There’s a little too much

I haven’t posted in SO long, that guilt is like a puppy that won’t leave me alone (and I don’t really like puppies that much). So this poem I’m working on is here to say some stuff–at first I thought, I shouldn’t post this thing I’m working on, what if someone reads it and sends me a text like “Hey are you okay?” which would be so fucking annoying and I would 100% ignore it and maybe not talk to them for upwards of three days so please don’t send me that text. And when I realized I could just ignore it, it seemed like the final control rests in my hands and then it’s not so bad.

I love you, but my head hurts.

I love you, but I’m hungry.

I love you, but I drank too much coffee.

I love you, but I’m on low battery.

I love you, but I need to dance it out.

I’d rather go to yoga than get a massage.
would rather sweat than ask for help
would rather lay in bed awake than respond to your text
would rather not eat dinner than make small talk with you
would rather swallow pills in the dark than write another not-enough poem

about how I ask too much, say too much, think too much, forget too much, promise too much, joke too much, drink too much, brood too much, read too much, deny too much, lie too much, fight too much

There’s so much to say, which translates almost directly into nothing to say. But I’m reading all the Jack Gilbert poems I can get my hands on and I swore I wouldn’t order more books but I ordered another two books and my head really does hurt, and has for days, but I’m getting used to it. And here’s this Jack Gilbert poem:

Meanwhile

It waits. While I am walking through the pine trees
along the river, it is waiting. It has waited a long time.
In southern France, in Belgium, and even Alabama.
Now it waits in New England while I say grace over
almost everything: for a possum dead on someone’s lawn,
the single light on a levee while Northampton sleeps,
and because the lanes between houses in Greek hamlets
are exactly the width of a donkey loaded on each side
with barley. Loneliness is the mother’s milk of America.
The heart is a foreign country whose language none
of us is good at. Winter lingers on in the woods,
but already it looks discarded as the birds return
and sing carelessly; as though there never was the power
or size of December. For nine years in me it has waited.
My life is pleasant, as usual. My body is a blessing
and my spirit clear. But the waiting does not let up.

What waits inside you always, no matter what? Write about that.

And here’s this film you should watch because it destroyed me in a really beautiful way and it’s very very good. And short.