before the belly of the document

Today is designated as my sacred writing day cuz I meet with Marie tomorrow & I’m not sure how I feel about where my thesis is at. Okay, I guess. It is where it is, where it only can be right now.

A theme that keeps popping up lately has been the role of the subjectivity of the artist– the artist’s I. My I. Do I attempt to make myself consistent? Am I building a whole? Let me preface this exploration by saying I feel it is irresponsible not to question who the I of yr poems may be. Does it blaze through, as a false whole? How does the organizing principle (the I) of yr poems deal with past selves.

So many poets I love posit this I, this self-making, as phantasmagoric– ghost, fortunately or unfortunately, embodied. I’ve grown to prefer looking at the I as an art project, a construction, a Christmas tree. The only issue I see with this is who is in charge of the building? Who or what has the agency to create? This is where I like my understanding of Spinoza– all complicated intersections, collisions in time….

I feel like I do this well in poems about the dead. My dead Daddy poems. This may work, ironically, because he is ghost, ghost that I give form in my poems…

am I doing as much for myself? How can I show the seems of this without deadening emotional response? This is important to me…I’d like my poems to be a contemplative space, but what I’m practiced at is creating feeling. This requires, so often, working within the familiar tools of language. It’s like writing a symphony (duh)… creating expectations with language, subverting them while not breaking outside of the language. Disruption (whether by drawing attention to pronoun trouble, or the problem of the typical personal mythology of the first book) can often draw the reader (by which I mean me as a reader) out of the emotional space into a thinking space. It’s somewhat Brechtian– allowing the audience to have an intellectual reaction, to incite change…

But what do I want from my poetry? Is my aim, ultimately, to have my reader question her/his/hir I, their subjectivities? While that may be an undercurrent of a lot of the non-lyrical poetry writing I do, I’m not sure if my poetry has broken into this. It really is a lot more about imagination– the I may be ghost, construction, coincidence, but because of this, because we are not bound, we are free to imagine ourselves, imagine difference, different lives, different ways of relating to one another, of communing with the dead, of questioning the boundaries of ourselves& how we conceive of ourselves, of seeing who effects this.

I have this conversation with myself about my work, but does this need to enter the poems? & how? It would be a risk. A huge one. Part of me wants to say it will appear when I’m ready for it to, that I need to trust the visitation cuz that’s how I do the writing that is most helpful for me, that challenges me to question how I’m representing myself  to myself & relating to others.

Challenge vs. Happiness is a mighty false dichotomy, I’d like to think…

***

holy shit I want an egg sandwich with sausage. probably fake.

***

Is it irresponsible not to write myself as a ghost when I feel more like a projector?

Sisotowbell

Today, I took care of myself by sleeping in, cleaning my space with lavender-infused vinegar, & drinking copious amount of tea. Reclaiming order.

Yesterday, I took care of myself by eating (mostly) healthfully for the first time in weeks, walking home from work, & asking for what I needed. I dealt with my fumbling. I proceeded to be open & kind to someone I find it difficult to be open & kind with, & the evening actually ended up being fun.

***

I probably needed to be messy for the number of days that I was messy. For whatever reasons, be it my relationships, another one of my close friends getting married, my dirty apartment, disorganization everywhere…

now I get to go through that beautiful yet challenging process of rediscovering peace.

Not a stagnant peace. That’s not what I want– I want challenges, growth, discomfort, but all from firm, steady foundations. From a sense of inner calm, that I’ve tasted & know I can have.

Relationships are kind of like poems. Architecture. Form. They give shape to phenomena– feelings, desires, challenges– that are already there.

I could go someplace interesting with this if I felt I had the energy, & maybe I do…

The “standard” heterosexual relationship is a received form. History, society, etc. have provided its why, its endpoint– marriage. The relationship ends up serving roles, tasks get done, some needs are fulfilled. Marriage can be said to have its own list of purposes. Received. People are likely to augment, if they don’t get caught up in the words, in the history of the words & the meaning that they create. Couples end up living out the whole history of marriage. Everything they’ve read has the possibility of shaping husband or wife. It’s there, somewhere.

The thrill of queerness for me has usually, in part, been about radical possibilities in relating to others. I can’t remember the last time I wrote about this, though… was it two summers ago? In creating new forms, much beyond woman/woman man/man. With Devin (though he would not pin this one on queerness, per se, more on his nature, whatever that means…), this became starting a conversation about why we are doing this, what we get from one another besides safety & silliness. Our relationship gives us a space from which we can question anything. A space where we can be vulnerable & cultivate a love that illuminates the love all around us. That lets us peek into the big-L Love. A space that pushes us to grow, to take risks. We share a commitment to personal growth.

Lately I’ve been developing what could be considered another new form, another creativity in the space between my friendships, some that deal with repressed emotions/feelings/ideas, etc. & some that have never had to, & my monogamous sexual/love relationship. When a. & I talked about what we might do from the point of acknowledging our mutual attraction to one another, we decided to create a space in without repression, within which we can be intimate, for the purpose of challenging one another. Personal & artistic growth. I don’t just want our form to be radical, but our content– I want this to be a space from which I am pushed to the edges of possibility, where I learn to handle ellipsis, the unfinished, the unsaid/unsayable…

I have to admit that the roots of this…this is what I had been getting from her, anyway. We’re working with things that were already there. It feels powerful to put intention behind it. To make it something.

***

I listened to every Joni Mitchell album I own while I cleaned today, & I am missing, of the pre-jazz experimentation albums, Clouds & Court and Spark on vinyl. I would like them.

Going home next weekend. Thinking a lot about what I need from my mother/daughter shopping excursion- new winter jacket, black boots, panties, a welcome mat. I want a compost machine for Christmas.

***

Too tired to process much more. I miss Devin– I’m in the mood to spoon with him, for his hand to be on my breast. Thanksgiving will be wonderful (it’s creeping closer.) I need to buy my Christmastime ticket, too. & to figure out how I’m going to afford to pay to ski.

Sleep now.

I / :-) / Rhubarb Pie

I have ten minutes to dislodge whatever is lodged in my tired head that is preventing me from re-writing.

Dislike that my art hasn’t become a place to question subjectivity– in the meat of it– in fact, my speaker tends to be this fairly consistent construction of how I imagine I might want to be if I were consistent– some badass, some tenderness, a huge dose of how I might want to live my life. All personal mythology. I write a character…

I want to take a nap rather than go to this talk & I just had two cups of coffee& I wanted to run today, not to rip a run in my only decent pair of white pantyhose. I’m getting fat. I’m falling into some unhealthy habits. Had a necessary conversation with Claudia last night which means I didn’t call Devin until after midnight which means I didn’t get to sleep until after 1, rhubarb pie in my belly. Weird dreams of running into my middle school band director in a lingerie shop. He once called me high-strung. To my face. As I cried in his office about feeling overextended. 13-year old me.

I’d almost like to claim I’ve learned it isn’t worth it– to overextend, to work miserably toward a goal that will probably not be as rewarding as working & being satisfied within the process.

***

Am I happy now? Is that what I’m doing now? If I don’t write about whatever invasive thinking I observe within myself, does it make it more or less real? Do we act within patterns because it feels safe, illusions of consistency? What happens when two patterns intersect, not exactly bad ones… but what risk to take? If any? Or build something new, always my favorite answer– the thing I derived most from queer studies, queer living. That might be what I’m doing now, I hope, but how…?? Everyday blogging? Writing this out until something comes to light. Meditating until something comes to light.

***

Have to go to the talk but will probably not run & try to write instead about not running, maybe, or hopefully about beauty & sex/desire or my Spinoza self portrait or something else entirely.

“trouble” sounds funny. trubble.

Maybe its not in our words but in how our eyes meet. Not within whatever parameters we set but outside whether we set them or not. We is a dangerous word. Perhaps this is better suited to an email, a conversation. How verbal the conversation? How something else?

***

Ate an ab&j sandwich for breakfast today because I didn’t feel like washing a cereal bowl. I’ve had four pieces of bread today. I feel paralyzed, again. Maybe a list, a goal, something would help? I do have to write today. For hours– it just needs to happen.

But I’ve been ignited… time is passing with this weird new bravery & I bet I’ll have a dozen poems to write in a month or so. I wish today.

***

Maybe, sometimes, I should just record what I do. Write a poem every time I enter a train. Make sense out of my interpretations of events before being so impulsive & abstract.

***

Today I want to see what I can’t see in all the versions of myself. Is this desire for control, or simply perspective, or a photograph (that I would not be able to interpret in the same manner as this blog.)

something but nothing more than wonder

I feel like I’m in the midst of processing so much & enjoying so much & I’m not sure about making it as comprehensible as language. Parts of it.

***

That’s what the beauty poem is “about.” Fuck about. That exercise, my response to it, silly Poets’ Companion, fucked me up. In ways I needed. Of course in communion with other things. The timing was right. So many years of history just trickling into now &  I will this life so it makes sense.

So much is about sex & desire & the ways I live with the extra-verbal. I’m not sure to what extent I serve words or words serve me, but it’s becoming clear that I funnel every non-verbal, abstract inkling into the sexual. Cuz I know it & like it & have experienced it as a surefire way to get close to what’s real, beyond this fancy skeleton-ing I do with writing….

I come, & presume others come, to this intersection, this instant through sex that isn’t beauty or adorable or even spiritual. To talk about it is to reduce it…

I often feel like I could have sex constantly because with it I am getting at something I only otherwise touch in meditation or sometimes in a connection to someone that in the moment I feel a need to feel safe from.

But what isn’t sex that is this? How else can we be intimate, & how else can things be expressed through the body? What are the parameters of sex, not-sex, un-sex? Do I need to know?

I’ve recently started going to dance parties…a few… queer ones. I’m not sure if the dancing (I am an awkward dancer) or the multiple contexts of the dancing make it what it is, but it does have some of what I like about sex in terms of… Use of the body? The body as a conduit? (Fuck, I don’t know). It is not only the realization that meditations on beauty led me back to sexual/desire that has me reconfiguring how I channel this…(thing)…impulse…I can’t verbalize. This is not a conscious de(un?)verbalization…

***

I don’t know. I’ve shattered all the good china lately & like how the mosaic pricks my carpet but don’t know if it can stay that way. Not sure what I’m becoming attached to, if anything.

Don’t want to be vague anymore, don’t know how not to be right now. This entry is a stillbirth.

***

Maybe I’ll talk about Brenda Shaughnessy after a pajama break. Or maybe I’ll just quote her again, all the passages that have me crying on the train.

All my guards, one by one they die & I’m not sure… control? It would be something else entirely if I didn’t like this, if I felt more confused or troubled or misdirected.

Wonder & possibility instead.

***

(i wrote this last night & then my internet crapped out)

reminder (remainder?)

…

You must stack stories from the foundation up.

From the sad heart and the feet tired of supporting it.

Language is architecture, after all, not an air capsule,

not a hang glide. This is real life.

So don’t invite anyone to a house that hasn’t been built.

Because no one unbuilds meticulously

and meticulosity is what allows hearing.

Three millions Richards make one point.

I hear it in order to make others. Mistakes.

- Brenda Shaughnessy, from “One Love Story, Eight Takes”

***

I am falling asleep at my desk.

I am wondering when I became so openly critical. When this became okay.

When it became okay to whine again rather than just stock all complaint in my chest.

Balance?

better // different

I love the concept of weekends that force me to see where I’m not yet living the way I intend, boldy throwing about words whose definitions need to change once I hit a resting place for them– always inadequate. The weekends themselves? Difficult, but immensly satisfying.

What does it mean for me to be transparent? To make assumptions? To bust into someone’s business? To not shut up? Do I need a policy? A map?

Feeling silly, or messy, or like raw material probably never ends– peace comes at the acceptance of these…

***

Always questions I’m not sure how to ask.

***

What am I not questioning? What am I justifying to myself? Am I looking for a place of comfort, or a challenge, a way to better build my life?

I think (hope) the latter. The richness of the past two years have shown that this way, in effect, is a practice, its cumulative… I feel more now, I handle struggles, my own intense propensity toward self-consciousness, better than I did then. More moved by art, by sex.

Better or different ? In this case, better. Sometimes, it’s hard to differentiate the two. better =/= different.

***

Why not be messy? A poem can dwell in possibility, build something ideal. I’m not a poem, I’m a person– everything I say or do will not be poetry, my immediate responses may conflict with my ideal ethics, initially, because it’s a practice to internalize these things, to own them, to truly become them rather than just strive for them.

Sometimes I still wish I could be a poem.

***

At work right now, exhausted. Devin got here & it was much more exciting than I had anticipated. Honestly, I was worried & nervous because I felt unsettled & distracted. Somehow, the intellectual distance we can grant to things with physical distance disappears when the person is right there, saying the kinds of enlightened things that drew you to the person in the first place.

I don’t know why I sometimes feel the need to justify my relationship with Devin to myself. On the surface: cuz he’s a boy, cuz he’s young, cuz we don’t have an identical knowledge base. These are obviously okay. When he’s here, when he’s not, I want him, to go deeper with him…

I’m starting to believe, in an emotional, not strictly intellectual, way that love (perhaps intimacy perhaps vulnerability) increases when shared… I’ve said this before… when Devin & I share our love, are open with one another, honest, committed to personal growth…I want to share more love with others, be more open with others, grow with others– if we’re doing it in a way that isn’t about comfort or attachment. I even want to say hi to people walking their dogs on campus in the morning. I can then bring these things I experience with others back to my relationship with him. We all get to be closer, more open, something…

My benefit? Not just living up to some idea, some policy, but a satisfaction that continually pushes up against something else…

to preserve

My cousin Em read this poem at my grandfather’s wake & it has been stuck with me since. D.H. Lawrence always knows when to appear in my life…

IMAGE-MAKING LOVE

 

And now

the best of all

is to be alone, to possess one’s soul in silence.

 

Nakedly to be alone, unseen

is better than anything else in the world,

a relief like death.

 

Always

at the core of me

burns the small flames of anger, gnawing

from trespassed contacts, from red-hot finger bruises on my inward flesh.

 

Always

in the eyes of those who loved me

I have seen at last the image of him they loved

and took for me,

mistook for me.

 

And always

it was a simulacrum, something

like me, and like a gibe at me.

 

So now I want, above all things,

to preserve my nakedness

from the gibe of image-making love.

 

 

D.H. Lawrence

silverware still to wash

The best thing about Joni Mitchell’s Ladies of the Canyon is not “Woodstock” nor “Big Yellow Taxi,” nor even “The Circle Game”– too preachy. The best thing– her moans during “Blue Boy.” Devastate me every time.

intention // action

Have a lists of shoulds that I refuse to let dictate my evening. At least wipe the coffee spots from the floor. At least do the dishes. At least clean the toilet…

At least write poems, work on my thesis. This is where I am, though. Cold, hands dirty with dinner than I couldn’t help but pick at with my fingers. Compelled to chronicle, especially the horrifying article I read in the New Yorker today…

how could I not know that this country sends robots to assassinate people? Our president considers daughters collateral damage. Reading about the rate at which we detonate drones makes me feel disgusted. I drooled all over my issue today, had to sleep to escape it, or fully process that we have so adequately stripped entire countries of their humanity. Assassinating people in countries with whom we are not at war.

I don’t care about the reasons, for me this is never okay. That other layer of protection, that it doesn’t have to be a human that fires the weapon. It’s like eating meat, in a way– okay cuz you don’t have to kill the cow yrself. The cow or the terrorist, the father & his wife & children.

How are we not considered terrorists? Can we make this connection?

While I believe it is good to live with intention, intention cannot be everything. Good intentions can lead the CIA to knock-off someone who acts, according their code, with bad intentions. Still, intention seems much less concrete than the sum of action– why are we not held accountable when a drone bombs a funeral at which the target was not in attendance…

target? Man. Human man.

***

Or in my own life. Little to do with violence, but with that balance between intention & action. & awareness & action. I hesitate to write about what I would like in here because it does not seem like the right space. Yet.

***

My apartment is going to be so messy by the time Devin gets here because I can’t imagine myself doing the dishes tonight, even if I listen to Ladies of the Canyon then The Life of the World to Come then Harvest.

Self, be open to rewrites. What were you too afraid to say the first time you wrote the poem? Who were you trying to protect? (typo: protext.)

How has something whole not come out of my grandfather dying? Out of driving an SUV? Out of the stars over the nuclear power plant, over deer crossing my headlights at the precise moment I needed deer to pass through my headlights? Out of all possible confessions, out of all lists of food?

When in Waziristan, an unmanned drone kills the tribal leader’s entire family, “including three children, one of them five years old,” & I fall asleep on my issue of the New Yorker,  dream about falling asleep while fucking my boyfriend.

***

Maybe I will do the dishes. Maybe another listen through Ladies of the Canyon is worth it.