Something is Quite Wrong With Us

on not writing a newsletter

I have not been writing newsletters. Instead I have been writing poems, swimming “one more time” even though it’s never the last, thinking (hoping) about writing being seen in the form of art vs. entertainment, perusing the aisles of grocery stores, accidentally hurrying through processes, slowly—ironically—learning not to hurry.

Here is a poem. Part of the poem has truth, though I did not eat the little guy who landed on my table after falling out of a blood peach—I think everything has some truth somewhere. (Insert philosophical belief on everything being nothing.) But I’m ruining the poem talking about it so… Release yourself… write about things that didn’t happen!! If you wish.

…

Something is Quite Wrong With Us, Something is Quite Right

First in the palm of my hand, then on the slab 

of live edge: a maggot. It seemed confused,

out of the womb

as if it had been born in the pit. 

This was terrible, the only option to eat it

now that is had seen everything.

I grabbed one end, and it sailed in circles 

like bubbles near a child’s lips. Don’t eat it! 

Someone said, and it sounded like a dog snoring in my room

but it was the trees cracking their necks out there.

Don’t eat it, the trees cracked. Once it’s over

I’ll reach into my mouth and pick the maggot out 

that simple, like god playing tricks on his children

or god choosing the amount of trees I’ll see before I die.

Good god, I said, how many of us will lose everything?

…

My thoughts on most everything these days: