absurdities by the pound

[nutworks]

The L Word

I wish I could describe how I think of you and how often, How my body still trembles at the memory of your touch, How I can trace the corners of your mouth into thin air Willing you into existence. And recollect the angle of your nostrils and the sharp tip of your nose against the linens lining laying bodies lush and languid.

Letting your heart trust again is as daring a venture as taming a lone wolf. Prove your permanence through repeated exposure Watch it silhouette on a remote hill top. Chase it, and it will vanish never to be seen again. Try to grasp it and it will recoil, nip at your outstretched hand, leave you wounded, awake in the night, wondering when you will see it next. (Another day it will bring something ugly, undignified - a mangled bird, a rotting carcass - and leave you no choice but to welcome its sick stench, knowing, that the underbelly of it all is what gives life purpose). Let it be, and it will arrive to you after sundown, softly. Illustrious fur reflecting the dim glow that punctures the horizon. You will hear its breath and see the stars, quiet and peaceful, at ease with the impermanence which permeates the first warm nights of May. And as you waken, many scents will fill the air. (Surrounded by the morning mist, you will hear the sound of songbirds, ceel crisp blades of grass against your face, wildflowers fading into vision.) And suddenly, as you lay naked on the kitchen floor, sun bunnies dancing on your stomach, You will know that love has just arrived.

[nutworks]

the processing of long depression

The days grow long enough to study myself In the sunlight. Out through the weathered windows, Plum shadows mounting on the driveway, Sway, with same quietude as yesterday, Their edges dulled by weeks of unobstructed lack of ease.

I’ve let myself deflate My dreams and expectations, Survival, stasis, dust between my toes. What’s left - a small box tucked away with all that I had wished for and devised. All ends, no means.

How do I see myself from here to harmony? How many turns and crossroads left to find That angle, at which the sunlight hits, That makes my shadows dance?

How do I mend my heart today, as broken as it has been yesterday, A month before, A year prior, And when I come to think of it - It has been broken since my birth, I came into this world all brokenhearted.

Today, it feels unmendable - the weight within. A precondition to existence, A daily digest of discomforts, Anxiety, bubbling at my throat. I gulp it down with morning coffee, Keep it tucked away with booze, And sing it daily in the shower, then cower naked on the floor, Gripping the warmth that is a cheap and shedding towel.

I never banked that I would be a tragedy, I may not look it from the outside - I have grown masterful and swift at hiding misdemeanors That plague me from within.

And what I wish to find the most, Is a safe space where I can utter All the guttural cries, Release what has been clawing at my soul.

Today, there’s nothing left to do But place one foot before another, Return to my indentured woes, Live through my loved ones, Read about the lives well lived, And dream of levity.

Today, tomorrow, always - Bending both knees to providence and fate And pray to one day find myself elated.

[nutworks]

A juxtaposition in deep purple

Vacuous, his smile. Hiding behind the brightness of his teeth is a lack of roots, a feigned stability and a half-hearted stillness.

And I did paint it scathing, with his shame and with my tears, tore up the memories born of out the wholesale of my organs, Uneven trade for the lukewarm acceptance of what may have been my soul.

I will paint these memories purple - color so deep, no light will penetrate. The shade of misdirected hope Aborted friendship, misarticulated lust.

Hanging thick in the air still is the wound of obfuscation.

I will air it along with my grievances hang it next to the drying laundry, transport myself into the city where crowds are cradled by cobblestone corridors.

Late in the night with their slick guitars and their slicker hats, Fingers exposed, strumming at the tendons of the willful night - mournful chords of choro, fado, samba - voices swirling into a chorus of predestined possibilities and unstamped passports. Syllables stretched across the alleyways, sounds buried deep beneath surface of this morbid century, as the cool night air lends relief to the pounding heat of the working day.

I would rather hold a stranger’s hand tight like my mother’s Than feel another ounce of hesitation taint my truth.

So guileless as a child, I let the others lead. Chorus of voices, not one of them mine. To love meant to be taken over by another's will. To dedicate myself to both their plight and their agenda.

But love is like a bird - observed, and thereby multiplied, imbued. Not criticized, nor fixed. It has no things to prove.

So I allow another stranger take me on, to show me that his palm against my neck may be a blessing, and his guitar - a rapture; and his voice - a storyteller’s magic spell, all housed within a slight and tender man who makes his home wherever he may go and has a chest that aches with comfort, not with shame.

So I will smear the shame you gifted me all on the front steps of your porch. Break from the smallness that you had imposed on me. I am so large, larger than ever, far too large to fit into your meager wounded heart.

Too large for you to hold within the night, too bright for you to witness without fading. *** Maria, red short hair and redder lipstick, Brazilian, sixty-six and strong in stature. She said that in our lifetime, we will live so many lives. A simple truth, but potent. To me it spelled - I’m free to be. and free to understand, what you and I have shared is just a blip, a fraction of a fraction of a life among the lives that last a lifetime.

Perhaps, the final exercise in bending to conform my shape to someone else’s misery; to someone else’s shame.

[nutworks]

I will wear the beautiful beautiful dress I will pick myself up after eating shit at the altar of a stray polished stone My ankles elastic, My chest hot with breath.

At what street corner did I leave myself, gasping for air? At this sapient juncture, My fingers are long and lonely, longing to touch something lasting.

I will find a megalithic rock and I will hug its circumferent permanence, I will dangle my shame from an old Roman bridge and drip my fears into a green northern river. I will drink wine out of clay cups and speak a language I do not understand I will twist my words as I twist in the night from the fear and the love and the longing.

I will entrap my personhood like a pest or a fly - Flat, faded, peeling like an eighties wallpaper. How do I find myself again at the crossroads of giving up and my childhood kitchen? But this time, the shelves are crashing down. They are holding too much and I am so little.

I want to be the be the biggest version of myself Enormous in glory and ease Layers of kaftans and turbans and fabrics to emancipate what has become emaciated. So large, I can dissolve myself into the heavy humid summer air.

I want to hang my fighting boots at the bed of another Only to wake up to the sight of him cleaning the dirt from underneath my nails I will hold the little kitchen mouse to my chest until our warmth is one, Then I will birth the emptiness that has haunted me all of my life.

[nutworks]

*insert airplane emoji*

So was my mother right? To never pick a man up from a flight. Although she never said so, in her own words, she did attempt to preach That I ought pick a man that will adore me. And she has standards for the adoration - Well, did he walk you home at night? And- did he gift you flowers? Where was he when you … Is it his shoulder that you cried on When your joints were broken-broken At the finish line?

So I digress. She would continue - Why did he not take your bag? And can he help you round the house? Did he take care of you? You- truly, deeply? Does he worship you? I hate how clearly she wrote those questions to my mind.

And she herself has never reached that bar of adoration I have never seen her and my father kiss. But I have seen them argue Dangle divorce and drink together (oh how they drink together!) Fret, and fall into a deep pit of nostalgia. They spoke so many different words of hate.

And did my mother hold a grudge so tender to her heart that it had kept her in an indelible distance from the one by whom she needed to be loved?

My father, bound up in her fury The two of them As intertwined with one other as they are with their own miseries, And all the adoration - poetry he wrote that he remembers, but he will not share All that - dissolved right to the bone of his misogyny and of her tightening grip of what remains of his free will And so he sits alone and in his car a beer in hand, all just to have a minute when he does not feel like there's a bone stuck in his very throat.

I asked my daughter yesterday, if I am like my mother Sometimes, I suspect the worst Sometimes, I hear her in my voice Sometimes, the way she moves Can resonate as if it were me walking in her aching feet And she said “no”, my daughter. Then added “maybe when you fight. Like really fight.” “I'm working on it, baby. Really am."

So what the fuck is with the airport? The ultimate manifestation of commitment - Yes I will go out of my way and wrap my day around a convenience that easily could be delivered through an app. For so hollow a gesture, How profound.

And I have done it thrice. One time, I failed. (or three times, all depending how you measure) “I’ll meet you in the airport, with flowers, maybe” We needed a syntax tree to parse out that particular misunderstanding. Me there standing, no flowers (thus the maybe) and you already gone (because … the maybe) Wandering the streets of a strange city, in the winter, in a sweatshirt and a suede coat, in Russia. What a fool. My child's father.

Funny, that it is he who loves me most consistently. Our papers in a constant ebb and flow, yet never reconciled. Too scary. All too damaged. Deeply hurt. Too wrong. Willing or otherwise, my emergency contact. It was him I sobbed to at that finish line About my broken-broken joints. And several years prior, Of my broken-broken heart At the hands of another man.

So what the fuck is with the airport? The ultimate inconvenience. “Oh that’s okay, it’s no big deal” Which really equals “I can put my needs second to yours and I invite you to as well” Two. Two more times I made the same mistake for the sake of the men I knew that I would love. And is it a surprise then that I find myself continuously adjusting just to fit their comfort?

I have told myself “never” many times. I told a student - age fourteen! - it's not so bad to die alone.

My daughter hugged me round the stomach yesterday She said “I cannot wait for you to have another baby” She too almost fourteen.

She cried tears of a fourteen year old when I asked her to spend the weekend at her grandma's so I may have an ounce of a time in my relationship. She pleaded not to go, she said that she would rather be alone, happy to be alone (please do not die alone, my baby!) So she is off right to another family’s house (they are so lovely! she is thrilled!) And that glimmer of hope at that small precious tear-soaked sliver of a time? Well you tell me. I did pick him up from the airport after-all.

[nutworks]

the makings of a home

There are boxes in my basement, Bags and boxes, Children’s clothes suffocated in plastic: Memories gasping for breath.

There are bike frames and parts The bike cemetery - I call it. All that the light touches … and then some.

Not mine, aluminum and steel, But mine, the burden of unassembled dreams.

In my closet, archeological layers of ambition - Meek, hopeful shifts of thick silk, superseded by black chiffons of being on the lookout for my sex appeal, supplanted by ochre and rust of whatever kind of budding individuality that I thought I might possess after seven years of a soul invalidating marriage, turned to shimmer of sequins and cycled back to baggy black of oh-my-goodness-i-am-in-my-late-thirties-why-do-i-still-have-to-try-so-hard. All these identities taken out for a spin, and buried unceremoniously. With them, please let me bury my body in a kind of fabric that lets me unfurl much chest.

With years that move faster than evenings, the making of a home is convoluted. Where to hang the many memories that linger? My daughter’s play kitchen, still in the sunroom, bathed in cat piss, Abandoned, now that she can fix herself a pot of mac on cheese on days when all my energy escapes me through the bottoms of my feet, Never not calloused.

I often wonder how my daughter sees our home, Sporadically unkempt, clean on occasion, formidably lived it Especially when life stops short of the formidable.

I hurried to dispose of the signs remaining of her father Who’d stayed a cherished friend, a crushing memory - The lives we shared - unhappy,innocent, Continue, uninvited in this space, left unattended Through the objects that have overstayed their welcome.

I have accumulated so much of myself as well That keeps me tethered to the floorboards. And I wish nothing more than to feel light again.

[nutworks]

Your eyes are crooked. I am sorry - I cannot see through the imbalance of your gaze. And this is far from commentary on your look Or eye Or balance You know me well enough to understand that I appreciate The imperfection.

Instead, it is a note on words that have been forced to rhyme When there is neither space nor time And rhyming cannot be a sign of love.

One large step back So I can see more clearly The grip you have on me on paper, On paper - where you pour your words. On paper - where I choose to not have read them.

I seldom have encountered better words that sit so wrong with me. All right things spoken, but the wrong air breathed. I look for ease - have I not told you? Shared presence not a puzzle to be solved, There is no time to pour over each minute, When minutes fly like seconds. When I am grasping for the edges of the understanding you should grant me, but cannot.

And look- it’s really not your fault That our eyes are just the same in color, But mine, they have seen more.

It’s not your fault That you have read too many books That helped you understand yourself but not the universe And I would rather be obtuse, then obstinate.

You cannot take what is innate to me, the air I breathe And teach another how to take deep gulps of understanding So I am done pretending That because we share similar gait, That we can walk alongside one another.

It is no bother For me to start again from scratch And when I spoke to you the truth that I Can live and thrive with noone by my side, Your voice got sadder, But I know For me to love a man, He would have to rejoice at words thus spoken. You are asleep, I am awoken.

[nutworks]

Good

Does it make sense that I hold myself so gently Like a bird with its wings fluttering in a loose ladle of my palms When everything feels broken, what better protest That to carry the soft creature that you are Confidently through this world?

Yesterday, I told my father that “I don’t need anyone” But I didn’t mean it like that What I meant Is that I need no man to carry me forward That I am my own agent of creation and destruction And it’s myself that I make love to And it’s myself that I grow old with

I am not scared of neither boredom nor desolation Everything I need - at my fingertips, here Inside my chest Within my reach I nurture myself persistently, with dedication

No need for the external gaze A stern assessment Nor compliment Nor validating words

I can be better still, But I am good And I mean that - good Not the best Not the thing to strive for But simply, plainly - good

And in this but singular life I will not twist my wrists into submission Nor will I lay in wait And anticipation of someone else’s firm grasp of guidance You hear me? I am good

It is that very word that hangs on my classroom wall As an example of poverty, of dearth of language - Take this synonym menu of many fancy syllables - Spectacular, adequate, virtuous, clean - Yet none of these thing mean what I am trying to say

I am simply good

Perhaps another word is enough Who I am is enough What I do is enough How I feel is enough It is good enough. Enough!

It is this simple tune that on a chilly spring morning wades through my body, percolating, like the smell of coffee, to my fingertips and toes and the split ends of my unkempt hair And with this feeling, I move in all the fluidity that a person can muster My smile fills my cheeks and I watch it resonate in others In this resonance, we are no longer strangers. For a short moment, we may be one. But this unity, though temporary, is not fickle I do not seek it I do not seek anything in it It is simply there to feel. A route back to myself and at the same time The route that leads me back to others.

I’m good.

[nutworks]

There is no "you"

There is no "you". No disembodied hope of rescue. No aim to be dismissed of my obsessive habits by some hero of my own creation. No life onto which to project the glories I’m too feeble to attempt. And in my daily toiling - little turmoil. When face to face with Other, I unfold delight and then retreat as promptly as I came.

I do not talk to men. I do not let them listen. Really. There’s nothing I can say that I would like to sit within their hearts, I’m selfish. It is all for me or for the ones I love - the fears, the joys, the trepidations. Little deserving, they will not observe the magic that I store.

An unobserved existence is a silent place of wonder. I used to crave the eyes of witness, now, I crave the easement of my mind. A life uncatalogued, unrecognized and thereby - free. Unwitnessed, unrestrained, innocuously quiet, still.

***

draft material

I thought that you would wait for me but not one waiting soul has seen the sun come up as glorious as I have. 

I thought that I would find a home among these strangers, yet, having done my waiting, 

I have honed in on a home that is within the four walls of my mind.

Its quietude is counter to the very thing I would hold dear. 

The romance of it all is that the only thing consistent is the change. 

There is no you. No disembodied hope of rescue.

No aim to be dismissed of my obsessive habits by a hero of my own demise. 

No life onto which to project the glories I’m too feeble to attempt. 

And in my daily toiling, little turmoil. 

When face to face with other, I unfold delight and then retreat as promptly as I came. 

Although the speculation rests - what wonders do remain uncovered below the trouble of communication? 

I do not talk to men. I do not let them listen. Really. There’s nothing I can say that I would like to sit within their hearts, I’m selfish. 

It is all for me and for the ones I love - the fears, the joys, the trepidations. 

Little deserving, they will not observe the magic that I store. 

An unobserved existence is a neutral place of quiet wonder. 

I used to crave the eyes of witness, now, I crave the easement of my mind.  

A life uncatalogued, unregognized and thereby - free. Unwitnessed, unrestrained, unnoucuously quiet. 

And if you’ve done your waiting, you can find me by the unabashed river, wider in its banks that any harbor. Dipping my toes into a parallel existence as the daily concrete ribbon of the lesser evil takes me to and fro in a relentless quest to live until tomorrow. 

[nutworks]

this poem made me cry

It’s funny, because, as it turns out I could love you and nothing really matters.

I could love you because your smile is soft and bright and it does not matter because as we tried to watch the sunset from the Alcantara viewpoint, our bench pointed sideways, the sun set firmly in the valley and with our faces turned away, we could not see it set.

I could love you I’ve never seen a white tshirt sit quite this well on a person And it does not matter because of the dozen or so objects that populate your apartment only one is mine and, because it is green and living all you need to do for it to die is nothing.

I could love you I rarely can talk for hours, but with you - I do our laughter and tears ringing well into the night and it does not matter because all that it takes for the laughter to stop is a stroke of discomfort and, as you like to keep your windows shut , so you can keep all of it shut from me, in a decisive move, familiar gesture.

I could love you because you had the patience to see through my sudden escapes, late arrivals, later departures, frivolous phonecalls, contained emotion and it does not matter because as it turns out when I do choose to be all there, I am, as I have frequently found, again, too much.

I could love you because you were born striving and in your own quiet way you continue to strive each day, even as the day wears you down and your curls hang heavy, and you sink into the softness of your sparsely lit space, and it does not matter because strive as you do and strive as I might, the odds are still distinctly stacked against us in a world that does not accept softness, does not encourage strength, does not permit ease.

I could love you because I did not choose to succumb to your awkward walk and your gentle voice it simply happened. and it does not matter because whatever shadow of love you have for me, you chose to keep it to yourself.

[nutworks]

I mean it- There is nothing quite like a cup of coffee in a stranger's kitchen. I never had the skill to play pretend, neither myself, nor with my daughter, but here are I am pretending that - drenched in the yellow sun, subdued by neighbor buildings, flush with the morning air - this is my kitchen. A tender place for every small necessity, and temporarily devoid both of its owner and my burdens.

I fix my nourishment with utmost care. A simple, economic meal of bread, tomato, cheese has never sat so well within my stomach. What, with the bin of dirty laundry roaming hive of fruit flies - distinctly not my problem.

I like to be absolved of all my hardship, sucked into another person's daily assets - a parasite, much like those fruit flies, I choose a lover of dimension. Men of accomplishment, achievement, passion. so full of themselves that they overflow into the vacuum I've created. Vacuum of indecision, spurred about...

a draft to be ammended

[nutworks]

I arrived with my wing broken, my back - aching, my arm - spasming. Dragging my wheels behind me in a box. A near certainty at my inability to take off. And you with your walls empty, your hope - toothless, the shutters tight against the windows of your home. All lights off when you leave the room. And as we walked - how you dislike to put in proper distance - the corners rounded, softened by your smile. And I saw the ocean blue of knowing: I am alone / I am not alone and this condition is permanent.

My eyes are a rare color where you come from and your eyes are cut from a different cloth. Our skin - the same type of leather, the type that breathes calm. Don’t make me slow dance / slow dance with me. The simple truth of being together is a dance and it is slow. And we both know time flows too quickly.

You avoid the river because of the wind it carries. But if you didn’t, you would know that it passes past the ornate shores as tenderly as our time together has passed us by. And that there are dolphins that swim at its mouth and that it contains the pigment that colors my eyes.

I don’t live here, but you do too. You shoulder the burdens of the present and of history, unfolding still like the creases of my eyes on the mornings that we did not share, unfolding, like my refusal to spend the night, acidic, like your mother’s cooking, sour from the war she had escaped. Kristina.

My wounds are two generations removed, but I too know the struggle of walking away, of fighting with the current, of the rain that will not pass. So what - we let our stubbornness sit in comfort, maybe together, our stubbornnesses will move boulders, turn them to pebble, turn them to sand that will stick to our skin as we swim in the ocean of what we left unspoken. I walked a small plant with me into your space, something living. I am leaving. I will send you books (your shelves are half empty). Please do not forget to tidy your kitchen, to fold your clothes, to take care of your teeth and to breathe more deeply.

Put down the cigarettes, stranger, I need you to stay.

[nutworks]

34 on 35

Touch my ankle one more time. Point to the sinews that hold me upright. Until your fingers are pressed into my muscle memory.

Then you would learn that I best see myself with my shirt unbuttoned, gazing in through my plexus. holding onto my breath, eyes folded shut, approaching what must be the meat and bones of being a woman.

This spring did not sing the way that springs usually do. You see the sun still surrendered too early and the blooms were walked to a pulp before I could catch the beauty of this transition.

Temporary, this torrential downpour. Temporary, the morning sunlight. And I will never again be in the body whose tendons sing in this peculiar pitch. And this mixture of odors, that makes me falter, this flavor of sadness, which chokes me daily, the angle at which the hair stands on my skin, will never repeat.

The dust that gathers in the corners of my conscious will never sit quite this well.

And I think intensely of the foreign cities cobbled streets clad in Jacaranda purple.

But to put down roots that will sever the pavement, to give my daily burdens heart, that I could pound out with my footsteps, so that they feel like bread and salted butter. Roots so strong that when I hold my face against the bathroom mirror I can see right through my reflection.

So when you press the tautness of my achilles tendon understand that beneath your fingers broods a summer storm.

[nutworks]

a simple ask

The dewdrops pooling down my back, I ask you leave a little bit of sweetness to go with all my patience. Leave me

a memory of summer grasses pressed down by our bodies, the tremor of an evening warmth. Hold me

beneath the sturdy shelter of your eyelids, until the storms that took over of the city pass on by. Remind me

to forget preoccupations that I find are dignified for woman my age.

And with my body, outstretched and limber-

please leave me be.

[nutworks]

better than nothing

It comes easily The lifting of another’s burden. Hoist them upon my unfragile shoulders, deadlift and squat press them, if asked nicely.

Take on the faults that are not mine, Into eager outstretched fingers, And bash them into my chest Until they are fully molded into my own Imperfect ways.

Chain my long limbs to not my own boulder And let it drag me down Until a familiar darkness sets in.

Instead, I want the depth of a green forest, Peppered with the glimmer of the lightning bugs Spread thin across a summer night.

I will take the low croaking of toads to be with me, And press it all slimy against my face, And hold it, like a precious child, smelling of dampness and moss.

I cannot be Like the petals floating down the calm surface of the river, Carried along by its current. I want to feel the sharpness of the evergreens stinging at my soles.

I know, there is great darkness in every soul And each of us teeters boldly at the edge, But I have broken free From the concrete That held down my feet. And I will claw my way up from the bottom.

I want to go in, not down, Deeper, not lower.

[nutworks]

Here’s the thing - For the rest of my years I will continue to become. Turning fuller, softer, more stoic.

Unafraid of the webs and folds That will come to line my eyelids So long as holding the line Between myself and the disrespect Is, every year, a lesser burden.

And the quality of my voice will matriculate from the meekness it’s been taught to the kind of bold that will finally release the pressure that’s been holding the vocal cords taut.

I will speak with clarity, unwavering, unsuccumbed to the waves of chaos put in motion by some finicky dudes and their shit attitudes because I will bow down to no such affliction.

Only the small creatures will hold me hostage- animals, children and the first rays of spring nested into the depths of an unfolding blossom.

Naivete and wisdom are unfortunate neighbors but with them I carry a fortune, a trove of well wishes, a well of quiet breaths to behold.

So let not bitterness take its hold And favor the flavor of relentless remorse. less. ness. Allow the sunshine to kiss your wilting eyelids into a durable moment of burlap peace.

[nutworks]

When the season came to roost,

Clouds thick with worry, 

There was not a soul left 

That would bandage the wounds.

One, two minutes of sun 

Is all it takes to understand

That in the whistling wind,

All things are ordinary.

And still, I look to you with questions unforetold

In the stillness of the evening

It strikes me 

That’s there are creatures 

That wander the night as I once did

Their loneliness scattered 

I take my loneliness daily

Squandered minutes in the morning

Empty pockets of time in the afternoon

And a slow slather of it when darkness arrives

Until the season renders useless

The many ways in which I hold my breath

And the stones grown warm

With storied hours shared.