THE DEEP END

To studio early, sitting out in the sun; remembering other days sitting in city sun listening to traffic - at the Miyako in San Francisco one late afternoon in 1980; in the courtyard at Chelsea, Old Church St, in 1984. Memories like this - the essence of a feeling trapped in an experience of colour or light - deserve to be loved and nurtured, elaborated, evolved, exaggerated, falsified, turned into metaphor.

So I guess this is another poem about how grateful I am to still be alive // been on this planet nearly two decades & the sun’s like “holy shit, you fucking go” // & the moon’s like “you are one resilient bitch” // & my mom’s like “oh thank god, I didn’t have to bury my oldest child like my mother before me after all” // & my dad’s like “how old are you again?” // & I’m like, screaming into the void, but in the best way possible // and I guess this is the science behind staying alive: a constant, grueling study of time and light // my hypothesis was wrong // and thank the heavens for that // or thank me, I guess // despite everything, my body didn’t quit on me, & I didn’t quit on me either. I’ve got a whole sky to prove it.

I rise from my worst disasters, I turn, I change.