that's what d said. that's his intention for his new year - to learn from all. i dug it. dug into it and found myself laying around dreaming of learning from all, of dissipating with every conversation, spoken and unspoken, of really appreciating the earth on this skin i'm in. a Gift.
on day 5, i am floating, finding communion with chopping apples, and bananas for oatmeal; communion with grey clouds, with bangla, with shawls and homies over time, with derek, warren, tony torres, gene, tyrone and jitandra. with chuck and brian, eric and charlene and alisa, miguel, juan and wil.
today, i'm at peace with jungle city, okay with its panting that whispers like a lover who i will never see again n see in every new encounter - the beginning, end and on to the 4, 5 and 6, uptown in ascension through a conference of birds.
all praise is due...
met this brother in a chinatown spot last month. been going there for a while. it's off canal, a bakery that looks like 1980's bronx. it's where other broke people go, sit down huddled like an arab feast around the little trays of food. 8 people scrunched into a table for two, sharing stories in mandarin, cantonese, spanish and nuyo-brokonics.
my dude had has ny fitted low, saw new york in my spies.
all praise is due, i said. yes, he agreed. we shared blues, broke in our 30's, and praying.
what's good though? i asked. what r u thankful for?
for waking up. he said.
word.
give thanks for that. God wakes you up, you do the rest.
"Dead Things" by Joe Weil
ReplyDeleteThat rooster I found on the tenth floor of the Fairmount Luxury Apartments,
just wandering around in the hall,
Rhode Island Red, fierce,
and coming towards me with his spurs...
How did he get there?
Or the time I was struck in the back of the head
by a pineapple that had somehow
been catapulted from a truck,
and I woke ten minutes later,
with a beautiful Egyptian woman
leaning over me,
her breath smelling miraculously
of coconuts, the intense sadness of her eyes,
not for me, but for every humiliated
and half-hazard thing:
What is it?
And how do I know she was Egyptian?
I must have asked her, or perhaps misremembering
is a form of prayer
What have I not misremembered
so that even your hand, beloved,
resting on mine, now,
and tracing the pale blue vein
just below the knuckle
dissolves into a vast mistake,
a fen of almost-theres
that are never just so
just so this hour of being real—
the cup, the long ago voices
of family,
the sobs I hear come out from my own throat—
this animal that walks away from inside me,
this thing I have sought to kill,
my spurs slicing the air, my crown
of feathers bristling as I rage,
my life out of place, and not
my life at all.
thanks for sharing Your thoughts
deep. mis-remembering. right - my life out of place, n not my life at all. forget that often. forget to disassociate from this skin i'm in, from these four walls and apartment i crash in, from being a stat. misremember n i'm more than that.
Deletethank you fam.
ReplyDeletehaving moved back to boston from small town upstate new york, i have been struggling with figuring out how to feel earthly connection in the city...how do we feel the earth through all the concrete? today you remind me that the gift of cities is the potential for human communion, and we, too, are the earths children.
word. been thinking bout that a lot. struggle with it. especially as i get deeper with traditional medicine. i wonder about how well can i know the 5 elements, i have been severed from them. but it's all around us. been thinking that in some ways, what i can offer is an urban understanding of 5 elements, in how it plays out here, in our bodies n soul...
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