I feel as if my life has been a series of reminders A cluster of opaque balloons in a blue-green sky The chairs of the world dig into my spine And I know how much I've borrowed This is someone's voice, but it isn't mine. I want to celebrate the clumsiness of hands, I want to celebrate the clumsiness of feet. I try to measure out the weight of the demands That I impose upon the people that I meet Do I get that wrong? Oh, man. I get that wrong often enough. Some days I'm full of smoke Some days I'm barely here at all. Now that I've hung from the bones of the night Now that my lungs are full of sky I dream of Republican women I dream that we've all been forgiven I dream that every building in the mile end Is bathed in waves of woven light From here on out I want to be a person whose uncertainty Is with me like a fat, ecstatic, friend. I want to cultivate my mind, I want to listen to that silence I want to be kinder than I am But will I see that through?

And, just like that, a new day dawns. The lights are coming up in the restaurants. Coffee courses like a river. We drink ourselves together. Amy Goodman, what have I missed? And if the news is bad As it often is Help me remember how to breathe in Give me something to believe in when America, That box of rain, That peeling coat of copper paint, Is coughing in its room all night And shooting at the astral plane All I hear is nervous talking And what am I supposed to do With all that noise in the morning, really? Who am I even talking to when I say "Oh how do I know that I was really here at all?" I keep falling through the holes in the languages I've found I feel the weight of something Silent and enormous In the air. I do not know how to describe it But I feel it pressing Down... There is a sound Like a thundercloud Rolling over Nova Scotia now The sound of women laughing in liminal spaces The sound of men making faces Oh I used to be so hard to tame And I still am, on my darker days, But now I leave more room for motion. I was a door, I was wide open And love came in, with its fine hips With its wide mouth With its blindness And softened me up Taught me to sing again Fastened me into the world With its ligaments I know I could lose it But I'm working to keep it green. Still though, how do I know that I was really here at all? All of the lies I've told, where do they live now? What did they buy? I feel the weight of something silent and enormous In the light. I do not know how to describe it But I think It's on Our Side?

I can hear my thirties come for me Through the cool bloom of the dark They wait like keys to a rental car. I can hear their steps: a relentless Press through the emptiness To the west of the reservoir Where we've parked Rest assured that they know where I am Rest assured that they know who I am Rest assured that they know... I can hear my forties come for me Like a script I've half rehearsed They will slide their arms into my shirts. I can hear their breath, I can smell their scent obliquely Bent over the men In my life like a curse Oh rest assured that they know who we are Oh rest assured that they know where we are Oh rest assured that they know...

Picture me as I am: Staring at my phone. Already high and getting higher. Wearing an expression of exaggerated calm. Thin as a young Wynona Ryder. This wasn't the world I wanted But this is the world I've got How do I live within it? How do I still my thoughts when the bright pages of the papers they pierce me through? So much white rage in a dark suit. I'm older now than I've ever been, but I feel so new. My body replaces itself all night. So why do I cringe when I see myself in pictures? Why do I feel so unsatisfied? Oh world, If you're as old as they claim, Teach me how To forgive myself Teach me how to praise. Because I'm moving through my life like the winter Through a glove. I try to hold the future close But it reels around, it reels around Like a squid in a Wet manila envelope. If I had my way, I'd float Up up up up Up out of my body too. My whole life I've been running from something But where am I running to? My whole life I've been listening For a signal through the hiss. I did my work I went to college And all that I learned was this: Sometimes the world is full of luck. Thick and soft underfoot like clover. And sometimes the world is just a truck Backing into the ocean Over and over and over and over and over.

I know it’s always been Such a precarious time To Be alive Oh but tonight It’s So Acute I keep counting up the signals that I’m missing All around me something sinister amassing Dark water underneath all of the bridges The future blurring out along the edges I know it’s always been such a precarious time to be alive oh but tonight It’s so acute. Oh the shadows fall around us like a curtain A malevolent old chemistry returning white supremacy. that enemy, is surging Everywhere the same few words, like crosses, burning “I should be able to wake up from this I should be able to wake up from this I should be able to wake up from this But I’m not able to wake up from this” I should be able to wake up from this I should be able to wake up from this I should be able to wake up from this But I don’t know how to wake up from this”