Sunday, January 11, 2015

and don't grieve

(Even at night, ice on the ground bears
witness to the blackness of those “secret hours,”
always awake to the cold
sprawl,
sky’s frozen lake.)


Think of all the things you cannot hold
and don’t grieve.


(“We’re still alive!” says Rachel.)


And don’t grieve.


Don’t grieve for young times when there was less
to fear,


as you casually hurled grenades at encroaching
future,


or for the dream you had of swarming sharks,


or for men as they
make love to bottles or
women as they
make love to bottles,


don’t grieve for the unearthly procession of grandmothers
that were brought in with the mail,


for fingers lost to machinery,
for hearts lost to false hearts, or
environmental mirages.


Oh love love love look how you cry
on the inside.


Oh love love love look how you cry
on the inside


and don’t grieve
(“We’re still alive!” says Rachel)


and don’t grieve.


Don’t grieve for Jason Molina
he’s not listening.


Don’t grieve for Jason Molina,
there aren’t enough tears on tap in the world.


Don’t grieve for him, once started
where’s the stopping.


.


And all the things you cannot hold
I cannot hold.


Mornings: morning when a scrub jay
hops on the desk.


Nights full of fear and nights
full of comfort.


Sacrifice your carefully curated objects
to the truer abyss.


The truer abyss is adorned with
gold chains that slipped down the drain,


jaspers and agates that fell off
the edge of the lookout.


Don’t grieve for the truer abyss,
in truest form it both hears you
and doesn’t care.


And love love love
look how you cry
on the inside.


And love love love
don’t grieve,
don’t grieve,
don’t grieve.


1/11/15

Wednesday, January 7, 2015

Love Is

LOVE IS
Love is applying for jobs that you will not love because you need a job.
Love is dreaming of an almost embarrassingly modest salary.
Love is considering and then considering not and then considering grad school again. 
Love is thinking "I need to learn the format" out of fear.
Love is avoiding the novel and choosing to watch a movie.
Love is wanting to watch a romance and somehow ending up watching Deliverance.
Which you have already seen four times.


Love is being unable to outrun or outfox your strangeness.

Love is sending pieces off and having them returned to your arms rejected.
Love is sending them off again and again.
Love is writing "personal" articles and fearing who reads them.
Love is having them published anyway.
Love is the $30 you make per article, minus $2.85- the Paypal fee.
Love is learning how to sell your art and put it in your gas tank.
I mean that.
Truly.
I think that is what love is.
Love is selling your art
and putting it in your gas tank
so that you can drive yourself to peer out
at the great old vista
That You Love.

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