The Maynard
Spring 2018

0:00

 

 

Dearly Ignored,

This message is being relayed to you from inside your cells
where you feel the ratcheting, the festering wounds.

Which of the many can raise their invisible mitochondria
and wave, me, I have been festering for 10 billion years
since the dawn of the Pleistocene era. I believe you.

These are wounds speaking to their wounds
and saying unto you even before this language
we exist.

Are we talking past lives? I have no answer.
But traces. Even without memory.

Once you were running in the desert and saw a hut
and thought it was near but you ran and ran and it was
still far. Near and far are so confusing.
Wounds are like that, constantly appearing on the horizon.

I can feel you wanting me to find something positive here.
Please let us not rush.

Dearly Ignored, for how long have they misread
your name, calling you beloved when you felt
none of it? This too is your birthright.
The ow of having been brought here and told be happy.

And the surprise when happiness indeed came
up within you. The first humorist must’ve been
an infant, singing in their bed,
their arms wound around their heads.

But who can really remember being that baby?
Maybe in a dream, when you feel that lurch awake
in the middle of the night you will know it's you
I've been talking to. Take in
a breath slow to know the air within you
is also around you. No better or worse. Same air,
ignored and beloved.