a howl of sleep

In the distance, a dog barks. It is 1 am. It is 3 am. Round it to 4 and then 5 and I wonder how long one can howl before sound is drained.

This is New York, I whisper. Why is no one yelling.

Where is its mother/father/owner? Does it hunger. Is it cold or too warm or fearful of the evening sting on its fur. Is it tied too tightly to fence or thirsty or in need of a meal. Is this dog howling for its mate?

I feel angry at this dog for taking my sleep away and yet I also recognize our kinship. I have been howling for months. One could argue: years. In search of. Hungry for. Longing. Lost.

When the dog breaks away from its noise, I worry. My body begins to settle back into sleep and then its bellow arrives once again. The cries extend longer. Louder. Deeper. There is desperation in each push of sound.

I had a lover who led me into an alley once and told me to scream.

It feels good to let out the screams stuck inside our bodies. And there is no warning attached to these yells or fear. It’s just one giant, screaming exhale.

Sometimes one needs to extend all the rage from the body– the screeching music– in order to move on and through a day or moment.

It is dark and I cannot differentiate one rooftop from another, but I still push my way through my tall window and hop onto the roof of the apartment below. It is a far jump, but my lack of sleep removes my fear of height/injury. The bricks are uneven and they become like a ladder, which allows me to climb down further. I follow the footsteps of this dog’s howl. I am getting closer. It’s like thunder–when you count to notice whether it is moving nearer or further away.

I am almost there, I say out loud.

The moon points through its neon and though the dog is more like a moving shadow, I know I am upon it. It howls. I howl. We mourn and cry and remove our body’s losses together. Our tones differ. Mine is less deep, but more desperate. We rarely permit ourselves to just let it out.

The sky fills with our wails and I feel like the air is hugging us. We are going to be ok.

In the distance, another noise joins in. Not a howl, but more like a yell.

Shut the fuck up! says an unseen voice.

The dog and I continue just a little while longer. There is comfort in the acknowledgment of our screams. When my throat begins to hurt and voice grows smaller, I begin my walk back. Up the bricks. Onto the roof. Through my window. Back to bed.

 

a festival of instrumental rain

Cellos can be flesh eating when held upright. I want to write a poem from my body. Done before. No. I want to write a poem from the point of view of blood gurgle or lung expansion or the tilt of thighs when handled by another. I want my body to verbalize how it feels when someone walks inside it. Rain drops on window’d eyes; blink blink blink away the sky ejaculate or welcome in welcome in its beautiful aggression. Bangs may only be worn by those who are straight-follicled. Percussion can be learned by excessive practice; bang against bang forward bang in a pattern body begs to be bruised in. Call that the music of skin changing colour. Harmonize the salt the drip the toe crunching the scars that make the others not want you like that the callus the wrist bone the boners the turn-on of heart when heart loses battery the arrival the arrival you are arriving, right? Right. Take out your ukelele. Bring it outside. The rain will pause when you search out a shadow burly enough to call umbrella. Now play. Now sing. Now call out your love letters to the only one who has remained past the past.

to slow down amidst pattern(s) of express

for M.M.

1.

That first cough of language. Whether dyed in a hue of flirt or poetics or musical accompaniment of jukebox song. When you know. When you know because your body is churning like a washing machine and limbs feel close to understanding their lineage.

2.

That time you saw me minus all my scars and I saw you beyond gender prescription.

3.

“Hey, when you were on stage and you talked about hair, I thought about my own symbiosis and how often I felt the need to disturb its length and texture. Hey, you spoke my language. Hey, I love you beneath that wig and the glitter that will travel from your skin to mine later tonight and how about I show you what I mean by all this through my ability to remain. Hey, your erotics reveal tragedy in a way I can orgasm to and I haven’t been able to touch parts of me because I just didn’t know how to approach the distance. Hey, I’m so grateful you failed death and I need you to be alive like the moon, even when it needs to hide some of its parts; it still glows and you glow.“

4.

That moment right before experimentation of addiction. Choose from any of the above. To be able to say: just don’t.

5.

Every time I have sipped on a body that I chose to learn. The fluency of flesh and how sometimes it feels like a floatation device, saving me from this drown.

the erotics of scar tissue

Many years ago, a woman grabbed my arm at a poetry reading. She rubbed her thin, bony fingers along my textured forearms and told me they looked like an art project.

The lines are so even and perfectly slanted, she said. Did it take you awhile to get it like that?

And I wondered if this was foreplay or irony or naiveté or ignorance. How to respond to any of those?

I yanked my body out from her grip and stared. We were in a coffee shop in a town overrun by mountains and patchouli-drenched hippies. A young dreadlocked boy was on stage. He sounded out a poem about his mother and newly dead turtle. The entire place could have been on fire; all this woman cared about were the coordinates of my scars.

*

I am driving in the only car I’ve ever owned, which is now in the possession of a mechanic’s daughter. My green Honda Civic with cigarette burns from that time and accumulated hours of sex in the back seat and a tape deck and discarded post-its of directions from all those other times. Gas tank reads: fill me so I head to the cheapest gas station on route 9. New Jersey still does not trust their drivers with gasoline, so I roll down the window and ask for $10 worth. I hand over my currency and the man with moustache or stubble or grease on his face (who can remember) asks me where all those marks came from. It is summertime where nude limbs are necessary and all I can say is: Sex.

Years trying to make others more comfortable pushed the trauma out further and all I am left with are disjointed reasons and shame. And they’ve spread through the years past arms to shoulders to belly to hips.

*

They are the first thing I notice when they are noticeable. All the bodies pressed against me have given me their scar stories because their version is far better than the assumed ones. And with each narrative, ownership is engraved further.

It’s love when I let you touch them; it’s trust when I tell you how each one arrived; it’s long term when I can be honest with you about the last time.

It’s not so rare anymore: the occurrences of scars.  Sidewalks are uneven and loved ones hit and there’s all that running away that causes so many to fall and crack open.

Someone new at some point is going to see them all on my body. The disrobe will be in slow-motion not for erotics, but from fear. But when I meet someone who calls my body a map or cracked open sky or simply: earth because it is alive and giving and collaged with shapes and sounds, all those scars will blink open. There will be no need to hide because without them, I wouldn’t be here. . . . . . . .

Scars are a language learned only by breathing.Scars are a language learned only by breathing.Scars are a language learned only by breathing.Scars are a language learned only by breathing.Scars are a language learned only by breathing.Scars are a language learned only by breathing.Scars are a language learned only by breathing.Scars are a language learned only by breathing.Scars are a language learned only by breathing.Scars are a language learned only by breathing.Scars are a language learned only by breathing.Scars are a language learned only by breathing.Scars are a language learned only by breathing.Scars are a language learned only by breathing.Scars are a language learned only by breathing.Scars are a language learned only by breathing.Scars are a language learned only by breathing.Scars are a language learned only by breathing.Scars are a language learned only by breathing.

necessity to flatten

[I don't quite know you anymore]

Remember that time I suffocated you with two-ply? You hacked and gasped and chafed, but I left crumpled toilet paper against you all day because you weren’t tall enough. Someone else called you brick wall. I called you stubborn and flat. Evening is when Judy Blume taught me how to accentuate you. Increase your existence.

And then. And then when you started to exist, I wanted you away. We can wish for things, but I wonder how much we really want them.

When wishes arrive too late to the someone we are who we weren’t when we made them.

Suffocation continued but tissue became replaced by bandage. I tried to medicine you away.

The first time someone else touched you: I was eighteen. Jennifer. We contemplated each other’s softness and extended parts. Hers were bigger and she liked when I sucked and pressed and squeezed. Hers were an atlas and I often get lost so I studied and studied and used my fingers to trace every line and bump and formation of beauty marks.

I soon began to realize: no one really touches them the way I want them to be touched.

How to explain: use your ribcage more. Think of them as a bench and straddle and lean in. Please do not allow them to help you decipher what I am. What am I.

In the summertime, I let them float and fixate on the thin fabrics of old shirts stuck against them. My nipples rebel. Drama queens. I don’t mind when they grow erect; I only wish the land mass they extended upon were wiped away.

A new lover likes to defy gravity with mouth, wafting lips over nipples as though they are their own singular entity. This one pretends there is nothing else there and that body is a haunt of so many genders, why pick one why pick one.

Sometimes my body and I agree to disagree. I am fickle with my rules and regulations. There is no static or one way. I change my mind as often as my skin cells evacuate. So…..ask. Our bodies are made of invisible ink and there are so many guidelines that are too faint to read. I am unsure of what goes on beneath and above and around my bones sometimes. Even I need to ask sometimes.

Body, can I touch you there. Are you closed today. Are you on holiday. Are you in mourning. Are you choking on trauma or can I rummage you. Where can I touch you and tell me for how long and how soft or fast. What should I ignore or what can I call you today. What is your name today. Don’t worry about your answer for tomorrow…that may change. I’m just asking for right now; when I come around another evening, I’ll inquire again.

light can be turned on just like a body

There is no sound to it. Fingers pinch handle of light or body and illumination arrives. This is on. There is stimulation of sight as visibility fills in the cracks of dark. When hands learn the hips of another, shadows scatter and suddenly the entire earth is turned on. Electric. Decorative. Emotional. The tic of seizure’d fingers carve out the light from a body. The twist of charged particles. Thrill of power lines replace veins. Shock. Accumulation of hours from charging. Correspondance of wattage. Jolt of fire from  bulb or belly or breastbone or behind earlobe. Choice of dim or scream. Push of color from mood or bruise. Blur of contour. Murky twists shaped into wall from hoisted bones. Call this lamp or sex. Name it fluorescent or foreplay. It is track lighting; it is excessive and blind. This is sun; this is lava; this is the reflection of your tongue against the puddle of my throat. This is radioactive; this is neon and plasma; this is the composition of carbon … of gleam … of moon … of torched anatomy.

an anniversary of dying

“Dying/ Is an art, like everything else./ I do it exceptionally well”    Sylvia Plath

Twenty years ago, I was writing her words in my notebook as adolescents do when they are in love.

     I  HEART  Jennifer  Christine   Sarah   Melissa   Gina   J’Nnae    Rachel

Instead of girls’ names in my classes, I was taking apart the poems of Sylvia Plath. Repeating lines into each page as though I couldn’t speak without her language reminding me how to.

When I was in high school, I mastered the art of almost death. And into young adulthood and adulthood. And I think about the grey in her mind and how many shades mirror my own.

Sixty years ago, she died. Turned her body into a meal consumed by gases. One month later, “The Bell Jar” emerged. How often did she think about what would proceed her. Did she trust that her husband would honorably publish what lingered. Did she trust her husband. Did she feel about love the way I feel: that it exists like paper– something to be written on and scratched out and revised and workshopped and blank sometimes.

I am alone in my bedroom, yet there are so many genders and bodies surrounding me each night. I choose who I sleep with. Rilke hides in the curve of my hips. But sometimes I need it to be Anne Sexton or there are those naps during the day where Bukowksi sneaks in and though we like our space, there is a lot of rummaging and coarseness. Kate Bornstein and I sneak stories into each other’s skin and Kathy Acker and Audre Lorde. When I want to be reminded how I think about my body, I read Dodie Bellamy as I cut up the parts that label me as one thing in order to become something else.

I have just a few pages left of Rilke, so I place Plath’s “Ariel” into my bag. With black pen between my fingers, I think about how we can speak together like ghosts. I thought we’d die together, then I hunted Sexton and planned to die with her. Now, I’m eyeing others who lasted a bit longer to see how far I can get.

when they go missing

This is all a blur. This is too big to carry on back with or without scoliosis or strength. This is too windy so that everything rushes out of pockets and everyone knows you can no longer get through a day without:  chapstick, that rock they gave you, two tissues, tiny folded bits of  poems, a pin that when you press it music blurts out, some nuts for protein, a pen with someone else’s name on it, the photo of them without you, some rain stolen from when it fell off some cloud somewhere captured in a pill box. These pockets are deep.

When they go missing, search milk cartons. Search lamp posts and grocery store cork boards. Search alleyways and abandoned warehouses. Search the forest behind their house. Search rooftops and fire escapes. Search other bodies and linger until some other sort of sensation arrives. When they go missing, buy a plane ticket, go to hospital, cry in front of an audience of strangers, walk around nude beneath midnight, have an affair with another part of your body, slam memory against brick wall and see what colors converge. This has nothing to do with you. Sometimes people need to exit in order to feel like they exiSt. 

all this can be used for something else

Walk the beach long enough and you will find a shell with a peep hole and when you bring it to your hazel or blue or grey or spotted-owl-brown, you will see beyond ocean and fog. You will add this shell to the others, collected on a Monday when trauma trips you almost off this earth and a human arrives with an overripe banana and a bottle of water and a car, wheezing from lack of gasoline. There is no driftwood on this beach, but your eyes find bits of animal and ghosts of storm from months before. Your feet are nude and ankles too as questions arrive like how can love carve so many scars on our bodies and how can we breathe when loss is like a subway collapsing on lungs and all this is part of life but what parts of life are meant to make you want to remain. A big enough shell can be used as a soap dish or to hold quarters for laundry or as a ladle for thick soup or rice. That curved branch left all alone over there can be used to hold things like toilet paper or discarded love notes. The water is too cold but so is life, so you jump in with clothes on because the shyness on your skin is too scratched up to be seen. All this can be used for something else. You are offered a souvenir of black-and-white magnet of this day and it sticks to your refrigerator of the time you almost drowned. You think of the ocean as your body: salt, loss, death, wave, deepness, peed in, grainy and dangerous. You want to crawl toward its bottom to find a way out. On the way out, you notice the seagulls and fall in love with their aggression; you are jealous of their flight. Home is many avenues and city blocks away but you’ve got all these shells to crush into your skin like armor. Sometimes life is about one day and how to get into it and how to move through it.

an (atheistic) approach to belief

I carry a bible in my pocket now. It fits inside fake leather dip of hiding space. On the subway, I sneak it between my palms and underline the language that makes my blood seep through the holes in my skin. When I drip, I take note. This has become my companion these days as I gather up bits of moon and shadow, and conversational outbursts with others. Love is found in these pages. No need for beds or hand holding anymore; in this bound collection, I have found what I am most in need of: challenged thought and deeper meanings.

My volume is a bit different. There is God mentioned, but less attached to religion and more saturated by the language of poetics. I call it my bible, but it calls itself: Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke. Sixteen years ago, a teacher of mine gave it to me and I have carried it from home to home in various states and mindsets. What led me to reopen this book and sew it to my body in this way is what I think might lead others to attend to their own searches. Seven years ago, I fell against pavement and received nine stitches among other medical help. One month ago, I fell in a different way and this book is my cane. For now.

I am not sure the moment I started calling myself an atheist. Several events could have led me there, but I believe it became solidified when I couldn’t find meaning to the parts of me stained and scarred by these happenings. I just stopped believing. Though as I look back, I still had/have my beliefs. I believe in magic and found it in humans and love affairs and at the tops of mountains and in cabins. I believe in poetry and the essence of its healing powers.

This is probably what led me to house this particular “bible” in my pocket.

Rilke writes, “…ask yourself…whether you have really lost God. Isn’t it much truer to say that you have never yet possessed him? Why don’t you think of him as the one who is coming, who has been approaching from all eternity, the one who will someday arrive, the ultimate fruit of a tree whose leaves we are? Don’t you see how everything that happens is again and again a beginning, and couldn’t it be His beginning, since, in itself, starting is always so beautiful.”

I replace “God” with “love”. I replace “God” with “words”. I replace “God” with “you”/”your”. 

All of this doesn’t have to be an end to something. That period at the end of the sentence could be its beginning. The loss of another could be the beginning of something so much deeper.

Yesterday, I was thinking about pronouns and how we are given a name at birth and a pronoun attached to it, but what if it doesn’t fit? So we make our own versions of what we need and what we are. This pertains to my atheism or what I thought my spiritual (non)belief was called. Perhaps I was never one. Perhaps there is something in between belief and non. Like: betweeniest. 

My mind is not set. Even at this age, it changes. Sometimes, it falls apart and I have to reshape it. This can be exhausting; however, it offers me a chance to rummage through the parts of myself I so often neglect. We do this sometimes.

So, I take off on a trip and feel the miniature words of Rilke press against me. It is erotic in how alive it makes me feel. Fear is what has kept me away from living (at times). Fear of understanding what I just don’t understand. Finally, finally….I am ready for answers found in these letters written between 1903 to 1908. Still relevant and connected to the language of the earth we all linger on.

And that’s kind of accurate….we linger. We loiter. We endure. And to fill in all the gaps and breaths of silence, we question.