spreadeagled in the empty air of existence

 Yesterday, on the 212th day of German lessons, we went back into lockdown. 

We knew it was coming. I felt it coming. I haven't been sleeping well. I'm barely reading. I'm working too much and watching the news. I make popcorn and drink wine and watch America fall apart. I haven't been sleeping well at all.

Occasionally I feel my heart leap into my throat and I panic. I don't know if it's the looming deadline I know I'm going to miss even after a 15-hour workday or mere existential dread.

Pandemic uncertainty may actually be good for your brain. It's also exhausting.

The dreams are back. He asked me if I snored (I don't know, I have no bedmate to tell me), and accused me of not wanting to improve myself. How could he, how dare he, he said I was perfect.

The restlessness is back (had it ever gone away?). I want to buy things: expensive shoes, stupid t-shirts, a new condo. One package of books may be lost in the mail.

The order I placed with Ikea months ago was finally delivered this week. We have fresh curtains on clean windows. A utility cart for my sculpting materials and tools. Kitchen gadgets.

The kid is attending CEGEP, virtually. Tonight she is finishing an assignment on Ferlinghetti's "Constantly Risking Absurdity."

   the poet like an acrobat
                                 climbs on rime
                                          to a high wire of his own making
and balancing on eyebeams
                                     above a sea of faces
             paces his way
                               to the other side of day

My self-cut hair looks great. If civilization collapses, I can get work as a hairdresser.

Pantone has a new shade of red. Period.

The flesh of the world

If you call yourself a poet, don't just sit there. Poetry is not a sedentary occupation, not a "take your seat" practice. Stand up and let them have it.

It's been a rough couple weeks at work. After eating lunch at my desk Friday, I need fresh air. An impromptu afternoon stroll takes me to the bookstore.

I miss browsing in bookstores. The bookstores I know here on the whole simply aren't conducive to it. I go with a mission usually, for "research" or a specific purchase. Some lunch hours I may spend more time there, scanning the bargain bins, but methodically, with only the pretense of leisure. It dawns on me that I may have shut myself off from an introduction to many fine and interesting books, pretty ones that shine cleverly at the cocktail hour, but deep and secretive ones too that leak their mysteries into the last bottle of wine some time after midnight when the jazz records come on.

So I... I don't know what I'm doing there Friday. I'm angry and distracted and tired. And I pluck off the shelf, I know not why — I guess because it's black and red, slim, the title psst-ing at me — Lawrence Ferlinghetti's Poetry as Insurgent Art, and I start to read, and smile. I feel all giddy inside.

Here's the thing. I'm a poet, I'm realizing. I mean... I don't actually write verse. But. No, I'm off to a bad start. How can I explain...?

I think I'm having a midlife crisis. That is, something is crawling over me, or bursting out of me, or seeping through my pores. Part of this is a physical function of age: I'm at, or nearing, my sexual peak, chronobiologically speaking, and the time bomb of the biological clock is pulsing, pounding, through my heart, my head.

This is a lustiness beyond the physical, that has yet to be sated. I am hungry — all my senses together screaming for more! And I am vibrating! Every fibre of my being — my physical body, yes, but I mean my neurons, my heartstrings — vibrating! Singing! My God, do you have any idea how much I love crunchy leaves?!!

Am I crazy? Or is this the noise of a cocoon rustling around me, flaking away?

(Diagnoses welcome.)

And it happens that I've discovered poetry. And I think these things are connected. And Ferlinghetti has me crying Yes! Yes! with every proclamation. Like I am being called to arms. Though I'm not sure my arms are literary ones. And I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do with this information exactly. But it's being made clear to me that this feeling, this experience, this crisis, is not a disintegration, but au contraire a synthesis, at a molecular level, of body and mind too long separate.

Instead of trying to escape reality, plunge into the flesh of the world.