poets, the lovers, the laborers. I respond to kindness by always giving some back, accepting the bouquet and giving you half. I learn when I allow exuberance, life giggles like a newborn. But that’s me! That’s me! I’m the baby, I’m seeing it all for the first time! All the first times from one moment to the next! If you allow it, it will fill you.
I believe I am 29. I believe freedom is cool but cool ain’t freedom. I mean, the cold doesn’t keep anyone warm. I mean, you will never hurt as much as you love if you let love do its thing, you feel me? I mean, care will carry you over water, over flame, over the mud of you and me.
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5/11: Let me say first that I am early for being late and that my stomach is in a state of rebellion. That the Vibe is low on gas and I am sitting now in the driver’s seat. That the folks who were driving behind me were laughing and taking photos of my bumper stickers and the folks who watched me pull off to park were horrified at how fast I made the turn. It’s Saturday and I’m behind on myself. I got the call to cover a shift and I’m in no position to refuse. Let me say that the world will have to keep waiting for me and that your flowers are in the mail. Let me tell you the Northeast sky went green last night.
T tells me to look up and I am trying to trust my eyes, used to the tricks they play. In the Vibe on the highway, the two of us were looking up the whole way. My boy knows the road, knows exactly where we are, will figure out where we’re going soon. Cruise set to 80 under a cheshire moon, dark to the West and eerily bright to the East. Green fog first, like a film of muck on the lens, radium green curtain dropped from the heavens.
T says, I know a spot, says, I don’t think we’ll get arrested. We are looking for where the sky stretches out wide and grasses grow tall. We are on East 9 where the lights in all the houses are off and the lights on the dash are off and the road workers wrapped up their work for the weekend. We stick our heads up and out of the sunroof where the wind seeps in, the night directly overhead, green as radioactive day and the haze of red, of purple, where the flames of the sun get close, licking the cheek of our atmosphere.
It’s fuzzy and dark on the ride home. Let me tell you, my eyes were closing against the black and now, they threaten to close against the white. We learn it was all opalescent in my city and we were driving away from it, taking guesses and calling it an adventure. I think of A, all her talking about solar flares. I think of the mountains and the sun going black like bullet hole in the sky. I think of the stars tripping and falling and singing psychedelic poems to this burning part of the Earth, a universe wild and acting out.
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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