—AND, YES, YOU SHOULD TAKE THIS PERSONALLY

 

 

Love in the Time of COVID

 

Let’s take off 

that extra layer 

that black mask

loosen every added thing 

and get started 

slowly / quickly

hips on hips

lips on lips 

mine then straying 

as they’re wont to do 

landing there and there 

and yes there 

It feels delicious 

to be unshackled again 

virus-free

just breathing naturally again 

able to remember 

reimagine and 

reengineer the 

taste of your tongue 

and your teeth 

and your (…) 

as you pause to 

bind my wrists 

with the wisps of 

your stray mask 

laced taut around 

the bedpost 

you smirking 

slapping my ass and

saying, Giddy-up, Boy,

Giddy-up

  

—LUCK CAME DOWN AND DIED ‘ROUND HERE

 

 

All This Life / Joshua Mohr

 

 

--The world is a search engine.

 

--How can he tell his son that becoming an adult is learning to live with your failures, learning to dodge these dying birds as they thump back to earth? How do you say that to your boy?

 

--Jake is a banner ad that his dad won’t click. He’s a pop-up. He’s something equally annoying.

 

--You don’t mortgage tomorrow because today is streaked in shit.

 

--She learned too young how unfair the world can be. How you should, under no circumstance, wonder if life can get any worse, because it always can. There’s no such thing as the bottom. Not really. You might not be able to sink any deeper but you can sprawl down there, exist horizontally.

 

--Yes, sometimes letters don’t have words; sometimes the image tells you everything.

 

--“My advice would be to follow your sweaty palms. See what happens if you live a life that makes your palms sweat all the time. See what wonders await you.”

 

--Protection is a wicked illusion.

 

--That was the horrible thing about signs: Often they were only legible once the outcome was clear.

 

--He’s a disaster shepherd. Their deaths are his property.

 

--Loving a drunkard is like running with the bulls.

 

--Pretty soon what you were craving became a god, Jesus Christ, whiskey, whatever. The only reason to live was to worship that deity, and the only way to show your devotion was to consume another drink.

 

--There’s something special about constructing your version of someone else.

 

--Sometimes there are disasters, sure, and afterward those scars are turned into something else.

 

--History is important, but so is tomorrow.

 

--He’s constipated. It’s like everything is dammed up behind a wall of worry.

 

--Having a kid is the ultimate risk.

 

--Human sadness is what’s heating up the world.

 

--Your. Face. Is. Great.

 

--Now, who the hell are you?

—I WAS FAR TOO SCARED TO HIT HIM, BUT I WOULD HIT HIM IN A HEARTBEAT NOW

 

 

Another Brooklyn—Jacqueline Woodson

 

--I know that what is tragic isn’t the moment. It’s the memory.

 

--Where would we be now if we had known there was a melody to our madness?

 

--Who hasn’t walked through a life of small tragedies?

 

--…the four of us sharing the weight of growing up Girl in Brooklyn, as though it was a bag of stones we passed among ourselves saying Here. Help me carry this.

 

--No judgement is a lie.

 

--Maybe she had already forgotten, the way years allow us to.

 

--And as we stood half circle in the bright school yard, we saw the lost and beautiful and hungry in each of us. We saw home.

 

--Whenever a good song came on, she swayed like waves being poured.

 

--She was sloe-eyed and wide-mouthed, a beauty that could have just as easily not been so.

 

--Maybe this was how it happened first for everyone—adults promising us their own failed futures.

 

--When boys called our names we said, Don’t even say my name. Don’t even put it in your mouth.

 

--Death didn’t frighten me. Not now. Not anymore. But Brooklyn felt like a stone in my throat.

 

--And she whispered how she was the queen of other places.

 

--When she showed up again, I’d introduce my friends to her. I’d say: You were wrong Mama. Look at us hugging. Look at us laughing. Look how we begin and end each other.

 

--One day my body would tell the world stories beneath the fabric of my clothes.

 

--And everywhere I looked, I saw glass shattering into truth.

 

--Who could understand how terrifying and perfect it was to be kissed by a teenage boy?

 

--I was fourteen and nothing mattered but hearing I love you and believing he meant it.

 

--When you’re fifteen, pain skips over reason, aims straight for the marrow.

 

--Once I came very close to saying, For a long time, my mother wasn’t dead. But I didn’t.

 

--This earth is seventy percent water. Hard not to walk into it.

 

--Two steps to the left or right or back or front and you’re standing outside your life.

 

—I’M NOT THE FIRST ONE WITH WOOL OVER MY EYES

 

These F**king Poems, Man

 

Another poem likes me

better dead, better embalmed or

keenly scalpel-ed, indecipherable,

drowning in lurid words of Spanish wine, 

while only the author or executioner

knows what’s just, and what’s not.

it’s funny or not 

to be tossed in the air

by a cyclone that doesn’t

know your compass or 

half your genome sequence,

limbs akimbo, then torn apart like 

a heart that wants too much.

And still, another poem wants me 

recused because poetry either

heals or crushes the writer underfoot, 

no warranty attached, no questions asked.

Like every poem I’ve ever written,

this one thinks I’m more popular than I am, 

that I know the answer to so many things I don’t,

that I have stories to tell which are

different from yours, though you and I

both know the half of it, don’t we?

—I FIGURED OUT A LONG TIME AGO THAT I NEED HELP

 

 

Milk Blood Heat—Dantiel W. Moniz 

 

 

--She hadn’t realized empty was a thing you could carry.

 

--“Baby,” her mother said, laughing a little, cupping her chin.” You don’t know what you need.” 

 

--The baby was the size of a Washington cherry when I lost it.”

 

--“I’m a sucker for beggars.”

 

--Nothing stays new, she wants to tell the women.

 

--There are so many ways to be filled.”

 

--And wasn’t that the most coveted thing? A pretty woman content to be near you?

 

--They gathered to pierce Frankie with their eyes whenever they could—another’s shame being the truest spectator sport.

 

--Later, everything tastes like something.”

 

--“Just stay a minute,” he barked. Why didn’t anyone ever stay?

 

--Her mother had let herself be shamed, like a bad pet.

 

--They couldn’t touch me. I trailed my laughter like a flag.

 

--It was an illusion, that stillness. Nothing ever stayed in one place.

 

--It was a relief to leave the bathroom, our apartment, cramped as it was with all our unmet needs. Our blaming silence. We never called each other anything other than baby, and now, like this. It was as if we didn’t have names at all.

 

--“You said it wasn’t me.”

--“It’s not. But then you make it that way.”

 

--“I saw what my face would look like if I died in surprise and fear. What my father’s face must have looked like. There’s nothing scarier than that.”

 

--Snow nodded the way we do when we doubt what someone else has said.” 

 

--I started to deny this, but stopped when I realized what it meant about me—that I could be both a victim and a perpetrator of a gaze.

 

--My body felt made of stars.

 

--Easily, I could imagine him as a lover, and what that quick pink tongue would do.

 

--He was so familiar, so good at it. Billie pushed the dog off the bed and closed her eyes, unbuttoned her jeans to give him more freedom. Lifted her hips. Almost let her conscious self fall away. 

 

--"You learn to be who you are, or you die as someone else. It’s simple.”

 

--"Isn’t this how all the trouble started?”

 —IN MY MIND, YOU’RE ALWAYS THE BRIGHTEST PERSON IN THE ROOM, THE ONE EVERYONE SECRETLY LOVES, AND WANTS

 

 

…I don’t normally post out of order (every M, W, Friday) but I need to get a jump on Monday, because this is going to be a busy week.

(Also, it’s close to midnight right now, on the cusp of Monday, so I'm not exactly that out of order.)

 

…I loved the book below, the carefully crafted stories, the lines that slay, the subtle and not-so-subtle ways she allows you into her head and heart, the thrum of danger.

It taught me a lot, for many different reasons.

She’s a writer to watch, for sure.

This is Part One of my favorite (dog-eared and underlined) bits…

 

 

Milk Blood Heat—Dantiel W. Moniz 

 

 

--I feel blurry and grateful—how much love it takes to hate this much.

 

--The lights are off in the bedroom. I am six and the dark is a jaw around me.  

 

--“Life’s a circle, you know? You can’t go anywhere someone else wasn’t first.”

 

--But Billie wasn’t fooled; she knew that, worldwide, money was the cult over all things, no goodness or sin excluded.

 

--Certain of her own complicity, Billie got into the habit of picking up stray litter in the parking lot. Every day she checked for dead carp.

 

--The sky ahead of the road was streaked purple and felt a little like driving into nothing, made them feel immaterial and a little spooky, like maybe “self” was a myth.

 

--What would the world be now if women had been allowed more freedom to wonder?

 

--Even the most basic scars no longer faded entirely from her skin.

 

--“You think anyone really knows what they’re doing?”

 

--“Sorry,” she mumbled, hiccupping into the bowl, but she knew that it was only a word, that it excused nothing. 

 

--Colette bent over Billie and rubbed her back and Billie thought, maybe even anger was a kind of love.

 

--Billie considered that maybe anything could be a portal—a black hole, a body, a choice.

 

--He sighs and it sounds like a storm.

 

--This always delighted me, how extraordinary things could look outside their flesh.

 

--She said gratitude kept her young.

 

--I heard, and thought, If she’s still a girl, when can any of us be women?

 

--I estimated the number of boyfriends she might have had over the years, the many children she had swallowed as seeds. How painless. I wished I’d been eaten, too.

 

--She was laughing, unaware she was about to swing into the sky, about to be lost, a pinprick among clouds.

 

--She told us you could be a ghost in your own life, and sometimes that was worse.

 

--And when I blow out my candles, just know what I’ll be wishing for.

 —WHAT I’D REALLY LIKE DAD IS TO BORROW THE CAR KEYS, SEE YOU LATER, CAN I HAVE THEM PLEASE?

  

                           THE THING ABOUT BEST FRIENDS

 

       People laugh when I tell them that one of my best friends is fourteen years old. 

       They think I’m pranking. Making an odd joke. That maybe I’m toasted and my edges are fraying.

       When I tell them that I’m not, that I’m sober and serious, they chuckle again, but in a sort of stilted manner, which right away lets me know they think I’m strange.

       But I get it—fourteen and my age—that’s a heady differential. What they’re thinking is:

       How would that work? 

       How much could you possibly have in common?

       What would you even talk about? 

       And always, at the end of it, they throw in something like, Anyway, you know he’s fourteen, right? And you’re what, 95?

       (Not 95 yet, but getting there, hopefully.) 

              That best friend in question is Dane, my nephew, a fascinating person who I adore unabashedly. We’ve known each other his whole life-time now, and, so far, it’s been pretty great. Mostly, it’s been epic. He’s him, and I’m me, and we connect.  In so many ways, we’re a lot more alike than different, despite the chasm of years.

       The thing is, this guy makes me feel like I’m fourteen a lot of the time. Or younger than that. Or, he makes me see the world like a fourteen-year-old does, which is infinitely better than an adult’s view of things, mired in network news, which only portends catastrophe and end times.

       Some of the hardest laughter moments I’ve ever had have been with him, with Dane, and the majority of those were before he turned fourteen. 

       Last week, we saw a movie. Afterward we had an early dinner and for dessert, we ate a mountainous Almond Joy Sundae, which means I wouldn’t need to eat again for a week. During that time, we laughed/cried about JILF’s. We reminisced regarding our anguish together at a screening of “Roadrunner,” the documentary about the late Anthony Bourdain.

       He told me secrets and I told him some of mine. 

       I think that’s what best friends do.

       We share music. His knowledge of music—every kind—is off the charts (the other day, he showed me some freaky Incubus videos/songs I’d never heard of, or seen).

       As with all best friends, there’s no fear of judgment between us when we share things. Or when we mess up. Or when we don’t completely get each other.

       What we have together is safety. An easy comfort.

       I also get a hard time from people when I say I have 7 best friends. “How can you have more than one best friend?” they’ll ask. 

       That’s a fair question. But I guess, in my mind, I think a best friend is the first person you want to share things with—the good news, or bad news, or something exciting, or interesting, or oddly curious—that comes your way. 

       They’re the first person you call, or text, and for me it’s this group of seven I feel very, very lucky to have. And Dane, my nephew, just happens to be one of those. 

       Why should I care that he’s only fourteen? Sometimes he sounds smarter than any adult I know. Sometimes he brings clarity to things too cloudy for me to see or understand.

       Whenever I do text him, he gets right back to me. (I think best friends are those that text you back sooner than later, and if they don’t respond at all, well then, they’re not really your best friend, are they?) His replies are always authentic—funny, or concerned, or sarcastic, sometimes with inside-joke verbiage only he and I understand.

       For example, on his birthday last year, he sent me this: 

       “Holy chair. I’m chairing thirteen! How the chair did I get this old? I can’t chairing believe it!!”

       In the Anthony Bourdain documentary we saw together two months back, there’s a part where a friend describes Bourdain as this tremendous lover of all things art—music, film, photography, books, architecture, painting—and whenever he discovered a new piece of art, the first thing he wanted to do was share his love of it with his closest friends. I’m the same way. Sometimes the art is really obscure. Sometimes it’s dark or bitter yet riveting, as with this song I’m now obsessed with:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzQ6g1j_pdI

       Dane may not get what a “snuff video” is or what “Bizzies” are, or what "WDP" means, but he got the gist of the story, the rancor, regret and angst. He appreciated the artistry involved, which I did, too.

       And then, right back, he sent me a video/song he was presently enjoying, though totally different, but I loved it as well.

       That’s friendship—sharing something you love with someone who you feel might find value in it as you do. And if they don’t love or enjoy it in the same way the sender does, that’s okay. The sending of the song/video was an expression of love, of trust.

       And that’s Best-Friendship.

       The thing about best friends—and, as you know, I believe you can have several, but not too many, because it takes a great deal of time and effort to be a best friend—is finding, savoring, and furthering expanding, your connection.

       It’s understanding how rare the relationship is, fortifying it with genuine love and attention whenever possible, and reaping all that joy together.  

       In fact, here’s a text I just got from him as I was writing this and we were giving each other chair…

       “There you go, chairing with me again…”