we have been truly unhappy.

If only we knew,

we would have convulsions of awe at the vast

delirious goodness we could have

been inside.

 

We have been denied everything.

So deranged, holding tight

to little bits of paper.

I want to feel the ageless

joy of lying in a field with someone I love

I want to feel the buzzing

catching flowing through my pelvis as if

it were a throat, breathing.

I want to be generous.

 

Warm, nurturing, free to love. I do not want

this history

I do not want

to live in this world where

connection is measured

marked suppressed

 

nature,

how have I lost you?

My whole heart is with you,

so i'm always dying.

How, how can I go to live in another city?

No matter how I try,

it doesnt excite me, really.

 

I cannot live this way. Why do I

keep myself in sickness?

I want to smell you all the time.

I need you.

And all these people,

talking, talking, like they never knew you.

I never want to hear another word spoken.

Do I look just the same?

Am I one of them?

 

Nature, nature, how can I wait longer?

My bones are so dry, the marrow inside hard and shrunken

like little glots of sap after winter,

Not fit even to chew on.

 

Must I really go? If I am loyal

to anyone, it must be you.

Not poetry, or anything human.

 

You tell me all without my asking.

You let me be.

You never harrass me.

Demand nothing,

unlike poetry,

who is extremely demanding.

And who beats and uses me

taking full advantage of its beauty.

 

You are better by far.

I have never

met anyone so leisurely so

independent,

not in any way sycophantic you are

just how you ought to be

 

if I could be alone with you,

maybe I could be happy.

Huge packs of dogs would

roam the streets,

hungry.

Perhaps they would flock around me and follow me

as I go picking through the detritus

of everything, at my leisure, distractedly or

curiously-

 

I wont mind, as long as they let me alone

from time to time- soon, anyway, they will die

and im sure their children will be more

self sufficient

 

likewise

I am too old to learn much, probably. But whatever

i'll carve out a little existence, humbly

noone to harrass me, when I die i'll do so

peacefully.

 

I Imagine

a child of mine coming

with mushroom bodies gathered in the forest

how does he recognize

with such depth and certainty, their uses

strange pleasure and envy

offspring, so sensitively

tuned to this alien fruiting

land. The nutty

porous, styrofoamish

sunset graded brown to cream, grey to white

the delicate gills that shrink under the light-

 

a useful thing, used up, is gone. Feathers

too old and scuffed to be smoothed and teased back together

earth crust things

we scab, we snap, are worn...

bring it on. Let us be reborn.

 

Yes if I could go back in time

I would. And I would go

a very long time back, to when

women may not or may, as naysayers say,

have been treated

even more brutally.

But before the wilderness was carved up and anaesthetized and operated upon

in all its pores and cells

I would go and there I would,

if any men or people tried to control me

simply walk off with knives and furs and whatever

away from them in a straight line and live happily.

 

I truly hate the bones of it.

 

Sometimes I see people going through their little

routines cheerfully and I become

almost lighthearted, thinking

'perhaps I am really making

generalisations, perhaps one can

live cheerfully, in a small way feel OK,

maybe I should be a

physiotherapist or open a

roadside chip wagon'

 

quickly though I remember

how I have sworn to live truthfully and I cannot

adopt any way of coping, or bed

into this bankrupt charade successfully,

instead I am obliged to continue

disowning everything around me;

I choose unhappiness.

it has somehow gained

my loyalty

I choose nothingness. I wish I could choose humanity

I wish I could choose myself and you

I wish they hadnt fucked things up so badly.

 

-Staying alive for the end