justwrite 20 november

If I could write about anything, don’t you think I would? Don’t you think I’d break free of cookies and photography and books and books, and all those stories, the people I know who’ve lived and all those who’ve given attention in my direction? I’d make corrections to what did happen and what should have been. I would win all those wars, those games, and certain names wouldn’t make me twinge/ cry/ try to wonder why too much. I would touch no sore spots; I could trot like any good fox. I could box like any fighter, a good day a good knight or two coming around the bend to defend my honor, but your honor, I swear on something I believe in: there’s nothing left to grieve over. And under the couch I found today a pile of pictures in a red-tied ribbon. We delivered ourselves from evil and the pizza came right to us. There’s trust in what we say and I can trace back each word to some absurd story that was mentioned in my dream, that came true down the street. I meet stories all day long, but the ones that stick with me, that trick without a fee, are the ones that really happen—the friends I have and their tragedies, the colors and the sounds of the canopies under which I walk, the talk so cheap and the words so cross. I am waiting for a letter that I don’t want to arrive. I am wondering without asking how this task will be carried out There are doubts too strong to voice and there is space in which to rejoice, but for now I’m leaving the batter in the fridge because it’s still too early for opening day. Gotta stay cool, keep those fools in the dugout with their spices and their catch and release programs. The dough’s never enough to go around, to spread across the pan and flash like every picture taken, every life mistaken. When we say always, we wish we meant forever, but just another letter or two makes the play turn to never. Nowadays we don’t even know the colors of each others’ numbers and we certainly don’t call, but what is the fall without such sharing? What is the future without such caring? Well, we’ll see, so it’ll be, but in the meantime, please be kind to these pages. We rearrange all of our words into misheard syntax. We listen to new music and create solo albums. We advertise for surprise and we say yes to invitations, saving the nation and uniting new leaders, electing the readers and asking for generosity. I was afraid and I still am, but there are different jams to try, different breads to slice. Sometimes it’s nice to think of when, but then I can’t keep at that, can’t keep those details flowing—they’ve got to get going in a different direction. So when you catch sight of some night rewritten with different names, you can nod just the same and remember with tenderness, but you never need to say so, you never need to let go of those pieces, but we see how they fit different puzzles now. Whatever we’re making, there’s no faking those ingredients, but how expediently they’ve turned into new tunes, with the same moons and star far above, stuck in tar like love in your hair.