People You Know By Heart: September 2022

Friday, September 30, 2022

—TIME ON MY HANDS COULD BE TIME SPENT WITH YOU

rust

the rust never sleeps even as your crib cries out from a room down the hall screaming save me I’m choking the doll’s hand caught my throat I can’t breathe I can’t talk and I don’t want to leave you this soon before we are able to share words child to father and mother

Wednesday, September 28, 2022

—SOMETIMES IT BE LIKE THAT

trying

I don’t know I don’t know I don’t and I should but isn’t that a sluiced blue-gray cloud floating oblong and looking at me side-long and isn’t that spectacular/bloated heron about to give birth on my dock or in my office chair and aren’t I as confused as I seem to be while God keeps on ignoring the good guys making me feel one million things but none of them beautiful or accepted or that I ever could be one of those lucky Fs/Ds even if I was trying like I’d put my life on the tie my life on the line my life my life wanting it that much and for what

Monday, September 26, 2022

—SOMETIMES THE CLOTHES DO NOT MAKE THE MAN

doll parts

everything I have

is yours

though it’s all

worn or broken

me a doll dismembered

neck and limbs

dislodged and dangling

from the attic floor

eyes upside down

staring at you askance

wondering why in hell

you’d bother taking

the stepladder up

to save me when

the kids are squalling

and the house is on fire

burning down

the whole block

Friday, September 23, 2022

—I SEE THE TRIGGERS BUT I CAN’T SHAKE ‘EM LOOSE

…Hello, beautiful people. (You are beautiful, and you know it.) Friday is looking at us, right outside our window, and the weekend’s just begging us to make something of her.

Let’s do it.

…I haven’t taught a class in a couple of years, but it’s on next month. No matter where you’re at in your writing journey, I’ll meet you there and we’ll make some amazing art. I’d be thrilled to see you there:

https://bendinggenres.com/writing-groups/?fbclid=IwAR1nX-4O-ylPV88PaatSJ-NCpXErWPsyvagnfWjTGtMR5acJqGe9zi9pCI8

Wednesday, September 21, 2022

—IF YOU HEAR WHAT HEAVEN’S LIKE, CAN YOU TELL ME? I’D REALLY LIKE TO KNOW

polaroid

good lord there’s a new dawn all around splayed like a nude without inhibitions posing so proudly fingers there picnic basket placed there a sheer napkin there at the theme of things but I can see the sun shining on her soul like gold and that’s really all I need to get by

Monday, September 19, 2022

—YOU KNOW, YOU KNOW, YOU DON’T

Please

I kiss you and

close every ring

sing you your

favorite aria

under my breath

I watch sullen clouds

smudge our bedroom window

with their swollen

disgust and disbelief

while a crow shimmies

on the too-narrow sill

nodding and nodding

as the moon decides to blink

which is when I at last

drape you in my arms

carrying you into

the quiet dark

like the night when

we wed and you

looked up at me

still breathing then

saying

Sing that aria

one more time please

it’s my absolute favorite

Friday, September 16, 2022

—ALL MY LIFE, I’VE ONLY BEEN PRETENDING

…That’s Izzy up there, the second (just barely) cutest dog ever. I spent three and a half hours rolling around with her, wrestling, and playing. She’s so full of love. It would be great if we were all like that.

…People keep asking if I’m going to get another dog, but there is no other dog like her, and honestly, I don’t think I’d be strong enough to lose one again, especially if she was even close to anything like Lucy.

…It’s human nature, when trying to commiserate and console, to make comparisons, but that really just makes things worse.

…I’ve got the Bending Genres Weekend Workshop today. If you’re a writer, this is where you should be. I’ll say Hi. And also, I’m teaching next month. It’s going to spin you out, in good ways.

I promise.

..."But once we have tasted far streams,

touched the gold,

found some limit beyond the waterfall,

a season changes, and we come back,

changed but safe, quiet, grateful." - William Stafford

…If I could stop embarrassing myself for a moment, I’d be fine.

…From a pretty hot woman on FBK, which I found funny, yesterday: “Wow, Desmond Tutu wants to be my friend. Too bad he died almost a year ago.”

...“I came to a point where I needed solitude and just stop the machine of thinking and enjoying what they call living, I just wanted to lie in the grass and look at the clouds.”

~Jack Kerouac

…I have never ever wished I was a lit cigarette until now.

…“Sometimes the greatest adventure is simply a conversation.” Amadeus Wolfe

…In Denmark, there are libraries where you can borrow a person instead of a book, and listen to their life story for 30 minutes. The goal is to fight prejudice. Each person has a title—“Unemployed,” “Refugee,” “Bipolar,” etc.,—but listening to their story you realize how much you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. This innovative project is active in over 85 counties. It’s called The Human Library.

…“I counted my years and found that I have less time to live from now on than I have lived until now.

I feel like that kid who won a package of sweets: he ate the first ones with pleasure, but when he realized there were only a few left he started to enjoy them intensely.

I no longer have time for endless meetings where statute, rules, procedures and internal regulations are discussed, knowing nothing will be achieved.

I no longer have time to support absurd people who, despite their age, have not grown up.

My time is too short: I want the essence; my soul is in a hurry. Not many more sweets in the package.

I want to live next to human people, very human, who know how

to laugh at their mistakes and who are not inflated by their triumphs and who take on their own responsibilities. This is how you defend your human dignity and move towards truth and honesty

It’s the essentials that make life worth living.

I want to surround myself with people who know how to touch hearts, people to whom the hard blows of life taught to grow with gentle touches of the soul.

Yes, I’m in a hurry, I’m rushing to live with the intensity that only maturity can give.

Not planning on wasting any leftover candy. I'm sure these will be yummy, a lot more than what we've eaten so far.

My goal is to reach the end satisfied and in peace with my loved ones and my conscience.

We have two lives and the second one starts when you realize you only have one. "

--Mario of Andrade

…Good God, it’s Friday already, so I’ll keep this short.

Thank you for being here, and have a fantastic weekend.

Tuesday, September 13, 2022

—SOMETHING IN THE ORANGE TELLS ME WE’RE NOT DONE

Untitled

You don’t know this, but I sang you an aria this morning while the moon broke through the sky with its crooked, blind eye, nothing in the world stirring but the sound of my voice bending the window pane back to breaking, remembering our last goodbye, while cradling your urn in the soft nook of my elbow where your head, your face, those lips and you, once laid, looking up with one last, innocent question.

Monday, September 12, 2022

–ALL WE HAVE TO DO, IS TAKE THESE LIES, AND MAKE THEM TRUE

the rain is unbreakable

I’m negotiating with my skin breath exoskeleton again while unbreakable rain stiches each slit in the summer sky You said I was unknowable said I wouldn’t recognize a robust love if it landed on my lips lids lenses But sometimes there’s nothing left to do but scour your flesh with a machete steel wool razor wire to find out what’s beneath, if there’s an odor, if there’s anything worth saving or believing in

Friday, September 9, 2022

—IT’S BEEN SEVEN HOURS AND SIXTEEN DAYS

http://ghostparachute.com/issue/september-2022-issue/my-therapist-is-in-love-with-me-again/

Wednesday, September 7, 2022

—BAD HABIT I KNOW, BUT CAN YOU HELP ME OUT?

...Hate to say that I’m lonely. Hate to say that I miss you. Hate to say that it’s dark in here, but it’s true.

…A crane stopped by on the dock, two days in a row. It was still and lithe, almost a living poem, and it felt like it meant something symbolically, though I can’t say what.

…“Hope really is a most depressing expectation.” Foster Trecost

…“Pain is only bearable if we know it will end, not if we deny it exists.” Viktor Frankyl

…But the sea

which no one tends

is also a garden”

― William Carlos Williams

…Unconditional love, and enabling, seem like they are close cousins, and that’s a very thin line to walk.

…“Poetry is a way of mind; the exploration of a tunnel, where blind albino fish seem to float in nostalgic pools of unremembered memory.”-Russell Edson

…“You know what that means, right?”

…Ever feel like you need to course-correct? Like, big-time?

…"They teach you there's a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art." Charlie Parker

…Sometimes two hours feels like a whole day. And sometimes it's two minutes.

…It just hit me, like really hit me, the other day, that I could die in an instant.

…I couldn’t sleep, so I turned us into art.

…If it’s possible to over-care, I’m your guy. I’ll wear your agony for months and years, until it disappears.

…“I’m most myself when I’m learning.” Ocean Vuong

…“Most things will be okay eventually, but not everything will be. Sometimes you’ll put up a good fight and lose. Sometimes you’ll hold on really hard and realize there is no choice but to let go.” Cheryl Strayed

…There goes my heart beating, because you are the reason, I’m losing, sleep. Please come back now.

…My exoskeleton wants a divorce, and I don’t blame it one bit.

…In another life and time…

…I really envy people who can just turn it off. What a gift. Cherish it.

…You always said I’d come back to you, again, everybody needs a friend, and it’s true, someone to quiet all the voices in my head.

…Sometimes a mini-concert in your office is just the trick. Other times it can be soul-crushing.

…It’s stupid to sleep two hours and think that’s okay, same as it is to eat one meal a day, and yet I do both often.

…I’ve tried Twitter one, two, eight, nine times now, but I am not clever enough for it, plus I could never post about what I had for dinner.

.…Been one of those day when I don’t want to come out.

…“Love at every level is deeply important to my identity. How’s that for dodging the question? Alexandra Grant

…Who knew Picasso was left-handed, or Lady Gaga, or Garfield?

…"We mourn the broken things, chair legs