Poem: “Gentler Is the Night Somehow” 2015
The night is gentler somehow-
Easier to fold us in its sleep .
My heart quaking somewhere between
Bleeding and loving,
Telling me dreams that softly come
Of long moon lit roads of nowhere to go
And stars and cold :
An aching voice upon a stage,
Howling to the heavens to
~Let her go~
A falling follows, exquisite gallows,
That makes me see you upside down,
With roses in boxes
That scent my midnight terrors.
Cacophony, I love you,
Gaze drunk and smitten,
Sleep walking within the edges of the mind.
And the sheets are tangled with our venom
A rebellion against endless, passing time.
Breathless, take my rage away
To own my shaking and my depths.
And the aural pathway of a kiss
Generates a wild, reckless bliss.
Gentler is the night somehow
That we may finally rest.
I wrote this poem after a show in 2015. Sometimes at shows, often my favorite ones, I can feel the sound in my chest. My heart vibrates, and I feel like I’m in a reverie, high on music, and poetry somehow comes out. Most of the time if this happens, there’s no real context, subtext, or motive. The poetry won’t have anything to do with the music. It’s like being touched by a muse, and the music, the sound, is a conduit for inspiritus. This poem is like that. I sat here this morning staring at it awkwardly thinking, “What in the actual fuck? How does this poem exist?” I don’t know, but I like it anyway even if the sight of it nearly pushes me into a strange state of anxious weeping.
Upon reflection, I think about how instructors always tell their students to read poetry out loud. When I read most of my poems out loud, I draw out the words. They linger and are articulated quietly with intensity. One time, probably around 2013, I read a poem out loud once at an open mic night. I had to turn my back away from people to read, and I was stunned to hear the room filled with clapping from an otherwise dead crowd. This guy who used to publish a poetry zine thought it was amazing and wanted me to do more open mic on different nights, but the idea was so anxiety provoking I never did. In fact, I had to flee the coffee shop after reading. A few months later, when his zine was accepting submissions, I sent my poems to him for publication. They were rejected. I wonder if he thought to read them out loud.
*Also, does anyone else have problems with spacing and line breaks on Medium? The spaces I want don’t show up, and spaces that aren’t wanted appear. I try to delete and repaste the work from the original document, and still the problem continues. If you know how to fix this issue, please let me know in the comments below.
