Looking for Advice. Found Some in Spacetime.

All the poems lately have been bad, written from a place that nobody lives in. Though I know I shouldn’t, I’ve been desperately wanting to live elsewhere. I imagine cloudy skies and rain. I imagine low-paneled walls, moss green paint, fresco bodies on the ceiling. Every thesis I’ve ever written has been about the body. Last night I dreamt of one. Long black hair, wide hips, big gut-belly. She knew how to laugh, but when it was time for sweetness, her voice got real low.

I’ll say it in a whisper: All the poems lately have been bad, with far too much emphasis on the matter of good. I am easing myself back into this body like you might into a new body of water. Well, new to you. The water itself is far more ancient than you can imagine. Even just last week, it was in the clouds, watching you from its place up there, the top of your head unsuspecting.

I’ll say it from an aerial view: All the poems lately have been bad, and badness is alright. When you’re learning, everything is bad at first, which means badness is somewhat of a birthplace. It’s somewhat of a womb. It’s somewhere like an underground. Something like the soil, which is what this body is made from. Which ancestor of mine had these fingernails exactly? Which these thumbs? These ankles? These lungs? Who first taught this body to breathe and talk and stand upright? Thank you from the overground.

I’ll say it with its ancestry: All the poems lately have been bad, and the word bad has no relatives in other languages. It isn’t even concretely found before the 1300s, which tells you something about how it’s been used. It also means that this body of mine is far more ancient than the word bad can even imagine.

I’ll let the body speak for itself: You can’t talk about me without talking about everything else.

I’ll talk about everything else: Recently, I learned that a new mother’s brain decreases its grey matter by 75% so that it can redistribute that energy to its more primal parts. Our new mothers are masters at body language. Recently, I went to an art show and met an artist who began sewing colored thread over his polaroids during the pandemic. I needed more joy, he said. I started three books and finished none of them, then decided to reread an old favorite. I’ve been watercoloring, and I like the way the paint takes the reins of its own travel. I’ve been spending lots of time at the altar. I’ve been arranging flowers there. I’ve been climbing oak trees as an act of childish prayer. Over the phone, I told a friend that my whole life feels like prayer when I get present with it, and then, for that moment, I stop wanting to be somewhere else. But I’ll admit that I also got a new purple coat because I miss living in a place where I’ll need it. I met a woman who just wants a ticket home to Alabama. She misses her grandbaby and the fishing. In one of the books I didn’t finish, I read about how matter and spacetime talk to one another. Matter tells spacetime how to bend, physicist John Wheeler said, and spacetime tells matter how to move.

I’ll say it like matter: Bend. Whatever is there, bend around it. Be a witness to its existence. Poetry is the articulation of the contours it makes.

I’ll say it like spacetime: Move. Move towards pleasure. Move towards joy. Move towards whatever’s gravity is tugging at you. You’re not in control of much, but you can move your attention.

I’ll move my attention: All my body lately has been poem. What awe, look at it bend this spacetime. Look at its moss green walls.