“skirts, from above”, Aditi Nagrath

I really, really like the third part here. To sacrifice the poem.

“Prelude”, Christian Wiman

This reminds me of the whole a love of form is a love of endings from one of my favorite Louise Gluck poems, “Celestial Music”, which is also about religion and beauty and non-religion.
Well, and then the ending: I need a space for unbelief to breathe. / I need a form for failure, since it is what I have. Like, come on.
I am grateful for space for unbelief wherever and whenever I can find some. It seems rare. It seems many people banish it, since to be a space for unbelief among believers is a rather dangerous endeavor. I should know.
I came across some Richard Silken writings too, where he says something like Everyone I know is in some kind of pain: Everyone…and so, another reason to lie, because we’ve all agreeed not to tell the truth to each other. Seemed consistent with the above.

“Archaic Torso of Apollo”, Rilke

Any time I see this I will bring it back up, so foundational is it. You must change your life.

I also learned today, in two different media “outlets”, that there are multiple types of therapy, which I didn’t know. I imagine I could use some interpersonal therapy and would be more than curious to have some professional psychoanalysis. I think for me it’s more about acknowledging something is there, and the action parts follow from that relatively straightforwardly-ish (which doesn’t sound that straightforwardly now that I’m reading it aloud to myself with all the qualifiers…).

Now a few poems of my own that I came across today:

“Fake mint, or I love you”, James Bowden

I refurbished this poem today, reshaped it more than anything. I’m not quite sure how I feel about this, and it feels to me to wax a bit more toward word salad, sorta between this (but very far from it) poem, “may be you are like me: scared and awake” by Olena Kalytiak Davis and the more usual coherent poems.

“how to live”, James Bowden

I sent this to my mom today. Now it is here. I am very grateful for her.

“This Is the Honey”, Mahogany Browne

I’ll end on this one today. I find that I like anything that smacks of an affirmation for repeating. Just a very hopeful and joyful poem overall, to lose oneself within, to forget for a moment and perhaps have that moment be more than a moment. To keep reminding oneself, this is the honey, this is the honey, this is the honey, and so on and so forth.
Honey always reminds me of this song Antonia showed to me, “Presumably Dead Arm” by Sidney Gish, whose lyric honey, you are nothing to me also gets kinda spun around in one of my own poems, “voioioioioid”.
Which also, as an afterthought, on the subject of affirmations, reminds me of DFW’s “This is Water” speech, which Antonia also showed me, which also, this is water, this is water, etc.

I am finding myself quite surprised, the way I work at this poetry, not tirelessly as I do tire of it like I tire of anything, and it is indeed work but not like that. I thought work (for me) was reserved for STEM and stuff, but this nourishes me in a different way even though it’s still work. Funny how that works. This, much more of a flow and engagement and less of an active thinking effort.