Field Notes from This Week

Everything I want to say

has been said,

written,

painted,

sung,

danced,

hummed,

puked up,

regurgitated,

birthed,

killed,

cooked,

chopped,

screamed,

and whispered.

I want to say nothing new.

I only want to speak things

you already know

so that you keep saying,

"Yes.

That's right.

Yeah, me too.

Okay, cool.

You feel that too?"

I want to be relatable

and understood.

I keep reaching

for some grand idea,

some twist of phrase,

something unique

and insightful

and sexy.

Stretching

and pulling.

Thinning it out.

A little porcelain insight.

You sweet thing, you.

Quickly!

write it down

before you are interrupted,

or distracted,

or a fly sits

on the tip of your nose.

I want to be special.

Unique.

One in a billion.

Or seven.

Chosen,

picked,

assigned my own personal genie

with bells on her hips,

bells on her shoes,

bells in her hair.

So that when she dances

on my command,

music sprays out

from all corners and angles

into a ringing,

deafening,

jingle of illuminated nonsense.

I want to write

about the heaviness of life,

the hard job of survival,

the serious business of it all,

and those hard men and women

who walk with lead shoes.

I want to contrast it

with those fortunate souls

who arrived

with the lightest of touch.

Harnessed on bungee cords.

Touching down on tipytoes.

Sweetness drooling down

their chin,

pockets full of gold.

I want to detail

their distinctions

and experiences of life,

but I'm pretty sure

that book

has already been written.

Many times before.

I want to write about

priestly princes,

shape-shifting poets,

clay figurines

on windowsills,

homicidal cats,

setting up booby traps

Plotting accidents.

I want to write about

uncoagulated poems

bleeding out

on butcher blocks,

Flies circling their carcasses

ink and bits of bone.

I want to write about

silk scarves

polishing sharp peaks

of mountaintops.

Faint figures

stretching across the horizon,

wrapping,

twisting,

deforming,

engulfing,

only to disappear

around the bend

and emerge again

from the other side at dawn.

I want to write about souls

with karmas so heavy

that rickshaws clank behind them

with every step.

Waist-deep in memories,

wading through alligator waters,

recounting unnecessary burdens.

I want to write about shadows

on highways,

negotiating space.

Glowing white and yellow strips

of paint on the road.

Enough to keep the order.

Invisible contracts

not to be broken.

Playing chicken

as they pass on the left.

Rolling the dice

and choosing life

over and over

and over.

I want to write about

upbeat dance tunes

on the Sunday radio.

Sherry in a crystal glass.

Camels of the night stand.

Rosy ash still smoking

in the tray.

Faint light

and the warm glow

of tangerine skies

flickering through

straw shutters.

I want to write about

the orphan

who came to sing

by the willow.

Tears salty as the sea.

Shattered glass cut deep,

but wounds do not ask questions.

They bleed

and ponder their nature.

Winged creature

with cement feet.

I envy your predicament.

Clipped wings

with diamond studs.

What bargain did you make?

I want to write about the engineers of appetite.

Coating fishhooks in sweet jam.

They mean us no harm.

They most truly do not.

They caught

a nasty case of biggering.

So bigger they got.

I want to write about a young silver fern.

Unfurling

Reaching

Reaching

I want to write about

I want to write about

I want to

write.