Diary 38

NOVEMBER PLAYLIST

Bosses Hang, Pt. I, Godspeed You! Black Emperor
First Air of Autumn, Drive-By Truckers
You Take Nothing, Ragana
The Rising of the Moon, Tia Blake
Old Shoes (& Picture Postcards), Tom Waits
Faded Loves and Memories, Blaze Foley
Black Snake, Anareta
Green River, Creedence Clearwater Revival
Sometimes I Have A Heartache, Big Mama Thornton
White Moon, Kikagaku Moyo

11.08.23

My grandma has been sick for most of the year, & this week I finally made it out to see her. She recently started working with a live-in nurse from San Salvador who solely speaks Spanish, & since neither of my grandparents know the language, my grandpa has committed to learning it. Walking around the house I found notes he’d written on napkins, translating phrases like te quiero mucho, (I love you a lot), conjugating verbs like entender (to understand). When the nurse went out to lunch while I was there, I witnessed my grandpa take my grandma to the bathroom, clean her up, change her clothes. It made me think a lot about devotion, what it means to stand steady & resolute in the midst of great sorrow.

01.

Stopped to take a piss in the grass
and, looking up,
saw a deer leap across the road
barely grazed by a semi-truck
ran right past me.

02.

Where must I go to
indulge my addictions
and bathe in the filth from which I came?
I’m no stranger to the
3-day-bender-chrysalis
waking up soaked.
Always hoped I’d see the light
in a summer storm, amber sky churning
praying, if only-

I dream of wild horses
running through rain, but sleep
solemnly on the concrete.
No one can abandon me
without fueling my fantasies,
I know it’s reckless
to live this way, deigning to
resurrect old ecstasies.

Damn these folded hands
like wilted lilies,
I want to know what it’s like
to be fully consumed.