"If you have a problem or desire a healing, try this exercise before falling asleep. Catch yourself at that point just before you fall asleep - between waking and sleep. Imagine bathing yourself with the healing orange light. You then can ask the Inner Master to help you regain spiritual balance by saying, "If it's for the good of all concerned and doesn't interfere with my spiritual growth, would you please heal me?" Then holding that thought, drift into sleep." - Harold Klemp

Blog,

This morning I listened to song a friend sent me a year ago. I was on the Michigan Ave bus, to my friend's graduation. The song explains a homing instinct when home is not a place you are able to return to. I thought about home--everyone who has made a vessel out of my body, when language was not satisfying enough, and we needed to reflect the entire sky. (I listened to the song a second time, for an image to cling to.) Blog, I also talked to my mom today. We talked about a lot of things, including where I might go next and what to do with my books, which are the only things I am thinking about keeping from here. I am not too worried, I got a lot of tattoos in Chicago. My body has been marked many times; each an attempt at creating a language for love, pushed into flesh. There are a few I remember the pain of: the lavender on my hand; the bird on my leg; the egg between my stomach and chest.

Note: wake up in in the middle of the night to ask the stars, what does it does it feel like to detach your jaw and swallow another animal whole?

"So, for this is an imperfect universe. The perfection isn't here." - Harold Klemp

Blog,

You are an experiment of desire.

You are a still life of textures.

You are a tattooed body. You have crossed the threshold, your tattoos are no longer examined individually.

You are felt like caffeine, ascending acuteness.

You are a devotional portrait. Your eyes are bloodshot and your palms are pressed to each other.

You are a dog's tongue.

I told you about my parents.

I told you how I imagine my body, and then we made love.

You hold me, blog.

You are the mother who let me into her house.

I am not indifferent towards you, blog.

You are the greatest piece of speculative literature not yet imagined;

but you have been discussed amongst friends.

"No teachings and no bibles on earth are perfect. They can never be" - Harold Klemp

Blog,

I did not expect to feel the then and there on St. Valentines day:

I had a dream about a friend who lives in California (I think). We were smoking inside and dancing and trying on outfits from a rack of clothes for a film she was shooting.

I tried to send my uncle a funny text. He is so smart and coy. I hope he knows I think about him often. It is difficult to get to San Francisco, but I hope to see him soon. (I couldn't think of the right thing to send.)

I read Lyn Hejinian's writing on George Oppen's, Of Being Numerous. Though I only thought of the teacher who showed me the poem. "We have chosen the meaning / Of being numerous" (Oppen). I hope she is well. In an email, she said she is rooting for me--I am rooting for her too.

I think of my friend in Vermont when I see lake Michigan from above. I want her to believe it is an ocean.

I think of my friend of who drew a map when I asked if they could look up directions for me, as I left their home. I pinned it to my wall. I remember the woman cleaning her clothes in the open fire hydrant, hanging them on a line she fastened above the sidewalk. I remember meeting my friend in a city far from where we know each other.

I think I will live in another city. Soon. Today I will eat curry and dance and write to poetry. Chicago is still full of fortune.

"Both the dream state and Soul Travel are doors to the same spiritual worlds." - Harold Klemp

Blog,

Things that are intelligent:

The imperfect shape of an orange, and each perfect moon inside.

Wayward floating snow in an alleyway.

Waking up feeling like you have been washed. The things you mourned the previous day disappeared.

Showing up late to work.

Superstitions about love. 

Being overtaken--forgetting that you are superstitious about love, surprised by how it feels to be touched below your ribs, on the side of your belly. 

Do you have friends that never use your correct pronouns and you love them anyway? It's complicated.

Listening to Bob Seger.

Wearing jewelry in the shower. Baths. Daily routines. Eating in the morning.

Thinking of stories and writing them down. Usually they are not good. But it is good to imagine a reader performing your language, entangled with your breath and blurring your edges. 

"True contemplation is reflecting on the blessings of God in your life." - Harold Klemp

Blog,

Looking into the window of the building across the street, I wonder if they are writing poetry. Everyone is concerned with the way we make up words.

I am trying to remember the artist of a song my friend played for me. I also like imagining how the song goes, and playing it in my head over and over.

Breath is where I would begin an ethics of being naked. Through the means of air. I write here to be unclothed. Do you whisper when you read? Or, keeping your mouth closed, rub your vocal chords together?

I spent the week writing a poem of profound love for a friend. I am going to tell my workshop it is meant to be thrown to the sky.

In the library, a friend I haven't seen since the summer when we ate hummus after her performance, rubbed my back. I am still thinking about it as I drink my coffee and watch the air mix outside my window. Sometimes I am reluctant to touch, but I can be broken down easily.

It’s quite a discipline when we’re in trouble to think of God and say, “I need some help.” - Harold Klemp

after a conversation w/ jill

Blog, 

I have an avocado on my desk. It has been there all week--Grant gave it to me. I worried it wouldn't ripe because of the cold air that slips between the window panes and in through the wall. 

When I checked this morning it had softened. My finger pushed into the fruit with the same gusto as human flesh.

Tomorrow I am going to cut into it, and spread the contents onto a piece of bread, as a reward for my patience. 

I am excited to fall asleep tonight and to wake up tomorrow morning. I feel sexy when I feel my skin on itself. It is the largest organ. 

"Soul, a particle of God, is blessed with the gift of creative imagination, which finds a solution for every problem." - Harold Klemp

Blog,

I'm happy it is a new month. I feel like a child washing their feet in a puddle.

I wish I had more to say about the marriage of sunshine and feeling good in the morning.

Lately, I have been writing litanies--something about arrival and departure and freeing the now to these. Something about uncupping dialects of the heart. 

(I am a poet after all. You should be too; all poets are comrades.)