“Love is like a wind stirring the grass beneath trees on a black night. You must not try to make love definite. It is the divine accident of life.” – Sherwood Anderson

i have a poem in the fall issue of sixth finch.

re-reading my old online journal. wild days in pittsburgh. ripped the curtains from the walls, ripped up a wall of maps. here, from the summer of 2008: “Certain, uncertain. What desire changes; how wanting to change one’s mind is enough to see that one’s mind was not well-made. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. “What we suffered from was an appalling lack of perspective.” The constellations, what we’re comforted by: certain hymns, Proust’s madeleine, movement. When we’re in motion things seem to work out. I want to stop using the phrase ” make it work” in any context, even in reference to inanimate objects. Perhaps… the core of our dilemma. Selfishness, self-centeredness. Talismans, logic, blood ties, righteousness. Needles & dyed hair. The moon a pinball”

l like this article by Maggie Nelson, this article about the hurricane and this poem by Noelle Kocot, below, which I found in my old journal.

A Lived Experience

I sold my eggs. I took a trip.
I mined the ever-lovin’ sky
Regularly, at two week intervals.
I listened to its sheer blue business
And saturnine greetings
Falling upon green resplendent fruit.

I’m learning my lessons, learning my lessons.

I stay in the house and make pronouncements.
I have friends, we travel around in a pack.
We sail away in a silken boat
Far from my husband.
Husband, husband, I wear your name like a pageant of shields
While you bandy about, so sad
That I ate compassion twice today.
It’s still in my stomach, and do you know,
When I left for work on the Jekyll of the train,
On the Hyde of the train,
Riding into a harbor of intuitive light,
There was the relentless interface of squamous cells
Singing, each to each — how they gleamed!

So I spread my fingers — God was awake.
I closed them — God was asleep.
I sealed myself in watery songs stammering through the tunnel
And raised a fist full of silver at the sky —
All in all, an awesome morning.

Now we’re in hell and there’s music here, too.
But of all the chants which are chanted in this chanting world,
I prefer the human song that goes:
Why do we have to be sad like this?
Because you’re human and I love you for that.