Shel Graves' Sensorium

Champagne and Elderflowers  Forgotten dreams, the skin on her hands softens,  “The more you eat the hungrier you become,” says the Queen of the Flower Fairies.  Perched on the steps with a peppermint stomach, “Not every day fills with poems and dreams,” she says.

Less Gratitude  She wakes and whines,  Life motivates.  Even in the cold rain.  Food, she thinks and hopes.  Body trembles,  The kitchen blurs.  Until she eats and sleeps,  Urgency fades.  Upon the warm couch, Life satisfies.

COVID 19  Usual writing room and usual posture.  Plus fear.  Up in the middle of the night. Cat staring.  Midnight news. Foot tinging against floor and inner thigh.  Morning news.  Thigh pressed tightly against chair.  Added worry.  Elbows hanging heavily.  Easy irritation.  Right wrist, middle back, neck stiff.  Weird shame.  Breath only through right nostril.  Dull fury. Itchy eyes. Arms overhead.  Plus fear.

Taste: maple; sour jelly beans Sound: washer/dryer; March wind Smell: vanilla almond cream in coffee  Sight: bookshelves, multicolored bindings  Touch: the heft of a book, a paperback, poetry, tome  Extra:    "It’s alright/if you fall out of love with being alive, but rise again tomorrow/with French pop songs and fresh croissants, wear all your gold/" — Traci Brimhall, Contender , Come Slumberless to the Land of Nod  “I will be waiting here. for your silence to break for your soul to shake for your love to wake. —Rumi”  A jolt of joy candy, sitting for a moment in the sun, a sip of water  Grateful for: calm, serenity

Peaceful  My anxious friends dissipated during the day,  “Remember when we were club kids in Germany?” Sultana said.  My heart once beating fervently fast.  “What is solarpunk?” I repeat and try to explain.  Yesterday’s urgent aches become tinged with feeling.   My arms reach up toward the black tulip magnolia,  As you steer the kayak through warm moonlit waters,  We pass quietly through the peaked waves, And listen to the wolves howl in the distance.

NEW LOCATION!  I have selected my own furniture and inherited only one piece.  The long red couch lingers at the south end of the gaming table.  When the cat comes, the couch gets up to leave. She's tired of being sat upon.  The wooden eagle guarding the couch kingdom pecks the back of my neck.  I lay here lazily thinking, “I must remember to take my medicines.”

Rolling Fives   Breathe in.  Pause for five seconds.  Eat cashew cheesecake.  Breath out.  Pause for five seconds.  Eat popcorn, wine, and rice. More rice.  Breathe in.   Breathe in.   Pause for five seconds.  Soak in Epsom Salts.   Breath out.   Pause for five seconds.   Spa! Massage! Acupuncture!   Breathe in.

Waiting  Usual writing room.  Usual posture.  Dressed.  Ate frozen waffles.  Depleted and exhausted.  Six cups of coffee.  Drained.  Feet tingling.  Legs heavy.  Stomach warm.  Not bloated!  Back hunched.  Arms reach up.  Wrists fluid.  Neck stiff.  Eyes droopy.  Weight 124. 8.  Left nostril plugged.  Breath catches in chest. It is almost, but not quite, time for work.

Terror  Overnight, I became a giant of weird textures,  My head grown red like a wisp of flame,  A dead taste in my mouth.  Yesterday, I gashed my back on a low beam,  Hunched underneath and smacked my head  On the wooden door frame.  This morning, my oily veins stand and wriggle,  While the animals outside startle at,  The thumping of my heart.   In time, I would feel myself shrinking, Mined into dwarf-shaped diamonds, A fragile giant grown small and hard. Usual writing room. Usual posture.

Election Day  All of my friends are fearful.  Usual writing room. Usual posture.  Feeling buried, absent, silent.  Life sapped of its unworthy weirdness.  Bottoms of feet hard, like cardboard.  Legs heavy. Stomach bloated.  Lower back stings. Upper back stiff.  Hunched torso. Left wrist tight.  Hands heavy. Neck crackling.  Face sagging. Nose runny. Snuffly.  Eyes itchy, especially the left.  Want to move, flow, spin. Be delighted.  I should be getting dressed up now and going out to dance.

Breakfast for Calm  Stomach rumbling, I drank tea first and ate tofu.  My body aflame with hidden feeling. Neck tight.  Once rising, out of my body, I floated down a river of dying.  Steering a kayak, in moonlit warm waters, around peaked waves.  Reaching body, neglected and bland, I raised arms overhead,  My spine uncurls with gathered objects. Wrists crackle.  Books, bags, cups, mask: Yesterday’s urgent aches wane.  In the beginning, I hope for constancy. Later, rushing, inconstancy.  After I eat, my body wants to run with music and joy.

Anxiety Puppies  Descending to rescue puppies in a cave of creepy spaces,  Scrambling bodies, tearing into walls to reveal hidden passages.  Catching the falling dog and then letting go her again,  Staring horrified at her broken body, the doctor eager to examine it.  Becoming feverish, infected by a gifted fruit bat,  Apologizing to the doctor, away from his family, working to find a cure.  Chasing after my injured husband, sick in the eye and wandering,  Worrying as the slutty girls mock me, asking, “Where did he go?”  Running toward the injured puppy, a gash in her hind end,  Trying to keep one puppy safe, while losing another.  Boiling a puppy for dinner and then knowing her name,  Regretting the action, asking, “Can the doctor save her?”  Selling a puppy to a cancer patient in Fremont Park,  Running barefoot at night in the rain on cobblestones.  Flying over the rooftops with a puppy in each hand,  St...

Return  One day I will be able to walk the library books back to the library,  Forgotten umbrella, rain pattering upon book covers, water damage,  The library will return the disheveled books to me with a fine, And the worn books become mine forever.  Until then, the stack of books sits placidly awaiting ruination.

Bat Robe  Warming Halloween with wings, Challenging to shriek and fly, Avoiding the thunderous clouds, Steering toward the full moon,  Scalloped wings in silhouette, Eating blackberries from the vines.

She’s Divine  Scatterbrained old woman, Wrestling with existential dread,  Cataloging her complaints,  She sweeps her horrible broom.  She stirs the anxious pot.  She opens the self-critical oven.  She plants the awful herbs.  She burns the hate-filled pancakes.  She scrambles the Tarot Cards of Uncertainty.  She hangs, chapped, and rumbled.  Enter divinity.   Usual writing room, cross-legged posture.  What about pleasure?  Bonhomie?

Usual Writing Room, Usual Posture  The anxiety of morning wakefulness,  Lies, thinking something absent went off rails,  A forgotten trail, a forgotten track,  Completely lost within a collapsed tunnel.  Fear of cold, fever, sniffles,  Startles, life recruiting only hale explorers,  Within space the shuttle floats,  Everyone else must quarantine on Earth.  Distress awakes at midnight,  Thundering, storms rising,  Islands drowning in choppy seas,  Survivors breathing fiercely upon wet bellies of hope.

Poem Dream  I dreamt of writing a poem with italics: Usual writing room and posture .  I ate cocoa, macadamia nuts, and so much fiber: Painful speaking.   Sourness coats my throat and coffee cascades over it  Welling into my belly, damming the cold river of my body.  Legs growing numb, drowning in the rushing river.  How did it feel to wake up in quiet and stillness? With muted heart.

Taste: goji and peach  Sound: dryer, clothes tumbling; twitch  Smell: burnt lint  Sight: cat tail twitching  Touch: silky, ruffled, wet fur  Extra: grief  A jolt of joy sun breaks; dogs at play with a favorite toy  Grateful for: rituals

Hypnotherapy  The doctor meets me in ether, Knowing everything about my inner body, My stomach so familiar to her.  She brings me to an apothecary, a farm, a stream.  She gets a pillow for my back and props me there, Trying to relax my gut, pain in my lower back,  And painfulness everywhere in life. In cyberspace, I sit, a doll, upon the absent ledge.

Croissant   She presses her back against my heart.  She presses her heart to mine.  I am tense upon waking.  Anxious to love her.

Dangerously Dining Indoors  Before anything attacked I was alert. On edge. Awake in my usual writing room with tense shoulders, a sensitive spot below my left earlobe, and floating head.  What does it even mean to listen to the body?  Here I was afraid of sitting inside in a chair. Everything upset. Turned away at the window, imagining my buttocks firm against the seat, my stomach burning, and irritated whispers.   Do you hear the fear, the crackling sounds, hanging over the open sign?

Civil Unrest  Rude Minerva finds life difficult to swallow.  “We aren’t the same age, so we couldn’t possibly be friends,” she says.  Unwashed for days, uneasiness rests between her cold breasts,  Distracted thoughts worry her haggard face, beneath lank and greasy hair.  Eating inflammatory foods and lifting a coffee pot,  Minerva says, “I found my arm weaker and unable to pour for you.”  She’s eaten so much swollen rice without much range of motion,  She says, “I wanted something warm that would later turn in my insides.”   She scoffed at those stiff leathery souls, her once friends, who wanted to help her,  “Because," she says, "What on earth would I do with unlimited funds?”

Hand Holding Rocks  Trying to stay in this body, hands on the steering wheel.  Holding a collection of heavy objects,  Hoping to feel pleasure from being in this aging body.  Walking through the days, foot dependent,  Cleaning with absent arms,  Aching between the shoulder blades.   Hanging things with dripping fat,  Dripping body like a beeswax candle,  Asking the monster what it desires: “Mostly I am hungry.”

Tamerlane  Sipping the sweet cream of anxiety and guilt,  She sleeps in late and becomes nauseous.  Sleeping through the night and morning,  The cat inhales warm catnip scent and purrs.  Brushing her powdery face,  She bites the inside of her cheeks and cries.  Watching as she writes her horror novel,  Edgar Allan Poe says, “Sleep aches, a stiff-necked mystery.”

Gorgeous Dreams  I dreamt I was eating ice cream,  Two large scoops and two again,  Guilt discarded upon consideration,  I wanted more and I could have it.  She says I am a little person,  And I suppose I am now,  A small husk of what I once was,  But I was teased and remain forever fat.  Now I’m chewing on my inner cheek,  I eat my lip and enjoy the texture, The press of it between my teeth, Feeling the hidden inside of myself.  I dreamt an orange-red sunset, An atmospheric phenomenon, So beautiful I cried out “O!” with awe,  I wanted more and I had it.  Now I am sitting shoulders hunched with sunken chest, Belly up against the stiff material of my jeans, Coffee burning in the distended place, Awake in my uncomfortable reality.

The Year of the Needle  She got her first tattoo, then,  Went to an acupuncture appointment,  Relaxed and screaming inside,  From the confused explorations of her body,  Now, when, warm enough for short sleeves,  She shows off her ink and scars.

Spacewalk II  Sam awake, speaking loudly through a mask.  My body flattened and drooping with stiff burning limbs,  I’m drinking wine and asking you, “How is this helpful?”  I am moving fluidly and freely through the world.  You can see anything any other way,  You see this soft, powdered body and say, “Yes.”  Now my breath soothes me, me, floating belly up.

Spacewalk  Sam beside me in the cute moonlight sipping solarshine, My feet leathery in the grass and my hair in tangled vines. I’m supposed to be here, but where in this garden are you?  I am here, lost among the hydrangeas, and unknowing.  You went, where? Not where the orchids unfold.  You went outside and said, “Nevermind.”  Now there’s just me, here, hanging in space with the flowers.

Cage of Pain  Her spine infection and other deformities,  Lay within her box, where she’s all eyes and unfed.  Hard stare! Demanding stare!  Impotent recourse from her hole,  Matted fur and empty expression.  Hard stare! Demanding stare!  Face sagging, she hangs her ugly head, shivering, Cold nose, cold body, bone cold and weary.  Hard stare! Demanding stare!  A wraith of hunger, hungry breath, and wanting stomach,  Stunned legs and chest immobile in the wet, cold box.  Hard stare! Demanding stare!  But, think, she whines, it could become warm, one day,  And that, at last, at least, would be better.  Hard stare! Demanding stare!  She doesn’t know anything, but being trapped,  She doesn’t know you and your absent compassion.

Two Hoodie Day  Cold, hungry, morning with feet on the floor,  Last night a yellow convertible crashed,  Sam refused to swerve around the gathered cops,  I worried about waiting, what could happen next?  A chill slid down the back of my neck to my wing pins,  Inhaled breath slowly reached into my belly.  I pulled up my jeans, my two hoods, and hid.

This Room Again  After a girl’s night out,  Belly rubs at 4 am,  Moon-shaped back pressed to me,  Getting up slowly from my bed.  Usual writing chair and posture.  Sunday with Sam, ready to vote,  At the table before 8 am,  Coffee and coffee cake eaten together,  Walking to the courthouse in my rain boots.  Usual writing chair and posture.  Morning: Dressed. Fed. Bathed.  Wrists fluid, all before 9 am.  In this body, displaced pain,  Growing silky hair covers my eyes.  Usual writing chair and posture.  A day off with Sam,  Before 6 am he does dishes,  Colder by day, skin wrinkling,  Running to drink my coffee.  Usual writing chair and posture.  After dying my hair black,  At 1 pm, the hairdresser cuts,  Adornments restrained strands,  Brushing the scraggles of my hair.  Usual writing chair and posture.  Sam beside me close this morning,  Sitting cross-l...

In This Body  Usual room. Usual  Posture—craning. Cat's Warning before  She leaps. Silent Body parts: Am I this?  I hear only aches/ Pains. Back cracks. Neck  Creaks. Hungry but  Unable to eat. Eyes, Watery. Vision bright. I  Do not feel like I  Am thinking.

Taste: salted caramel  Sound: hail fall; snuffle  Smell: Vixen, Astral Projection, Black Forest  Sight: his gray beard  Touch: wet and muddy feathers  Extra: imaginal cells  A jolt of joy wiggle butt  Grateful for: days with Sam and little fam

Move and Feel  Coffee increases movement, but I sense stillness.  I feel not movement, but my belly moves, False sensation of still movement, motion, Dreamlike sensation of fear moving fear. And still despair.