slowly.

“Where there is love, there is life.”   –Mahatma Gandhi

Ease in to this.

This may be defined as first cup of well-deserved coffee at start of day. 

This may be defined as pair of pants that used to be much looser, but sometimes bodies expand to let the right ones in, so let go of self-judgment of Rubenesque body because there is so much more of you to be swallowed now.

This may be defined as a newly acquired sexual position.

This may be defined as a tumbler of whiskey dripping down the sides.

This may be defined as a puddle.

This could possibly be a subway car full of 9-to-5’ers and you are just looking for enough space to spread your limbs, turn the pages of used Rimbaud book found at a stoop sale on the lower east side.

This could also be a love affair.

This could also be a morning.

This could be a conversation about veganism over atheism or atheism over hedonism or hedonism over McCarthyism.

This could be a stick of butter melting over a body.

This could be an announcement of lust.

This may just be a poem about what it means to forget you are a New Yorker and slow down. Turn flesh red like stop sign. Still yourself down until you exhale pauses.

Yeah. That is what this is.

 

how to remove the claustrophobia and turn it into a poem.

Awake to the sound of too much memory inside me, clogging up the zippers sewed into my skin called scars.

Before sleep, I heard a child speak about beauty. How it cluttered up her mind and confused her into obsession. When I was a child I wore pants until they fell off of me–threads becoming undone. I couldn’t wait to wear make-up and then when I could I preferred looking ghostly or homely or colorful only on the inside.

People rarely remain inside their disfigurations. They cover it up, melt it, insert or take away or laser it off.

My roots are showing; let me paint them a lighter hue. My belly is thickening. Instead of poeming, I’ll sit up and down and up and down and crunch and crunch and force tension to form.

How to live inside a moment. Really. Do we do this anymore? Are we present inside a sight? Though I drink coffee, I am also writing a sentence and catching up with a friend and reading a letter and washing dishes. How to remove the claustrophobia of multi-tasked rushing and slow down toward just one breath or bite or swallow or word.

Hello.

First thing I notice when I am present is the haunting of black ink on my skin on my hand on the left one near my thumb. Reminders because my mind is so webbed, is so crowded is so removed from itself, I must write on my body to remember how to live or what to buy or what to eat:

fennel. pickles. magnets. newspaper.

I look down and notice my lap, covered in borrowed brown writing blanket. I look up and notice nude tree outside my window, bark wrinkled like elephant skin. I look inside myself and feel hunger, body gathering breaths, pushing them out like invisible babies floating into the air. I gave birth to those inhales and exhales. They are mine! I do not answer phone which rings. I do not click on anything outside of this box. I am singular-tasking. I am present. I am here. I am I am slowing down.