Things I Don’t Know What To Do With

James Bowden

1.
Sometimes I just don’t know what to do with that. Like, for what? I saw Kristine today
and I mean, I’ve been over it and it’s fine but still my heart burned and–
who said you were allowed to do this?

I miss feeling held.

It’s been so long that I realize it’s been forever.

2.
Weight like pressure like Atlas like stones call me Giles Corey, honey, in that voice of yours
I’m so fond of and perhaps I will accept this mantle, accept or be bludgeoned by, can I really
feel crushed with a gentle hand on my cheek and yeah I need more therapy don’t you belabor it.

3.
I am one angsty angsty boy stability is not me

4.
I miss so much. I don’t know what to say about it most of the time. I ask for more sweetness:
I am living in the cold. I miss anything I possibly can, as if
a sign that much to be missed shall be present again, something small to hold onto.
a pinky to grasp. an envelope to climb into.

5.
That poem about how an everyday common desolation can make you look up, notice beauty in the world.
Except here it’s just random remnants that break my brain. Softness. Tenderness. A rock.
Beauty gone from the world, lingering like ticks.

6.
I am just so very full of emptiness these days, it doesn’t make sense, so empty of fullness other than more
emptiness bulging at my seams, so much so that I don’t know what to do with it. I mean, these are gradients:
I am just refusing to use them.

7.
life is really very odd.
i am become multitudinous.
i am become loving.

8.
This is always true, but: everything that happens is from now on,
and I continue to shift, I am the ground
                                                                unsteady
                                                                                    beneath myself.
All the world is just me interacting with myself, my fingers touch
my fingers, my words refract back at me, and so on. I am not in
love, but I am become a lover. All around me: attachment. My
breast becomes an open church for any soul that has suffered:
an open church for all lovers. One cannot suffer without loving
something, I should think. Yes, much of suffering is love of the
body, love of the self and such. But in a world where all I touch
is me—what else would it be? And is it odd that losing an
other is just losing part of self, some of my multitudes
detach or hide away, now pale vampires that at times
flow back out through my fingers: this is why they call
ink blood: this is why I must write. I come to adore the concrete,
not for its promises of permanence, but for its solidity even in its
transience. That is okay: turn to new sidewalks when the time comes:
you are fluid, stolid in your insolidity, you contain multitudes. It is not that you ARE
any of them or the conglomerate itself; no, you are the way they exist and move and die,
the how, the derivatives. Get in while you can. I am only here in the instant. As are you. Come. Open.

9.
Ábrete. Isn’t that worth

something?

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The poem referenced in part 5 is Ellen Bass’ “Any Common Desolation”. Part of the opening line in part 8 is from Bon Iver’s “Re: Stacks”. The ending of part 8 is in part inspired by an exhibit I saw at the NY MOMA that had text something to the effect of What looks good today may not look good tomorrow / Now’s the time, and in part by Clarice Lispector’s idea of the instant in Agua Viva. Ábrete is Spanish for “open”, in the imperative, addressed to a singular “you”. The ending of part 9 is in part inspired by Dermot Kennedy’s new song, the refrain of which has been stuck in my head, “Dreamer”. I’m not sure how I feel about this song in general, but it has a lot of little lines that I like.