I want all the past years to be equally distant from this moment with none either more or less remote. Like being at the focus of a circle. Somewhere, a child plays with collected marbles; somewhere, gatherings on many green fields. That is why time has passed, so that I could be standing here at the center of a still universe. And nothing can touch me.
On What or When or Why
Forever mulling over the absoluteness of things that have happened & the certainty that I’m responsible. I’ve been a world-historical fool.
Burning Ichor, I blush
the heavens I rush to touch—
fire, fire, in the veins of a god
Time that tyrant
I screamed but it was silent
On Distant Shores
Everything I loved has
vanished
Exiled and wild at world’s end
Purple perennials, head of Zeus
crocus circles, the noose
Gatherer of gusts, of dreams bygone
following fair winds to
Dawn
and dust
On Unraveling
Among the plurality of worlds, there is another version of me. Maybe she gets what she wants. I dream of happier times: a primavera sun setting on a sea of feathered grasses, english breakfast tea with molasses, a sweeping estate with sky for borders, apple pies born from the blooming orchards, fireflies like pixies in the June breeze with their cradled and fragile light, the vaulted crowns of evergreen trees, three children dancing in the meadow at twilight.
On Fire
I should be unhappier since my life has had no successes. Yet I am peaceful all the same.
I am your phantom Helen
Eyelashes of morning dew
I ripped the roots from their homes
to see how they grew
I am malevolent
Today, I realized how magical it is, that period before a plane takes off, when there is silence, stillness, and the expectation of flight. For a moment, nothing happens.
On Creation
I want to destroy everything I create because I know that creation is at odds with my non-existence. I build things restlessly as a distraction from being, only to be weighed down by the anxious urge to raze them down. From void to void, I count the forms of vanishing.
On Being Normal
Sometimes I do things because I believe young people do or ought to do these things. It is like watching my life from a distance or behind frosted glass. I feel a great sense of absurdity. Displayed in the garish light of a stage. Curtains drawn for tragedy.
This is what a young person does. Experience, not observation.
But I start to wonder: how long are we here?
How long are we here.
On Youth
Circumambient. Zeus Kataibatês: ‘Zeus the Descender’
“I toyed with the thought that we might capsize. It was the order of the world, after all.” Housekeeping, Robinson
The ribbon of God chokes
my gored neck
setting fires in Eden,
we heirs of Adam’s ribs
know that when a thing screams,
it lives
What distraction is agony
I want to be a tragedy
I may fear an eternal return
but, just this time, Nietzsche,
I want to burn!
On Many Secret Gardens
All morning it has been raining. In the language of the garden, this is happiness.
Mary Oliver
On the Scythe of Time
On Dissolution
I need to run to the ocean. I want to discard everything, even the things I love. Last night, I dreamt of scorched earth. My brain fails me. I want the abandonment of the self entirely—the clarity from an erasure that is total.
I want the non-existence of the ocean at midnight.
A ride through the eddies of night
and its moonlit rivers
all eve my disappearing youth
shrieks in slivers
time and space without boundary
the gates of the indifferent universe,
—as I scream!—
sleeping soundly
On Rest
“Do I seem like I know what I’m doing with my life? All I want is to sleep in some dark forest.” Phone Notes (2020)
On Mornings
On More of My Errors
From the stars
and their obsidian fountains
to the bluebells
of the distant mountains
Echolalia
an elegy for the slaughter of lambs
signals November’s advent
Kyrie like a thunderhead
the seasons went
On Unbecoming
I seek the luxury of not existing:
to be gone with none to know I am missing,
with no audience, to create
I don’t want to “grow”
but to do nothing and vegetate
seeking sky in bliss and bloom
I long and long and light
THEREFORE ROLL ON SUMMER SEAS
ROLL ON MYRIAD INFINITIES
On Selfhood
shrieks and storms in the summer of locusts
this our glutinous first garden
curb and carve carve and curb
the gaping teeth of a demon
disturbed
sewn and sold like a doll
a sinking starving art
in the shadows of cherubim
red eyes skeleton fish
soaked in the
blood
of a carnivore’s dish
the cuts.
eve after eve
young
expiring
life
(I wanted to be you.)
On the Multitudes
The Plurality of Worlds.
“The world we are part of is but one of a plurality of worlds.”
David Lewis
On Starvation
Fires in the sea of Helle on a black eastern shore
poison in the tangled rot of sycamore
Twisted threads of Ariadne
in which I am woven
the dead, the awakened, the cloven
A tripartite nation—
starvation.
I am your linchpin,
your prodigal daughter
the bad me: yes, I fought her!
Your gemstone offspring, success, the summit
purgatorio, death, the plummet
On Disequilibrium
From time to time I was afraid. That is the fault of a false view of life. Wittgenstein
On the State of Things
Age of Upheaval, 2020.
The last five years: who am I?
The next: who can I trust?
I am too interiorized. I forget there is a world that exists outside of my head. In this age of upheaval, I must learn to anchor myself again.