Two Poems by James Diaz

I will not go to Darkness having known Nothing of the Light

And so I refuse imagination
As many times as it takes to stake pure claim
That this is exactly where and how it all happened

I will not be sweetened
I will not soften
I’ll rage at it often
And speak its full darkness

How the situation unfurls
Like skin shedding at dawn
If a body go to light
That it not do so alone

I have smoked the bitter to the base of the mountain
In such dimness as is found in the creek bed bottom of life
My toes kick up universes of particles
Until the muddy water claims me right up to the ankles

And I know that what you don’t heal from will set itself up, base camp, in the soul of all you are,
And it’ll hurt, sputter, and howl
Split you right down the middle
And open you up into a thousand points of light
Headed like fugitives
For the trees
The trees.

I will not be sweetened
I will not be eaten

I am what survived
And what didn’t
In one wild heavy breath

And I will not go to darkness having known nothing of the light.

*

Good Things

What an incessant talker
My mind is
Trilling like a strange bird
Clumsy, wanting what it wants
What it doesn’t know it wants

Last night in the mirror I cried
A cry so deep it made
All I was shudder
Regret is a country
I have fought fiercely for
I never threw a single battle

I read today of a severely abused boy who one day disappeared from therapy (no one, not even the foster system, could find him) and re-emerged an adult
To leave a note for his therapist
At the hospital where she worked,
She who had spent much of their time together
Softly crying, because, she didn’t know why,
Only that she couldn’t reach the boy,
Felt so powerless to help or touch his pain

The note said: “Ms. J, you’re crying was everything. Fred.”

And then,

“Me too.”

He disappeared again.

We try to make the pieces work.
Our fingers do their dance.
What music, to put a thing
Where it don’t belong
And make it sing anyway

Something touches an ancient hurt in us. Crying, and we don’t know why. Don’t want to encircle or run down so big a thing, that mystery that is, that was. All dumb and beautiful, all terrifyingly real.

I want to forgive
And today I have
Unexpectedly someone
Who did not ask for it
But I felt my heart move a muscle
And softness comes to us
When it comes
It has no reason to
But there it so often is
Unreasonably at the door.

When I have this feeling that I can’t make sense of
I do a whole lot of nothing with it
But it’s a returner
A real soul burner

I think of what it means to love
Yourself, to stop hurting what you are,
Just like a kid again, waiting for rescue
But tag, you’re it man

You learn to run with it.

Pain don’t need a reason.
It just is. Like a loose tooth;
You play around with it long enough
It sets itself free.

I’m still learning
How to
Throw a few
Battles.

That you don’t have to be deserving
Of your own love.
That it happened because it happened.
And you lived because you didn’t die.

No reason why, you just are
Like a fact
Here in the world
And anything really can happen.

Good things, even.
Good things.

*

James Diaz is the author of four full length collections of poetry, the latest of which, Once More, Into The Light, will be out in the world shortly from Alien Buddha Press. Their work has appeared most recently in Resurrection Mag, Londemere Lit, Jelly Squid, Sophon Lit, and San Pedro Review.