I’ll pay attention long enough
to one day suck in my breath and close my mouth around the whole wide world.
Inside me at the center of it all is this reverent belief that I am Someone Extraordinary. From this center comes the voice that writes.
I knew it when I was a child sitting in the grass in my backyard. Sitting in the grass in my backyard as a child I could feel my whole life happen, and it felt important. Monumental, even. The voice from the center whispers to me, hoping to expand, to realize its potential.
The rest of my body around the center doesn’t believe it. There is the pragmatic constitution of my head and limbs to work a job. I can’t be convinced that the feeling in the center of it all is true, if it means anything. I can’t interpret the feeling into the movement of my hands or the direction of my thoughts. I am unsuccessful in the conversion of my ability into currency.
I am now an adult looking from the window into my backyard at the overgrown grass. This day looking into the backyard from the window where I, an adult, notice the overgrown grass, I am on the opposite side of the feeling that my life is Extraordinary. I confess that I am of no use.
But here You are, Someone Extraordinary
To write a poem I become solemn, Serious and still, Quieting my mind.
Rushing at the door On my head pleading to enter Are feelings I have never felt And bad metaphors.
I take note of these Showing them through the house And out the back door As quickly as possible holding my breath For the guest of honor to arrive.
And when she does, As we embrace, I’ll say I’ve missed you and I’m listening. Truth will take my hand, Lead me to the bedroom speaking sweetly, Calming my heart with her touch.
Before we begin I’ll have a final glance At my reflection in the mirror. Put my hair in order, Note the clothes I chose.
My lover responds. Without a word of protest, She’ll stop removing my clothes, Retreating as quickly as she came.
My face will grow warm And Shame, unannounced, Will break up the party.
There will be silence In the house I occupy alone, And a blank page, void of use.
I’d like to sit down to a feast Of all the days I have lived. See them in solid form, Examine each one by the light, Note their purities and Certain imperfections.
To eat my days Would be an experience Of time that I can digest More sensibly than by Living.
Tasting, consuming, inhaling, Serve as senses more useful For knowing than Being.
Letting my body work to remember Each morsel of who I was On any given day - last week, years ago - Until I’ve had my fill.
and so a gleaming shape emerges from a set of rules
a terrifying match of fates this is how the story goes
what isn’t molten into what is
owed to divine transfiguration out of mythic schema
and so I face myself, go to work break the rock, eat the fruit
this is my promised life
what is forty years to Moses what is modernity to molecules
Is there something in my buying and spending and smoking and going?
Is there something at the bottom of the coffee cup? less fear? is it at the bottom of a bottle of beer?
Is there something in the work my hands can do? can my head, my brain, come up with anything new? does it matter if I do?
Is there something about my friends becoming scarce, becoming too much, becoming their own? did we grow up?
Is there something I left in a previous year? is it essential to my being? can I get it back?
Til human voices wake us And we drown
I know that I’m experiencing a chemical imbalance But I wish you could feel the intensity of life that I feel.
I feel everything. The sun warming my thighs, The wind brushing my ankles, Sleeping on a bench.
The leaves gracefully dance on the backdrop of the sky As it turns from gray to blue, then blue to gray While the clouds play tricks with shadows. I wouldn’t notice this on any other day.
There must be something in the coolness of the air, The cool remembrance of another somewhere. I’m not here, oceans away the train is taking me to Shoreham by Sea. Then I wake up, alert to the feel of the wooden bench planted firmly beneath me.
I want to textualize everything. I want to take a bite from today And devour it for the rest of my life.
I am dancing the expression of every moment. Watch my shadows on the concrete Conduct the shaped you’ve never seen before Like the waves that Eliot’s mermaids Comb back and drown in. Wake up! Join me! Take my hand and take a bite of life!
When I am dead Give my hands to the ground, Return them to their birthplace.
Preserve the hands of those Who were better than I, Who could force the universe Into a ball, probe it with questions, Make words of the answers.
When my poems are written, Will I no longer feel this urgency To interpret everything I perceive Into words that mirror what I feel?
When I am dead Will I live in books? If you miss me will you find me In the words that I spilled, A product of buried hands?
There is power in my hands. If I do not write the truth, If I do not pen the universe Into an essay, a poem, They will find another way.
Now I can taste it in my mouth, The Need to Be Alive.
Pay no attention to until I am dead Then bury my hands.
Out of my smokestack shoes, a billowing cloud.
My head, full of smoke Vaporous, my thoughts.
Through a mist I see your face, familiar to me.
The height and depth of your chin, your nose, I know.
I plant my gaze on your whirlpool eyes,
I just noticed we’re rising.
my brother welcomed his son into the world yesterday
this morning I saw a train pulling along a hundred tanks
his lungs weren’t clearing on their own, he’s got tubes through his nose
someone is mobilizing some effort, somewhere, but I can’t know it for certain
I know it’s his care in mind, this tiny baby, but the tubes in his nose make me wretched
everyone along the path of the train slowed down, I wonder if they thought of war as I did
On an evening when the sun did not set by a contrasting glow a multitude of unfamiliar colors were made known and I might have time traveled
I visited an upsetting moment of regretful hesitance and from it I have formed my own mythology going blonde and blindly following it I am a hero with zero accomplishments and someday everyone will know that
I’m also a good guesser I think if you sit beside me on this bench forever you’ll understand what I need but don’t let me tell you come and see tomorrow the sun will rise indifferently and I’ll think up a new story never write it
And that’s mostly how I guess we’ll exist in a soft romantic glow feeling every color shadow absence texture and change in the weather and then this show is over but not before we’ve come up with the best way to spend the light between sunsets
I have an idea of how it goes you and me thinking of everything and doing nothing
When I am alone, When I am surrounded, When I think, And in my thinking am alone While surrounded,
Stillness,
The pulsing of the world, The minute details of life, A shoelace, meal preparation, cartoon
animation, commotion, the ocean, Envelope my senses, Pounding and rushing, Give us attention.
Stillness,
I am full of love: The stuff we collect And that we are collected from.
I am scared for the rest of my life If this is my resting state, My circadian rhythm, this pounding And rushing of life within me. When I am along and idle. Hot. Sad. And finding no reason. Feeling this and finding no source.
It’s half our lives we spend passing by us without seeing us.
Then autumn comes,
and is not to be ignored. red yellow orange green blue today we cannot take away the tree’s beauty,
and aren’t we beautiful, too?
If you took notice of me as you brush your toe across fallen leaves, to stop your parade along the waterfront, rest in a colorful pile,
and if you knew I was seated here with my sketchbook and pen writing a poem to you on your beauty. . .
The canopy’s light rests on your shoulders giving you a hug.
On a retreat to the mountains, I escape to step outside of regular life for a time. The peaks dressed in winter white, time refrigerated by the falling flakes, and lovely folks around me, old and new, alight all the artist parts of my brain.
On a shelf in an old bookstore, I meet myself, a mixture of the past and future, and she is disappointed, mournful. While browsing poetry titles, she cries. I listen to her, and she says, you’re running out of time.
On a separate shopping excursion, I adopt a pair of sunglasses - two perfect black circles to conceal the passing of time that my eyes can’t hide. I show my friend of photo of me at 16, she says, you look exactly the same.
On my return flight, all that I am packaged back inside my bags, inside my body, my appetite for life appeased for the moment, I decide I like myself, and I can change, as everything will mix with time, coming out the other side, beautiful.
I cannot be certain what kind of life these poems may live, but they won’t be staying with me any longer.
Jana Kelsay is a writer and maker residing in Austin, Texas, with beloved family members: husband and cat. All photos, with one film exception, were taken with her iPhone. More of her work can be found at plebpoet.com.