Life in the slick lane

[emslick]

My whole being is oriented towards you

This vessel within is hollow and hungry

It’s fragile walls are vibrating and humming

How I wish it would grow into a different kind of vessel

taking me across a vast sea

That it would torpedo me deeper than I’ve ever been before

Fighting for my life on all fours in yoga class

Sweating and cursing and laughing

Bite marks turned bruises

on my collarbone

On my thighs

But I’m waiting I’m waiting

Like a slot canyon freshly dried after a flood

A snake at the surface hunting for bird eggs falls through a crack

But it can’t move in the cold darkness below

It’ll die without a human hand to bring it back into the sunshine

Come on bring it into the light

You grow more beautiful each time I see you

I write endlessly because it makes you feel close

This is how love making should be

Floating on the flat ocean of your body

A wave sweeps me up

I’m turned and turned until

I can no longer discern what’s above or below

The moon is in both our third houses

We need words as bad as flesh, as food

But it feels like sacrilege

To cage that moment in a word

And it eludes every attempt anyway

Your hands on my bare skin at the show

The song blasting until the very end

I want to play it again and again and again

[emslick]

Notes on Empty Things:

-they cannot fill themselves

-easily forgotten

-easily refilled

on this same note, an incredible amount of dread may be accorded to these things that need to be filled

how to fill them

And to fill them with what?

here it is:

how it goes:

here it is:

how it will never go:

I chase you across town

preferably drunk on my bike

and maybe just maybe we learn a new way of being

I am struck by this assertion that every sexual encounter could be considered a possibility to enter into a new realm

a new dimension

a new way of being

is it like acid?

You can suck and sop your memories up all you want but you’ll never know what it is like until you’re there in it

Thinking about the first time i found some new possibilities I hadn’t seen or felt before: endurance

but also: a quietude

a horrible reticence

an unrectifiable lack of understanding

thus in transcending i came across a limit

and how to describe this latest encounter? Our inability to attain where we were at 2 years ago

insidious time unfurling between us when we didn’t even know it!

How can a person make you feel both wanted and unwanted at the same time

this in turn, is a new way of being

i think it was much needed

[emslick]

All Over October

I might be falling in love with you while we’re at a garage sale picking up jump ropes and a new rug and some lightly worn workout clothes

I don’t even need to write poems for you

I haven’t even written a poem for you

I started one and left it on your side of the bed and maybe you saw it

Today you asked me why I haven’t written a poem in so long

I only write poems when I’m sad, I say

Really, I just haven’t been able to

Elle is relieved I’m not writing anything.

I suppose I am too.

Permission to be weird.

Watching Beach Bum, that scene where they dance on the dock… drinking and smoking… Is That All There Is? Peggy Lee croones. You get this deflated feeling, that life isn’t enough.

Insatiable creatures we are. Always wanting more but not always in a material sense, don’t we want to feel more? Don’t we want it to cut deeper, penetrate us throughout? Don’t we want to remember everything, to party all night long, to languish all day long.

Don’t we want silence, and don’t we want the sweet white noise of waves lapping, the waves that we can’t afford to live close to.

Don’t we want it perfect but aren’t we disgusted by perfection?

It’s hard not to feel crushed by everything. It’s hard to be curious, it’s hard to care. It’s easy to wax poetically without saying much.

Scorpio sun racing through me like a drug, I remember every moment of my dreams

You’re talking about wanting to know everything

The lady at the garage sale is obviously disgruntled that we work at a restaurant

You should be a nurse! She tells me as if it’s some profound advice

I wanted to have fun in college, I told her.

As we’re walking away she admits, she hates being a teacher

She wishes she could be a lifelong learner.

Isn’t that lovely.

If only they’d pay us to learn.

Knowledge is power

And knowledge is a scourge for those who want us powerless

Perhaps

I guess

[emslick]

Why does it feel like magic

When the storm comes

And surprises us all

My mouth is wide

Drops without me noticing

Frozen globes of hail on the warm cement

Bring wafts of fog

Ghostly and glorious

I feel elated

You send me a picture of your new haircut

And eventually a picture of your naked body

You’re in a hotel somewhere in Minnesota

I’m in my bed in Nebraska

And it makes me sad we’re both alone

But, still it feels like magic

I feel like I’m entering some higher mind, in the eye of Gemini

Trying to intellectualize sexting

This mediation of sex

Sex distilled?

More potent? Or watered down?

Or something totally different

A sexual encounter that exists wholly in fantasy

Yet, is reciprocated

The space spent alone-

Together

Sex is usually so ephemeral

Dissipates in memory

But here i can look back

And see the look in your eye

Nothing’s off the record

We come on our own terms

June’s too hot for a lover anyway

[emslick]

First poem written in my 30s:

The garden is happening

We’re looking for lawn furniture

He’s growing

I’m growing

Our lines are opening up

The feeling is: hot and dazed

Needing to fall apart

To feel weak and vulnerable

To life

To sleepy, needy life

Barreling through me

Shape shifting

Tearing at the elements

Milky creation

I keep envisioning myself swimming to the surface

To the secrets we go through

The secrets we endure

But what does life want out of us?

Stay there

In the realm of possibility!

Love makes our tolerance go up

We learn to tolerate more and more

Cheating, hitting, gambling

My tolerance is so low

One sip and i get sick

He tells me about changing his oil on shrooms

The cold garage floor beneath him

The oil pours out - sill hot

I try to run my hand through his hair

He tries to run his hand through mine

But we’re all tangled up

We have years of unwashed hair between us

Lose track of who’s is who’s

[emslick]

POEMS FOR MATTHEW

Telling me about the air you’re breathing

The things you’re seeing

Searching for hearts key, fumbling

(Life is succulent)

Evenly turned

Smoke rising in the hills

My juices stoke the coals

Taste the wellspring within

My unencumbered source

You’re a skyscraper in flight

Thunder and lightning at once

The resounding sound of god on the ground

The tender rainstorm of a tongue

Prickly pleasure rising on all sides

Strike a match til it’s lit

The flame bounces in ecstasy

Heats the air

Skin, bloodless dry clean still

Sword buried beneath the dead

I paint my room

And lay around for days

I bask in the undoing

The non doing

My heart is crystalline

Fragile

Weaponlike

What if I’m not as good as drugs

What if you’re not as good as drugs

The boulder slows the furious road

Shoulda known shoulda known

A caustic thread in my loom has bloomed

The warriors sword subsumed beneath the dead

Won’t you bandage my gory gash

Won’t you burn me down to ash

California’s wildfire plumes

Turns Nebraskan sunlight into an unworldly doom

I paint my room and lay around for days

I can almost feel you

You know

I think of you almost constantly

What did i do before you

I want to sink into your dark blue heart

I want to soak in you juices

Feel the warmth of your incandescence

I dream of forgotten gardens i must bring to life

And so as springtime comes

I must bring us to life

How can i explain it

When i came upon a canyon

Hiking the trail on its mouth

Watching the sequoias race down from heaven

You are!

Variations on a star

We are!

Amalgamations of dark matter, black holes, the most mysterious elements of the universe

You swallow me whole!

I suck you dry

Blow me up

Send me off

Let me outrun you

Swirling in ecstasy on the lake

You know it’s my job to see things that aren’t there

To make it up as i go

—

[emslick]

[emslick]

Bad love poems for me #66-70

Poem written with a baby in my arms

Wishing i had my baby in my arms

He’s going crazy i can tell

Because I’m going crazy too

We’re on a trail in San Antonio sharing our thoughts about dying

And without knowing we veer off the rail

Into an angry nestle of branches

We turn around and change the subject

I am struck with a burning desire for everyone

Everyone is sexy

Everyone turns me on

A tall lanky woman comes to the edge of the pool

I almost run into the wall

Checking out the guys checking her out

She walks through the mountainous desires in me

She brushes against me, my skin becomes a live wire

Can she feel it

How dare she be oblivious

I miss and miss you

The quiet place you have to find within

To take the time to read poems and understand them

Is poetic in and of itself

I brought this book to San Antonio

It sat in the room while we fucked

But I haven’t read it until now

It has found me in the quiet place

Between lovers

He’s from Florida

She’s from the Himalayas

How shall I love you

Touch you

The whine and purr of the music you send me turns me on

This is the point where the infant (me) realizes her and her mother (you) are separate entities

[emslick]

Bad love poems for me 52-66

When I’m lying still

And my body screams

move move move

Is it because

I’m afraid of the quiet

Like death

Am i afraid that people from high school will think I’m a failure

Is it because i feel like a failure

Or is that too superficial

Must I untangle these tendrils around my heart

That the fear of nothing actually has a name?

A face?

Where does it hurt?

It hurts in the places that only I can see, those deep fault lines

Where I have no one to blame

It hurts where the rapids meet me

Those roaring white waters of every mother and grandmother who felt she wasn’t loved right

Or enough

Or at all

It hurts in the place you sit

And think long thoughts about me

It hurts right where and when I mistook you for a possibility

What if we meet and it feels hollow empty

I write dozens of poems like these

They float past me like ash from a cigarette

not a single thought sought on that walk

Too bad I couldn’t even finish the poems

It goes like this:

I must emaciate the dread in my heart

See how the day colors in

Why not go for a walk before all the noise starts in

I have to finish 100 love poems before i love myself

Madness lurks surly in my periphery

Trying to get better at daydreaming

The energy that needs to be dispelled never comes easy

Can’t even say the things that are in my head

Robin Williams dancing in the Don’t Worry Be Happy music video

Jesus

The sickness in my throat spreading throughout my body

The dimensions of love I can’t even bring myself to try to imagine

The millionth picture of your dick

Just wish I could see your face

My heart is an empty saloon

Longing for someone to step in and take a drink

Someone’s in my heart … drinking

Singing and screaming

[emslick]

One Thousand and One (Sober) Nights

Every day we’re given is a gift

But nighttime requires an offering

before we’re admitted into the kingdoms of sleep

The attendees used to have to make do

With what slipped out of my drink

They’d spin my head around

And offer me a dreamless sleep

Like weak tea

These days I go to bed early

The day wrung out of me

But, on occasion I’m prone to restlessness

So I’ll bike through the moonlit streets

Or take a late night swim at the 24 hour gym

It draws a strange crowd at night

One night a guy cannonballs in the hot tub

I have to laugh or I’ll cry

I accept that I’m their fellow oddball

Some nights I can’t sleep

Like when I got so sunburnt in North Carolina on my 29th birthday

I tossed and turned like butter in a pan

Til I dissolved into sleep

Or when I had an 18 hour layover in Seattle

Suddenly sleepless in Seattle didn’t seem so romantic

Some nights I stay up

Crammed with my sisters and mother on a hospital pull out couch

Desperate for sleep

Waiting for my baby niece to be born

Most nights I spend alone

But sometimes I can scrounge together a lover

N. And I used to listen to record after record

D. Liked to watch Westerns

C. And I ate popcorn and cackled over trash T.V.

Most nights I spend alone

Sometimes it feels like my super power

Sometimes my kryptonite

Sometimes the loneliness feels heavy enough to break me

But it just washes over me

And I emerge in the morning new, raw, and supple

On the 300th night a pandemic came

And never really left

I’d turn off my phone

And wander into sleep

And have nightmares of unmasked crowds

Some nights storms and floods raged outside

Some nights storms and floods raged inside

But I’ve always made it to the morning

To clean up the mess

Some nights I’m ashamed of

The nights I spent trying to drag lost souls out of the sky

It wasn’t that they were lost I realized

It was that I was afraid to fly

Some nights I’m proud of

Camping alone in the Custer National Forest

The night I held my two year old niece

While my sister sat in a hospital waiting room

Tonight I’ll go to bed early

The long day wrung out of me

Make an offering of laughter, gratitude and perhaps some loneliness and self doubt

Tonight I think I’ll go to bed early

Rest up for the next one thousand and one nights to come

[emslick]

Bad love poems for me #46-52

#46

(Halloween love poem)

What do you see when you look at me?

I know when i look at you i feel warm and entranced

I want to lean in close close close

We talk by the fire at the Halloween party

Simulation theory comes about in our talk, reminding us how precarious reality is

I catch myself trying to convince you of ghosts and demons and poltergeists and all the subterranean devils I’ve seen here on earth

When I get home I can’t figure out why I was so earnest

So persistent

I guess I’m trying to convince you that anything is possible

You’re contrarian, skeptical, demure

Try not to think about you too much, it seem to take away from what you really are

But what are you?

Try not to think about you too much, it takes away from what you really are (not here)

Must seducing Gemini always feel like pulling teeth

#47

I dream of waiting in fast food lines

Wake up craving the energy from fresh berries

The music finds me, divinely

Words and melodies and finger positions flutter out

About and about

The moon is on the only light these days

#48

Not drinking

Not thinking about

Not drinking

Thinking about everything

Trying to reconcile the different realms of soul’s and body’s needs

#49

Write down every thought and call it poetry

Trying to meditate

But I just think instead

I am not my thoughts!

If that’s true, where do they come from?

What are they there for?

Write down every thought you have and call it poetry

Cull your desires

Mull over her words

Rot on land!

#50

Pale face sags against the mirror

Is this what all the hullabaloos about?

This girlish freckly face?

Put some cream under my eyes

None of that drug store stuff

I get it from a lady in New Mexico who makes her own

My mind blanks

I feel the need to pull thoughts and feelings from it

Especially the bad ones

Like trying to tease and tangle hair

The morning is perfectly blue

I feel… grateful?

A reorienting tug of thoughts

The ego bruise of romantic mishaps cooling

What now?

#51

Thinking about generational experiences of climate change

Record highs in the yawning dusk of your life

And for us a bit younger, it’s a bit intuitive—

Tossed into the abyss of our endless hungers

But than again

What are we supposed to do?

Sit around and roast?

I hope the socks I made for you fall apart

I’m a fool to want (vape about) you

My sister and I both agree that as single women, our enemy is couples out on a walk together

For Fucks sake, someone tell me I’m special

Let the pens run dry

All these letters make me dizzy

#52

I’m tired Grandpa

Cat on the sill watching outside

Crash into sleep

Check what the cards say

A being appears, on its head

A lousy sunny day

My fate’s full

A spark under the wheel

If you don’t like journaling

Try poetry

Be abstract and glib and vague

It’s the only reasonable way to express oneself

[emslick]

Love Poems for me 38-45

Everyday is a flight from nothingness

It threatens to swallow me whole

Reminds me I’m alive

I love when you send me selfies

See you how you see yourself

Spreading out on my screen

I hurt my wrist but I still feel beautiful and and strong and lovely

My body seems constantly on the brink of orgasm

The possibilities for pleasure are endless

The senses are a mouth

The mind a stomach

We drink it up

Some are good for you

Some are not

But which is which?

Birds and highway

Meet James Blake in my earbuds

I’m up early but i feel strange and empty

When i struggle to write i make soup

But here i go I’ve committed to this idea

This strange notion of what i thought happened

The day the world opened up and Jonas-like swallowed me whole

I was corrected in a meeting when i described getting sober by magic

It’s not magic

*shrugs*

My heart breaks as we read your horoscope

Seductive.. selfish.. isolated

And mine?

Hasty and garrulous

Thinks they’re fascinating

What can i say

A poets eye can make anything look delicious

Up at 7 am in October

In the pool

A strange space of day

The dawn colors in the window, pinks and purples

Through my tinted goggles it looks ghostly, ghastly

The day greys...

This sober land is a bit harsh

Finally a weekend that’s not gonna kick my ass

Shrivel me up like an apple core in the compost

Remind me getting older is beautiful

All the words in this notebook make me sad

What to do

Sweep them up

Throw them out

Forget about her

They can teach you how to integrate the parts of yourself at war with each other

,apparently

[emslick]

Love poems for me #26-35

I think I caught you blushing

Serves you right

A tub overflows

A birds nest sags

I am precariously perched atop my desires

Another day just like the rest

Explosive energy in me

I need to explore your body

I need to feel skin, pressure, heat, breath, fluid

I tell her about how I got so high I stopped believing in god

I don’t know what to say

But once i get going i can’t stop

No idea how to orient myself in reality

Unless you’re spilling into my peripheral vision

Not gonna write about the hurt I’m feeling today

No way

Just gonna write about the lemon balm tea that soothed my aching heart

My shaking limbs

I can’t worry about much else, besides taking care of a few things before all hell breaks loose

Writing to feel alive

Cuz living makes you feel dead

I think me and you could go

Deep deep deep

Kept waiting for my run today to SEND me

But it just hurt

Another poem

another night thinking about all my belongings i want to throw away

I have to go further than merely distracting myself

Whaddaya want girl

I LOVE feeling sad crazy

What can i do but adore everything in this never ending dark night

Of my soul

Or whatever they call it

SO…. (thinking bad thoughts)

So…., (thinking dirty things)

My mind and body crave distance and speed

My heart wants to beat and beat

To pour blood out to every corner of my being

The skin and lips want touch

Sun and wind

My soft hair

Smooth fabrics, sound, vibrations

My heart gives birth

Again

[emslick]

Bad love poems for me #9-25

You should see me with my hair down

Ok justice, teach me how to say no

Feeling deep self-hatred

And shame

After talking too much at group therapy about self love

The irony

…

But i think Rhonda got to heart of the matter

Self love needs to be rooted in a spiritual practice

But I’m not ready for god or prayers or ideals

I exhaust

I overflow

Celibacy gives you lots of energy

To make eyes at all these guys 

Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii

Make love w my eyes

Look at my beautiful face

I feel light around you

Dancing on air

In your little shorts

Got my period without wanting to kill myself

I’ll take it as a win

You don’t deserve me

I pull the tower card and sense maybe a bit of magic in the air

God is on the ground

Write down the affirmation

You can say no without feeling guilty

Now i know why i held back my green light

Flesh wants to delight

Spirit wants to root

Trying to listen to the language of me 

I struggle when i encounter sex for the sake of sex

Looking for something to redeem myself out of all this

I untangle choke weeds from the hostas

You taste like hash oil and reese’s

I tell you you got good karma because you got me in bed with you

Aha

Or am i the one with bad karma because i’m in bed with you

Planning my relapse (on nicotine)

So lonely it makes it impossible to love anyone

Gonna sit in bed and hit the juul and try not to be so

Try not to be so

[emslick]

Love poem for me #14

My hair is looking good, no great!

Do you hear me singing? Whistling?

Do you see me dancing? Falling?

Did you see me catching you catching me looking at you

Bathed in sweat, sacred primordial soak

My juices run free

Who would want this,

Er who wouldn’t want this

Something like that

He texts me, reminding me he’s pathetic

I see him crossing the street up to his apartment, reminding me he’s pathetic

Prolly drunk, my sister says

We eat and eat and eat and eat

And don’t feel the least bit sorry

I read and read and read

And don’t feel the least bit sorry

Lay and try envision the perfect lover

Er

How can i be the perfect lover

I want to be intuitive and athletic

When i told him i wanted him

He told me he wanted Artemis and aphrodite

Referencing a book i lent him

What a dick

Telling your brother that he owes me

An illusory presence needs an illusory sky to dance under

An illusory frame of reference to be understood

I am acutely aware of you

The topographical notion in a look

Your motion maps out the plane of my existence

I learn how to read myself

Summertime is for solitude

Too hot for another body anyway

Watching fireworks from my bedroom window

[emslick]

Love poem for me #13

Look at me

Laying on the edge of your bed, no in the middle,

No right on top of you

Nudity suggests divinity

Alludes to the divine nature of our love

Your eyes on me

Make me divine

[emslick]

SOMEWHERE IN OCTOBER

Hey why don’t anyone love me yet

How will I die today?

As we get grown our crushes just get bigger and bigger

What’s the rush?

She don’t wanna talk to you

He don’t wanna talk to you

Do you ride books

Or read bikes

Mean ole scorpios give me a break

You get that AA burnout where you’re so tired of self-realization and revelation

You just wanna be toxic

And self destructive

And not work on any character defects

Soul’s on edge

Hearts all burnt and crusty

Mind is trying to best situate itself in some historical context

Between bomb and storm

Between life and death

Unable to Unable to really discern what’s real or what matters

Idk what to say

You just get sick of getting carried up the stairs night after night

You want to climb up em yourself once in a while

Want to remember the night

Should I ask Mike out?

Should I go all crazy again?

I met someone new

Er

I’m gonna meet someone new

Remember when we danced in your living room

And watched Heavy Metal Parking Lot

And you weren’t so big and scary

But for the sake of both our broken hearts you have to be big and mean scary

Trying to cast spells and wishing I had friends to talk to

Wishing you could be a friend

That I didn’t so quickly turn bitter

Like oversteeped tea