Image: Unsplash, downloaded (https://unsplash.com/photos/JYBBcCbRaFc) 28.11.2021.
When all is Said and Nearly Done
And later that night, the rain
And before this; feeling the rain come on
Someone's dark meets someone's dark
And before that; all this singing down the wind
Bottles of tinder-kin blood
Poured to ground
And the way the old steady themselves
Against the young
Take their time
And time is taken
And the stories seem so important for a spell
Until no one knows anybody you used to know
No one knows you
Like yours once did
Do you know me, friend?
When I come to it
Just let me go on a while
About everything I once cared for and carried
You're lookin' at future you
And this too;
It ain't a thing you lost that ever mattered
So much as the fact that you had a thing to lose
People too,
I'm talking
What we come in on
Is but a flash of song
Storied out of bone
And ain't none of us alone
Not ever, friend.
I know you know
What I know
Feels like rain, but it pours like pain
Don't disappear before you disappear
Be here, wild and wailing.
It's all taken up on the wind
In the end.
Come Cry in My Kitchen*
this won't fix it
but then again
what will
one must see for oneself just how badly
one can burn
it all down
around the heart
are these holes left in us
by everyone
we love and cannot
save from themselves
wasn't that me, once?
And now, not saved, but here -
trust that that happens
and can happen again
you can't step in front of this
words don't stick, anger misses the mark,
tears are something but not enough -
so, surrender it is
surrender as in
flag in the ground while the bullets are still flying
as in his life must reckon with dying
and hopefully pull back
soon enough
to have had enough
with all that
I tell him he doesn't have to burn to feel alive
that he can just be whole
but he hears "hole" and is looking for the stuff to fill it with
here we are, years and years apart
letters written in a child's hand
things done, things burning
and all I can do is take in the broken beauty of him here -
alive, for a moment
that I want to last
and last and last.
*Title from a line in The Solace of Open Spaces by Gretel Ehrlich
Poem in which I could not possibly love you more
And you would tell me
To hold on
And I would say; repeat after me -
We've never been more innocent
Like rain it rolls off
In years
Mercy gone to town
In the only truck left that runs
Errands, miles, yearlight in the off star
Of mountains
Sister, this happened
To us, we were here
We wanted it all
All that we had never been given
We were owed nothing
But this beautiful roughshod rain
And the light through the window that came
When we least expected it to
And the ceiling of stars it illuminated
And how close heaven felt in a breath
A cupped hand
Water kids wandering towards whole
And howl.
For my Poet-Kin
I've been both wound and finger
and at times
I think
have lingered
too long
on unnecessary details
like the chaff of a strap
when your hands are behind your back
a friend you cannot save from his own noose
in dark a cell, or how two wrongs
don't make the night a thing you know how to find the other end of
what little I know, I fought to know
what little it is I carry on me now,
but no matter
I love the indent of where I've been
the ghost fingers of howling and don't mention it
no, you must mention it I love this skin
every numb and dangle, strip and tangle
oddly beautiful - equally abandoned
we all hate what we can't fix
but we know how to love in a hurricane
how the broken in us is holy holy holy
it's getting late now and all I know
of what little I know is
how much I love you.
About the Author: James Diaz is the author of This Someone I Call Stranger (Indolent Books, 2016) and All Things Beautiful Are Bent (Alien Buddha, 2021) as well as founding editor of Anti-Heroin Chic. Their work has appeared most recently in Rust + Moth, Cobra Milk and Cleaver Magazine. They currently live in upstate New York.
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