Masterpiece
6/1: When I got off the bridge, I parked by a house w/ roaring orange chrysanthemum and I walked to the beach. When I woke up this morning, it felt later than reality. I dressed in a swimsuit naked as I was, inviting the sun. The beach was busy w/out being crowded, my friends here somewhere. My lover is still in bed, my lover changes his oil, my lover has leftovers for lunch. I meet my friends in the sun and leave cherry pits in the sand.
Saturday, a free thing in June, in June, tantalizing and green. I have wasted too many June days, calling the wrong things work and giving myself too many rewards. But I sit on the beach w/ friends and talk simple dreams. The clouds are slow in the sky and I am yapping for no good reason, uncareful in the sand, uncaring or unclear. When the wind picks up off the water, we sit up and wrap our arms around our knees. We remember tonight and tomorrow, we remember forever and ever.
I am dizzy driving home but I get there. Then it’s denim and helmets on, T and I taking the motorcycle along the back of suburbia, farmlands and swimming holes. I take blurry photos from the back, photos of shadows on the road. Shadows sitting close, helmets look like bobbleheads thrown back in a gear shift. It’s a photo I’ve taken many times. My lover and I, a horse of metal and exhaust. I like sitting closer than I have to. I like seeing us like this, all one thing according to the sun. T’s fingers on the gas and mine all a part of his middle, wrapped around undefined.
There is a lot I am thinking about, both real and not yet real, unspoken things or would be better left as unspoken things. Like how I can’t just sit around between work and work this summer and like how I talk in projections when I don’t have anything good to say about myself (I find it hard sometimes if I’m honest. I even find it hard to write for fear of solidifying). I see my distractions have gotten louder and my hands are sore from holding tightly a clock that could go off at any minute. Schools’ out and America is at the beach. I am digging. I am dirty. I turn the water on in the shower nice and cold.
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6/2: My greatest words die like grass in the sun. I am there now, sunscreen on my nipples and a hammock hanging between the three sisters. I am less magical now than when I started. Here and Now feels like getting used to the water, like I’m always here so I don’t need to be remembered. I am reduced to sweat and body in June. My yard all yellow; I graze unknown at home in the world.
I have to make time today to worship the house, where I sleep and eat and work and love. I got a drawing table for free a couple weeks ago and want to set it up by the window. Everything needs a little attention or else I’ll leave for dead. I’m fearful of the peace I find. I was convinced I would outgrow it. I thought I might be patient in the overflow. The seasons of my life that bend toward ease deceive me now.
I abandon the digital for the dirt. I am quiet and listening for my name on the wind. I am sweating the sunscreen off already but the breeze comes, the breeze comes. The body recognizes relief. What is actually for me? I am asking again. I turn green but for how long? I think I could be happy moving slowly as long as I’m not alone. I think I could be happy working body if I could keep my art for me. I think I could be happy giving back to my city, connecting and creating by the wild sea. I think I would be happy to draw this circle for a while as it grows. There are already blessings in the way I move, sensitive in the wind and uplifted by song.
Forgiveness is a yellow thing and I am eating slow, petal by petal, savoring sweetness. In the mirror last night I practiced discipline. And today in the sun, I sweat out what’s left of hopelessness. Last night, my body turned to jell-o, turned to Time, Saturday black and mild when the tide came in. I run to the same parts of my house when my eyes well. Wet and let go. A few loose seams in my dreams, in my favorite shirts, in my wallet where my future goes.
I don’t know if life is something I can stretch into but I’ve been trying, hips open in the dirt. My spine sprouts in a curve, a slope for rain, a gutter for dreams. Maybe I’ll burn w/ the rest of them, red raw around collar and covering my eyes pretending to be free. In ash, maybe. In ash, maybe I’ll find me.
What’s left? What’s left? Brown and red and gold under charcoal, art beyond art, life beyond reward.
I swing swaddled between the three sisters and I feel like I’m w/ family. I can hear, Where’s the baby? I hear, Over here, in the sun, God watching, they won’t burn. Three sisters, the oldest over my shoulder w/ enough heart for a whole forest, a forest like the one this neighborhood was carved into, oak by oak, acre by acre. I mourn the Earth by loving it. I respect it so I use it. I watched the lamb burn so I eat it off the spit.
Naked in the overgrown grass of my backyard. Holes in my favorite shirts. I am facing my own hardness, all my love tough and tarnished, how I can be thoughtless and quick to opinion. How I remind and remark often how I could always be wrong, could be the fool all along, and yet it simply makes me talk more. I’ve been working off script and I’m not very funny. Spit on my heart and give it a pen, I’ll try again. Slow and careful this time.
While the music / plays, let your body / be beneath your breath / Feel into the room / your feet always in / the dirt. Drink if your / mouth is dry. Hear / the city as she speaks / the house while it / creaks, the throbbing / wild airborne heart / clod of dirt as it leaps. Back to the fevered season; / sirens sweat and skin wails / into the night, the roguish / night, our world of / salt and our castles / of sand. This week / I think I’ll be on the / fritz a little, alone / and in charge a little / aware of my energy / when it is raw, where / it is red and pink / under here. Mud / dries fast in the / sun.
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6/3: I hide in plain sight, in the tall grass all green, feeling every breeze and allowing it to move me. I was a wish once, too, the dream of me, what my mother made, what made my mother insist on me. I could do nothing and still be a miracle. I think that’s true for everyone. My discontent is mine alright, a tool to motivate and a tool to punish. There was a wish made on this dandelion over here (below), its stem still strong, headless in the field. It looks at the ground and curls into itself, a small spiral purple and brown. One wish at a time, one life in one lifetime. I am grateful to be a thing that changes colors.
I came out in the sun before a busy week, before irritation could sizzle and pop, before the rains come - rivers overflow and dreams caught in rushing undertow. I share my bed w/ spiders, taking lots of little steps across edge of blanket, edge of cliff. I put my hands up in the sun when I feel threatened too. I move quickly in the sun. My web is new and ruined every time I return. Maybe that’s why I’m focused on building. My invisible thread. My own shimmering sunshine spot among the flowers. My own mouth, own hands, own silk. Weave, I do. Curl up and die, I do. Bloom and ripe and rot, I do, all the time I do. It is enough to take up all my time, to have me dreaming of the day that comes after forever.
Love outlasting lifetimes. Having a body that burns and turns into dirt is the most meaningful thing I can do w/ my life. I leave pieces of myself for you to build your nest w/, take it take it, hair and nails and skin for free. The only dream left is the weaving thing. To believe we are all thoughtless little gods in the green, powerful and forgetting, forgotten, our attention like the world looking all at once, red recording light and disco ball in the rain. The way we shimmer and bounce off the walls.
June, you were a taunting thing last year in the rain. I hope you understand why I had to step away. I am still gestating in the wet - never fully formed, never what I expect. I sob for reasons unchanged. I sit naked in an overgrown moment in the sun. Claim me, blame me, I look for rainbows in my city. Rainbows beyond bridges, beyond the sea. My body shakes and writhes beneath. I stretch across time and find grace, same me to same me. Spring turns to summer like lust turns into love.
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6/4: Body soft and in the center, the center, the bed, the room, the Time being for the time being. After bloom, it’s all green. I look at Magnolia tree only green, now and for the rest of summer. Eyes open wide to the sun and petals catch rain and the world grows lush over little graves. The world changed how it is constantly being changed. My mind layers the metaphors and I layer fringe and sweatshirt. I keep the precious things closest; my skin, my chest, my aching to match the world’s aching. I wear black to mourn, even in the sun, for lives short and full of hard work. I wear fringe and talismans of silver. I wear my family on my hands. I wear my hope on my face. I wear my poetry over my shoulders slouchy and spiraling. My sweatshirt green, a comfort piece, something soft for when the sun stops blaring.
I’m spending more time away from the Hologram. I play w/ what I have. I keep clothes in my car and finish up what’s in my fridge. T adapts his eyes to the night, becomes nocturnal. He is already over forty hours and it’s Tuesday. I stretch into my routine w/out him. My golden boy up all night and me, I’m what the sun makes me. It won’t last forever but will it still be green? After summer, after the work and the wilt, will it still be green?
Yesterday I sat in the sun in silence. I went out and gave away a few words to coworkers and visitors and mimes of authority. Then I found a bar filled w/ typewriter keys and a friend who was willing to wait for me. When I go a long time w/out seeing a friend, I work up all kinds of apologies for when we are face to face. Ancient shame all hot from the core of me, percolating below the dirt. My friends can be like the cool rain, wet and neutralizing, nourishing, saying, What could you have to apologize for? Or at least, Thank you, love you, thanks for saying something.
The sun went down in the West End and the red and purple lights came up in the bar but MC and I were still dreaming. Dreaming w/ her feels like tilling the land, not just voracious digging, not just dirt in my teeth and tunnels to nowhere. We are poets in black and white, our tough tough love and petals soft, growing overnight. We are rooted into ourselves under the cracked streets and swollen dirt.
She says love makes her weak, but I’ve seen her unfurl stronger after petals have been plucked, taken away and made into something else, stolen. I see her across the bar, across the field, in love but still wild like I have learned to be. We send each other songs on our drives home. The house is dark, but the night is warm. I lay in the center of the bed in the center of our room and rub coconut oil all over my body, soft on chest and legs and ass - it’s been so long so long. After deep morning sun, I feel nourished in another small way.
I listen to the first song MC sent me a over and over, finding something primal in it. A story of she, a song between then and now w/ an ache of diligence and moonlight. I imagine this song playing in MC’s cream apartment and in her new black car, in her ears twinkling gold. I imagine the energy of it thumping through the Earth and helping her move, helping her reshape this city, and I imagine it helping her celebrate. I listen again even this morning and feel the steady drum while I walk, softer skin walking over hardened planet. It does not belong to me yet, this song, these dreams, but there is room for me in this city.
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6/5: Dog-Ear, free to read for now
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6/6: The blue has been pulled from the sky like denim rubbed and over-washed. I woke today w/ gold curls on my shoulder and no alarm. T getting home early when midnight is early, sleeping when it is still dark, window open by our heads. Thursday, I’m still getting used to you. Send rain for my lover, he hasn’t gotten to dream in a while.
I watched the color run out the windows and when I was out of work, I saw lightning strike from the singular cloud in the sky. Stray drops fell like a kink in the hose. I go to the grocery store once and then back again, cowboy boots clicking on linoleum. I forget THREE LEMONS, TURMERIC.
My friend and I go to the movies and she brings everything, cherries and water in denim tote bag. Our cars parked together at the far end of the lot. We walked in w/ the last whispers of day. The theater big and all blue, Apple Cinemas, oversized and just down the road. J and I in theater 13 to see Challengers, talking through it and expecting more sex. We hoist our feet up on the little tables attached to the cushioned seats, my cowboy boots and her bare feet, holes in all of our favorite shirts and distracted together. All the good movies these days read like fan fiction. Our world holds so tightly to fantasy. What else are movies for?!
The sky is sweet and we are the last to leave, tupperware of cherry pits and cotton languid on new summer skin. Maybe Wednesdays are our days this month. This month zinging elsewhere and all over in the heat and meeting in the middle, stretching out, staying awake.
After the movie, I stayed outside in the mighty blue, this moody June. I sit before the three sisters and the grass is wet, from rain, from sweat. A prayer like I was taught: say thank you first, don't forget anyone, name-drop to God, and if you stay awake through every lover and thief, you can lay your Desire down at the big bare feet in the sky. This little light of mine, pressure and sparks. This little life of mine, beauty and static. These days in prayer I try to keep a short list (those closest, the ones I can't reach right now, not myself, not right now, not myself). I said I try but I can’t help but run long. We grow together more each year, our roots here in the dirt. My dirt in your dirt. My name in your mouth. My heart in your hands. Can you shoulder it?
I tell you I sit before the three trees in my yard in the indomitable blue just before the rains come screaming through (Though I felt them today, the rains, gentle and waiting, like friends seeing each other again after a long while). I tell you I'm thinking about you. A floodlight flashes on in the neighborhood, blinding right at me across the street, stage right. Maybe the world is all for me. Maybe the world is all of me. I am restless in multiplicity, need to move when the sun isn’t looking. I think of J and how she’s inspired me to stretch more regularly, more publicly. How it has made such a difference. I bend at the waist and stretch into my hips until I can breathe steady again. I root in and touch the dirt the grass the wet and there is light in my belly.
I think about my spine and I think about snakes and I think about dominos, one by one. Rolling up through my shoulders I am birthing a rhythm, the knot and the groan that unwinds it. In my head, twinkling like stars, the sound of a furnace, like the heat coming on in the winter. A knot somewhere near the center, base of neck northern spine. The blue held me euphoric in the shape of a star, five points and crumbling, burning out fast. I saw a single bolt of lightning today from the single cloud in the sky. Saw it hit just beyond Time and Temperature. I felt electric then. I feel electric now. Nerves like biting aluminum, I tell my body to put it all down somewhere. I keep my words small, only a few breaking through, a few: Allow, allow, allow / let go, lean in, learn patiently
The three trees where the woodpeckers climb and the sparrows perch and the ravens spy. I rolled my shoulders, chin to sky, stretched where it was all white noise. Right there, where the tension all collects in the tissue. Blind and dizzy for a moment. I felt freedom in my back where wings would be. They are dark in my mind, dark wings fleshy and dragging.
Neighborhood quiet, neighborhood black, birds asleep in dreams, in beds of collected things. All my metaphors of cages, my home of welded steel and rust in the green. All my daydream aching to fly when I don't even like to run. I think of suburban birds. I think of Paris. I think even birds need somewhere to rest and if it's not home then what's the point?
A long time ago, I was asked to define home for myself, to find it for myself. I looked at my collected things and opened a window. I walked into the sea and stayed sandy. I stretched the skin of my lover's hands, digging thumbs into muscles, massaging around the bones and when they felt strong, I let them hold me. I went out in my city and started talking to her like an old friend. I found myself in reflective things and felt myself disappearing. I keep a pillow and blanket in my car, crowbar, lotion, bundle of sage. An angel over the radio and sonnets bound by a friend, a blanket I am holding onto until I see M again. Allow, allow, allow. I am wandering wandering in the heart of home, expansive and unfolding. I am home wherever the sun can find me. Let go, lean in, learn patiently
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6/7: I fail and I fly and I flail and I fly and I think I'll wear black silk today while I let you down and I think the water is safe to drink and I think I can stick my tongue out to drink the rain if I get thirsty and I think I'm worthy, worthy of safe drinking water and my own space, my whole world under the umbrella of For Now.
I clipped peonies from the yard yesterday, bought a $2 vase to put them in. I sat in the G room and wrote in my little corner. The sun was on a long walk. My body was redefining comfort (what feels good now may hurt later, you know). T was home for a forehead kiss and a protein shake, gone again in construction orange and steel toe boots. My kitchen smells like cumin and cloves. I'm frying chicken. I want to be kept and carried in someone's pocket still, like fallen petals or sea glass. I start to think of my city like an open palm and I lean back into dreaming.
Fail and fly and flail and try; there is familiar magic brewing, humidity like a spy in the summer, all things felt but unseen. Spring falls in little deaths and there is love left, green and dotted w/ dew from leaf to seed to tree. Spring has proven something to me, a new tempo of belief.
I text my friend, I am home in the wet, love you dude. I am listening to the rain on a cashmere night, the rain a mist, thunder like barking dogs. I found music tonight in my city, in this trench coat that smells like 1970, like Paris again. On some of my favorite days I have gotten caught in the rain, soaked w/ love and sung to sleep. I’m still waiting on the heat to steal the summer, until all I can think about is sweat and melting. Hormonal Northern skies stay gray all Friday, 10 minutes of alligator tears and then weeping precious like mist, like beautiful world, beautiful world. My life all wrapped in silk and leather.
I go into work w/ pieces missing and I walk dizzy circles around once the shop was all locked up. Mystery lathered onto morning like coconut oil, lasting all day moist and ambiguous. I've become dogged about my Friday nights, all day circling the door, all night howling at the moon. There are more like me out there. I can smell them, smell sweat, smell blood.
I left the Soul parked by the water and smoked too quickly, my city wiping her tears on the back of her wrist. I stopped by SPACE when the rain picked up, to say hi and to look at the texture of things. A new exhibit of braided rope and wire sculpture, cyanotypes, machine sewing, nylon draped from the wall like glacier, like collapsing hammock. Grids hard and soft. Paracord cast in bronze and shadows half organic on the floor and walls. My favorite were Jesse Harrod’s wall hangings, like masks, like talismans. Come Inside reminding me of a bat w/ a wounded wing. On Sonice like a scarf left behind. Roped looped again and again, a deity w/ a floral crown.
The sky stopped spitting and I carried on West, the central nerves along the spine of Portland. The poets’ bar on the corner hasn't been a poets’ bar for a while. Typewriter keys and piles of books and painted walls but w/ the soundtrack of the hardcore scene from my youth and busy bearded bartenders w/ sailor tattoos and gauges. I went to find friends. I wasn't expecting the rack and racks of clothes, resellers in every corner, leather and vintage cotton and plastic hangers hung in clean rows, everything for sale. Joan was in the area w/ time to kill and it was so sweet to see her. My mind was still on textures, on soft suede and braids, of silk and lace, of bronze and nylon. I was a good bad influence again. Joan found a suede jacket that was made for her in every lifetime. For $40 she left it behind for now for now. Thoughtless, I was walking out the back door and popping my umbrella back up. I didn't mean to lead us away but it was loud in there, red and black and crashing in there, no money to spend.
We spiraled out, taking left turns wider and wider around until we were back on Congress though much further down. We stopped in that Friends & Family place that used to be that overpriced Vinland place, next to Congress Square Park. Joan had a Grandma slice and I pulled cherries from my bag, pulled pits from their sweet centers. We talked about the city and watching her change. We talked about watching ourselves change, going place to place, form to form, weave to weave. When we get to the end of the rope, we tie a new one on and keep braiding.
More wet walking Westbound and were back where we started. Now, clothes racks were being packed up and moved out and friends were posted up at the table in back. Joan went back for the black suede and I went back to feel the night fade. MC & Red were half waiting for me w/ a jar of secrets and a jar of advice. I stuck my hand into the wide-mouth glass and pulled out a piece of paper that said, BE GROOVY OR DIE TRYING.
MC had a little red gift bag w/ a big red heart, something she bought at the pop-up. She said, Look what I’ve got. All black & hanging daintily between two fingers, strap by strap, red light shining through thin lace. The shape of a body teased from gift bag like a snake charmed from a bamboo basket. Bodies move how bodies move. Bodies move like dreams, moonstruck by Mystery. MC giggled and said, I’ve always wanted to do that. I thought of dragonfly wings and nylon stockings and innocent beginnings.
Into red leather we leaned, the music got more and more aggressive until, Can we leave? Let's leave. The streets weren't dry but the sky was, my city and I all dressed up on a Friday. The curtains were open at Blue and there was a drum beat under our feet, something dark we couldn't help but move to. What the hell, pull us in, let's watch the night lean darker into itself, let's feel the animal heart of the city.
It was deep bass and bongos and a horn section. The guitarist wore his hair long and straight, in his face, like that vulture from The Jungle Book, like me if I didn't secretly trim my bangs. Electric organ w/ electric hands at the helm, grooving shoulders and magic fingers and yeah, two bongos right up front and a drum set painted to look like big round birch trees. Funk up from our feet.
The band had been playing for a while when we got there. After the second song built and built, a frenzy filling filling, the Trumpet announced, OK OK OK, we’re going to take a quick break only for the Organ to say, No we’re not! For the Full Set of Drums to beat out, You take a break, we’re still playing. Nobody got off stage, flame hopping match to match, wick to wick. They built it back up again. Unearthed dreams. Mystic stampede. The bassist was bouncing along all night and yes, something was being summoned so sweetly to our seaside.
Red and I were growling in our seats, hot and squirming. MC kicked pointy little heels in the easy air. A small room dark and easy to clap in. A satin curtain all psychedelic as the lights changed. The demons are on their feet tonight in my city, dancing and feasting, taking the weekend off, getting heated. The saxophones have an attitude tonight, we all do. The tenor, quippy w/ jazz. The baritone bold, boastful, balls of brass. The three of us, sassy and soaking.
Just when I think I am getting too comfortable in my city, I find things I've never seen before. The Mystery loves this city, loves the music in its belly, loves the mud it is made of. Alight w/ something like adventure even on the roads I am familiar w/. I am honest about what I know and what I don't. I no longer leave the past where I found it. I'm no longer pretending to be carved from stone. Clod of Earth, I am. Brown and green and gold, I am. In all places at once, I am.
I dropped Red of at the end of the road. I face home from the top of Munjoy Hill, down down down, right and winding out of the city. The rain waits until now to drop tears full and carrying. I play Wish You Were Here from the top, already onto a new dream. Windshield wiper night drive, slick and psychedelic on the snail trail out of my city.
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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