Anger a way of holding on. When contact or reconciliation does not work anger becomes the stand in. The person that we are angry with is alive to us still, even if they are no longer living. In this way letting go of the anger does not mean giving up on an injustice. It means accepting the way things are. There is so much I don’t want to be. So much that I resist. Turning from anger—I don’t want to perform this here.
Okay being broken. I wait until the day is almost done to write that. The child, the parent, and the adult: the child demands, the parent forbids, and the adult decides. Unless I am remembering that incorrectly.
To judge and to blame is neither the province of the student or the master. When anger blossoms it is a return in its own way.
Close in anger. When he speaks I often become angry. And it is not because of anything he has done or said to me. It is because he reminds me of someone I was once close to—and via his speech I am returned to them.
I want to write a poem called “Having It Really Good” about having it really good and getting caught in it like webbing—how I deflected whatever you said— at the end that’s how we talked, as if playing a game of tennis a careful game between two people who couldn’t figure out a way to get off the court now I want to recognize what belongs to me and what does not, want not to move forward slashing defensively at every advance before I even know where it is going want to cultivate openness want to imagine a light, an exchange— only after it ended could I ever imagine it during I was too afraid to know that I was, now I am stubborn— the game was never that careful—in fact I think we hurt each other more than is usual—we were so frustrated, knowing our ideal angry that the other took it from us—having it really full stop, holding onto it—believing in what it was not what it could be or was not
after you left the reading a woman turned back to us (by chance I was standing closest) & accused you of stealing the coat—she’d had the same, disappeared once
it came from a boutique in Roncesvalles little known (few could afford to) her favourite, beloved statement she’d thrown once on a bed and forgotten about & that night in Kensington it had returned on the wing of the thief
your innocence could not enter her convinced no poet (or friend of one) could afford it—now it walked out again & I was stuck explaining that it had never come
What does it mean to write a poem that is angry? Little fox raising a stone to his head-height threatening lords and ladies on the path. This morning I rose into a feeling, a kind of dampness despite the nice weather, a cold dark cloth draped over my head, stuffed in my guts. Last night, in haste, I pulled open a bag of chamomile, spilled its seeds over my cup, drank it anyway, without filter. Nothing angry there. Except my haste was to avoid another feeling. I knew what I was brewing up. Knew what was coming, or wasn’t. What would not. Oh to feel as clear and sharp and sure as I felt overlooking the old streetcars, certain it was a crime to be made to clean up a mess that wasn’t mine—my earliest memory a toddler’s anger, mildly Byronic I sometimes think—the self- importance, someone who doesn’t know the world is any bigger than what he is able to see. Doesn’t understand that the injustice doesn’t extend beyond his self
Helpless I watch the sun trace across the asphalt—my voice speaks when they are sleeping— they do not know why I beg for bread and salt—what feelings are mine and what belongs to them— when I arrived it was without blood of chicken or goat—they did not sprinkle the four corners of this one bedroom— didn’t speak my name or say their prayers— let the dog disturb me in his haste to shout at the glass—he is the only one who knows—snarling, suspicious—the fur raised around his slim neck—should feel instead weight beyond cunning—terror— what he cannot know—what, if abused, could destroy him. Sometimes pain is felt in one place but found elsewhere— sometimes the sun when it moves becomes something living
to reset I used to go to the art gallery, search for a painting that would arrest no specific feeling—I wanted to be either surprised or held I’d carry a little notebook with me and sometimes leave my phone at home or else mostly ignore it or only take pictures—now M wants to go to the art gallery. we all do. I told her this afternoon that I was running towards the blue, an imagined blue screen that hung in front of me like something I would never reach—the Aegean, I said, mourning the dead recast as heroes, or not heroes exactly but figures of tragedy, ancient consequence, betrayed mores—I’d downloaded the audio from a movie that I’d watched the previous night, listened to it with headphones—she said in her next message that my voice sounded different than it did elsewhere— I liked what she said, more alive to itself, something like that—while she searched for the word I thought immediately and without hesitation it was “open” something that in this quarantine I have sometimes struggled to do— tonight I read a book that surprised me, then I got out of bed to fulfill a promise I kept making and breaking—to smoke weed on the back deck let myself feel or concentrate on the action—to take deep and slow breaths back in bed a sound is coming out of my throat except it is noiseless—full and round and like a kiss on the neck
Susan Stewart: “in listening I am listening to the material history your connection to all who have been impressed upon you living or dead, the voice as with the eyes holds the life of the self”—as we move from one app to another you say imagine this is the part where I am inching my chair a little closer, ordering dessert—I have become used to pacing my apartment, dictating to some future version of yourself—maybe like me you play the voice notes several times both because they are long and because it is easy to get lost in the trail of your materiality, caught in your impressions’ grooves—and once sent rarely go back as if what is before us is all that is living, what will be caught and rendered and cut off, mingled with the sound of your dogs coughing, the streetcar, music playing gently in another room— I know these rooms now—the kitchen, the red room, and the bed—Stewart again: “the voice in poetry is the voice of the lover”—she tells a story about a man who smashes rocks on the weekend (amateur geologist) and gases butterflies in cyanide, an unknowing tribute to his grandmother’s lover who in a concentration camp broke rocks and died by gas—how we return to what we don’t even know —what is yours and what doesn’t belong to you—at a funeral a distant uncle or an older second cousin, this was eight or nine years ago, said my voice was like that of a doctor, which I took to mean: cold, circling—a history of this—but now realize he didn’t specify—a voice can mean many things—who did I love, how did it come to me, what was impressed, what was I wrestling with, what did it mean, and what do you hear now
meditating felt like I was pushing through sludge—some final resistance, some difficulty—held in the body but not in the brain, or in the brain but bodily—passing their house, desire to explain— what needs to be explained?—light of the sun on the facing buildings, neighbours passing in and out, with groceries—on the front lawn a sign free, cat deceased—easier to throw out than have to speak to the street, to keep record—what needs to be explained, what needs to illuminated, what needs to be brought—what is the new responsibility, what is carried—how can I be sure that what is called up in me is only muscles or footsteps, vibrations and jarring—something apart from love apart from desire, apart from need? know now I’m drawing a boundary: at the conclusion of this poem whatever it is will be released