every morning i’m inconsolable, googling flights to nowhere. listening to your old voicemails. contextualizing the moldy toblerone in the top drawer. making and unmaking the bed and sitting still until the housecat nips. i don’t think i’m real anymore. i have this constant feeling like there are many ways that reality might go or might’ve gone and since reality doesn’t feel any more real than these alternatives, there’s just an endless palimpsest of temporal and spatial possibilities which get trippier when one considers things like death. in the next life, i’ll be a herding dog, spinning in circles, biting at sheep, and feeling immensely the rich earth. i have little poetry for you today. i’ve put a few things together with the result that nothing makes sense- thinking about jesus- nothing like someone tortured, naked, and emaciated to reflect the sufferings of the sweet earth. still, the acridity of cynicism is about as useful as drinking paint thinner at a party to get a few laughs- belief is a strange little apparatus to keep us breathing and eating every day.
and actually i have no idea where i am, i can’t believe i’m alive, what i’ve been doing for the past few weeks (lying here listening to nighttime sounds and thinking about how meaning happens between people or doesn’t, that is, i miss everything, the whole dreaming earth is one long sorrow, goodbye, i mean good night, good morning, so long, i’ll sail my ghost ships to the moon and never come home at all and where is my love? (would it be the sad background music to the silent film of my life, a house that i pass every day left empty? this is a strange wordless peace (a buried moon)), haven’t been making anything with my hands or seeing anybody real, i should hitch a freight to nowhere, delete all contacts, get out of the country-
no use,
still got to find a place to sleep.
the body was just a brief history of the soul (i am light).
BIO: I am a poet, writer, and artist. I’ve been published in fifty literary magazines over the past few years.I have won four poetry contests, including Word Works Young Poets’. My poetry has been exhibited at the Greater Reston Art Center and at Arterie Fine Art Gallery. Check out my poetry books, "we’ll beachcomb for their broken bones" (Red Ochre Press, 2014), "a little luminescence" (Allbook-Books, 2011) and "the reason for rain" (Coffeetown Press, expected publication in fall 2015). Additionally, my visual art has won me several awards. Go to elenabotts.com for more information or o-mourning-dove.tumblr.com to see my latest artwork.