Moon Memo: Praying for Atheists
Hello from Portland, where I am coming out of a heat wave. Didn't really sleep for most of the week. It was bad. I spent a lot of yesterday in a psychedelic state so profound that I just couldn't face another day of it. So I burnt through another sick day. But I got to sleep, and I took a 2 hour nap in the afternoon, and I feel like I'm human again.
Wrote a poem for my friend A, who is having top surgery next week (hi, A. I tried to respect your privacy). It's about how I hope I wish for a swift recovery for her during her surgery season. Had to clarify that she doesn't, in fact, act like she doesn't have gratitude for the prayers I shower on her.
Prayer is weird. I want to give them to all of my folks, the community around me. Everyone. I don't know how much people actually want it. But they are going to get it.
I was never good at praying when I believed in God. It felt like I was bothering him somehow, that what I was doing him a disservice by letting my own selfish wants show up in front of him. But now that I believe in him less and less prayer is easy. It's something I can put out there, say "I'm thinking about this, and I want to give it attention, and I want it this to change." And it's bothering no one except the whole universe.
Praying for friends who don't believe in prayer
May your new breasts fall
into place. May your softness
keep reigning forever. May
your body be brave and beautiful
in recovering, the stitching
of nerves returning to life
less pain than reconciliation.
May you lean back into
recovery, let others do to you
what you have done unto them.
May you fidget your way
into belief in yourself, the only
goddess you've ever needed,
beautiful and kind, the best
sad girl. This is how you should
pray: against the will of girls;
kinked like a chain of old women
magicking god into being; annoying
in attention, celestial, full of grace.
In other news: America is a country without a poet laureate. Ada Lemon's term finished in April, and we haven't had anyone since. Who is singing the song of now? Who is showing up in the work of words for us? Who is willing to have an office in the library, and listen for the hired hand of Robert Frost to ask about metre? Who is singing for us in this dying country?
(Note: it turns out that the Librarian of Congress spends the summer searching for the next Poet Laureate after the last one’s term is over. I’m still skeptical that they will find one. And no, I will not accept it if it’s offered to me. I’m the Trans Poet Laureate. I have enough on my plate.)
New speedier laptop is set up. Have it working just the way I want it to. It's lighter and faster than the other one, still a 4 year old computer but it runs like a dream. Enough memory to handle the nonsense that I do. Stickers are coming. Need to donate the old one to FreeGeek.
What happens when sex becomes less about pleasure and more about care and tenderness? What happens when you spend time letting someone find the pleasant areas, the folds and beauties of you, the ways you want to feel vulnerable, maybe loved. My spouse does this. A girl I started seeing is doing this. Am I willing to let someone be tender with me? Am I willing to let go?
Done Unto Others
She learned how to show care to everyone,
wash the feet of old women in rest homes
as they babbled to mother ghosts, hold on
to dying men as they shivered home, learned
the doctrine of conditional love as she slouched
in slacks and beard, taught children to obey,
become themselves in prison country, learned
to accept providence: gender, sexuality, place
in the plan. After she sataned herself, put on
a black dress, curved her body, she is still
doing unto others beyond what she'd do for
herself, pushing hands off, letting care rise
over traumatized bodies. She pays attention
to their whimpers and pantings, breathes in
all their venting and breathing out their pleasure.
When will she be blessed among women, let
a mouth trace her ribs, fingers enter holiness,
done unto her as she would do unto others?
I think that's enough for this week. Love you folks a lot. Thanks for sticking around. Don't die.
Misha