Wash Out
Overbearing city, Southern city
This is life after water,
rainless city, streets clotted w/ grease and wailing.
synapse fire, old war stories
where cigarette light draws sniper fire
more than unnerved. erased
by simple pleasures.
formulaic tension, bridge building
cold, obtuse, dinner with an urban legend.
rain turns sharp, like ennui teeth
as the species stumbles forth
meet me at the river,
I will stand in the silt like driftwood
and I will not drift, but please forgive me if I drift.
above it all, above chemical accidents
and the sopor of ease
above indecision, the fervent churlish boys,
the parked car blues
above cold salvos of talentless pedestrians,
above complaint, above reproach.
- (the next night)
the California rivulets, the glory on the ground,
the misappropriation isn’t fair
the beaten call it mercy when the working whistle sounds,
a shambling mass of ones who wished they cared
A God who watches quiet is a God who wants to watch,
And I am not a God enough to say
That a watching God who doesn’t do the things I think he ought
Is a God who’s gone, as I can see, astray.
I am not a sunset but I’d love to love like one
The oily canvas floes around the hills
A stranger from the country—a marble quarry’s son
taught me all I need to know of staying still
-(the next night)
Wash out, Wash out!
You’re a new-home embracer
and a bad-day understander
before anything else,
and the world needs you,
but only if you’re lucky enough to believe it.
All you do is sit around all day and be kind to the things you see.
I was never much of an experiencer; never much of a venturer
flatfooted and glued to the places I could expect gentleness from,
disqualified from experiencing gentleness in its fullness, from all its lovely sources.
[could be, must be wrong, but shouldn’t the absolved feel absolved? Or do I simply fail to grasp the incomprehensible depth of ABSOLUTION?]
It would be a dishonor to all those magic hours of being known and loved by all those carers by instinct to do anything other than desert the agony-paths of youth I never owed allegiance to in the first place. It feels inarguable - I am too old to feel the things I feel the way I feel them. Hazy nights ashamed of indulgence. Self pity, lethargy, apathy, anger crowding out the gratitude I should be pouring out until I am no longer comfortable in malaise. O God hold me to my promise, teach me not to falter so easily.
-(The Next Night)
Calming down because the ole moon will not let me do anything else. Stumbled onto a horseback trail a mindless trot from the main road and followed the ATV tracks in hopes of finding some place to break the film of static that had become overbearing. & I wandered a path far too clearly marked to call it wandering, but I thought with something like clarity and I prayed harder than I have in a real long time. & I forgot to listen until tonight, but I think there are some voices I cannot pretend I do not hear for long, even when I forget to listen.
I have been thinking a bit about speed. In reading people far smarter and stranger and more experienced than myself, I am recognizing the ways the tremblings of the age have played on my resident weaknesses. I handle speed poorly because my soul is not made to move fast. I have ignored an infinity of lifealtering details that my soul was not designed to miss because I move faster than I care to admit and I have grown used to a convenient speed of caring that amounts to very little care at all.
Maybe it’s a pipe dream, but caring in minutes-long increments feels bankrupt, self-indulgent. A token gesture. I do it everyday. I look at the moon without realizing i’m seeing a heavenly body that meant something deeply spiritual to every generation preceding the last few. Something people dedicated entire sections of a pantheon to gets a ‘huh, look at the moon’ on a short walk to the car & it’s forgotten until it reminds me of itself again.
Maybe that’s not a function of caring about the moon more. Maybe it’s a function of learning care more comprehensively, more completely, more sacrificially, more naturally, more carefully! How do ya get there, huh? Maybe it starts with slowing down. Taking time, making time, forcing yourself into pockets of dedicated attempts to care until it becomes second nature. A way of life.
Maybe I can find a way to care in the fastest parts of my life. If you’ve got ideas, please holler, cause I get real scared of how easy (and somehow acceptable) it is to fold when things get fast, cause they will get fast. Pray for me, I don’t wanna wash out in the speed.
ALL LUV