OVID-19
People don’t just disappear,
something happens to them.
I constantly wonder what it would be like
to fuse to the point of no return.
Every morning I try to find it, drawing lines in transit,
listing recent selves in traffic.
Line number 1 reads: consider ‘scarcities’
as a portmanteau, and if, within that triple entendre,
you see your Life’s lived
in a bustling scar,
a scared, barren, flirtatious place -
then we can truly begin.
Number 2: there’s almost nothing that I haven’t been
in the elevator I take every morning.
I’ve been you. I’ve been a horrific virus.
I’ve been the dawn
of a revolution doomed to fail, dirty Latin poetry,
a spacious public library, a pile of dog shit
baked to a crust on the sidewalk,
and, once or twice, I’ve probably even been
G-O-D.
The trouble is, I can only perform
this astral transmutation of my soul
a little bit each day.
I’d rather not get caught in the act by my fellow tenants,
so I have to make sure I’m not settled too deep
in some other-world
some other-life
when the door dings open
and my perfumed neighbours enter
through whispering doors
to descend together in a normal silence,
preparing to greet another day.
Number 3: last Tuesday,
I was an unbridled optimism, saying,
“Next summer, I think I’ll work at Wal Mart
instead of McDonald’s,”
and though this exchange drew far too close
to the day I traded my high school eating disorder
for a collegial life of substance abuse,
I still managed to experience the thrill
of Mr. Harrison down the hall,
as he telepathically read my thoughts
stuck in the stale air,
a coyote’s grin
dissolving his wrinkled fortress,
his “kids-got-no-career-ambition-these-days” theory
blissfully disproved at last.
On Wednesday, I was an overgrown lawn,
newly-mown,
heaped with wet yellow piles
of beheaded buttercups
left to desiccate in the sun.
I wasn’t anything on Thursday,
I was late,
so I sprinted the stairs,
even leaping down the two bottom flights
like it was a jungle gym,
jamming up my ankle a bit,
but probably shaving seconds off my overall elapsed time
and, despite a throbbing limp,
I even managed to haul my hobbling, sweaty ass
to the bus stop
with a few moments to spare
during which I savoured the totality
and the sweetness
of my victory.
On Friday I was a woman
grinning nervously,
sitting cross-legged on the bright sidewalk
behind a black
teak-and-pearl typewriter
– yes, I was two relics of another age –
and adorning the tiny typed sign taped to us
were the hopeful words
“free poems, any topic you like,”
our stacks of paper
sun-stained
and untouched for decades.
On Friday I remembered I was supposed to be counting
and was Line Number 4: a group
of embittered anarchists,
200 strong,
trying to claim they could all equitably share two bathrooms
without incident.
This led directly to Number 5: everyone knows
terrible communities,
whether because they’ve done time
in them
or because they’re still there.
On weekends
I’ve heard the neighbours tearing at their floors.
I press my ear to the cool back-alley window
where their house sags, fatigued and flaking,
half-devoured
or perhaps now upheld
by thick vines of ivy; blackberry canes
vaulting high in strong parabolas; white bursts
of morning glory blooming;
and I glimpse through this fertile chaos
their yard -
heaps of shingles and rotting wood
and an alternate reality
like a vast wealth of potted herbs –
medicine
drenched in Southern sunlight.
On weekends I don’t use the elevator
because I can’t get out of bed
unless I’m forced to
at gunpoint –
I can feel so much
just by closing my eyes, laying still, and listening,
asking
who would you rather be – Awakening
or Dream?
Last Monday I got caught
being something I wasn’t
as the doors dinged open. But I was caught
being the most important thing yet –
I was an adventure.
I was us.
It was like we were the only truck on the road,
and we blew joyfully past all those brash red eyes
glowering in the stoplights.
All those streets we crossed,
and we could see right down
to the end
of every shimmering asphalt line
to where all the roads end,
swallowed by the mouths of mountains.
In my notebook,
Line Number 6 suggests that a disaster
does funny things to people –
you take on strange new types of behaviours,
like incessantly dreaming yourself anew
while borne numbly down the mechanized shaft
to another eight joyous hours
of middle management,
strait jackets and chloroform,
stocking shelves
and your overflowing mind.
A funnier thing happens
when the doors ding open
and your descent has ended:
you realize Line Number 7: that the real disaster
was your daily life – where all your problems,
despite your earnest prayers,
would never get big enough
to just finish you off
once and for all -
so you transform
to find new ones -
but in so doing,
warp,
and fuse,
and find
that you are
a mountain meadow;
a When without time;
a Where without space;
a hungry How
chasing flocks
of plump and elusive Why;
you are beings without Who;
you are the ‘What’,
alive in a broad friendship
with all and everything;
that you compose strange days without measure;
that you are
as you have always been;
the point
of no return.
People don’t just disappear,
something happens to them.
I constantly wonder what it would be like
to fuse to the point of no return.
Every morning I try to find it, drawing lines in transit,
listing recent selves in traffic.
Line number 1 reads: consider ‘scarcities’
as a portmanteau, and if, within that triple entendre,
you see your Life’s lived
in a bustling scar,
a scared, barren, flirtatious place -
then we can truly begin.
Number 2: there’s almost nothing that I haven’t been
in the elevator I take every morning.
I’ve been you. I’ve been a horrific virus.
I’ve been the dawn
of a revolution doomed to fail, dirty Latin poetry,
a spacious public library, a pile of dog shit
baked to a crust on the sidewalk,
and, once or twice, I’ve probably even been
G-O-D.
The trouble is, I can only perform
this astral transmutation of my soul
a little bit each day.
I’d rather not get caught in the act by my fellow tenants,
so I have to make sure I’m not settled too deep
in some other-world
some other-life
when the door dings open
and my perfumed neighbours enter
through whispering doors
to descend together in a normal silence,
preparing to greet another day.
Number 3: last Tuesday,
I was an unbridled optimism, saying,
“Next summer, I think I’ll work at Wal Mart
instead of McDonald’s,”
and though this exchange drew far too close
to the day I traded my high school eating disorder
for a collegial life of substance abuse,
I still managed to experience the thrill
of Mr. Harrison down the hall,
as he telepathically read my thoughts
stuck in the stale air,
a coyote’s grin
dissolving his wrinkled fortress,
his “kids-got-no-career-ambition-these-days” theory
blissfully disproved at last.
On Wednesday, I was an overgrown lawn,
newly-mown,
heaped with wet yellow piles
of beheaded buttercups
left to desiccate in the sun.
I wasn’t anything on Thursday,
I was late,
so I sprinted the stairs,
even leaping down the two bottom flights
like it was a jungle gym,
jamming up my ankle a bit,
but probably shaving seconds off my overall elapsed time
and, despite a throbbing limp,
I even managed to haul my hobbling, sweaty ass
to the bus stop
with a few moments to spare
during which I savoured the totality
and the sweetness
of my victory.
On Friday I was a woman
grinning nervously,
sitting cross-legged on the bright sidewalk
behind a black
teak-and-pearl typewriter
– yes, I was two relics of another age –
and adorning the tiny typed sign taped to us
were the hopeful words
“free poems, any topic you like,”
our stacks of paper
sun-stained
and untouched for decades.
On Friday I remembered I was supposed to be counting
and was Line Number 4: a group
of embittered anarchists,
200 strong,
trying to claim they could all equitably share two bathrooms
without incident.
This led directly to Number 5: everyone knows
terrible communities,
whether because they’ve done time
in them
or because they’re still there.
On weekends
I’ve heard the neighbours tearing at their floors.
I press my ear to the cool back-alley window
where their house sags, fatigued and flaking,
half-devoured
or perhaps now upheld
by thick vines of ivy; blackberry canes
vaulting high in strong parabolas; white bursts
of morning glory blooming;
and I glimpse through this fertile chaos
their yard -
heaps of shingles and rotting wood
and an alternate reality
like a vast wealth of potted herbs –
medicine
drenched in Southern sunlight.
On weekends I don’t use the elevator
because I can’t get out of bed
unless I’m forced to
at gunpoint –
I can feel so much
just by closing my eyes, laying still, and listening,
asking
who would you rather be – Awakening
or Dream?
Last Monday I got caught
being something I wasn’t
as the doors dinged open. But I was caught
being the most important thing yet –
I was an adventure.
I was us.
It was like we were the only truck on the road,
and we blew joyfully past all those brash red eyes
glowering in the stoplights.
All those streets we crossed,
and we could see right down
to the end
of every shimmering asphalt line
to where all the roads end,
swallowed by the mouths of mountains.
In my notebook,
Line Number 6 suggests that a disaster
does funny things to people –
you take on strange new types of behaviours,
like incessantly dreaming yourself anew
while borne numbly down the mechanized shaft
to another eight joyous hours
of middle management,
strait jackets and chloroform,
stocking shelves
and your overflowing mind.
A funnier thing happens
when the doors ding open
and your descent has ended:
you realize Line Number 7: that the real disaster
was your daily life – where all your problems,
despite your earnest prayers,
would never get big enough
to just finish you off
once and for all -
so you transform
to find new ones -
but in so doing,
warp,
and fuse,
and find
that you are
a mountain meadow;
a When without time;
a Where without space;
a hungry How
chasing flocks
of plump and elusive Why;
you are beings without Who;
you are the ‘What’,
alive in a broad friendship
with all and everything;
that you compose strange days without measure;
that you are
as you have always been;
the point
of no return.