Connections, bindings, threads that went between us
and all those loved ones are taken down and strung up again,
they fade and are injured, are burned and rejected.
The bound-up connected
are squirming all the while, all through history, squirming
as a direct result of what goes on in the brain—because we are always searching and wreathing and vomiting up our own wishes.
The bubbly goes down easily and my eyes cloud and sparkle in every context, the medicine and the medication.
Who gives what to whom.
I want to find that thing in myself that is the key,
the suggestion, however direct, I do not care, I just require a direction, please.
What were the tasks and talents I should have been undertaking and recognizing all this time?
Bring me up in front of them.
The confrontation doesn’t scare me
because I have nothing to lose or to pretend about.
I would tell all of you, anyone, my biography, if I thought it would bring about change or function as a catalyst for anything good.
When I meet new people and I get a good vibe from them, I barf out – to varying degrees – my life history.
To exile oneself, they say, requires much bravery and determination, to establish oneself in a foreign country is not easy. Yes, but it requires ignorance and a mindset suitable for looking only one year into the future…that’s fine but that’s at some point not fine.
Prone to guilt. Shitty religion.
Sweden in the winter, at a dock, watching boats still moving and walking past illuminated fog, the coziness is still palpable. That reliable ex-lover.
Accumulation of knowledge,
halfway through life,
and the human is still young, silly.
Building materials in China, New York, Damascus and Germany.
Don’t have your baby in Saudi.
Cavernous architectural beauty in Naples, Budapest, Bangkok. This won’t become a list. but sometimes could not a list be helpful?
The spark-flair is the moment
of the memory being conjured up, rolled over the tongue or through the jelly of the mind, the endorphin rush
and the chill down the spine that reveals, yes, you were there.
But, it doesn’t matter.
Can I dance by on the ephemeral?
The time distance compresses and I am immediately there again. I could fuck them. (What am I talking about?! I never FUCKED, I let them fuck me!!!)
She’s still standing there in the disco. Ten thousand picnics and fresh fish out of the Danube.
Which mind fever was the most delicious, the most exquisite?
Which state of brain chemicals was this burning longing that only stopped with the end of her love?
And that promise of a dungeon scene.
Why did I have to flee? I was, rather, being pulled about
from this gorgeous ursine dom dyke. They and Amsterdam are still there…
My table: the thick limb of a tree I decorated with papers, ribbons and dried leaves. The books piled up: Emmy Ball-Hennings, Sylvia Plath, Miranda July, Elena Ferrante, Hannah Arendt, Tove Janssen, The Four Season Harvest, magazines. I’m drunk.
You search for guidance or order in the instructions.
Search for sense in the administration.
To be a well-known artist, not famous, but well-known.
No goal is set.
The keys to the garden gate and hut hang in the hallway
for escape any time.
The next burning longing begins, the brain chemicals reassemble, recalibrate,
the fog protects me from whatever, whatever is out there.
Ever since my young adulthood, my brain worked
and dominated my body, my brain the big controller, my body but a stem.
I had forgotten that A Room of One’s Own was so instructional.
Provide me the right nutrition.
Did she prescribe the right treatments? I’ll never really know. February is always the worst. I lose my voice, get wistful, then depressed, try to celebrate believably.
Hurricanes
My Ukrainian savior has not returned my call.
She must be so busy.
Because everyone is suffering. More these days.
My back is so broad,
I can take the lashes. I like the dungeon, didn’t you know?
But my skin got more sensitive…was it the hormones? The child?
Growing the hair out, suddenly I’m more fecund, wild.
I like it, but it barely speaks to my libido.
INTERLUDE
I never really thought it would happen to me.
I had always been told, since the age of 17, that I had a mental illness and it would be with me for life.
Therapy, medication, a mediocre depression, with some astounding, meaningful artistic results.
But right now, now when I do not want the drama
It is here
It provides a shiny patina to something shiny already
When is the next holiday for Jews or Gentiles. I want to celebrate something.
The wine always tastes worse when it’s drunk secretly.
I seek help and I get it. But then the help’s effects wear off very quickly,
and I seek or not…I feel embarrassed or debilitated or dull-witted.
The being there was so sweet because I knew I would leave.
To stay means verderben, decay, something
I was away because I was traumatized, don’t you see?
No one knew it. It was unprecedented with my family generation.
Granddad and Grandmom, you lost your fathers (and a mother) when you were still so young.
How did you deal, in 1920s or 30s? I want to know the techniques of the elders. I want my elders near me! Why didn’t I see this 15 years ago?
My idols were foreign, Communist (halleluja), queers, European, the travelling sort of passing impulses that drew me. I cannot apologize.
I wanted to flee, though, and I am sorry that I couldn’t be stronger, braver. Braver would have been to stay, yes? To face the decay or fear of festering…
Instead I was frivolous and dreamy.
That is okay, to be so is to float, to simmer, to be in the presence of the gods of decadence and the philosophy of the age. Yes, to be part of something bigger.
Significance of history becomes clearer in hindsight because we cannot handle the weight.
I am moved by the weight of history, the horrible pace at which years go by…
Disease festers and awaits it’s opportunity to perform
And time goes by and speeds up its pace
Wars begin, the toxic masculinity hasn’t left. It’s very much alive and well…Realpolitik isn’t gendered but the leaders are and pride in revenge and bold moves rages…
My Ukrainian savior is suffering now. Dearly.
Trying to grasp the level of trauma in the human beings around me.
He is left by her. The dog has gotten between them, only brings to a head what was already stirring and pulsating.
The chopping off of hair
Let me breathe for a minute between alcohol and this other medicine.
After such joy in the snow with you all, I sought annihilation and a dumb-struck harmony with myself.
We were in a big car together
And the song came on and I only remember the dashboard and the lights of Dresden’s Neustadt. It’s good I didn’t comprehend the significance of that occasion: that we were truly done.
But I did, I felt the breakage and the tear
It’s enough
Because I had the shock and trauma years earlier