this is just to say: It's been a while

12 November 2009

It's been a while

Yes, of course there are peaks and troughs. I do not regret any moment of my time now. Here.

I don't know how the distance can be made bearable--but I can't not do it. There is no other thing which would be right.

I've been very fascinated by wounds. It's appeared in my last two poems. I feel like I've lost my momentum, but maybe I've written a lot for the semester already. Time for massive revision. Carving, honing--scraping what I can.

I don't want to ever stop.

I've found close friends here who feel like family to me. Aside from JJC, who is probably the most generous dear friend I've ever had, Justin and Natalie make Columbia and NY by extension, feel like a home to me. We share everything.

Last weekend, Justin took us to his parents' home in the countryside of Pennsylvania, and I basically ate as much meat as humanly possible, slept in the Polar Bear room, read lent poetry books (oh man, that sonnet with the quote, "karate chop of love")--rowed the boat on the lake (house sits on the lake), sat by the fireplace--

I got away from the city, and it was terribly needed. I think I'm going back next weekend.

Oh, I'm on a plane to SF right now. My eye wells with anticipation.

How could I ever feel wounded with these things in my life? Am I missing something? I don't know.

But I know what I have, and where I am. Every day, I get closer . . . to something.

I worry about the future a lot--what happens next semester, next year, after the program. My professional life, my E life.

I think things will be okay; I know this, but some days, I get so lost, I see nothing. I'm learning consolation.

I no longer have any tolerance for things which cause me discomfort, or are not pleasing. Acutely, I know this--time is too fleeting and silvery to be wasted on poor tailoring.

My asymptote yearns for certainty.

from "Euphoria," by Sina Queyras

1

Dear Regret, my leaning this morning, my leather foot, want of stone, my age
Old, burnished and bruised, my hair lingering, my hand caked, spongy as
November my dear Relentless, my dear Aging, your voice tinny, dissonant
As Stein shot through decades of war and Fortrel, cocktails on the hour,
Zeppelins over Piccadilly, bombing blindly in the fog. Dear Skin, dear Tobacco
Mouth my refusal, my merely geographic, my fibrous strings for you: your
Abundant wit, your lack of shadow and still joy nosing the air. Each moment
Stretches toward you, your dry feet: I carried them, pumiced and peppery
Laid them where regret is a biscuit thing to lean upon and sweeten,
My hour of you, my cursive thoughts, a pulpit beating under these ribs.

2

Dear Time, you swallowed us whole, swallowed us lovely, sharp as bones
Crimping sadly under foot my benign, my flotsam and crabs thin as leaves
Your smoothing, your sinking in. Mornings or mooring, or wallowing
Jericho: tapioca air indolent. I am still there, supple and driftwood, you lovely,
You loved me, your memory dark and west, thoughts like tugboats stitching
The horizon, you pulling me, my pudding, my thin crustacean, sideways
In the late afternoon, your gaze, having so soon forgotten the sharpness
Of mornings, the bite of your look serrating the hour: my treasures, all
Of them, for the pleasure of that slice once more, of our dangling,
You and me, the lot of us in some car, driving some hour, mapless.

3

Under a spiderweb, a tire, slouched: flat, sad-lipped, I think of Newton
Of the original apple, all of these clones since, all of these scentless
Descents. I shake my glass, shake again, melted suffixes tinkling; observe
All things natural: foliage unfurling like old bills, wryly betraying
Your habits, like the dog who digs and rubs, the dog who whines, who
Paws and circles, you trace. Why is pain so much better than nothing? Or
The mark of it more understandable? Why is saying nothing so much better?
Your one-liner like blossoms, uplifting, your currents strap me to air, yes
I guess there is a little texture up here, and oxygen pure as baby’s toes
Which if I recall, are sweet as kernels of corn, if I recall so long ago.

4

To arrive is practice, conversation or conversion, a story over a field
My Sweet, of concrete or whispering, furrows of a path no longer, not
Sure, was there, and snow combed in curlicues and dog ears a zigzag
Through January. Sure you are witty, but are you any less romantic?
In my remembering, I have undone all my beliefs, it is a luxury to lay
Unencumbered here, or there, the bones flexed with tendons, the
Spine like a seahorse, the heart far from a cliche unless beating is
Innocent, though innocence is not as supple as you think, nor as flexible,
Nor as perfumed, nor convenient, or even clean: between things regret
Gathers force. I remember that day: it was cold and the coffee tepid.

5

The small red balloons like thumbprints, waves green as the brush of
Cedar, the wind lapping your hoodie, blind strings tap the air, camera
Bobbing like a dog’s tail. Such lightness, the dog heading off, all
The dogs of English Bay angling off-leash. I would follow backward,
Lay old maps on your white sheets, so sincere, I am in earnest for you:
We won’t regret having not yet knit our acrid puns and jaded barbs, nor
Having the wind slip in under our belt loops, though I gently refuse
Gor-Tex, and you bet I will not concede the game. Those small red
Balloons like tulips in your eyes specs of amber, an amulet, an avatar,
My thoughts of you fully indexed, ready to step into.

12 November 2009

It's been a while

(underbed stor)age