I feed it raw meat so it does not hurt me. It is a strange thing to nourish what could kill you. We have lived like this for so many years. Sometimes it feels like we have always lived like this. Sometimes I think I have always been like this.
"I lost everyone. I lost everything, you fucking fraud, you fucking liar. You’re not in pain because if you were in pain, you would know there is no moving on. There is no happiness. What’s next? What’s fucking next? Nothing is next! Nothing!"
Pebbles, leaves, rain— they disappear into the river. Even the shadows of the black branches above (their bark peeling like thick burnt paper) disappear.
But we don't disappear: Not into the breeze: it brushes against the pale sides of our arms (rustle of dry leaf against wood, quick suckle of an inhale, cool shearing of cracks)—
Granted, this is not a world that keeps us.
Granted, there are some sadnesses in which I do not long for God.
"No matter where I go, I still end up me. What’s missing never changes. The scenery may change, but I’m still the same incomplete person. The same missing elements torture me with a hunger that I can never satisfy. I think that lack itself is as close as I’ll come to defining myself."
“You will live as you live anywhere. With difficulty, and grief. Yes, you are dead. And I and my family and everyone, always, forever. All dead, like stones. But what does it matter? You still have to go to work in the morning. You still have to live.”
Sit down. Inhale. Exhale. The gun will wait. The lake will wait. The tall gall in the small seductive vial will wait will wait: will wait a week: will wait through April. You do not have to die this certain day. Death will abide, will pamper your postponement. I assure you death will wait. Death has a lot of time. Death can attend to you tomorrow. Or next week. Death is just down the street; is most obliging neighbor; can meet you any moment.
You need not die today. Stay here--through pout or pain or peskyness. Stay here. See what the news is going to be tomorrow.
Graves grow no green that you can use. Remember, green's your color. You are Spring.
I am so tired. I have run across the ages with spiritless feet, I have tracked man where he falls splintered in defeat, I have watched him shoot up like green sprouts at dawning, I have seen him blossom, and fruit, and offer himself, fawning, On golden platters to kings. I have seen him reel with drunk blood, I have followed him in flood Sweep over his other selves. I have written things Which sucked the breath Out of my lungs, and hung My heart up in a frozen death. I have picked desires Out of purple fires And set them on the shelves Of my mind, Nonchalantly, As though my kind Were unlike these. But while I did this, by bowels contracted in twists of fear. I felt myself squeeze Myself dry, And wished that I could shrivel before Destiny Could snatch me back into the vortex of Yesterday. Wheels and wheels — And only your hand is firm. The very paths of my garden squirm Like snakes between the brittle flowers, And the sunrise gun cuts off the hours Of this day and the next. The long, dusty volumes are the first lines of a text. Oh, Beloved, must we read? Must you and I, alone in the midst of trees, See their green alleys printing with the screed Which counts these new men, these Terrible resurrections of old wars. I wish I had not seen so much:
The roses that you wear are bloody scars, And you the moon above a battle-field; So all my thoughts are grown to such. A body peeled Down to a skeleton, A grinning jaw-bone in a bed of mignonette. What good is it to say "Not yet." I tell you I am tired And afraid.
This boy, of course, was dead, whatever that might mean. And nobly dead. I think we should feel he was nobly dead. He fell in battle, perhaps, and this carved stone remembers him not as he may have looked, but as if to define the naked virtue the stone describes as his. One foot is forward, the eyes look out, the arms drop downward past the narrow waist to hands hanging in burdenless fullness by the heavy flanks. The boy was dead, and the stone smiles in his death lightening the lips with the pleasure of something achieved: an end. To come to an end. To come to death as an end. And coming, bring there intact, the full weight of his strength and virtue, the prize with which his empty hands are full. None of it lost, safe home, and smile at the end achieved. Now death, of which nothing as yet - or ever - is known, leaves us alone to think as we want of it, and accepts our choice, shaping the life to the death. Do we want an end? It gives us; and takes what we give and keeps it; and has, this way, in life itself, a kind of treasure house of comely form achieved and left with death to stay and be forever beautiful and whole, as if to want too much the perfect, unbroken form were the same as wanting death, as choosing death for an end. There are other ways; we know the way to make the other choice for death: unformed or broken, less than whole, puzzled, we live in a formless world. Endless, we hope for no end. I tell you, death, expect no smile of pride from me. I bring you nothing in my empty hands.
"If I relaxed my body now, I'd fall apart. I've always lived like this, and it's the only way I know how to go on living. If I relaxed for a second, I'd never find my way back. I'd go to pieces, and the pieces would be blown away. Why can't you see that?"
“In the evening my griefs come to me one by one. They tell me what I had hoped to forget. They perch on my shoulders like mourning doves. They are the color of light fading.”
The old dog drug itself across our autumn path, a man's breath coating my face. We've been looking for a dog, but not a damaged dog, not a near-dead dog. You can't fix the broken with broken.
I'm running down the ditch. Draping night across my shoulders. I'm naked except for the clothes and the cry. Begging dog to look me in the eye. You shameful, you turntail, matted surly.
When that dog dug itself out of our bed, barked at the ghost of us. What did you expect? Busy turning keys between your teeth, purled with burrow and maple and gleam. No. I got real things to do, real shoes to sew to real feet.
When that dog didn't drip or bowl, why didn't you just leave me on the nightroad crawl and howl home?
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references.
there is a lion in my living room, clementine von radics
san luis, gregory alan isakov
the leftovers.
the highwaymen.
gun song, the lumineers
hallowed ground, bishop briggs
no subject
hang me, oh hang me, dave van ronk
overcrowded thoughts & overwhelming time, darshana suresh
talking to fog, iron and wine
mutatis mutandis, mary szybist
the third death, isobel anderson
marionette, reuben and the dark
old churchyard, the wailin' jennys
south of the border, west of the sun, haruki murakami
the parting glass, the wailin' jennys
deathless, catherynne valente
i will remain, matthew and the atlas
blood on my name, the brothers bright
brother, do you know the road?, hiss golden messenger
singing saw, kevin morby
ghost towns, radical face
to the young who want to die, gwendolyn brooks
come on up to the house, tom waits
after writing the bronze horses, amy lowell
into the blackwater woods, mary oliver
the smile on the face of a kouros, william bronk
norwegian wood, haruki murakami
wild rover, the dubliners
the five stages of grief, linda pastan
electra.
sucker's prayer, the decemberists
dead dog done, caitlin scarano
the river, blues saraceno