Here is an old tumblr post reflecting on writing a poem

I don't think anyone ever read this, which is why I feel okay about posting it here:

Today, while writing a poem, I reached a point in the poem where I felt the need to add a last line. I was sitting outside. It was windy, probably the winds from the front of a hurricane’s weather pattern as it makes its way inland from the Carolinas. I just sat there for awhile and stopped looking at the poem. When I remembered the poem, I realized there was no need for a last line. I closed the notebook and walked inside where the internet needed to be reset. I would have to wait to type the poem into its file, hosted in a digital cloud. I unplugged and replugged the wifi. I walked outside to check the mail. I wasn’t wearing shoes. I felt pebbles and leaves stick to my feet. I thought about how long I would have to wait to upload the detritus into my body. I didn’t wonder this aloud. I didn’t even wonder it verbally. It wasn’t until I wrote it down that I realized I had wondered it. Now that it has been wondered, it is here, inside me.

Mass Exodus

My thoughts left me in full. I didn’t try to chase them. I was glad they were finally gone.

I could sleep now.

Except I didn’t sleep.

I thought if my thoughts were gone then what about my dreams.

My dreams were gone too.

And if my dreams then what about my perceptions of who I am now.

Those were gone too.

And if my perceptions of self were gone then what would be left of me?

I started culling the algae from my throat.

I scraped the lichens from my forehead.

I harvested oysters from between my toes.

All of this was nothing without thought.

What would I do with all of this?

My thoughts have all left me.

I scraped the interior of my skull, spritzed it like a fern.

A couple explodes next to the neighborhood pool. They both look at the sky, acknowledge its passing. Embarrassment is a capitalist invention. Yes, but so are we.

Everyone hushes, “There is a pandemic going on.”

Thought as an injury that will ever happen.

Thought as climbing out of a vacuum.

Thought as building the ladder

into my brain’s lap

causing a concussion

and a sweetness of thought

The purring of thought.

Thought’s effervescence.

Thought as murder.

I thought I thought a thought outright.

I did not. I tried to think a thought outright.

As I have said “to try” is the essayist’s dream.

“To try” carries violence against “to be.”

I sit and let my blood cascade through me.

My wife and son are doing a sleepover. They are watching Mulan. Action scene after action scene. Horses screaming. Crowds shouting. There is always a winner.

Mulan wins because of her mental ferocity.

Same with the bugs that shout outside. They are ferociously loud. Same with the timbre of being cool enough to have read this far.

If you’ve made it this far, here is a list of VIPs at my funeral (I prefer Sky Burial):

Squids

Anyone who feels like they know me

Babies (any)

MyFamily

People that are chill

Werner Herzog

Me (my ghost)

Nothing to Say

Having nothing to say is my new religion. I decided this while in the shower. I imagined writing a poem that began and ended "I have nothing to say." I rinsed the dandruff shampoo from my hair.

All's well that ends, as they say, including thought.

When I write a poem I attempt to crack beauty's mirror, only to remember that attempting (or trying) is the meaning of "essay," a fact that essayists like to weaponize in their attempt to expand upon nothing. But saying nothing should not be weaponized.

The story starts when it begins and ends when an ending arrives. Everything between holds hands. When I say that "having nothing to say is my new religion," I mean that I have lost my voice's whetstone. I think I left it somewhere in time's microwave.

I want so badly to say nothing that it becomes sin. In this, I have failed to live up to scripture.

Silence is instinct. The coyote stays hidden from the sun. The bat sees nothing but must click its tongue to locate its meal. Having nothing to say is different from not knowing what to say, but these religions share bread and juice. They impale the sun on a mutual spit and roast it in the absence of language. Every orbit simultaneously sets the limits of being.

I have said nothing new, if I've said anything at all. Welcome to my blog.