Just gonna take this opportunity to tell y’all that I’ve started another blog for a project in which I am trying to write every day for the entirety of my 23rd year of life. It’s a little less formally poetry, so I want to do it as a separate thing. However, I will be reblogging daily here, just to maintain a presence. Hopefully, there will also be some things closer to poetry that will be just for here. 

/end announcement.

Letters #2

It always feels like we're wrapping up when we talk, always feels like there's more to say:

I meant to tell you that it's been one year since my tonsils were removed. And look at where I am: Essentially in the same place, but with so much more movement inside of me. When you asked me in your office later in the year, you asked if you needed to worry about me, I lied. But maybe you knew that. For someone who is so concerned about questions of the self, I certainly can be pretty clueless about my own. But then again, I've always kept a certain detachment from it, and I'm not particularly sure if the one I write about is real even. I suppose the same could be said of the real one.

But none of this is really what I wanted to write about. I just suppose it's (the I, the self) on my mind, and I'm sure you can draw the connections that put it there. I've been trying to write about it again, because I no longer find the conclusions I drew to be relevant. But all the same, I think the subject has rather lost its spark for me, however much I try to work it otherwise. But I have felt a return to my language since we talked. Writing letters, like you talked about. To various people. To you, but maybe to the sort of proverbial poet I have in my head, the one to whom I don't have to worry that I might miss the point I'm trying to make entirely in writing. I ought to go back to describing. shouldn't my day be enough for the poem? But my days are pretty much all the same here. And though I love the landscape of it all, and feel as though I came from its soil, it doesn't hold the words the way I want it to--and I can't quite place why that is.

But this isn't what I wanted to write about--I brought a notebook to the reading, like always, like the diligent student I keep locked up somewhere left of my lungs. But I didn't write down much. Their words felt very much to belong to them the individuals, and very little to me, the listener. And, as I'm sure, like you, I have my reservations about such a mode of language. but I suppose there is something to be said for owning that. i suspect that is something I'll explore as I learn with them, even with reluctance. Here is what I wrote in my notebook:

That was the difference for me. Tony's work felt rather indulgent, while David's was a different kind. He didn't need a vehicle to state... facts/experiences/states of being? I'm not sure how to categorize it. Perhaps there shouldn't be a need to say something. perhaps things should just be said. And is that description? Things exist without language and our selves exist without language. We just happen to put the two things next to one another, regardless of poetry.I hope this doesn't sound too grandiose. I realize the irony in saying 'there shouldn't be a need to say some thing.' i hope this can be read as observational.From the previous page in my notebook--a thing I had forgotten about writing, when I visited Lorine's cabin for the first time, with chuck and karl after our board meeting:

I remembered Chris Nealon's book from when I read, because Chris that was and is my ex, gave me his copy so I could have it signed. I had shoved the poem I was going to read in front of him, and told him to read it before it was read in front of him. He was all over the poem; At the time, I told him that he was language within it, it wasn't important that it came from him. or something to that effect. i'm not sure if that was the truth or not.

I drove home in the dark and the rain after getting drinks with friends. (And bumping into Ryan at the bar. He told me I should have stopped by his class, because he thinks his students are afraid of him, and I would dissolve their fear of him, namely by heckling.) In the dark, the large raindrops slid efficiently off my windshield, and they glowed red from other taillights.

none of this except the middle bit was really what i wanted to write about. feel free to ignore anything not of interest to you.

Letter #1

I wish I was better at saying, thank you, you’ve given me everything except the inkling of talent that lies somewhere in my chest, on the right side. That sounds too poetic, but I think that my language is opposite my heart, I imagine something more like an appendix than a necessary organ. The dog’s staring out the window at the birds scrounging for seeds on the ground beneath the empty feeders. I’m cold but the windows should be open, let in the air that does not bite for the first time this year. For the first time this year, I think I may be alright. I may be alright and there’s a place to walk to down the road where arrowheads are embedded deep into the marsh and beer bottles litter the coast of the river, covered over with algae and aging rust and the tadpoles don’t mind. The tadpoles won’t mind and I’m sitting at my kitchen table watching the dog watching birds and shivering just the slightest bit, but feeling satisfied nevertheless. I think you’re a real poet. And if not, you’re a real person. I’m a little fuzzy on the whole idea of being real in general, but if anyone is real to me, you are real. I hope that’s okay for me to make that assumption for you. Obviously, you get to take and reject anything I do not tell you. Especially if I don’t tell you it in person. I don’t care so much whether or not I’m god, still not convinced I’m real, regardless. But i don’t care so much whether or not I am because it doesn’t really matter anyways. I had my windows open for the first time this year, today. It was a bit cold still, so I climbed under my covers in my bed to read Invisible Man in my underwear and promptly fell asleep with the cool breeze of the window brushing over my face and chest and felt very peaceful even though i had so many things that I could have been doing that would have been productive. But I’m feeling free for the first time since the hell that was the last year of my life. The year that made me grow because I had crumbled so much there wasn’t anything else to do. I enjoy reading best when I’m naked, or when I’m in my underwear. I’d like to say it’s because I can take in the words while feeling like I’m just me and not any fabric I carry, but it’s mostly because I like to imagine a lover in bed with me, watching me with awe and affection as I take in language and process it with my beautifully poetic brain. And in this I made my own construct of a story while absorbing another. I’m watching a couple of robins fuck in the field outside my window. I used to talk about climbing spinal vertebrae like a ladder.

I think I might become something today.

In the shower, I couldn’t pull myself away from the way the whole of my being was in my head. Like I was self in vessel and the rest felt so alien to me, even if I did find the idea of bodies upon bodies appealing. My shins are in splinters from walking distances in ill-supported shoes.  I called him on my way home, said, do you have a tire psi gauge? and my stomach twisted gentler than it used to. Did you know that you left me today, a year ago, for the cigarettes and the bourbon and the shattering bones?  I waited so long that the hot water ran out. My naked form arched and shivered but I didn’t want to leave. I hadn’t solved the problem of self.  (Let me remind you, this is shit poetry.) Yesterday I told people who matter for some reason that my art is sloppy. That if I don’t let it all fall apart it’s no good at all.  Benjamin tells me the self is eternal, that his prophet rejected cessation without nirvana. Benjamin tells me the best part is the food.  Benjamin tells me weed throws him into existential crisis and I tell Benjamin I don’t need weed to do that. If I talk about art long enough maybe I’ll make some. I think I’d go streaking if only I’d be seen my more than dairy cows and box elders, of which I am the same. She no longer looks of decay; just soft and quiet form, shower shivered.  And the cold. I cannot stomach this cold so uncontained.

Notes on Niedecker-Century Readings on English Literature

It’s been difficult to write. I’ve been losing myself left and right and I’m not really sure which is which. I’ve been spending a lot of time being quiet, feeling my body press against the corners of itself as it draws in deep breaths, making itself smaller and smaller, as though i might actually become the speck of dust I wish to be. Is it so much to want to be a speck? Can I be so small? It’s not that I don’t want to eat or that I don’t hunger. It’s not that I want to be thinner or to be more attractive thereby. I just don’t want to eat. I think if I consume emptiness, I can finally become the blank space that seems so appealing. The man tries to make a space between himself and the water, forgetting of course, that the only way to create the immaterial in to immerse yourself in it.

I’ve appropriated the basement space. Every day, I clean my parent’s cat’s shit off the orange shag carpet because she’s too senile to use the litterbox like she used to. There’s something about this house that makes the cats defecate where they should not. My dad has killed the cat yet, but I expect he wants to. I just want to disappear a little bit. Make it so I can make art without wondering what the point of it all is.

I want to wrap myself in India ink just to see what will happen. I want to do it and not look like I’m trying to do black face, like that time I accidentally asked David if I could touch his hair, not because I wanted to know what black people hair felt like, but because he had just shaved his head and I thought it would feel cool, like the way my neck feels now that the undercut is in.

I don’t know how I can make myself less anymore. I don’t know how I can make myself into anything at all. I don’t know i don’t know i don’t know.

Lewis said that the capitalization of i is probably a sign of the narcissism of english speakers as a whole and I said i’d never really thought about it, but he was probably right, and if not, it certainly was an insight, or at the very least, an interesting factoid. So much insistence in existence.

Space is moving through me and my limbs are translucent, and perhaps my tongue too. And perhaps my consciousness too. I feel so pretentious about these things. But maybe that’s how it’s gotta b. It’s ironic, bitch.

It’s this sense of self-presence that I can’t seem to shake. That thing that he says I’m always self-assessing for the benefit of removal. In all things, removal. It is appealing to pull myself out of the work so entirely that everything becomes autobiographical. Isn’t this magnificence? It sparkles and it’s silver and bright. And you’re white and geometric and perceivable despite the little bits that droop and slip because the weight of things is essential to creating the thing’s own form. 

Once I determined that I was indeed god, I grew disinterested in my own deification. It’s the kind of thing where you pass focus when it becomes unnecessary. It is not necessary to work to understand something if you understand it.

-in progress #16

This is not how real people have conversations. We do not say things with so much innuendo that our voices become breathless with sexuality. Yes, I know that we are merely bodies and we drive ourselves with the ideology of limbs and digits. What an inefficient use of time. I might become a poem instead of limbs, but I cannot say if one is different from the other. They’re all worried about you and so am I. I think they must have switched bodies. This is genetic violence. Any family history of mental illness? I will make a list of one thing to the other and still it will count for nothing. How many things can we quantify and intellectualize before the time runs out? I can’t even look at you any more, to tell enough to say if we are made of the same things. What becomes identity anyways? I’ve passed a great distance for this. Are they not the same character? I have crossed a great distance for this. This is going to require a certain measure of trust. I keep saying that I don’t like people, but this isn’t true, and I make addendums for every statement made. I cannot say if I like or dislike this because I have no frame of reference. Perhaps I am not capable of love but is it really necessary? All things can be replicated with persistence. Do I need to know any more than you do? Sometimes fear should be respected. Sometimes fear should be irrelevant. I wish to understand that perfection, that harmonium. This is the first I’ve written of harmony. More often I find myself pulled by the necessity of dissonance. But when all is dissonance, harmony is a logical progression. We have a task at hand. I’ve had to amend the directive. I have trust, I suppose, for whom I understand nothing. Perhaps that is the difference. There is no extension in my emotion, only resolution. There was existence. There was lifeforce. I cannot be elsewhere while I am anywhere. There were ruptures. My mouth feels small, like I’ve lost more than just teeth. I have the chance for protection, for containment. I am curious to understand the oral history of burning the sky, the blood of the creator. A creation myth like any other. Here is the distortion source. What have we done, but pulled the moon out of its orbit, made ourselves to change our tides, looked up in the sky and found that there were only stars. Nothing to feel the closeness of celestial bodies. And this means nothing. On the contrary, I understand perfectly.

-in progress #15

And we who believe in the world so absolutely as this find condemnation in every aspect. We take steps as though they will find themselves in exemptions and dissertations. This is your trophy, hang it over a mantle as though death means something to you. We are trapped beyond. This is my training.

Detachment through perception. You might lose your grasp on what is real, but it is really necessary: I will cross the state for the sake of depth. All descriptions become the same when environmentally you become stagnant. And I believe in stagnancy with the whole of my being as of late. But who really cares to see so microscopically. Each of us has lost our own singularity. Each stutter becomes a collapsing form. We piled rocks at the precipice and became the cliff’s edge. We did not stare at the abyss; we turned our backs to it until our spines become rock faces. And here is this false spiritualism. Place god on the face of everything until you yourself can even believe it. Even you can believe that I am god if I say it often enough. I have lost it all. Every memory becomes an access point. Let us address the problem. I have replaced this sadness with my anger and I cannot know if I like one over the other. Luck has nothing to do with this. Let me give you my sage advice. my thoughts have been aged so thoroughly that they have grown resilient to mold. I am become self,  battered resilience, a mixture of distrust and distaste. The cleanser has pulled off the taste from my tongue and for the second time I am losing all though of wellness within this plagued mouth. However much I think that I can be less or fade into this background imagery.

-in progress #14

Had a great time with ya’ sister. What does that even mean? I told her I’d gone from staying in bed all day to discover interminable anger. So this is what it is to rage. She lifted my should blade from my ribcage and I could feel this sort of space that would have been pain if the space had not been there. I swear I’m not trying to make a metaphor. She dipped one hand under my shoulder and supported the rest and made a space between my bones. And I cannot stomach this anger. I want to rip my stomach out, or maybe an intestine. I’m shaking and cold and I can’t help but die alone and hate every melodramatic line that comes before. Oh I’m getting help alright. They’ll pull teeth tomorrow. Here’s the line about ripping wisdom from my head. Better than when they drained infection from y throat. I could write a million lines about pus and not one would make the final cut. I ought to make myself calm down. Breathe all quiet like. It’s more like uttering them out really. I told him language is inherently meaningful, gave my academic pitch for writing and it meant something to me, to convey an approach rather than just to make it. And why does it even matter if I say one thing and mean the other. He’s lying to me anyhow. Stop stop stop. You skin is still oily from the hour it was relaxed, when the animals in the ceiling didn’t make it crawl. Stop, let me look at you; see how you’re grown; see if I can recognize the child in you hiding behind the surgical scars. Are you going to hover over my art again? Tell me how I can make it better? Men who think their business is my creation. What would be better if I sent him a pic of my boobs. Don’t you understand I can breathe life? Every inhale and exhale is the anticipation of life and I strip myself naked every month out of sheer joy. And they told me I’m meant to love unceasingly. I grew these plants when they were just leaves. Cut them from the budding point and placed them in dirt and hoped that they would bear roots. And now I’ve stabbed a different kind in the kitchen, draped it over water and begged it to root.

I cannot stay here. Cannot remain so still that my body quivers, shakes, shivers. Claim these 7 women as your own. He tied up her knees and dragged her to the shore where she later escaped to the sea, only to be bound again. And no, this is not a Kanye video, although I know you’re tired. I’ll finish writing this book and then I’ll get down to writing poems.

-in progress #13

Sometimes you can’t quite say where the loneliness lies. I’m lining my eyes with a paint pot to try and say that I’m trying. Even if I’m just talking to myself. I’ve been imagining you in the backs of other women. Watching my body in the mirror, admiring the way my skin falls below the grip of my pelvis, attraction to the soft decay of my own form. I’ve never meant to make my body a goddess. To be worshiped, but the locals haven’t become civilized enough to see that it’s just parts and mechanics.

-in progress #12