by Beth Benson

God spitting bars
God open mic
God the artist in residence
In my heart and mind and every desk in this space and in the world of these trees
I am here in this moment with the mirror and the god and the bodhisattva and the marvin words still pelleting me with inspiration and trauma there is this space between the words where god lives
God
As god
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh,
God you are the water cycle
The rock and the hard place
And you’re reshaping this geology of earth through writing
And i hear marvin and i want to be here, too saying something of worth and worthiness
Me with my desire to whoa the white girl woes
And become the long hand of god
In the poet moment
Of the poetress
Poetess
Poet in a dress
When was the last time i wrote a dress or address? Or wore a dress?
Where am i on this day?
Ass in christmas velvet from that freedom year when i left the brandy stories and moved back into my own books yet to write that let brew go home with celeste after that movie and target shopping trip, i treated, and then these pants found their way to that basket and into the moving, moving, moving, moving boxes of times i pray have fallen out of time and i sit here in this fabric artifact of all that accomplishment while i write to the all over this land song belting out from the cracked glass of that still iphone7 transition object that still reminds me of all that broke open that day i fell on the scary walk home from the joanne’s catch or ketch or reworking of those named actions and verbs there by the half moon bay shoreline in that not quite half moon bay spot we lived in after we knew we didn’t want to live together anymore–but before we could bring ourselves to the truest truth of breaking up.

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Vernon sings to me–good morning while i play a little bit–and i listen to him playing and look at his prayer beads and his blue, baby blue, shirt holding that enormous heart in his beautiful chest i look and hear the reverb and the bad sound of phone and distance and all that has separated us all these many years of being separated in the air waves ways of the covid safety ways of not being held but hoping we remember what it feels like to feel held.

I am here.
You, blessed marvin, are offering a prompt.

Start.
Just start writing.
That’s how you enter into this contract–
And now there is dennis
One thing
What one thing will you bring to life in 2022?

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

What one thing will i bring to life in 2022?
I will bring the one thing of this matrix
This humane human life
This woman’s journey
This art in this now
This wording of this truth
This partnership with my dear writing friend
This dream
In this world
Of this hour
In this song that can keep singing itself with me here and me there
Mind body soulsystem still installed in that front row pew where there was all that new life after life after that break of the breaking of up
Is down the only other direction?

One thing i will bring to life in 2022? The matrix. The web. The cocoon of fence and walls and eco art discovery center dreams in the aftermath of all the math.

I am here now.
I am deep breath alive.
I am here.
I am breathing.
I bring this breath to life
To my life
I let the air in and deep
I let it carry my please brush your teeth breath to the knowing of my own nose
I am here
And ready
To breathe
And brush
And sit
And be
And write
And breathe
And listen
And write
And return
And write
And return
And write
And enter
In the movement of my hands across keyboard
In the moments of my sole and silent awarenesses
Each gifted to my eyes and breath and body and and soul system that incarnated in this form to be in this now with you and dennis singing the forever and ever and the one thing and the singing and the sound–is that me? Whooooing in my white girl way from the front row of adoring him.

He looks like my ex-husband, you know.
We made beautiful babies together.

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Who and what will you hold more dear in 2022?

I stand up
Walk to the open door
Feel the cool in the air
I look out at the sea of what the fuck am i doing
Making its ways visible in the big studio i give myself to work things out in now
I am here
I return to the work ipad
Wondering if anyone will write back to all the follow up love i sent today
Did it smell of desperation?
Leah comes in to the choir track laid down as comfort and sings those first words that open me, open, open, open me to the now and the hear and the here and the please, god, send me someone who will put their loving arms around me.

I am porcupine now

The gilf who didn’t laugh when i called her a gilf called to interrupt the things that happened between answering her call and arriving back here at this spot where i write to the soundtrack of jonah and the song for solange and the love he sends her is the love i amplify. 

How much will there be? In the light shine brighter in 2022 light i shine? Do i get the fullness of the year or just this moment, here, with the past and present and future of glide? 

This little light of mine, i’m gonna let it shine…

Here i am with jonah in this loneliness that crowds around my porcupine body longing to be touched. He asks me to feel the light and i remember what it was to stand in that stream of sunlight illuminating dust–was it the kitchen? That slant of light that caught me in the moment of my deepest gratitude at having been found by such a thing–risking to make it past the trees and through the glass and into the kitchen with me–for dancing?

I miss the dancing.

I miss the dancing.

The greatest risk, the greatest wonder…
He sings, he loves, he thanks, the stuck vision of my marvin’s face over that prompts of how can you make your light shine brighter in 2022 question being the thing that is the thing in the here of this now.

I am sitting in the velvet pants on top of the tiger soft blanket and the soft socks and the tennis shoes, fake converse, while the marvin starts up here–lovers of the word–we all get to write the new text–poets and writers–collections of stories–write from there–write us out and write us in from there–the theopoetics–it is in the poetry, the metaphorical, the fresh anointing and aren’t we all an odd twist of word.

A living word in you.

What is my living word?

I listen to the poem of him–his time stories of clock and god and the unveiling of this thing that lets the thing word god in the wording of the ways of waves of living words, responsive and generative and only good.

Write down their names
Write down their names
Write down their names
Be where you what are you asking me?
In my heart body mind soul system i am here in this chair under the tiger blanket soft and the velvet pants and the naked underneath of seven layers of skin on my ass still on my ass and not used for anything else yet–no skin grafts needed as of yet–no what of this life is here?

Simmer down
Show up
Get to where you’re supposed to be
Then
Just maybe…

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Because of sunday, monday is…

I am here in the now of this hour of this moment in this day of this day now dazed in the daisy chain of here as i reach out to the now of this story hour.

Writers know that everybody comes with a story
Writers know
Writers know
Writers know
What?
Do writers know?
How to show up
In words
That let every reader feel their own heart and breath and soul beating in the art of the now in the writer’s church
Our writing says
That we have all
Done something
Passed something
Passed into something
Passed over something
In the something of the somethings
In this moment in this dream of the hour of this now
I am here.
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

I am here.

Marvin is still talking in that Marvin preaching kind of talking way that opens me to this here in the now of the dark alone.

He is some light in white in some room i haven’t seen behind him before in all these zooms of what was once a space close enough to hug.

I miss hugs.
I miss dancing.
I miss sunlight and warmth.
I miss being outside in the cold.
I miss weaving and wefting and making the something i don’t know i’m making by making it and letting itself show me what it is through all my projections cast and recast as memory and inspiration in the act of making the making it is all in the making, you know
Love
I am here in the now of this hour
I am here in the now of this moment in this day in this marvin onslaught of syllables voiced through breath taken in between the word song he pounds, pounds, like nail going sweet into wood that yields to let it be connected through that bridge of thing that pierces open the connection that combines the two into one.

Words.
Things.
Emotions.
Feelings what can not be felt in the loneliness of now.
I am here.
I am hungry.
I am here.
I am lonely.
I am here.
I am here.
I am starving for connection.
I am here.
I am lonely.
I am lost in the found of this beginning
Of the word
Where i am
In the divine lineage
Of the answered call
To oneness.

Here.
One.
Nest.

Here.
Keepin’ it real.