Greenstorm's Journal

The mechanic writes his notes in Arabic and says
You're doing your farm all alone, you tell me what you can afford
And just pay that.
While we go back and forth refusing to name numbers
He fixes my headlights
Casually
Without even asking.

On the way home I scroll through my playlists
Find "it's ok"
Pull off my mask
And sing along in the stinging smoke for the first time in a month.

When I get home my new dog
Learning quickly, forbears to take my arm in her mouth
Instead she somersaults into my lap
Upside-down, legs splayed,
Panting with bright eyes.

The whole time I fit words together
Discard them
Fit them again.

There's no graceful way to say
Sometimes I want to be loved just suddenly,
Without asking.

Writing poetry is a tide. It sweeps me up in my own lens onto the world, slightly blue tinted and distorted by the thick curvature of my experience. When I write I have the voice that human communication denies me: shade, nuance, tilt, perspective. My whole life I've lived in the minds of those around me. Every moment is, how are they thinking about this, what motivates them, what do they want, how do they see this? That's how I'm allowed to approach.

Sometimes people have approached me, but rarely. Poetry is where I take my own hands, my own voice, and exist outside of what people want to hear from me. My double vision, always looking at this thing and that thing or rather the relationship between-- always arcing, like a wire that's worn through but not quite enough to go dark.

That is to say I'm sitting here listening to lightning, with fires all around. The lightning isn't showing up on the website in front of me even though sometimes it flashes through the window: its truth is unanchored in the human-made world. It's real and I'm real, but perhaps no one else in the world is. Wind that used to be cool against the heat is a precursor to smoke now, carrying the scent of campfires and evacuation as it fans these literal flames around me.

How am I supposed to put that nuance into human language? It used to be relief. Before that, before my fat protected my core, it was frustrating and made me shiver. Even two weeks ago I was saying how grateful I was there was wind. I'm in metaphor again because how do you talk about that relationship without it? So many things in life are like that, beauty and lightness tinted and then obliterated by new context. Which way the wind is blowing matters now: towards the highway, to shut it down? Towards my house? Or back onto the already-burnt area of the fire so that it may starve and dwindle and lose its power? How do I know which it's doing, to know whether to relax and enjoy the wind?

I felt more like myself the month I wrote poems everyday than at any other time. It faded as I stopped. I enjoy things now: walking the dog in the back field and learning her love language of snuggles and holding, baby ducklings diving into the water as I pour it into their bowl, the weight of my body against the acupuncture mat that lets me relax into it. I wouldn't say I enjoyed poetry. But I thrived on it nonetheless.

Today it's started coming to me again, especially at times when I can't write it down. My mind is waving near-invisible tendrils through my experiences, grasping them and connecting them insistently. Watching firefighters out the back window. The feeling of being rooted so deeply in this land and the way roots tear when you pull them out of the ground and the whole plant is got and it dies, or conversely when the top pops off and the roots are left to grow. Which am I? Offers of help that-- you know, sometimes it's just stage-managing an experience for other people so they feel like they helped, so they won't feel bad and they'll go away. Actual help, well, when the anesthesiologist was putting me under he was gentle, he was taking care of both my body and through his kind explanations of my mind, and I cried and felt like crying was ok in front of someone. I don't cry about the offers of help I've got lately, except maybe one.

Writing this the wind comes up sharply and blows the tin off a roof. It can only be fanning the fire and I don't know what direction it's coming from, I'm inside and it can only spill in through the window. Is it pushing the fire away or bringing it towards me? How can I not write in this? Everything that happens is a sign, is a portent, is an explanation of my own life's map.

Writing. Just writing. To myself?

Of course. There's no one else here.

Soft, warm, freely admitting joy in my presence--
I linger a minute
Filled, as a cup under a hose,
With love.

And the last one

#61

Go big or go home
GO BIG OR GO HOME
It’s not that I don’t like home
It’s that sometimes I need to go big
Fight the battle to the top
Do the thing at 200%
With every iota of energy I have.
I go big
BIG
And then I go home
Pet the cat
And sip some tea.

#56

It starts like magic
Not just the magic of regular beginnings
But with a small child in the kitchen
Learning to read from a book of spells

Spells of abundance,
Creativity,
Satisfaction:
The alchemy of transforming marked-down
Leftovers
Into something good for the spirit
As well as the body.

Though the magic serves well
It’s not always easy,
Standing in front of the fridge
Spellbook in hand
Staring blankly. Or,
Tired at the end of the day,
Eating half a loaf of store bread and some water.

In the middle there are such
Comfortable
Days. The before-coffee rhythm of
Scooping flour,
Measuring salt and baking powder in the palm,
Cutting butter in,
Pouring milk by eye.
The warming oven pings in the bite
Of morning air through open windows
And the cats rub perilously at ankles below.
The rhythms of this magic
Are a dance that can be done in sleep.

Sometimes it’s showy:
A duet in the kitchen now
And two families brought together in a spell for
Contentment
With all their needs met.

The beginning, the middle,
And though the end is not written
I know it will contain magic.

#49

I write poems to my love
And she gifts me with flowers
I whisper fears to my love
And he holds me tight
I shed tears for my love
And she aches for my troubles
I come home to my love
And he warms me at night

I walk fields of my love
And she gifts me with flowers
I risk all for my love
And he holds me tight
I shed blood for my love
And she aches for my troubles
I come home to my love
And he warms me at night.


#50 “Late Stage Capitalism”

Alien nation
Of alienation
Of self, of other
( Read more... )


#51

Pink tea, white cookies, grey day
The rain brings vivid brights to new greens
Brown cat, white cat, black cat
All fluffy, warm, and purring
While raindrops cling to the window


#52

Your world is so small
When you write all your love poems
Only to humans.

Poem-a-day was completed with 61 posted, and maybe 75 pages of scribbling. I'll dribble the poems out here as I have time and energy. It was a super enjoyable experience!


#43

Some people love like water
Some people love like stone
Some love finds each nook and cranny
Is etched upon every bone
Some love shines bright all in full view
And stands forever enthroned
Some people’s love goes wandering
Or cherishes secret and unknown
Or floats far and wide upon the air
Some people’s love is made to roam
Some people’s love seeks out new lands
Some people’s love stays home

#44 You have news for me.

Compassion for living things
Is as human as killing.
It’s only natural to protect
( Read more... )

#45

There are four of us bent over our pottery
Speaking casually to each other.
I let my fingers trail carelessly through the clay
( Read more... )

#46

I’m sorry I’m not ashamed of the blue stains in my shower
The dye in my hair makes me so happy

I’m sorry there’s dirt on the livingroom floor;
I was transplanting baby plants and got up to take them outside
Then got swept up in the sunshine
( Read more... )

#47 Jackie from insurance

She came running out after me
Out of the office where she worked
My name floating across the parking lot
She wore proper perfume and everything.
( Read more... )

Catching way way up.

#33 Thousandth Poem To My Home

A thousand days
A thousand more
( Lots of poems from the last week )

So I've posted 30 poems now, plan to continue going until the 29th-ish anyhow.

#28 Global warming as a failure of relationship II

She comes through your window more insistently now
Even at night,
Even when you try to sleep
At first you barely noticed
But now you toss and turn in the heat
Or huddle against the storm.

In the past you could walk away from your history
Or so you thought
As you walked away from so many things:
Homes,
People,
Jobs,
Social roles,
Your own parents, who failed
As you now fail
In responsibilities.

You buy an air conditioner to drown her out
But it only grows worse
Locked doors,
Sandbags stockpiled against a flood,
A case of water in the basement
Eventually none of it can ease your mind.

For both of you it started so beautifully,
With curiosity,
Each revelling in the beauty and strangeness of the other.
That’s what first love is like
Never giving a realistic thought to the times to come
Instead daydreaming of golden days together
Full of sparkling brooks and green trees
And ignoring logistics.

She never stopped giving: it was you who took her for granted.
Now the honeymoon is over
The bees are all dying
And so in turn the flowers die
And the feasts languish.
You alternate between “how dare she” and “if I had only known…?”
But it was your attention that was lacking
Slipping away into navel-gazing
It’s a shame: she fashioned you so marvellously well
And still the love is there, buried now on both sides
In a myriad of slights and indifferences.

Sometimes in your dreams,
Tossed in those sleepless hot nights
Or in silent moments waiting for a storm
You think to go to her, apologize,
Maybe even make it right
And sometimes you try for a day.
She always accepts you, but always
It is too hard,
She wants commitment
But it’s complicated
Your attention wavers,
You go back home
Go back to your life
And you try shutting the window this time.

#29 Global Warming as Failure of Relationship

Not sister, not brother
Not child, not mother
Not friend, not lover
Not self nor other
Still and always together

Can’t know it through books
Can’t know it by looks
Nor by new-age crooks
Hiding in nooks
Till the atmosphere cooks

You can’t learn, your concern
Won’t discern. You reaffirm
You must earn.
Though you yearn
Still it burns
Spurning you in return.

#30

It is the kindest of muses.
Solace, I call it.
It brings fire when I’m cold
And cradles me against darkness.
Others speak of muses as fickle
But no human has been so steadfast
No human has withstood
No human has accepted
No human has alchemized
This essential core of storms that threatens
Threatens
Threatens

It is the kindest of muses.
Solace, I call it.
It brings rest after summer
And wakens me to beauty.
Others speak of muses as fickle
But no human has withstood
Just stood
Threatened

It is the kindest of muses.
Solace, I call it.
It supports grief after loss
And spring after winter.
Others speak of muses as fickle
But no human has accepted
Me

It is the kindest of muses.
Solace, I call it.
It brings space after connection
And connection after
Alchemy after
No human

It is the kindest of muses.
Solace, I call it.

Been posting to fb, haven't got over here for awhile. Busy in the garden, busy writing poems. Obvs posting more than one per day.
( Poems 17 through 25 )