A Pale Thread

Split skin near my thumb heals, leaving a pale thread reminding me I am still too willing to suffer, still beholden to the idea that pain is a man's privilege. Is she impressed, will she take her clothes off, et cetera. Meanwhile, the poor are given doughnuts and exhausted dentists. You wait for what to write then say fuck it and write whatever and it works, it always works. For so long I yoked sex to love and suddenly the yoke slips a little, implies it can be set aside, and what then? What was it Seido Ronci said about "monk dick" almost two decades ago? The many names we have for the poor, all of which are ways of not really seeing our capacity for hoarding. Saying "there but for the grace of God go I" means one has a lot to fucking learn about the grace of God. For a few years in the late nineties I painted, and the smaller projects - some of them - are still on my shelves, leaning against books, usually poetry. A cheerful ceramic elephant that belonged to my father's mother, an empty glass bottle that begs for color. Must we constantly reinvent the 1970s? How can there be such lovelily color in what is essentially a transparent world? One leans still on Emily Dickinson, one remains grateful for Max Ernst. In my dream Dan was ready to talk and my joy was such that my feet no longer touched the ground, one was neither the man with nor the man without shoes. Allusions to Jnana yoga - which are my own illusions projected - are not unhelpful. There is yet a way, the spiritual tumblers are yet tumbling into place. "I see the world in celestial gentleness" indeed.