the heart, and burial places known and unknown

loving, and singing,
the heart paced
on night feet through the desert
that lies between you on god's mountain,
and a home whose name you don't know.

the heart
swoons
like a femme fatale slipping
with her frighteningly slim waist
onto a couch.  the heart

knows how to get what it wants.  it is natively
neither open nor closed, but is something
like a goldfish;
it opens its mouth to sip its tiny breaths,
then closes so as to think it over for awhile.
the heart

is simpler than all of this:
two middle-aged men with earlocks
will stand across from one another,
holding each others' hands;
they'll revolve in slow circles, dancing
just one night of the year, every year,
over caleb's grave.

but singing in an ever-lowering voice,
your heart might find itself ready
to sleep.  the longing
grew too long, the desire and gold dirt
ever-lengthening away from you.  it is a good
place to die, this place, to be gathered
up, it is a good place to rest,
sings sleepily the heart.

On Pace

Wow.  This blog thing is nuts.

Obviously I haven't held up my end of the bargain, which was a commitment to posting a new piece every week.  My explanation for that is twofold.


Firstly, I have been working on something, but it was not a piece that I could rush very much even in getting it to a first draft stage.  Rushing was sort of the point of creating this blog - I can certainly be very, very, very precious) - but I am learning as I go.

A month or so ago a reader posted a comment which was, shall we say, not entirely positive.  In discussing it with my boyfriend, one of the things I said was basically, "Well of course it's kind of crappy.  It's a first draft.  People get that, don't they?  That by commiting to getting a new piece up every week, I'm really commiting to getting a first draft done each week, right?"

To which Kevin responded, alarmingly, no.  He very sweetly pointed out that not everyone in the world is a writer and therefore not everyone in the world knows that all things done quickly are, by default, probably done none too well.

Beyond feeling that I have confirmed my earlier opinion that rushing breeds bad work, I just hate doing things quickly.  What on earth are we all rushing towards?  Death?  I assume it will come whenever it's good and ready.  I could rush to get more work done, but then I'd just have more work to do, and as I already have plenty of that right now...it seems obvious.

And the second part of my explanation for my tardiness bears intriguing implications for my understanding of liturgy.  For a few of the Sundays that have elapsed since I started this project, I have not been able to go to church.  The first two times it happened, I wrote something anyway, responding simply to the readings.  But those two pieces (which will remain unnamed) were, by my standards, poorly conceived.  Not bad through and through, but very...one-dimensional.  That's the only way I can put it.  The readings alone seemed to prompt a particular line of sight which I found it difficult to shake myself out of without the help of the music, incense, homily, and simply the presence of other people participating in the Eucharist.  So one of these past Sundays I wasn't able to go to church, my third missed mass since I started the project, and I decided to just let that one go.  I would rather not write at all then write something just to say I did it.

Which is a little bit what the essay I'm about to post is saying.  It's a much longer piece than I've created yet for this blog, and it was a bit of a challenge for me.  Long pieces of prose are difficult for me to write.  But it's a direction I'm trying to work towards, and so I would welcome any comments - either in encouragement or critique - that you might have.