this is just to say: And so it goes

17 February 2010

And so it goes

The same refrain.

I'm not running away from anything, I do not hide. Only the rawness which comes consolatory, bitter, and never sweet. Of course I did this to myself. I do not seek a place for blame.

I only wish it were not inescapable. That there was an end, a bearing forth of labor to some resting place. I only wanted love, love, in the unfathomable way I could not ever lay out.

I have caused you pain. I continue to bear pain.

Isn't it useless, to continue to want what I am giving up? I punish myself, and there is no healing time.

But actually--I am not miserable. I've made a place in my life; my body has adjusted to the weights of my press and pull. I've distorted.

Even now, I do not want to give up the dregs of feeling between us. However painful, wrought out--I am cruel, I think to myself first, and carelessly, to you. I have failed in so many ways.

I continue to fail.

It gets worse: while I can safely be content that I am actually writing (vs. not being able to write even a squint), I have never felt so numb, removed, and full of loathing for the foreign thing produced.

I understand that this element exists each time I write; but now, it feels different. I watch with a disgusted awe how easily the words fall in their disjointed jibberish array--and how I feel as though I peer at them from 3 glass rooms away. Who is this?

I don't know how to kill it. I can't hide it, because I have to keep turning in poems, to my embarrassment. I'm not in a funk; this is my daily living.

I, I, I apologize for the selfish egoism and drudgery. I've fallen to a very ugly, foul-smelling place.

Poetry is useless to me. I hate her because steals me and mocks me. Of course she is smarter than me.

I beat her: she is meaningless, and she reminds me constantly of what I've done. There is no rest.

When did we sleep?

Nothing beautiful has been by recently. And you know, I'm more comfortable and fascinated with the ugly depth--but this, this muck of waste--this renders me obsolete.

I want my Siberia. My exile. The frozen Trans-railway to rumble me foul. Addled. The ruined thing because it was dropped, shaken, placed in too warm a place.

My hands are empty. Peace, or calm, as I've called it, laughs at my body hung out with the laundry.

We are never clean. Forgive my self-deprecation, loathing, and boring drivel of disgust. I do not want solace, just to find myself again. Send her home.

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.

17 February 2010

And so it goes

(underbed stor)age