Residents of the Multitudes

a poem

"Love is the recognition of oneness in the world of duality." ~ Eckhart Tolle

Ya’ll,

For the first time since I started taking Cymbalta, I successfully wrote a poem. I’m so glad my brain is turning back on. I’m still having my ups and downs, but I think my mental health is moving in the right direction. I’ve also been cleaning like a motherfucker. Hell yeah.

I hope soon to share that poem with you, but for personal reasons I’m going to hold it in my pocket for a while longer.

I wanted to share that success with you all though, and I thought it had been a while since I’ve shared a poem at all, so y’all’ve earned one. I went back into my catalogue for this one, but with TFG back in the highest office, it feels unfortunately relevant still.

Without further ado, and with my greatest gratitude to you brilliant readers, a poem:

RESIDENTS OF THE MULTITUDES

I contain multitudes and the multitudes
contain me. I know this. I know I’m a single
grain of sand in a universe that I don’t understand
the limits of. I know there are infinite stars and
infinite galaxies that are born and burn out
and collapse inside of my blood. 

And when I’m calm (for instance, when I’m young,
in an empty cow pasture cradled in the blue ridges
that roll out like soft arms and breasts, that reminds
me of good mothers, when my heart is learning love
and fearing dying), then this is a comfort.

*

If I get to choose the guest list,
then my table
is long and heavy wood
 and it seats my heroes:
the grandmother I never
met, Frida Kahlo, Greta Thunberg,
Mary Oliver, the little girl I once
knew with the hole in her heart (and when
we lost touch, how I never knew if she had
died or we had simply grown away, as grown ups
do), Jane Goodall.
Our table is heavy wood,
and benched,
and our meal is poetry,
animal fat, fresh spring ramps,
beets that stain our lips and tongues, and we eat
without guilt, fear. When, after the meal
is done, and we are full and honeyed
and softened to each other, we share
stories of other women we have admired,
and when I tell them I see how we
fit inside each other, simultaneously,
we nod.

*

It’s not that simple. You don’t get to pick and choose
the way the night/life unfolds.
If it
unfolds.

*

If I have the muse come to visit me, and inside of me,
then I have the bratty bored dumb child, come and here too.

If I have my love be a good man with ethics and heart,
and I have this man inside of me and we are the same,
then I have his brother too.

If the radical freedom givers, then the nazis too.

*

Most of the time when I dream, I’m me.
But last night, at the 2 and the 3 and the 4,
I woke very aware I had been living
in the world, no matter how briefly, as a man. 
I name myself Elijah so I can keep that moment
and remember myself.

*

The first time I remember reading Gary Snyder,
my father had given me a copy of Axe Handles.
I was in high school.

The first time I heard the word interpenetration
was in Sam Scoville’s class
called Dialogue and Dialects at Warren Wilson College 
in a tiny room with no windows and there was Sam
and his six weird baby philosophers alternating between
almost scratching through the curtain,
and absurdity and butt farming, and once
confronting that yeah, Dan and I were acting weird
because we’d gotten a little handsy 
in a tent that weekend.

The first time I understood the word interpenetration,
I was reading Gary Snyder for a class in Texas
in a little cabin in the hills south of town with a skinny
wannabe buddha, and suddenly all the words
I had been trying to say instead of god were
on the pages in my hands and they had once been trees
and seeds before that.

*

I’ve had multiple dreams involving Donald Trump.
In one, he was an old Scandanavian woman 
who was angry I was picking flowers in her field.
Her field. In my dream.
The audacity.

I have never dreamt about any other presidents.
Carl Jung says every person in your dreams is you.
Everyone inside of me is me too.
Everyone inside of me is living outside of me, holding me,
holding all the different mes, the Elijahs, the monster presidents,
the dream dinner party, the good poets, the molesters
and my abuser. The whole gang.  

I wake up from my most recent Donald Trump dream
extra upset that if I believe any of my own beliefs,
then we’re all mirrors reflecting back at each other.
and when I read the day’s news and scandal
and murders and trials and men shot by police officers
and children gassed and rapists still taking office,
I’m reading me over and over again.

*

It’s too much to bear. —

This is something I like to say when I don’t want to think about it anymore.

*

I have this recurring daydream where I name my abuser, and then I walk away. The scene varies. Sometimes he comes to whatever town I call home, and it’s my turf, and I turn to someone who loves me or at least loves me more than a violent stranger, and I name his crimes. And I tell him to leave, and never come back. I claim my home and my space and my allies and somehow after this I am less hurt, less claimed. Sometimes, it’s the dive in my hometown and I am showing someone I love the spaces that shaped me. I am explaining Snug’s Surprise when one of the sweet but awkward boys I knew in highschool approaches me. He’ll say something like, didn’t you used to date rapist? and I say, oh, I did, is that monster here? I say, he raped me. I let the sweet but awkward boy know what company he keeps. I turn to my companion and I say, let’s leave. And we do. And after, I applaud myself for being so mature, so nonviolent, so brave, so rectified, so healed.


*

I swear I have written
a poem before
about my daydreams

I wonder if this is a lie
I have told myself

I wonder if my daydream
has progressed
into the victory
of telling my naming
story

I swear I was in the sun
room and yesterday
they had stormed the capitol
and I couldn’t

hear another violence
without it being
my violence

*

Patriot, according Merrium Webster,
means one who loves their country.

It is a word derived from the Greek
Patrios; of one’s father.

Brethren. Men you war with. Countrymen.
Sometimes, it implies valor.
Sometimes strength. Usually, victory.
In 1776, the Patriots won the war.

In 2017, 2018, 2019, the Patriots won
the superbowl. All hail the athletes.

In 2021, the Patriots stormed the capitol
and somebody shit in the hall.

*

In the first spring in our first home,
R. buys us a flag pole. I have never hung
a flag in my yard. We hang the progress
pride flag, and R. irons out the wrinkles.

Three doors down, the neighbor sports
two flags: Trump 2020, the confederate flag.

Across the street and down a ways
is a dove and the planet.

The Betty Ross. 

The United States of America.

Biden 2020.

Black Lives Matter.

Peace.

*

I moved to a town with more queers folks than proud boys.
I have a little Utopia bubble. I like this.

*

I haven’t had a full length mirror in my home
for most of my adult life. I could even afford
something beautiful and wood framed
these days, but most days it’s better
if I don’t look at all parts of myself.

---

Thanks for being here and for boldly resisting fascism. You are brave, brilliant, and beloved to me.

I haven’t had a chance yet to mention that it’s Disability Pride month! Happy Pride, fellow baddies! To celebrate, I’m considering dropping an entire chapter of my in-process memoir, Bad Bones. For free, might I add! Unless you’d like to become a paid subscriber and help me sustain this crazy act of writing. Let me know if you’re interested in either reading the chapter or becoming a paid subscriber!

My favorite song today is the song my husband, the artist known as Brokestring & the Empty Promises, dropped yesterday, “The Battle at Camarillo”. I’m embedding the video below, but check him out on Instagram, Threads, or Ye Ol’ Ticky Tocky.

I love you,

EBG