things that i miss...

1) my father

2) living in chicago

3) j.

4) j's nightly phone calls

5) traveling to st. louis

6) holding hands

7) the "largeness" of the world

8) possibility

9) coherency

10) a grammar of love

a rough couple of days

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

--e.e. cummings



i couldn't understand my mood

these past couple of days

then i remembered that it was

father's day on sunday

and all of the heaviness

started to make sense

grief is tiring because

it is heavy

and mourning is like a movie screen

that plays memories

in no particular order

so you sit with your grief in the darkness

of this theater

watching the glow of the past in

illuminated gestures

breathing slowly and just wishing for

that time back.

wondering where i am

i always thought that i was getting to know
myself better the older i got...
i definitely have changed since i was younger
but this new middle age me is still as perplexing
as the me in my 20s and 30s

i have more aches and pains than ever before
aleve has become an important part of my diet
i play "trombone" with the books that i'm reading
i think more about death now than ever before

the last point is more complex than just the anxiety
of fretting about whether there is an afterlife or not
a heaven or a hell
or if i'm coming back as another person
or a fly

this anxiety is over loss
which means i'm not anxious over my death
but the death of those around me
paradoxically, it seems that i'm not afraid
of death after all but
i'm afraid of living
living through loss

i am the youngest of my siblings
theoretically, i will outlive them all
because i am significantly younger than they are
i am so used to following
i am so used to being the one who trails along
being told what to do
being loved and loving

i was re-reading _the return of the king_
in this book there is a scene in which sam
is trying to resuscitate frodo after he was bitten
by the spider shelob
sam yells at frodo telling him not to go
indeed, he says to frodo "don't go where i cannot follow"

i feel that i will replay this scene for the rest of my
life
the people that i love
that i follow will leave
and i cannot follow them
one of my sisters is having this issue
right now with the loss of my father
because just like her oldest daughter
passing away some 12 years ago
my sister is reminded once again of
the inertness of her position
of the imposed 'stillness' of life

i felt it too when i was beside him
when he took is very last breath
and i felt the numbness creep
from my brain to my feet

i'm sure some scientists somewhere
will tell me that it is all chemicals
a "natural" and "evolutionary" development
to help me cope...to get by...to keep on living...
to deal with the idea of not following
there is little comfort in that for me
to be reminded that i am only soft tissue and
that my longing is just gray matter
and neurons firing
that not being able to follow is natural
because it secures survival
because for these scientists...that's what
it's all about anyway

not for me
never for me

but the concept of god or an afterlife
is hardly any better...
people have concocted some wild theories and stories
that we take to be true
leaving one group of people yelling
at the other
it's noisy being in the middle of all of this
ideological dissonance
it still doesn't feel "good" or reassuring
because the longing to follow and yet
not being able to is there
and will always be there

i didn't want him to leave
and i miss him
i don't want my mother to leave
nor my sisters
nor my brother
my friends
my partner...if only he thought of me this way...which i am unsure of
and much too afraid to really ask

this is not about being alone
this is about access
about a preemptive lacking
that i know will be coming
so maybe things haven't changed as much as i
have imagined
maybe age while dulling
my body like a river stone: smooth and rounded
sharpens my inner hearing
to what my mind and my body are trying to tell me
through voices that extend way past the box
of scientific discourse
and chemicals
and nature

the voices that only a young body can suppress
there is a spirituality
about all of this
about following
about the love that creates the desire
to follow
maybe that's what keeps us going
anticipation of not being able to follow
and waiting for a resurrection that we know
will never happen

poem for the week

Grief Calls Us to the Things of This World

by Sherman Alexie

The morning air is all awash with angels . . .
- Richard Wilbur

The eyes open to a blue telephone
In the bathroom of this five-star hotel.

I wonder whom I should call? A plumber,
Proctologist, urologist, or priest?

Who is most among us and most deserves
The first call? I choose my father because

He's astounded by bathroom telephones.
I dial home. My mother answers. "Hey, Ma,

I say, "Can I talk to Poppa?" She gasps,
And then I remember that my father

Has been dead for nearly a year. "Shit, Mom,"
I say. "I forgot he’s dead. I’m sorry—

How did I forget?" "It’s okay," she says.
"I made him a cup of instant coffee

This morning and left it on the table—
Like I have for, what, twenty-seven years—

And I didn't realize my mistake
Until this afternoon." My mother laughs

At the angels who wait for us to pause
During the most ordinary of days

And sing our praise to forgetfulness
Before they slap our souls with their cold wings.

Those angels burden and unbalance us.
Those fucking angels ride us piggyback.

Those angels, forever falling, snare us
And haul us, prey and praying, into dust.

annoying teenagers, going to bookstores these are a few of my favorite things....

well, i must say that i woke up feeling a tad bit sorry for myself



i was feeling weighed down



walking underwater



slow and labored



but only me



everything and everyone around me was moving



normally which appeared to be fast to me...



however as i was walking across the quad to teach my 10 a.m. class



i was surrounded by teenage joggers



yep...some intellectually gifted track coach must have thought that it



would be a good idea to set a bunch of teenage joggers loose on the



quad during peak time...



and these kids would hardly move out of the way



hogging up the sidewalk and expecting people to move



for them



i didn't move though because



1) i was annoyed



2) i was still feeling heavy



3) i was annoyed



although it did give me some kind of sadistic pleasure to make them



move...and i think some of them even pouted....nothing says

have a bright and sunny day than

a tennager's distain...



after class i was talking to a student



and i spilled an almost full dunkin donuts coffee



on a desk and consequently the floor...



fyi: that stuff is a bitch to clean up



after i finished up with that fiasco i decided to go to borders



bookstores always give me a sense of peace...i like them



i like to be surrounded by words...potential stories....



there is always a sense of discovery whenever i go into a bookstore



and discover i did



i found a memoir/illustrated book by chip kidd (the famous book designer)




while i was leafing through...taking in the images i saw this....


wendy brown's book!!! i love wendy brown and this book is not only an important piece

of scholarship it is also a book that changes lives

well mine anyways...

if i ever get published or better yet become the kind of scholar that

would get me chip kidd to design the cover of my book

i would be overwhelmed by the sheer awesomeness of it

seriously...it wouldn't have to be that great of a text

because good or terrible, boring or pithy...

chip kidd would certainly make your text sound better

after i was finished browsing that book i meandered over to

the psychology...actually the death and dying section...

i know grief but i still feel lost...so i picked up this book:





and i read a little...

very practical and lois ackner's writing is quite good

but something in me was not interested in getting it or reading any further

dissatisfied...slow...labored

maybe another book will call to me

or maybe a poem...

i just don't know

we are the fat of the land, and we all have our list of casualties

I want nothing left of me for you, ho death
except some fertilizer
for the next batch of us
who do not hold hands with you
who do not embrace you
who try not to work for you
or sacrifice themselves or trust
or believe you, ho ignorant
death, how do you know
we happened to you?
wherever our meat hangs on our own bones
for our own use
your pot is so empty
death, ho death
you shall be poor

Judy Grahn from "a woman is talking to death"