The Thin Places

For every fire you drive into me

another quietly perishes.

Of all my selves the one

that you most occupy

is the least recognizable

and it is for this reason

that I love you.

–

Arranged by you, for you

I bloom, morose but wild

for it is chaos which feeds us.

My heart gives way

first to a garden and then later on

to a coffin of unrequited stars.

–

It is in the thin places

that I will make a home

for the two of us.

–

Nothing is real

least of all the taste of you

which falls over me

like an avalanche

of sweet, sullen dreams.

–

I touch the darkness

with my naked skin.

Your loneliness,

is heavier than my loneliness

because I am after all here

even if you do not see me.

–

I am forever consummate,

forever yours

and if that matters to you

then I have lived enough

for one day.

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Palms pressed

to the moon-soaked pavement

I pray for the momentary

captivity of a witness

whose soul stretches out

like a field

from one horizon to another

without ever collapsing.

–

Breath tethers me

to gravity’s dubious game

but in the interim,

whereupon dreams exist,

I float above the wreckage

and find that my soul

is too vast

for a single body.

How did I ever fit

within this self-conscious pincushion

that is the human experiment?

–

The stars churn overhead,

their unresolved laughter

jettisoned by leagues and leagues

of untenable blackness.

Your words make it

impossible for my heart

to stay in one place.

I want to live for as long as possible

even if my life is nothing more

than a series of abused commas.

–

Only my eyes dare to bridge

the chasms that exists between us.

Scars hold the silence together.

Some day when I have become an abyss

I will drag you into me

and kiss you until our senses

fuse together.

–

I stand naked

under a sheet of ignorance.

You don’t know it yet

but your love for me

is unfinished.

I will carry with me

the sunset and leave you

with the sunrise

with hardly any space between them

you won’t even know

the difference.

–

I promise you

that for every prayer

I will find a heart of greater measure

to test it against

and for every strand of hair

we will find a woman

breaking herself open

in recognition of freedom.

Heaven isn’t a place

it’s the space

we make for love.

–

You are the deepest

of all shadows,

an army of wildflowers

and every afters

dropped one by one

into a manic sea.

I watch you

pulling fish from the water

with your bare hands

and I am reminded

that every thing you touch

is broken by the primitive application of time.

–

I am alive. I moved back to Sweden. I am trying to find a job. I have to go to the doctor again tomorrow to see if I can figure out these health issues. It is not even just the relentless heartburn or the stomach pain or the weight-loss I have also lost a lot of strength, particularly in my upper body. I recently started studying to become a yoga teacher and beginning exercises, exercises I have practiced for nearly 20 years are really pushing my physical limits. I just don’t have any strength in my upper body. Pumping myself full of B vitamins has helped my energy levels and focus somewhat but not my strength. I know my poem is disjointed but I like it and I think there is something in there that wants to be expressed.

Dragonfly

Photo by David Hofmann on Unsplash

We dance together

underneath

a murky, blue-black sky

praying that the stars

will align in our favor.

Whether delusion or gift

I offer my wings

for a taste of the earth.

–

Your hands press into

my curves and indentations

with mammalian intensity.

I am wearing only

the heat of your skin in proximity

but somehow I still have this sense

of wanting to undress myself

as if I can’t abide the barriers

of flesh, blood, and bone.

–

The moon languishes

in a nest of loose, gray wool.

Like a dragonfly

she anticipates our movements

and wherever she lands

madness soon follows.

–

I am wearing only

the impressions of our bodies

as they twist and turn

to a savage chorus of heartbeats

and stomping feet.

–

I want you to gut me

like a small fish, metaphorically speaking,

so that nothing remains concealed by a veil

of materialism and objectification.

I want to be loved at the marrow,

in the buttery richness

of my innermost voids.

–

I need a man who understands

all the shapes and dimensions

a soul can assume when paired

with a human body.

There is a whole world

of experiences eager to pass

through my senses.

Sublime or savage

I want to move as the moon

through the tides, phases

and erotic overlays

of an imprecise darkness.

–

My stomach issues have returned after a rather short period of remission.

Invisible Girl

Photo by Serhat Beyazkaya on Unsplash

There is a moon

in my heart

that rises up

in the darkness.

Silver and chaste

it trembles

like an enigma.

–

I can feel it swelling

in my throat

like a great, triumphant OM

and I want the world

to stop for a moment

and listen to my voice

not because my voice

is the most remarkable

but because there is

a message inside of me

that is more precious

than life itself.

–

My life is just one

eclipse after another.

I know where the pockets are.

I know how to walk

from one end of the hall to another

and align my feet precisely

with every shadow and prominence.

I know every secret,

trick, diversion, feint

and all I can say

is that I want to be seen.

–

I might run

from one end of the street

to the other with a wave

and a smile so light

that it catches in the breeze

when what I want is to sing

and dance and tell stories

about beautiful, uninhabitable places

like those inside of my own mind.

I want to be heard.

I want to be known.

I want to stay wild

even as I flit between

the domestic and the mundane.

Animal

Photo by Donnie Ray Crisp on Unsplash

In the half darkness

I sleep naked,

your body

wrapped around my body

like a fisherman’s net.

–

We fill up

the whole bed

with our animal heat

but there is too much

punctuation between us

to ever find that familar

animal rhythm.

–

I close my eyes

when you masturbate

because I usually can’t shake

the humiliation of never

being chosen.

–

The room

smells

as if it were

an extension of us

and most nights

you press your face

into my hair and breathe

in my scent

as if it were a drug.

You seem to love me

but not in all the ways

I want to be loved.

–

I miss you,

not because you are

absent

but because

you are not all there

you are not

in everything

you are half-way.

–

Some nights

I am so there

that I can feel myself

merging with your pulse

and the shadows

which crawl from one corner

of the room to the other.

In that sinister state

of primal alertness

I want things

to happen to my body.

–

So I sleep

and I dream about you

and for a little while

it doesn’t make any difference

that it’s just my imagination.

–

I don’t want

to stand still

forever

I need to be seen,

known, experienced

in order to feel

that I am alive.

–

Love is not a game

of paper, rock, scissors.

Whereby I am always paper

and you are either

abusing or abused.

It’s about communion

and there is absolutely nothing

unholy about sex.

Wordle #284

Even the flames of appetite

pass unanswered and unremarked

in the faux pas and arrogance of a new dawn.

–

You were never final,

never trustworthy,

never one to answer my prayers,

spoken or otherwise,

but in a dank and inscrutable darkness

we made use of our bodies

and created a moment

which felt very much like an always.

–

I watched you sleep

from a distance

and from a distance

you looked very much like love.

So much so that

I left my number

carelessly beside your phone

and put on your sweater

instead of my own.

https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2022/08/22/wordle-284/

I am that wilderness

Photo by Michael Olsen on Unsplash

I have too many emotions.

They stick in my teeth,

in my twisted viscera,

in my glowing red heart

in my stiff grey lungs.

They are my hands and my feet

and all the spaces in between.

–

Feelings can’t be ascribed

to any one organ

they rise up between

the solid bits.

They are a void.

They are eternal

right up until the moment

of exchange.

–

I am inconsolable

whatever my orientation.

Viscous and viral

there is a wilderness

so wild and so vast

that no map could ever

hope to translate it.

I am that wilderness.

–

I never have

the same emotion twice.

Each emotion is its own construct.

The only thing which is certain

in me is uncertainty

but that does not

bring me comfort.

–

I sleep hundreds of hours a day.

I am the dream, not the dreamer.

I do not wake but every now and then

life comes pouring in like salt water

and takes me to another place

and in that foreign place

I take on the arduous task

of drowning.

The Artist

Outside the sun wallows and swoons. She is like a woman in love, radiant and docile. Her golden headdress drops feathers to the ground. Feathers which the shadows with their infinite recesses fold into themselves for safe-keeping.

–

The mud cracks in a way that is vaguely sinister and fantastically human. If I look long enough I will find the face of someone ancient and famous who embodies humanity more in death than most of us do in life.

–

There is a carnival of flowers dancing around my ankles. There is heat in my body and seagulls shrieking as they swoop dangerously close to my head. I leave them all behind and go inside. Once inside I turn cold and cavernous. I am waiting for an excuse to write so I clean the drain and put on the water full blast and watch everything fall into darkness.

–

I smell of wool and dried sweat. The window is looking in on me without reservation or pretense. The sky is supple and blue. I want to climb into it and lie down as if it were a lake that I could breathe inside.

–

Today I visited the home of a painter who became a writer who dreamt of being a painter. I found her words more beautiful then her still lifes and portraits. Her paintings were mechanical. She wrote under a pseudonym but there was more of her in print.

–

I went home with a postcard of the artist herself not one she had painted but one taken of her in Paris. In the photograph she looks like she wants to crawl out of her skin, like she’s felt everything at least once and has decided that she wants to go on living only she can’t quite bring herself to live the life she really wants. She was phenomenally strong and phenomenally patient and when I look at her I see a person who is both resigned to a life of fire and anonymity, a life of compromise and incessant wanderings.

–

When I left the museum I realized that it doesn’t matter what you pursue because pursuing anything is still a voluntary act of creation. There is the sun and the moon and a sky full of ceaseless fish with scales that reflect like mirrors all the brightness and vastness which exists in each of us whatever shape our dreams assume.

–

PS I did like the painting she created of her husband, by far the most expressive

Woman on the edge

It has been a long time, particularly since I have updated Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie. As some of you know my life has undergone some pretty significant changes within the last few years. Divorce. Relocation (most recently to Norway for the summer which has been very good for me). Reinvention. New Relationship (we live together). A long-lasting version of Covid. A series of mental breakdowns (involving self-harm). Recently I have been struggling with my weight on top of that. Since January I have lost about 10 kg or 20 lbs. It should be said that I wasn’t overweight when I started to lose the weight. At first I was pretty excited but now I am starting to get a little nervous. I am about 49 kg which is under my personal ideal. BMI 18.8 so still in the acceptable range albeit on the edge. But now I am having massive stomach problems which I do not think is going to help the situation. Usually I lose weight very slowly so for me this weight-loss feels quite rapid. Anyhow that’s not really what I came here to discuss. All of this taken together has really made me look inside of myself. I need to have a goal, a personal goal. Right now my focuses are: joy, freedom, connection/experience, creativity, and “home”. I watched a really good talk lately and I will share the video below. Watch it, I don’t think you will regret it. Actually I have seen a lot of good videos so if you are looking for some good (mostly Eastern wisdom) spiritual talks I have suggestions! I want to create something new. I would like to hand over my beautiful and beloved Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie and start a new project (alternatively if everyone on the team is amenable we could brainstorm ideas to reinvent MLMM) because I need to build something from scratch because I need a new beginning since all these other changes have changed me in someway that I cannot quite articulate. Maybe a magazine. I just know poetry, inspiration, freedom of expression, short stories and spirituality will almost certainly be involved. Maybe divination and adventures (I have been going on a lot of those lately actually). If you have ideas or an interest in taking over at MLMM let me know as soon as possible. Some of you are probably thinking that I have started a number of things and not completed them and you would be absolutely correct. I have started and stopped more projects than I can name. I am not exactly consistent but recently I have learned some things about myself that I had put off knowing for a number of years (as in a lifetime) which I hope will move me forward for once. If not well it could be an interesting distraction or learning experience or another fabulous failure. Who knows??? Who really knows. I just know that I want to write. I need to write. But I need some fresh inspiration. I have noticed my last works have been repetitious, certain phrases keep coming to mind. I can’t stop writing once I start but I am not really writing in a direct way, in an honest way. I don’t know how to explain it but I feel I am dancing around the topic a bit or tiptoeing around some sensitive area or toxic belief that I can’t quite bring myself to touch. Anyway I will get back to you when I know more. I feel I should not rush myself as before but try to go about things in an inspired but disciplined and methodical way. I need to really work towards something for the sake of my sanity. Btw I am still keeping this blog because I have had it for years even if I have come and gone many times.

If the video doesn’t work check After School on Youtube: How to keep your heart open in hell- Ram Dass

3 Poems Published in Suburban Witchcraft

Exchange, Love in Quarantine, and Crepuscular Flowers Published in Suburban Witchcraft