Poetbabble

Where I’ve Been

The last month has been a cyclone for me work-wise, a frenzy of 14-15 hour work days, finally book-ended by a trip to the Tennessee Williams Lit Festival. I feel like I’m just coming to. A week in New Orleans lit me from the inside. Once again, ravenous, insatiable to work. I spent so many afternights sleepless and wild.

I should have seen it coming. The rut and grind of my days, the madspin of so many nights, negligible sleep.  The body is such an imperfect vehicle for the spirit, the brain, the half-loved heart…

On Wednesday morning, I woke wracked with flu.

Usually, mild fever is pleasant in its semi-delirious sort of way, how it alters vision/perception by a subtle re-arrangement/derangement of the filter, the lens. But last night I was hallucinatory. I spent all of yesterday naked, in and out of baths, hovering at an air conditioner (one I rarely use). Like a horrible burn, my skin raged, on fire.   

And last night my dreams were surreal and wonderful and horrific. Our house in New Orleans, all trumpet jukebox and dixieland moss, the slow ruin of dystopic carnivals and abandoned hospital hallways, the neon green of spring leaves in whitehot sunlight, rusting coca-cola signs still swinging from their posts. Our dappled dirtroad made hazy with waspwings and ditch ants. You were the biggest catfish I ever hauled onto that muddy bank. Running up a darkened staircase. How the old pictures yellowed and peeled skyward. You were the longestsaddest dirge. Such big hands, such big hands… I thought you could hold it all.

And now it’s Saturday night in another life, and the fever still has not broken… In four weeks, though, I’ll be free. In four weeks, I’ll dive in again, swim toward you.