Glad
I want to wear happiness like a flowing summer dress,
And flaunt it.
Chase balls in the park like a spotted lassie off the leash.
Sharp like a Raven with its beady eyes on a big fat worm,
(Fun fact: ravens recognize human faces,
So don’t piss them off.
They will remember.)
Joyful like a worm in its final hours,
Writhing and feasting on things,
Both dead and alive.
It’s a beautiful summer day.
I’m glad to be here like the sun is,
If only briefly.
Joy is a sensation that spreads,
And among other things,
It makes you want to live.
Maybe,
Joy is fucking to come not to conceive,
Maybe,
Pleasure by itself is an unequivocal good.
Question to self: What if where I am is what I need?
It’s easy enough,
To wax lyrical melancholy,
But ordinary devotion…
The pleasure of abiding,
The pleasure of obligation,
Of dependency even.
That takes practice.
So we leave empty spaces,
So Soul can rush in.
I stole this poem from Lincoln’s Inn Fields in London. augmented man has inspired me to try my hand at stealing.
“Become thieves instead! Not of verses pieced together
From others’ voices echoing eerily down empty halls;
No, steal inspiration direct from everyday life itself.”
London has so many grey days. When the sun finally shows, people are extra grateful, extra giddy. They smile on the streets even. They wear summer dresses!
I just finished reading Maggie Nelson’s “The Argonauts.” Since reading the book, my understanding of queerness has expanded. Eve Sedwick redefined “queer” to hold all kinds of resistances and mismatches that have little or nothing to do with sexual orientation.
Maggie Nelson, who is married to gender-fluid artist Harry (Harriet) Dodge, is convinced that pregnancy is the queerest experience she has ever had. Watching your body transmute before your eyes, to watch it shift, contort, and change to make space for another human body.
It must be so wild. The part of yourself that rationalizes your humanity is confronted with the part of yourself that is wholly animal.
I’m starting to think there’s something inherently queer about poetry too. Poetry — The art of using words to color outside the lines.
To hold space for the contradictions and multiplicities (the squiggles) in language. So everything that is also is not. We are at the frontline, waging war against everything defined, everything materialized. We are warriors of the ethereal! I heart spectrums.
