and there’s too much weight, at least for now. academic acquaintances i’m concerned i will be judged by–it doesn’t matter that i know deep down they would never. because they’re good people, they are. and then. i could go and half-hope you’d be there, always on edge from the self-inflicted embarrassment, surrounded by faces i barely recognize. really, i’d rather not. i’d rather stay home and catch up on the sidelines, do my chores, have dinner on time, a quiet fade into night. waiting instead of chasing–there is nothing wrong with that.
the night before last, i had a dream about two girls growing up in a convent. one brown-haired, one blonde. they were happy together, running silently through the pews during mass–there was a grey light coming in the windows. but as they grew older, one of the girls desperately wanted to leave. at the end, she looked sick, worn out. standing barefoot in the grass without clothes, the nuns wrapped an old green blanket around her shoulders. she wanted a different life, and i saw her through the eyes of the brown-haired girl who didn’t know what to feel.
I beg to dicker with my silver-tongued companion, whose lips are ready to read my shining gloss. A versatile partner, conversant and well-versed in the verbal art, the dictionary is not averse to the solitary habits of the curiously wide-awake reader. In the dark night’s insomnia, the book is a stimulating sedative, awakening my tired imagination to the hypnagogic trance of language. Retiring to the canopy of the bedroom, turning on the bedside light, taking the big dictionary to bed, clutching the unabridged bulk, heavy with the weight of all the meanings between these covers, smoothing the thin sheets, thick with accented syllables—all are exercises in the conscious regimen of dreamers, who toss words on their tongues while turning illuminated pages. To go through all these motions and procedures, groping in the dark for an alluring word, is the poet’s nocturnal mission. Aroused by myriad possibilities, we try out the most perverse positions in the practice of our nightly act, the penetration of the denotative body of the work. Any exit from the logic of language might be an entry in a symptomatic dictionary. The alphabetical order of this ample block of knowledge might render a dense lexicon of lucid hallucinations. Beside the bed, a pad lies open to record the meandering of migratory words. In the rapid eye movement of the poet’s night vision, this dictum can be decoded, like the secret acrostic of a lover’s name.
i’ve been reading some wonderful poetry, lately.
apricot milk 