Poetry, Peter Gutierrez

Afterparty

There were tides inside, lap-rolling and full of swimmings with and

Against the waves, lagoons of shifting plastic, and seabirds fighting

With the shore birds fighting with the waterfowl, intarsial contrails

Of diving, flying over, falling into. Nearly every morning she awakens

Only partly, the slosh of dreams and the chilled saltiness of reality

Staggering her back into jumbled half-action.

The clear light and the unclear, and how the two of them liked to switch

Between the two.

The clear undercuts the unclear, which is fun in a jungle

Sort of way—you never knew what phenomena you’d encounter in the fog.

Focus on breath in, hate out.

Breath in, hate out.

Janus felt the negative leave his core, or

At least decided that’s how he’d describe it

Later.

Breath in, hate out.

Or should that be breathe? He hated those online

folks who didn’t grasp the difference. (Spells & spellings.)

In any case: in through the twins, observing thoughts

As they froth and ferment. Then: out through the lips,

Fumigating the caverns of contempt in the digestive knowledge

Management system.

Distantly, a jet plane quiet-thundering through the clouds;

On the next block, a Sonata slides by, its tread smooth and humming.

He could sit here and listen to the dawn-sounds, the sound-

Makers afar and invisible, and be happified for the rest of his

Life, he mused.

His wife, Eleanor, enjoyed a different pathway into the light:

Influenced by an influencer, she went out each dawning before

Anything else. Barely dressed, barefoot or flip-flopping along, 

Ellie followed the notion of forcing undesired action into being,

Doing that which she didn’t want to do to skill her mind into

Facing the unknown; specifically, the rest of the unraveling day.

As a strategy, this swelled and broke like an egg. Those summer

Mornings in Maryland, inches past daybreak, and she could feel 

The hint of heat, the tingly precursors of rain, the immediate world

Still coated in night’s silences. This emergent love of the pale,

Creeping minutes in a pale and creeping hour derailed the project

(As happens sometimes). Later, a post she drafted explained it,  

How what she’d avoided became what she desired, and undid all

The wisdom of the shift. Yet also brought the amor fati peace that

Newsreel chatter, sparkly cocktails, party favors, and elbow-brushings

Had failed to.    

Her husband, whose name is likely Janus, was, is, and will be

Ever unaware of the sutured joinings of her Buddha nature.