my earths

[written 2013, an artifact of sam says, sam]

To define the self start naming the non-self. Cartilage, tissue, hair, air. You are not the sky, not tree nor atom, but each refers to you. The tree, seen, is called tree and otherwise would not be called. And you may be argued upon, if not seen compositely. Your detritus contains each of your identities, and you return to the earth over time. Refer to sharpened chin. Refer to wingspan, to camouflage, to pitch, to bicep, to ovary, to confidence of grin. But even the earth is known because you named it. Your eyelashes and fingernails are buried in its crust.

If you are not the parts you shed, you can not not be their gathering.

Love instead each iteration, each evolution, each new avenue. See the composite of the body, the changing color of the eyes, the multiplicity of feeling and history, the unlikeliness of earth, of bones, of growth, of thought, the unrelentingness of time, and the artificial counting of time, of separation, of any wall, the limit of a name, the unlimit of a name, the impossible containment of blood, the fusing of tongues, the emptiness of I, the sorrow of a branch. You are not not the branch’s sorrow.

[written while listening to rachel blumberg]

I think about time–when I think about time — is it happening then? (when I think of it)
Is time constant or based on more permeable matter?
–If I leave it
If I return
If I am stopped
pulled out or in–

The nerve of a lifespan
to change
and time with it.

I think about the way my body operates so much of the time on existing data, partially always in a previously recorded loop, until I am stopped– my mind forced to receive time as new.

And the duration then so different, a hill among platitudes, queering time by being in it
and out of it
awake.

Otherwise, I have been tricked into thinking there is an increment of measure that supersedes / survives / could overcome my life’s duration
if only I keep count.

i found an earth

filled with plastic

it washed out

of the drain

i was having

a headache

i was having

an emotion

like why

does death

feel like

a discovery

every time

like who knew

this would happen?

who knew bones

were something

like sand

so we eat yogurt

from an eternal

material shaped

into a cup

i was thinking

about the river

and the road

and music

and the locations

of ends

and how earth

can’t avoid

being there

but how light

can be separated

into parts like

everything else

so at least

a moment,

a second,

even many,

can exist

without loss

if you don’t

count time

as it goes

i try to balance a history of heredity on my earth. i draw lines to connect me to my earth. but it is an imperfect web, that, out of care, i can’t stay. the fact that my neurological illness draws a line to that of my great grandfather, without drawing a line to his dramatic end–his fall, his jump, from the monument. the trauma of his daughter, my grandmother, her loss. the trauma of her daughter, my mother, her loss. my own loss. and all those early ends, and women always women who are left. my earth generations of unresolved DNA that my body, my earth, has taken on to resolve. illness that survives, a running that will still. a body (so defiant) builds whole cities for its loss, its genders, its bodies, its earths, and just lives. 

your earth could be any surface, the point you start from with the sun to the point you get to with your wings. your earth might be a question, the question it takes years to ask. or that fear in your chest that has it’s own moon, it’s own orbiting stars and planets and space debris. maybe your heart palpitates sometimes when you’re dehydrated, and you press a finger against your throat to remember you have blood that can be counted. and feet that can be planted. and a planet in your chest that needs releasing, a fear pulled by a gravity outside of you. so you just let it go then, let your earths outside.

Make do your chariot, sunny blind of the reflected rock. The cholla’s own yellow takes air as its hue. Submerge. The drill of the bird will wake you, or the tree resisting the beak.  (Calculate, but sleep  at  nine,  wake  at  six,  still  home,  still eastern daylight time.) Bugs roused to be breakfast, then your feet on the floor, toast toasting, water boils in the pot. A day, awake.

Body soaped in the tub, soaked in the soap, smoke from the candle, steam from the heat. All stirred in the room. Sand greets like a fox in the garage spews dust from the saw. Coconut oil in the cup, coffee ground, water hot from the pot, and a sleepwalker stirring seeds. Find your way.

The park like a state like an island in a drought, ocean missing, missed, boulders building instead. Lavender smells better surrounded by dust and singeing sun. Show off your purple, flower, if you grow. If you grow bring your body to the land.

my earth is connections of blood, bodies connected by blood of blood of earth. my earth just a river, my body just a wash. my family of stones smoothing over time, rounding into globes, softening into dirt into earth, my earth. 

my family on the riverbed, on a current pushed by melt. my family of minerals steeped in an earth. my family of bones of stones of water of dirt. my family an earth in its parts.

our earth where we could always cry, every day, all of 2017, to sate the drought, to save ourselves or bathe ourselves, hydrate ourselves. (those spiders on planet earth just dangle themselves into the pitcher flower, to eat those bugs who came to drink.) (these thoughts are related only by water. even a flower can digest what drinks it.)  but today on our earth if we cry (we do cry) we breathe each other in / hydrate each other’s skin like we make water. 

My earth if there could be an earth, my planet if i was one. 

My earth is the cave, Plato’s shadows of trees, arms of the dark, branch like a person, fire like light, shadow just shade sending shade giving shade like a cover like a roof like a shelter like a planet in space. Earths grow up like bodies like my body in shapes put together and named pronouned like a planet is mother because we’re home here were born here stomp our feet here throw a tantrum here change our minds here. but i grew from the root shadowed dirt of the tree, from the shadow of what we call a tree, we call a body, call an earth, call a girl, call a shadow in the shape of something familiar to what our own eyes have seen, until the light changes, shadows break, tree refracts, branch full of light, roots leave the earth and breathe air leaves translucent bark breaks from the trunk shadow light different light tree parts in light changing in light until you see.