Port Townsend journal, Michael Daley

7/25 it has taken me three days like Christ to come home. The transcendence into pain, self-pity, thoughts of suicide, quitting teaching poetry, quitting organizing readings, putting my past – all is an act of self pity.

Galway Kinnell said that and Sexton indulged in the ultimate form of self pity, selfless suicide. I have been sulking, I've been pouting inward, no lower lip projecting anymore. No longer acceptable.

Waves of sorrow are flooding the rock strewn beach. My heart unwinds itself like a snail poking its antennae out to see if the coast is clear.

The clouds paint an illusion of color over Mount Baker and is smaller twin poking out of the marine layer of mist, whether the cloud are real, no matter. It exists behind those islands, floating on the water.

Galway says to me: you can't quit writing, ever. Not the way a dog quits killing chickens when the carcass is tied to its neck till it rots.

I wanted to hang my heart around my neck. Proclaim myself smarter, saying I cannot love again.

My wounds run open with black blood deep inside my heart lies, my heart lies. The day and not days and nights of poems yet to come.

The clouds of Mount Baker are expanding back into cloud. The smoke has subsided.

The true skin of writing never buries itself moisture like under the waves of sorrow.

The mountains and the curves of land are breasts of the earth. The clouds milky teeth white breast in the air and sky. And while I sit on Michael Daly's porch, contemplating dusk, I wait for time to pass. I evaluate the sunset. I saluted the sunset yesterday with a bottle of California wine, drinking little sips from the stems of grapes before the harvest, calling me home.

Michael Daley founded a literaty journal, Dalmo‘ma

The sun reminds me that it rises again just as surely as it sets, like the low hum of the well oiled machinery the ships on the Straits of San Juan de Fuca interrupt the whispering of waves along the island shore. I've spent so little time writing. I do not offer my craft a place to sail. I'm learning to sit study and listen.

Michael confesses he was an altar boy, but his face darkens. He escaped the seminary after studying to be a priest. He carries the wrath within still. Our common thread, we're all poets teaching in the schools. All, on the outside, looking in. Poet fugitives.

Last night, I swung the double headed axe, splitting wood to earn my keep. Michael thinks I'm a lightweight. I resent it. The kindling flies off into the bush. I glare at him. He shrugs, re-evaluates, and smiles at me beatifically. Breaks the silence with his broad Boston Irish vowels.

I'm striking at the anger off my bones the previous night, the news of losing both my lover and my friend. My lover and my friend have found something to ease their souls and my burden becomes weighted doublefold and that axe is unsteady at first, becomes sure, the pile of kindling grows exponentially from out of nothing.

Michael resents my presence. He is like a jealous god. Doesn't want to share Sharon. Last night I heard them whispering. I lumber off to sleep in the backseat of the VW bug. He says to stay another night. He doesn't know I overheard what he said. Where will I go?

I have exercised hard, I have stretched and used muscles. I have poured new oxygen into my blood, the tissues and my heart are becoming fine-tuned as I run through the pineleaf forest. Sharon says you must listen to your heart.  You must write about it no matter what. I am learning the readiness of lung and leg as I take the time to stop and eat the thimbleberries and the blackberries. But my tongue awakens to acidic fruit, rotting before it is ripened.

Sharon Doubiago

7/24-25/1981
Pt. Townsend, WA
added 9/15

See True Writing, another version of 7/25 entry