WritingTheBody's profile picture. “... terrorist and mystic combined. Was I? How could I not be?”

Last Words from Taipei

@WritingTheBody

“... terrorist and mystic combined. Was I? How could I not be?”

Heavenly Mother, make of me a man who is anyone, anything, but a father


Catch myself, from time to time, talking to my father’s ghost, wondering what he’d say or think about this or that. Still. Were he here, he wouldn’t say much more.


Always needing to be higher and higher. I learned nothing from Icarus, his father, or mine.


I need the senses more than I need the world to make sense.


And— there he lay, envying skin that could touch itself


《 Father II 》 Moving through the space that once was yours This house was always bigger than I knew


《 Ghosts 》 A dog, beaten, forever hesitates Skin remembers what’s long long gone


《 Father I 》 My father the realist says we must first take care of our own And who are our own? I concede I never was very good at math. Still, will more live or die this way? We sit, neither uttering a word


《 3 a.m. 》 night kicking dreams, wild moon spasms


《 (Non-)Identity 》 What does that word mean, “queer”? No longer permitting others to define one’s desires Is it an insult? It’s a stone caught and thrown back, harder


《Burning》 Task: not to confuse every little spark with a lasting flame (but isn’t it nice, still, to be warm for a little while?)


Strange phrase, “killing time,” when it’s the other way around


《Transcendence》 Just this: to build a new body from the old


《Fragments》 Not a style but an event— what happens when I can no longer make it all cohere


If I’m honest, I’m still afraid of the softness of poems, the way words unfurl and make a fuss about themselves They’re so delicate and precise and trembling-soft, and I fear I’m too hard to handle them anymore At least I’ve learned that language is not so brittle as the body


I’m making a list of reasons to live. I’ve written, so far: “Mother” (of course) “Cool night in late summer and I catch whiff of jasmine” “The sea” “Beautiful boy, half two a.m., smiles so brightly” “Songs I’ve yet to hear” Will come back to this.


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