I’m sorry that I’ve brought you to a graveyard on a sunny afternoon, but here’s what you need to know.
once my dad wore holes into the soles of his feet walking around this city looking for a job. once he carried so much lumber that his body shut down for a week, his legs lost their memory of walking. once he prepared himself mentally for bankruptcy and his hair turned grey. But it was all worth it becuase he pushed us forwards, he might say. if I asked. I don’t ask, the meaning is already implicit, right? Working hard will get you to all the places you need to go. To live is to swim forwards, to be human is to march progressively, to write is to yearn. is this true, do you think? Progress is a tide, it ebbs and flows, blah blah blah, but I hate metaphors that haven’t been thought through, becuase you could just as easily point out that before a tsunami the water recedes from the shore in drastic and alarming ways, could you not? how can we trust something as alien as the ocean?
I wish times were normal, even though times have never been normal. I wish we had more compassion. I wish that humans were better at not fucking up. I wish that my dad and many, many others had easier lives, and that trauma was barred from entering our DNA. I wish we could vaccinate against that sort of thing.
I talk about leaving but all the things I am running from have already overtaken me. I saw an article that sent me into a tailspin. I think about never reading the news again and then I remember that I cannot stand people who opt out of their civic duty. To be alive is to bear witness. someone once told me that my distress about ‘things’ and ‘stuff’ and ‘it all’ makes me incoherent. I apologised. I wonder what it means to live with such certainty that even in the face of devastating truths, some can remain eloquent. I wonder what it means to live and not think about the price.
what I am saying - what I am asking - is, how much weight can a soul bear? I guess you could classify this poem as grieving. I guess you could say I’m trying to reconcile with truths like dead children who are internationally allowed to die or who are permitted to sleep on their mothers’ graves but never to throw a stone, or to say, I am here and I deserve to be. Children are symbols of hope. I guess, reading between the lines, that you might see this as a song about coming to terms with certain facts, like: maybe things are not getting better. I could write a thousand poems about the moon, I really could. but she is beloved enough.
some species of shark must push forward or they will cease to breathe. to stop is to die. how then, does the fatigue leave the cartilage and the muscle? how does a body heal if it cannot sleep through some of the aching? how does the soul not rupture under the cost of living?