LOST WISDOM PT. 2
P.W. Elverum & Sun
Belief
When I Walk Out of the Museum
Enduring the Waves
Love Without Possession
Real Lost Wisdom
Widows
Pink Light
Belief pt. 2
Belief
Through all of my life I waver back and forth
Between a belief and not believing in anything
In any solid shape
The unfettered mind
A deeper understanding that holds nothing
That lets sounds come in the ear
And just pass through without deciding what it was
If it was a jet or a dragon
It was merely a sound without a name or a picture
It was every possible thing at once
I barely ever get to be in this state
Just quick flashes by surprise when I'm like standing by a car,
Squinting my eyes, caught off guard and unpicturesque
I used to sing this one song all the time that I made up to try to cut through
When I'd find myself caught up entranced in certainty, staring at a hill
And it went:
"Let's get out of the romance"
Over and over
"Let's get out of the romance"
Like "Please can I go through this life unscared to see that nothing stays the same?
No one knows anything"
When I was younger and didn't know
I used to walk around basically begging the sky for some calamity to challenge my foundation
When I was young
So imagine what it was like to watch up close a loved one die and then look into the pit
I lived on the edge of it and had to stay there
Joanne Kyger said:
"We fight incredibly through a hideous mishmash of inheritance
Forgiving for deeper stamina
That we go on
The world always goes on
Breaking us with its changes
Until our form, exhausted, runs true"
Out of nowhere love returned
I saw what looked like a god who walks among us
I met her
We fell so in love
She is angelic, miraculous
I totally lost my mind and poured everything into this sea, this ocean
And when I came to I saw my face in a store window's reflection
And there was fear behind those eyes
Now I'm back where I was when I was 20
Trying to stop clinging to a dream and let an old idea of love dissipate
Back into formless rolling waves of discomfort and uncertainty
The true state of all things
I want to wade out into dark water hand in hand with you
I played this song for you and all you heard were the words
"Discomfort and uncertainty"
You asked "How do we get back to how it was?"
And that's when I started to know that I might be in it alone
Devoted to an unknown
Homelessness enthroned
Us and the kids all wind-blown
Courageous as bone
Lying down in a storm
Steadfast, newborn
A house with no door
Exhausted form
In your eyes I found home
I believed you and dove
And oh my god, when we swam together for a little bit
When I Walk Out of the Museum
When I walk out of the museum
The wall of sudden light makes me crinkle up my nose
And standing, coat half on, between marble columns,
I sneeze into the wind
When I walk out of the museum
I have centuries of dust behind my eyes
I hunch a little bit from the culminated weight of all these other peoples' ideas
I see a tipped over garbage can blowing in the street
When I walk out of the museum
I think about a snorkeler surfacing, tangled in kelp
That is me: writhing, wild attention, glancing around
The huge museum doors behind me slam and I flinch
In all of these brief flashes of momentary clarity
The emptiness that cuts through is like a bowl beneath the sky
Empty, not yet pregnant
Fertile, without form
It terrifies me, the raw possibility
And I want to go back inside
But when I walk out of the museum
Everything I see seems rippling and alive
On a freezing January day
Everything: the museum, and the garbage, and the internet, and the constellations
All collapse into a heap
And light floods out from this compost pile
Enduring the Waves
Reading about Buddhism and listening to Xasthur on the subway in New York City
Back when you were my home
Not that long ago
This life upends me again and again
(This churning life of avalanches, it spins)
Each night now, my mind in the dark brings it all roaring back
(Each day plummets into night, now my mind in the dark brings it all roaring back)
That you could not bear me and the wind that came in through the door
(Can I bear the uncertainty that arrives on the wind that came in through the door?)
That I can not hold you
Our devotions mismatched
(Holding you in my mind)
Waking up surprised with no one around
And wondering "who?"
We could have bridged the gap
But it yawned and swallowed this world of ours
That's now yours and mine
(That's now mine and yours)
This life bulldozed by ridiculous sensitivities
(This life clinging to rocks in wind)
Seeing your face everywhere and there's no escape
(Seeing this lost chance)
Except what if we could go further in?
We were each other’s reward for enduring the waves
"The wages of dying is love"
Like the poem says
As long as the one last leap into the dark is wholehearted
It almost was
Love Without Possession
What would be the use in becoming a symbol of walking desolation?
Awash in multiple griefs elaborating on anguish
What glows beneath all the pain and anguish?
Love that doesn’t die
Magma embroidering
Love: a small word unable to hold, while we stretch at its meaning
Now this:
What’s this new version of love that intrudes into the peace I thought I had?
This love has no recipient but still lies there smoldering
Indifferent stars in the night sky watch me while I churn
Still holding this love for you without a thing to do
But try to live in this uninvited liberation
Without a home in your life or heart
Without a shelter at all
Exposed and burning still
This unattended fire for no one emanates a wasted warmth on the wind
Pushing against the edges of what it means to give
Lost wisdom in sparks that rise and die
Even if I never get to see you again,
I’ll know that when we collided we both broke each other open
Rose petals were blustering
And I’m determined still to hold this open door, even now as it devastates
I wake up gasping in the void again
Speak sky
Blow breaths
Exhale to dissipate the always gathering clouds of yearning memory
Of all that we foresaw laid out before us, unlived
Dropped from a height back into the open ocean
It’s all horizon
This sky mirroring emptiness is where I first found you
Real Lost Wisdom
Now I'm frantically grasping at wisps of dissipating wisdom as we disband
This is the wealth I would like to leave to my daughter when she lets go of my hand
These words, these hopes
We almost exemplified
Wisdom lost
Undiscovered paintings in a cave
We almost went inside
If any descendants ever somehow find any evidence of us
On it I'll inscribe: “Love vehemently, like we did, without adverting your eyes”
For love it's worth it
Look into the fire
Don't flinch away, no matter what monstrous fears will arise
If there's a cataclysm and you have to go inside, please at least let some wind blow in
Take yet another breath and stay right there, courageous and kind
With love permeating your doors and windows wide
Look right into the fire
Look right into the fire
Look right into the fire
Look right into the fire
Wisdom
It's almost Mother's Day
Me and the other widows will commiserate alone at Montessori again
Straddling two worlds
Between the crush of single parenting and the need for wailing in the woods
Around a slosh pile burning into the night with tear-crusted eyes
I know I'm overcompensating in this PTSD disorientation
From my brief time in the rich part of the city
Now my hands stink like salmon skin left out in the rain
In the ash of the fire from last night
I haven't bathed in a while
And no one's near me
(If there's significance in where you live
Let it all go and follow love and intuition)
Today the tabloids told the world you separated me
(And see what's there)
My phone began dinging more than usual
(In the open sky)
It was just like the day they found out that we'd gotten married
(Because we're all gonna die)
Unwanted attention from an inhumane, delirious, absurd other world that keeps trying to eat you
I woke up quivering, raw, and heartbroken again
Took my daughter to the garbage dump and rifled through the free pile
And stood next to the pit
The crows and ravens circling spoke to us and we spoke back to them
But nothing is real except this one thing:
Please remember at the bookstore in the poetry corner upstairs
I slept with my head on your lap
Pink Light
Our bones do blow away in pink light
And in pink light we found each other
In the spring, dripping with flowers
Now in wind filled with human remains
The petals won't stop blowing
With each setting sun asking:
“Could there be another spring?”
Belief pt. 2
I believed in love and I still do
I'm not going to seal up my heart
I still do
I believed in love and in you
Now walled away, I know it's in you
I love you
I love you
There's an ocean that awaits us, spreading out on all sides
We could swim
We could dissolve there
I love you
I am for you
If ever the bonfire that I carry around could warm you again,
I will be out here in the weather, for you glowing
I believe and now I walk to the edge of delusion
Divorced and estranged, staying back with my parents
I believe though because I know who you are and that the world we could share
That we lived in for a moment still lies fertile in the dark
I go there
Alone there
I can only offer my love
I love you
I release you
At the edge of this ocean I stand and pour out the glass of water I brought
There's nothing else I can give but love
Belief
When I Walk Out of the Museum
Enduring the Waves
Love Without Possession
Real Lost Wisdom
Widows
Pink Light
Belief pt. 2
Belief
Through all of my life I waver back and forth
Between a belief and not believing in anything
In any solid shape
The unfettered mind
A deeper understanding that holds nothing
That lets sounds come in the ear
And just pass through without deciding what it was
If it was a jet or a dragon
It was merely a sound without a name or a picture
It was every possible thing at once
I barely ever get to be in this state
Just quick flashes by surprise when I'm like standing by a car,
Squinting my eyes, caught off guard and unpicturesque
I used to sing this one song all the time that I made up to try to cut through
When I'd find myself caught up entranced in certainty, staring at a hill
And it went:
"Let's get out of the romance"
Over and over
"Let's get out of the romance"
Like "Please can I go through this life unscared to see that nothing stays the same?
No one knows anything"
When I was younger and didn't know
I used to walk around basically begging the sky for some calamity to challenge my foundation
When I was young
So imagine what it was like to watch up close a loved one die and then look into the pit
I lived on the edge of it and had to stay there
Joanne Kyger said:
"We fight incredibly through a hideous mishmash of inheritance
Forgiving for deeper stamina
That we go on
The world always goes on
Breaking us with its changes
Until our form, exhausted, runs true"
Out of nowhere love returned
I saw what looked like a god who walks among us
I met her
We fell so in love
She is angelic, miraculous
I totally lost my mind and poured everything into this sea, this ocean
And when I came to I saw my face in a store window's reflection
And there was fear behind those eyes
Now I'm back where I was when I was 20
Trying to stop clinging to a dream and let an old idea of love dissipate
Back into formless rolling waves of discomfort and uncertainty
The true state of all things
I want to wade out into dark water hand in hand with you
I played this song for you and all you heard were the words
"Discomfort and uncertainty"
You asked "How do we get back to how it was?"
And that's when I started to know that I might be in it alone
Devoted to an unknown
Homelessness enthroned
Us and the kids all wind-blown
Courageous as bone
Lying down in a storm
Steadfast, newborn
A house with no door
Exhausted form
In your eyes I found home
I believed you and dove
And oh my god, when we swam together for a little bit
When I Walk Out of the Museum
When I walk out of the museum
The wall of sudden light makes me crinkle up my nose
And standing, coat half on, between marble columns,
I sneeze into the wind
When I walk out of the museum
I have centuries of dust behind my eyes
I hunch a little bit from the culminated weight of all these other peoples' ideas
I see a tipped over garbage can blowing in the street
When I walk out of the museum
I think about a snorkeler surfacing, tangled in kelp
That is me: writhing, wild attention, glancing around
The huge museum doors behind me slam and I flinch
In all of these brief flashes of momentary clarity
The emptiness that cuts through is like a bowl beneath the sky
Empty, not yet pregnant
Fertile, without form
It terrifies me, the raw possibility
And I want to go back inside
But when I walk out of the museum
Everything I see seems rippling and alive
On a freezing January day
Everything: the museum, and the garbage, and the internet, and the constellations
All collapse into a heap
And light floods out from this compost pile
Enduring the Waves
Reading about Buddhism and listening to Xasthur on the subway in New York City
Back when you were my home
Not that long ago
This life upends me again and again
(This churning life of avalanches, it spins)
Each night now, my mind in the dark brings it all roaring back
(Each day plummets into night, now my mind in the dark brings it all roaring back)
That you could not bear me and the wind that came in through the door
(Can I bear the uncertainty that arrives on the wind that came in through the door?)
That I can not hold you
Our devotions mismatched
(Holding you in my mind)
Waking up surprised with no one around
And wondering "who?"
We could have bridged the gap
But it yawned and swallowed this world of ours
That's now yours and mine
(That's now mine and yours)
This life bulldozed by ridiculous sensitivities
(This life clinging to rocks in wind)
Seeing your face everywhere and there's no escape
(Seeing this lost chance)
Except what if we could go further in?
We were each other’s reward for enduring the waves
"The wages of dying is love"
Like the poem says
As long as the one last leap into the dark is wholehearted
It almost was
Love Without Possession
What would be the use in becoming a symbol of walking desolation?
Awash in multiple griefs elaborating on anguish
What glows beneath all the pain and anguish?
Love that doesn’t die
Magma embroidering
Love: a small word unable to hold, while we stretch at its meaning
Now this:
What’s this new version of love that intrudes into the peace I thought I had?
This love has no recipient but still lies there smoldering
Indifferent stars in the night sky watch me while I churn
Still holding this love for you without a thing to do
But try to live in this uninvited liberation
Without a home in your life or heart
Without a shelter at all
Exposed and burning still
This unattended fire for no one emanates a wasted warmth on the wind
Pushing against the edges of what it means to give
Lost wisdom in sparks that rise and die
Even if I never get to see you again,
I’ll know that when we collided we both broke each other open
Rose petals were blustering
And I’m determined still to hold this open door, even now as it devastates
I wake up gasping in the void again
Speak sky
Blow breaths
Exhale to dissipate the always gathering clouds of yearning memory
Of all that we foresaw laid out before us, unlived
Dropped from a height back into the open ocean
It’s all horizon
This sky mirroring emptiness is where I first found you
Real Lost Wisdom
Now I'm frantically grasping at wisps of dissipating wisdom as we disband
This is the wealth I would like to leave to my daughter when she lets go of my hand
These words, these hopes
We almost exemplified
Wisdom lost
Undiscovered paintings in a cave
We almost went inside
If any descendants ever somehow find any evidence of us
On it I'll inscribe: “Love vehemently, like we did, without adverting your eyes”
For love it's worth it
Look into the fire
Don't flinch away, no matter what monstrous fears will arise
If there's a cataclysm and you have to go inside, please at least let some wind blow in
Take yet another breath and stay right there, courageous and kind
With love permeating your doors and windows wide
Look right into the fire
Look right into the fire
Look right into the fire
Look right into the fire
Wisdom
It's almost Mother's Day
Me and the other widows will commiserate alone at Montessori again
Straddling two worlds
Between the crush of single parenting and the need for wailing in the woods
Around a slosh pile burning into the night with tear-crusted eyes
I know I'm overcompensating in this PTSD disorientation
From my brief time in the rich part of the city
Now my hands stink like salmon skin left out in the rain
In the ash of the fire from last night
I haven't bathed in a while
And no one's near me
(If there's significance in where you live
Let it all go and follow love and intuition)
Today the tabloids told the world you separated me
(And see what's there)
My phone began dinging more than usual
(In the open sky)
It was just like the day they found out that we'd gotten married
(Because we're all gonna die)
Unwanted attention from an inhumane, delirious, absurd other world that keeps trying to eat you
I woke up quivering, raw, and heartbroken again
Took my daughter to the garbage dump and rifled through the free pile
And stood next to the pit
The crows and ravens circling spoke to us and we spoke back to them
But nothing is real except this one thing:
Please remember at the bookstore in the poetry corner upstairs
I slept with my head on your lap
Pink Light
Our bones do blow away in pink light
And in pink light we found each other
In the spring, dripping with flowers
Now in wind filled with human remains
The petals won't stop blowing
With each setting sun asking:
“Could there be another spring?”
Belief pt. 2
I believed in love and I still do
I'm not going to seal up my heart
I still do
I believed in love and in you
Now walled away, I know it's in you
I love you
I love you
There's an ocean that awaits us, spreading out on all sides
We could swim
We could dissolve there
I love you
I am for you
If ever the bonfire that I carry around could warm you again,
I will be out here in the weather, for you glowing
I believe and now I walk to the edge of delusion
Divorced and estranged, staying back with my parents
I believe though because I know who you are and that the world we could share
That we lived in for a moment still lies fertile in the dark
I go there
Alone there
I can only offer my love
I love you
I release you
At the edge of this ocean I stand and pour out the glass of water I brought
There's nothing else I can give but love