Hunting Dumb
Hunting Dumb
August 5 - August 11 / Nightmares & Morning Pages
8/5: In love w/ the day as it hits now in the morning, though I wish I could keep sleeping, Two fans in the windows and the feeling of falling behind. My lover gets dressed for work & the sun stripes his back. Zipper, button, pushing curls from his face. The most restful I’ve felt all week is the five minutes we rolled in unison from back to side, a cat by our feet and a cat under the covers. Then it’s zipper, button, pinning hair up and out of my face. These days, I keep my hands in my pockets and my heart unguarded.
The humidity sits heavy, doesn’t she? I wonder if August will turn her back on us or if summer will keep singing over the fire, logs burning down to sand and a small group of us washing feet in the sea. I send out the invite w/ no follow up and wonder why I am forgotten. The Magnolia bush went green and doubled in size when I wasn’t looking and now it is something else. It expects no apology from me. I want to quit all my jobs and follow my dreams but they’re tangled and twisted up in who I thought I could be & what I want to eat. My dreams scatter from sleep to sleep, forsaken to a summer that falls in line. My city yanked out from under me. Future untied and drifting.
Am I online enough to get anywhere? Am I in the dirt enough to be loved? Am I floating in the wind on a prayer, on a practice, on hold, on speaker phone w/ the insurance company w/ paint on my knees?
THC gummies melt in the heat; pull them apart like my thighs from the black leather seat. Spirit sits on some edge in my mind that I’m climbing towards. I’m distracted by butterflies sipping blood, sipping mud, the gauze around pierced and trampled dreams. Fruit drips onto silk and I look no further. I put pen to paper when I have nothing going on up here - I point to my noggin like you can see me even now. I rattle teeth to make my music, dancing naked in the dew, waiting for a call back w/ an estimate. The cost of Future comes out of Now’s pocket. Pockets of trash, pockets of sand, pockets of undecided die made of metal and shells from the beach, chance alive and unburied.
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8/6: In the shower, I move like I'm not supposed to move in public. I touch how I'm not suppose to touch in public. I come out of myself horrific and willing - unfolding, fucking molting. My skull melts until I am only soul, hungry soul - left muddy, clogging the drain until I am something new, something wild.
Release the squirming thing so I can face you again. Hunting dumb. Calling everything freedom except freedom itself. You won't watch me crumble so I watch myself. Clutch my eyes closed and wailing when the shame hits. Beyond the waterfall, rocks and dirt and digging digging. Dark blue here, water leaping, water pouring, dark blue naked and letting go, letting no light in. Shame, so soft now, like oysters.
Oh behold, the debris that becomes a pearl! The pearl always feeling uninvited, saying, no, no, I don't belong here, don't make me into something I'm not. I sleep on your tongue, letting no light in. Tears & phlegm & cum, all the same stuff. Salty and organic and release, release. When the rains come through the kitchen windows, we shut the lights and go to bed.
Early August and this dog is bored of digging. I'm looking at the world for something to eat and someone who will stroke me soft w/ blood on my teeth. I've been out and gnawing. In my spine, I remember.
We go to rivers, to lakes, to the sea - filthy is fine where I find it, better than the sink, better than from the broken hand. When I was thirsty, did I hurt you? After you have given me all you have, I still don't sit still. I don't come home when your whistle unwinds the night, no. I curl up by your feet when the fireflies die.
Mt. Etna erupted Sunday and w/ her, that feeling of enough! We're running a fever that even the river can't cull but we try, we try. All I do is nudge and nose my way around the love I find, hunting dumb and howling into autumn. I leave bones at your feet. I trust you still to love me.
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8/7: Wednesday, waiting for the tube. I sit on the concrete in the shade, trusting time that way we have to in travel - w/ surrender, knowing ourselves capable. Cicadas humming in the afternoon. I almost drove but instead, paid to park overnight in Lot G and asked the train to take me away. In a quiet, singular moment of empty waiting, I meet w/ the melting parts of me. I take my twelve year old self to Boston w/ a fraying backpack. I take the red room on the road in my red book.
Yesterday, I kicked the Soul into manual while taking a turn too fast off the turnpike. It made a sound like a toy car when I parked before I kicked it back into automatic. Something about suddenly being in the wrong gear and getting myself out of it easily. Something joggling my confidence to get back to where I’m supposed to be. Sometimes it’s easy.
Last night, I let poetry save me. I wasn’t planning to read but in yet another moment of waiting, I pulled at my prose, in the center of my web, chewing what got caught. The words I haven’t felt proud of revealed myself to me and for that, I felt brave. After 2 years, here, bravery is still something I have to conjure. It starts w/ not wanting to waste anyone’s time and transmutes into a greater wanting, wanting to be a part of the world again, a part of this community again, even when my mouth is dry and my knee is bouncing restless on the wooden stool on stage. I went to the red room w/ the unfinished dreams of me, to read what I wrote in the raw red morning.
The Wizard and I met up at the bar w/ all the maps. We ate sandwiches and unraveled unevenly, trying to catch up in that unfocused way we do. The Wizard and I were late so Achilles made the list - we joked, scribbled ourselves onto the waitlist, went in for hugs after the unexpected hiatus last month. I showed up wearing brown, wearing black, nothing in my arms & I left completely held and overflowing. We sat in the back w/ New Boy and didn’t stop yapping, getting loud for the poets who also chose bravery.
The Doctor opened the show praising the words, the immaterial, w/ friends her own age visiting the red room. The Generalissimo recited a poem from memory and celebrated finding a quarter on the street, singing, I’m gonna be a rich man, whoo! Chuck wore a dress and read about corduroy and heartbreak. Ashe was foiled. They showed up for the first time after the last Workshop w/ their phone dead & only had printed love poems to read, old and unrehearsed. And yet, it was a serendipitous introduction to the room. Gabe didn’t mean to write to God but God kept inserting himself - charming nerves, distinct voice, definitely a writer. Eli wrote about grief & Elii wrote about the disparity between what is good and what is wanted, warped through a mirror. Sophie wrote: Did you know you’d see me tonight? And I had a moment gleeful & relieved. That was a line I had written once and deleted, unable to work around it, but Sophie had written it now and it opened her up. Words are funny like that. Beer Money read poems I had heard before but not like that. They hit me wet in the chest. What we do w/ the manic energy we can’t get rid of. I remembered a question I’ve been living w/: What is the difference between ignoring something and choosing to live w/ it? And is the difference important?
At intermission, I was made of honey. It was still warm but the heatwave had burnt out. When we returned to the speakeasy, looser than we left, we took our seats in a quieter room. It was a star-studded second act - new readers & new poems. I watched my friends become creatures. Dressed for once in marigold, MC compared herself to a neighborhood cat. Mysterious and independent, skittish at times but won out by curiosity. Funny, I imagined a black cat at her door and the boss in black to match, but tonight she wore the color of the sun. The Wizard stepped up, riddles three, poems in ink still wet & crawling out of themself. Bells ringing, bells ringing; the crystal kind of clarity that echoes, that changes lives.
I already told you how my go went. I put myself third on the waitlist. Scooching up onto the stool. Asking Benjamine to procure my water glass in the middle of the first poem. What I didn’t already tell you was that Spirit was w/ me, that I saw everyone in the room w/ crystal clarity. They were w/ me in my green green yard. They were w/ me in June July & Now, August. They too, dizzy from the heat and howling despite themselves. Summer does this every year and we forget, drags us through the melting and still, we choose Earth every time. The poets, the pearls of this city, unwanted and made so so precious, reflecting the beauty in our warped ways, changing colors on stage, living a life rewriting importance. We are scattered in so many ways, but in this, we are diligent. We are digging, for we are believers of immaterial things. We are saved all the time.
The Grey Lady came to the show last night. I didn’t let her leave my sight. We pulled out our frustrations like pulling guns out of their holsters before sitting down at the crowded picnic table. She asked for the Future and I said, Yes yes yes. We bid adieu long, like smoke on a windless night, hanging in the air until OK OK OK. 11PM ticks and we’re making moves.
I dropped Benjamine off at the painted apartment they’ll be moving into in the fall. The painted apartment by the park and my favorite coffee shop, back here, back in the city while they can stand it. I look forward to sharing soil. I drive home w/ the music low, listening to the gears and grinning w/ the feeling, like working up a roar and turning in for a nap in a softer world.
All that surrounds then & Now is a too familiar cloud of what I’m calling my responsibility. Packing and pausing and one last job. Here, I surrender through time, all the pearls of me at once, pooling in the sand, carried weightless by life’s current.
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8/8: I climb onto the back but the back is the front. The train whistles like it is animal too, frightening the birds. Moving backwards out of the twisted concrete city. Boston falls away fast, train tracks and rubble by the water. On the train again this morning, grinning a temporary goodbye. On the train, working and returning home in dirty clothes. I see band tees on backs from last night’s show. Concrete, concrete, twisting telephone wires, twisting evergreens. The en route bathroom smells like cat litter. A Dunk’s cup is crammed into the overflowing trash. I get two seats to myself, going backwards through a portal home or someplace better.
Last night, my oldest friend and I went to Fenway Park w/ the huddled masses in black and silver. A Green Day concert like we were 12 again and 14, 18, 22, to celebrate 30 years of Dookie & 20 years of American Idiot. Forgotten dreams come true in time. E and I screaming through. From our seats in the rafters, the band looked like the $8 ballpark peanuts. It was painful to look at the stage w/ the lights so bright, lights so bright so the TV lighting looked good. Every song before American Idiot began felt sped up, too fast, like they had a lot to get through and not a lot of time. A funny disconnect that took some of the shine off.
E and I kept waiting for it to break, for something profound like we had gotten in the past, somewhere for our anger to go, but it didn’t come. Green Day, older now. The audience, getting younger. Their protest, nondescript & commercial. They had a lot of power. Powerful through exhaustion, powerful and through that power, something that breaks down into hope like carbs break down into sugar. All the advertisements around the stadium - the sky above our heads bought up and sponsored.
We had always hoped to hear American Idiot live from start to finish, so when the set changed and the TVs glitched, we were lost to it. I sang American Idiot through my fucking teeth, ringing true, still ringing true. I fell back into the story as the album unfolded near perfect. I found queer joy even here. On the outside, outside, forging life and finding what to believe in the land of make believe that don’t believe in me. Tre Cool, cunty in leopard print and hammering on the drums. Mike Dirnt, skeletal in a prison jumpsuit. Billy Joe singing w/ a pout and carrying notes long past sunset. We bark at the stage from all sides, Hey! Hey! Hey! And the Citgo moon rises and sets in dramatic rhythm. We are, we are, waiting on a world we can believe in.
A million little lights shine while we walk alone. I can’t help but be completely moved, low rise and sweating. Alone is a mask, too. What happens when we make a home of the outside? We don’t see the light from the open door, too busy looking at our feet. But now, now every phone is lit up and shining. Boulevard of Broken Dreams is a lie, now - hallelujah. No matter my age, crowds like this will always make me believe in community, in power, in possibility. Before the show, the crowd was unbearable to weave around, no air in the stadium. But now, we all stood shoulder to shoulder, holding up open hands and shining bright lights. That same crowd transformed. I will always get emotional, here. I will always get hot for a guitar solo. I will always sing along to Whatsername.
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8/9: The aria between storms, crickets and cicadas and rustling unrest in the trees. 9:15 PM and I haven’t had dinner yet. I’m listening to the rain in soft pants while T is inside frying chicken for tacos.
I found it hard to believe in Friday today, but now that it’s almost through, I’m bowing my head & washing my feet at the altar of the weekend. I found it hard to believe in August today but now that summer is breathing heavy on her last lap around, I’m already missing it, dogs howling mournful at the door to Heaven.
A bad habit of mine - was it just last week that T and I were on the beach in that instant afternoon? He pointed something out to me but I missed it. I was busy pulling his hands closer and basking in the sun. Right there, he said, his right arm over my right shoulder, his right finger pointing past my ear.
Oh! I giggled, I was looking way out there, I missed it!
You do that a lot, he said. The way he said it w/ a smile and behind that smile, someone who knows me so well.
He has caught my eyes on the horizon more than once and in more ways than one. A smile gentle. A smile loving. A smile wanting me now. Now is a word I write all the time to pester myself w/ the present. It is a joy to say, Now Now Now. There is nothing more real than Now. I often need the reminder.
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8/10: The sky dipped in red over the flowers, over the farm. Bats fly low. I am slung low on a Saturday while sunflowers kiss the moon. I watch every color that passes through the stomach of the sky, getting sticky sumac and milkweed on my fingers. August, you’ve still got it. Hot, hot when I wake up. Hot, hot when I make love. Hot, hot slung low and rolling up in the tall grass, parking next to rows and rows of zinnias. Wild sassafras on picnic tables. A hideaway of amaranth w/ an archway of gourds. The musicians are getting set up in the barn and we’re still figuring out parking. Welcome to Feastland, the first of its kind.
Today, I stood behind fruit plates w/ berries from the co-op and chicken of the woods cooked in butter. I gave out free cans of polar seltzer. I mixed it w/ milkweed. I mix pink lemonade w/ wild sumac. I am all bright red and juicy, all over my fingers as the field filled up. I worked for SPACE today and I am so glad I did. I sit now while it’s dark and dying down, the energy still in all the empty seats. Crickets and peepers and string lights left out here. The sound of amps rolling over rocks and dirt, of voices that plan, that congratulate, that coordinate, that laugh while we work.
We ran out of the good stuff before 7 PM and I became a most joyful soda machine. Everyone dressed w/ summer in mind, bouquets of flowers in their arms. The dancers in the field glittered. Little girls asked their fathers to chase them, which they did, every time. I drew the sign for mushroom tarot but never got a reading. I ate a falafel sandwich for free that filled me up. I wore my cowboy boots and pants I could twirl in. When things mellowed into periwinkle, I danced on the wind, left to explore where the moon winked behind the bar. An ever-expanding world to move around in. I carried w/ me an openness I carry always, or try to, try to, the best of me carries it but the best of me still gets claustrophobic and antsy.
All over, I see my friends - they’re not here but I see them, for just a second, all the same. The owner of the Jewel Box is across the way, soaking watermelon slices in negroni. He sees me and gives me a slice while we work. My manager swings by and takes the reigns, saying, You’ve gotta see the installation before the sun goes down. I get to the greenhouse just as the sky gets bashful, gets bold - the greenhouse w/ glowing silhouettes and floral imprints waving in the wind. Saudade at work. I get caught up in the stems of flowers suspended by string, straight up and down, staring at the dirt. There is a mirror nestled in purple dahlias like a portal. There is a hole in the lining of the greenhouse like a broken frame in and a window out.
Working behind the bar means I’ve already talked to everyone here, means the ice is broken, ice is melting, the cooler left open when I leave my post. Warm hands sticking in and grabbing what they want. I flow like water dripping down their wrists. I’ll admit, it’s been a while since bliss was untapped like this. My stream of self sweaty and flowing steady. I look up at the sky eating itself. The moon a chipped tooth. I think of everyone the moon reminds me of and I kick my heels up in the dirt. I don’t care who sees me dancing.
In the barn, we gather to watch HAXAN (1922), a silent film about witches. It rolls onto the big screen from a vintage film projector. I relish when it glitches, when it takes a couple minutes to adjust to our future. I think of M and text her while she is camping and away. I ask the universe funny questions. The musicians in black score this old film live behind me, spooky & surreal. The painted flags wave in the big open doorways while guests come an go and while bats swoop low. Everyone wants to see the weird old horror movie, to see what the tambourine is up to, the harmonium, the foot pedals, the kids in black, the Devil himself. A movie about manipulation, lashes, asses and questions of control. W/ my feet up, I watch the bats fly in uninvited.
August, I’d like to reintroduce myself, let me shake warm hand to warm hand, spiderwebs and sap. Get stuck to me. Hold on tight. I’m who I am meant to be, here; what we make of each other, the seasons and me. I drip further into myself in August, into something I can trust.
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8/11: Where were you while the fireflies ate the farm? While the webs were woven and unwoven, tension of silk from one end of the world to the other? Were you walking through a portal, trying to reach me? I’m in the sun even when it French Exits to another hemisphere, even when it’s all black over here. In the family that is my city, I pretend to be alone - twirl around to find fingers tapping on the glass, imitated by dragonflies in August. Visible tan lines until the leaves die. Then will be beautiful while Now catches its breath. I give what I want to give. You wouldn’t believe how much I trust you to hold me. I shrug, remaining whole.
I take my ancestors to the festival. I let the spiders drip from my ceiling. I call my top floor a garden, my home overgrown w/ weeds and I don’t believe in pruning. Patches of red and green on a Sunday. I slept late because I started dreaming again, when it is just after midnight and the cats are moving around my legs, when the little dipper twinkles low over the night blooms and my lover is away, up North, wishing for me on shooting stars. I weep for witches and crawl naked towards the moon. I lie trusting in linen sheets and in the tiny miracles of me. My spirit tills the Earth before I can sleep. I close my eyes, refuse to see. At 29, surprises are a golden thing.
I stopped counting hopelessly to three. I sing out loud the songs left in me. I want summer to be the last season I ever see.
The festival was dressed in red and green, white lace & slabs of pizza, banners in the breeze in the eyes of God. The Catholic church in the city is putting on its 99th Annual Italian Bazaar. August breathes hot on the chains around our necks. Gnocchi and chicken parm in the sun. Mary in a halo of disco lights. I almost buy a shirt that says, Pray for me, my wife is Italian. There are saints w/ dollars stuffed in their sculpted bosoms. Tent after tent of face painting and gambling, a painting of spaghetti for kids to stick their heads in and pretend to be meatballs. Wishes made in the sun, music in the city. I kept swearing in front of the children and apologized. We joked about drinking the holy water inside the church, we were so thirsty. T and C and I carrying around plates of red sauce and slices of white Italian bread. A Stephen Hawking book by the red, white, and green dumpster, dated Toronto, X-Mas ‘88.
I am the bread my grandmother baked and the prayers made on uneven seas. The blood that ferments a gorgeous purple-red. The risk beloved and born to me - a heartbeat bent in the sand, holding loose a beloved, lucky hand.
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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