broken the mesocosm

everything is breathing

but not in sync — you know?

mes·o·cosm

biological system that contains [multitudes] 

physical features and organisms of a [fettered]

ecosystem restricted in size or scope [bottled]

for use in conducting scientific experiments 

[and so we go on trips and journeys and write poems]

[and listen to music and kill people and make gods]

[and go on trips  whatever breaks the glass jars we made]

back in poulsbo in my empty room i have a 

big collection of mesocosms i made from 

mosses and ferns from forests all through wa

some are in big, funkily shaped jars and some

some are in little salt and pepper bottles

dad doesn’t water them i don’t know if they’re alive 

i don’t know if poulsbo’s alive – i have a theory

that wherever you go whatever city you’re in

it’s a mesocosm of itself a mesocosm of air

as stale as pockets inside old bread and people

so branded by their environment they have no

way of seeing past the glass walls (and ceilings)

they created for themselves in space

kerouac says there’s nothin in new york i think

that’s why  dad says metsovo was a mesocosm too

a jar with stained glass windows and a cross

and chain that grow on you like tattoos like things

you cling to just to keep alive and somehow

because the things inside your jar give your life

to and whenever you go into a church you see

the saints of that system kissing your feet again

glowin sound like my fingers glowin

glowin against the paper pages

blowin in the wind

like a bunch of icons

collection of medieval saints on the paper pages

i dunno if existential freedom really exists but

really if you feel good or you’re happy even just

for a couple minutes does it really matter if you

exist  if you get to see colors vividly what would 

you trade it for – what is life but to be  living

everything like a painting where you can

taste the different colors

you know didn’t they used to taste the paints?

yeah no cause if you’re blind and you paint

you can taste the different shades of paint

or maybe it’s the texture?

it’s one of those things where you get so 

attuned to the delicate variations of shade

yeah i don’t remember if it was tasting or touching but

it’s kind of the same

i came down from poulsbo and i saw mesocosms

here too  people trying so hard to get to the finish

line people trying to maximize the surface inside

a hexagon people who need six arms to get done

all the shit they promised themselves by friday

people movin so fast they’re just rotating

insects slowly rotatin in geometric shapes

and forming discrete parts of the body

while rotating 3D in a 2D shape

in color

and opening lids gives birth to butterflies

sort of simplified but folding out

of the rocks in swarms

and the sky and not converging toward

me but if they did — oh my god

out of all the moss and all the rocks

everywhere is butterflies 

i wonder if they eat dead things

have you ever heard of hyperbolic space?

it’s funny i hate math except for this one concept

you know the crinkly look of all the weird things

that make you uncomfy like sea slugs and lettuce

all the things that have an excess of surface?

it’s cuz they’re made of hyperbolic planes

it’s because they have an excess of surface

excess of surface – that’s how depression feels

it’s the surfacing of excess  excess of inertia

keepin you tightly wound in the sheets excess

of loneliness at odd moments of the day excess

of thoughts you can’t stop spinning until you

do something to make it stop and make yourself

feel so disconnected you can breathe again

i feel like all my joints are disconnected

like a skeleton

i’m in pieces 

my arm’s in the rock my hand waves

and folds into the sky and i feel the

sinew, muscles skin evaporating

until it’s just loosely associated bones

sometimes you gotta get high to feel the world

again you gotta accelerate things to see the beauty

in everything  here i see people so accelerated there’s

hardly anything left of them and they can’t seem

to stare at the world in wonderment anymore at all

THIS! when i put my hand to the sky

the stark organicness and the

yellow-pink fingers on blue it’s like

art deco

this feels like an art deco piece

i’m just  i’m wavin my hand right? but

the sky it’s one color

but i can see the gears in the sky

and i can see the guts of the sky

except it’s more like mechanics

machine guts of the sky  is that futurism? like when i dream

and it undulates

mom said she had to work until six then ten and

then it was 2am and i stopped waiting up

it’s such a paradox the government says work

work work so you can pay your family’s bills 

and then you lose your whole life you don’t ever

eat dinner with your kids anymore and maybe

it’s a choice to stop and say fuck it and spend

time with them but is it a choice? everything

is so much more convoluted than it is simple

but with my hand — what i’m tryin to say is

nature is like

really really tangled

it looks just like it’s one color

but it’s really really tangled

and i can kinda see it holdin on itself

but what i’m sayin is

the nature

it’s so much more convoluted

and i can see this kinda spider thing

lookin down at me now

it’s got six sides

and the nature is so much more

mechanical

and the people are smooth against the mechanics

hey i see people down here doin the same thing

chewing their time quickly scarfing it down so that

they don’t taste it at all gotta make this deadline 

gotta go to church you know allegedly this place is

hippie central but people either flow their own go or

just go no flow and sometimes you need to MAKE time

to live because turning in that assignment late is better

than dying in a digestion of work and sleep and hate

consuming this capitalist tradition of never loving me

i feel like i’m eatin the bug

the bug in the sky

its undulating insides are contained

by its shape but its shape wants 

me to be part of the undulations

it wants to undulate inside my shape

it’s kind of scary

i can see how this could start to go south real fast

it’s comin toward me when before it

was existin undulatin independently

but now i can feel myself kinda breathin

it but the breathin pattern is more mechanical

more of a choice

it’s all comin toward me like a roller coaster

comin down the tracks right 

into my mouth

hard to breathe — frightened — done

and sometimes in alum rock you go on a trip you see

faces i’ve made more faces than i've seen in my school

and my thoughts still go so fast that i can’t seem to think

AH the sky is spiraling

(you know when you start a sentence on

zoom and can’t finish? i feel like that

thoughts movin too fast)

restin my eyes on that city — tree — hillscape

n the ROADS are startin to twist

sort of reform their own thing

you can’t see the roads?

the roads are like the highlights, the light 

colored lichens, bare ground and water

reflectin sky

bare light-colored parts of san jose

roads dissociated from their surroundings are real

and dissociating is how you get through it’s just a

sort of way of sayin i don’t exist here for a moment

it feels like a high like not eating and sleeping enough

until you feel numb all over but it’s the sweetest kind

of rest you’ve ever gotten to even just for five minutes

that’s kinda how it is you’re just like

‘oh, that’s cold, it’s cold

but that’s not me’ you know?

n that’s how it is with the roads

goin through everythin they’re just

SEPARATE like a spirit world crossover

n THIS is what i’m feelin

it’s like nausea but i feel like you don’t 

come down to somethin bad

like you feel like uncomfortable but it’s

okay to feel discomfort

n so every day why can’t you just settle into that discomfort

you just gotta embrace it

like the cold right now it’s just kinda like

menthol it’s not COLD or ME cold anyway

and then i've created my own mesocosm of air within

myself my own images and way of seein the world

and finally i breathe all the way out until there’s 

nothing left not even a whisper and suddenly

i want to listen to music

i want to listen to music

i can feel my blood inside of me

it’s like tingling

it’s like the limbs gettin so separate 

like the sky piecin apart

like two parts of my mind one goin down

one goin up

and i’m goin up — i want to close my eyes

this is the part of the poem that breaks down because

i don’t know how to convey hedonistic sort of

breathing sort of acoustics in a hollow log or a bathroom

moments of absolute shivering connection to a world

that you want to tell everyone about but you can’t

i’m an interpreter but i forgot whether my 

jaw goes up and down or left to right

i remember in the car ride down to school we thought 

for sure dad would be the one to cry he’s one of those

sweet emotional people i think he’s where i get some

of my calmness from but also the anxiety and the

racing thoughts  but he didn’t cry at all and when

the tunnels of trees surrounding road broke into

the bumpy bareness of california mom was the one

with tears in her eyes and apologies on her lips

sort of goin down into the convoluted tunnels of 

a cave seein cave paintings on the walls

paintings are like spirits livin in history

of now but time’s not real

they’re just the same undulatin now as they were

in 1200 just keep undulatin lovingly

n when i’m goin down the mine the music is

theseus ball of string keepin me lifeline

but it’s not a lifeline to our world?

music poetry all that with a beat

it’s here IN BETWEEN like me

not here or there n that’s okay

i think i exist in the blank spaces between lines of

poetry  do you ever feel not one thing enough or 

another getting rejected from school after school

until there’s just one left keepin you from taking

a one-way plane to europe and starting over over 

over  but if every city is its own mesocosm you 

can’t really start over unless you break the jar 

inside you, isn’t that right? or you won’t be free

big rock rockin gently undulatin

kinda like a handful of worms but out of

the worms are comin foldin, secretin

gargoyle faces

from moss patches moustached

monsters stately

and like dancin spirits

just the faces swiiiimin

what is freedom really a bunch of discrete shapes 

you see under a mushroom cap umbrella strangers

walkin down the streets of san francisco get soaked

in the rain with me until you’re crying so hard for

the streets of seattle you make your own ecosystem

enough rain to preserve that little warm piece inside

n i can’t tell if they’re warm or cold they’re

sort of neutral

neutral lavendar blue gargoyle faces with big lips n teeth

dancin breathin in a cacophony

and they’re scary

i could see how this could start to go sour

if they start comin toward me

but if i don’t both then they’ll leave me be

don’t you love travelling though i think if you figure

out how to break out of the mesocosm inside you don’t

have to be trapped by all the ones in all the cities and

maybe if you go in buses and cars and trains and planes

and everything that’s metal and moves you won’t get stuck

in a job working 16 hour days and never seeing your kids

n i can make carbon copies of myself

i can freeze a copy of myself where i was a second ago

and move the new copy leave it make

more n more n more until

I’M a cacophony too

if i make enough copies one of them will be happy right?

like wishing over a candle at easter every year maybe today

maybe today will be the day my wish will come true i can 

be happy but i believe in different gods than you do

i believe in hearing colors and the gargoyles in the rocks

can i assign YOU a color an aura you seem 

to me purple

kind of royal warm rock n full of sounds but

i don’t think  no you can’t assign just one 

color i can hear the full visible

spectrum n some not visible around you head

like the halo of a saint in st demetrios

but every trip’s gotta come home and if you haven’t

found that home in the four chambers in your chest then

you won’t cross the styx you fall in the water and get

all sticky tar black cold dead fish and crying on the rocks

n suddenly outside of myself i feel the idea 

of exhaustion

n so so cold

it’s still separate from body me but i know

i’ll have to start worryin about body me soon

i try closin my eyes to get back

n there’s still color but the slate’s turnin white

n i don’t know the timeline but it’s just changin

and at some point it will just be the moments of connection

that help you find home the pieces of warmth outside 

yourself like a hug or warm music in the car – did you know

that some musics are warm and peach-colored and some 

are blue and cold and some are lavender country?

but every song has an ending and then you feel empty

and (cold) folded over her knees watchin 

the purple orange pink sunset

like her aura n like

the into the mystic color

helpin me ride down

n i see more than before

busy n smooth surfaces

n music rides the smooth surfaces

like a slow train

into the mystic into the sunset — smooth sky

and the gargoyles don’t have dinner with you either

they’re outside you in the rocks and you want to call

mom and you want to go home but it’s not home anymore

the traumas like the faces grow out of the walls and 

they scare you more than anything in the world

n it’s dark

n the music stops

n i’ve stopped seein faces

n i’ve trampled on the cobwebs

but in the sky

n in orion

i can still hear the colors of the music

dad i remember when you said you could die happy

when i'm married to a nice boy and have kids

and i remember just starin at one of the mesocosms

on the windowsill and thinking i'll make it out of here

but a journey and a trip later and i'm still stuck inside

i’ve got so much rosemary in my boots

i can barely move my hands

those jars and traditions and happinesses are how we

stay alive  how can we live as people without 

breaking everything joyful apart to a science and

making so many rules we stumble over all of them

and our children move away and will do anything

to forget all about us and our rules and our mothers

mother earth is no mother at all

but one of those folks who listens

and hears the world in the same key

and wears loose-knit brown cardigans

and almost crying with my head in her lap

watchin the sunset

hopin that the colors will blossom and warm

me up again

we hold on to something – at least i do  something

not quite human not quite spiritual but there and 

cold like science but breathing like a little child

we hold hands with orion in the sky with gods with

the person i spent the night with and then left before

either of us had the chance to wake up to the morning

i’m shakin rosemary out of my boots

untying laces without letting go of the rosemary sprig

still holding cold hands with orion

and every time i smell rosemary

i see his faces

and when i came back down from the california mountain

i looked at god and he had one foot in poulsbo and 

one foot in san francisco and he said chaidie i know

you’re writing a poem about the things you’re so 

happy you saw because they’re beautiful and i know

you’ll have moments of euphoria but i will always

eat you like that bug in the sky i am the capitalist 

orthodox family crushing time wasting dream chasing angry old man with an old leather belt that’ll kick you in the back and leave you in the park and give you thoughts that tear your mind apart and gargoyle smiles that resemble happiness but just stare and glass jars that keep all your thoughts like experiments and no matter how many trains you take i will always follow you

and i said well shit god what am i to do

i guess it’s time to find another city

and see how many jars i can swallow

until i can break the one inside and let you out