Cape Disappointment
I drove all the way to the other coast just to stand
at the edge of something. Everything
salt, fog. Next week I’ll be twenty-nine.
I’m tired from so much becoming.
How will I know when I’ve become myself?
And what if I go too far, become something else?
All day I walk through the dune grass
while the ocean churns beyond. I came
to feel this, I won’t turn my back on it now.
So I write the poem, walk the twisting path
to the lighthouse alone. I know from a life
in writing I can arrive at the truth by telling lies.
My favorite point in a poem is when the truth
becomes unstoppable. Here’s the truth—
I’m not standing at the edge of anything.
I’m alone in my vacation rental
and I didn’t pack enough sweaters. I wanted
to feel like Virginia Woolf but have no clue
how she felt. I don’t even know how I feel.
In my therapist’s office, I point at my feelings
on a wheel. I wanted to see the shipwreck
but the fog was impenetrable. I wrote a poem
anyway, just made it up. I think I’m starting
to like my solitude. Sorry for what I said
in that other poem. This morning
a deer was in the yard. I chased her
with my new camera. It feels good
knowing nothing. I don’t want to die
out here among the towering pines.
I’m saying I don’t want to die alone.
*
Constraint
If I cut enough I’ll reach
my own hard pit. I ditch
the apps, quit sleeping in,
I shave my head. I cut
caffeine, my poems spoil,
cut desire, don’t write at all.
I think writing’s this way:
I prune language, I leave
what’s alive. Look at me
drunk on my ongoingness.
I’m working on a poem.
Look what I made myself,
a glittering hole. I don’t
know what I want, only that I want.
*
I pack the car to watch you die
I pack my Big Thief t-shirt. My electric toothbrush. I pack two books I won’t have time to read. Pack my silver rings, turquoise. Then I take them out. I renounce adornment. Abandon it. I pack my journal, pens. I won’t write for a month after this. I pack seltzer, tinned fish, oranges, sleeping pills, matches, yarn. I drive. I drive all night. I’ve never driven like this before, toward something. My car just full of random crap. All the shit I packed and all the shit that was already in my car. Then I’m in your hospital room, surrounded by your things. What’s left of your things. What gave your life color and shape reduced to this this stack of books, this drawer of clothes. Your cowboy hat, your father’s pocket watch. My photo pinned above your bed, my hair down to my waist. I see that you, too, packed for this. And nothing we brought makes any difference.
*
I Have So Much Left To Confess
I go down to the cafe because I can’t write in my apartment
because everything is too familiar, but now everything in the cafe
is starting to feel familiar. Except the new gay barista. Except
the snow falling outside my window like scrap paper, like ash
the night the garage burnt down with all our baby clothes inside.
The snow feels like all I can write about, that and my loneliness
which feels like someone standing behind me who wants me dead
who vanishes every time I turn to look them in the eye. The truth:
even my loneliness is starting to bore me with its dependability.
It’s making me want to go back to suffering. I came down here
to write because I’ve been writing every day because I’m afraid
if I don’t write I will die and I mean that literally. Snow falls
like dogwood blossoms and makes me want to drink whiskey.
I don’t know why I’m fighting it if I’ll always be alone. I want
to wake up I-don’t-care-where. I’m never going to love anyone
like I love this poem so what’s the use in trying. When she left
I said at least I have the poems I wrote about her. I keep
reminding myself of the futility of language. I can’t live in a poem,
a poem is a not-self, but here I am loveless drugless writing my way
out of a fog-drenched field. I’m trying to imagine a place
where I can reach out and take joy because it’s what I deserve,
so how can I admit the poem isn’t real when it’s my only hope?
The truth is this is the truest thing I’ve said all year. Every night
I draw an orange-scented bath and drop a stone into myself.
Once I read the best poem ever and dropped the book in the tub.
Don’t say I’m not willing to risk it all for love. I pulled the book out
sopping wet and read it anyway the pages translucent as moth wings.
Sometimes I bring my knees to my chest and think about my father.
I don’t think I’m brave enough to be a poet or angry enough.
I sit there in the perfumed dark, the air like steamed oranges.
I want to be born again but then I think of all the suffering
I’d have to endure. All night I beat uselessly against the dark
like a moth’s wings against the inside of a lampshade. Maybe
I’ll let the poem save me. Let all its promises be gold.
