How I Choose It
I’m thinking today about solitude.
How I wish for my own to graciously open and breathe, expand like a sky,
without foregoing below, without the usual delusions
of escape from the flesh.
I’m thinking of alphabets. I’m thinking of letters,
how they sleep underground, dense earth, clay earth, soil and sand.
The letters of the tribe which somehow distinctly emerge
from the sensate oblivion of bodies, scorched or scratched
onto that from which they were parted. That’s how it works.
The earth, o great scribbler, will not be stopped. Earth will painfully find
itself on its own
obdurate and trickling surfaces, female and male, animal and metal,
slippery silt or chalky powders. Murky crystals. Splinters of mica.
I hereby allow it.
It never seeks my permission,
but I allow it nonetheless.
I wish for the hinges of loneliness, mine and everyone else’s,
to loosen and wave like a carelessly
generous and excitable hand: hey, over here! or hey, see you soon!
or yo, I’m here too!
I wish for a solitude
that torques like a bolt
in the hearts of my loved ones and makes us all walk
at the same time backwards and forwards in torrents of feeling,
a fabulous river of fists
that will keep us alive when we’re dead and long beyond sobs.
I wish for a solitude
which matters
in the matter
of the matter
of You, You with Your
solitude. And what do we do
about this?
Earth will seek earth, I know,
but I have no wish to seek me. I desire the desire
for You.
I’m tired of hoarding. I’m tired of fearing. I’m seeking a solitude way
beyond the old sickly simmer of don’t let me die. I long for a solitude
akin to the stones of mellifluous letters, dissertations seriously
self-mocking, tragic-comic geologies of compassion.
I don’t much care about the next pallid step
in the complicated machineries of self propaganda.
Stickum of egos, gangrenous ladders, miniscule skies.
Everyone hovering, maneuvering, and hoovering for bucks
would make me quite sick
if I weren’t hovering, maneuvering, and hoovering myself.
If I weren’t laughing my head off, would-be flier,
frog on a trampoline
on a rubbery planet in Galaxy Quicksand.
Yeeeouuwwww!!
Terrifying, lonely, and excessive.
That’s how I choose it.
It’s how things already are,
but I choose it nonetheless.
See these loose hinges? See these lines? See me waving?
Nichols ©
Draft posted for temporary viewing.