how being on the computer makes me feel kind of weird and empty and sad

standing still, it is impossible to see how things have changed so much.
from longing comes movement.
from movement comes the recognition of change.

small changes add up to small movement,
or perhaps not small at all.

a warm house, a cold day, quiet breathing,
reaching out for poetry--adrienne rich, marge piercy, t.s. eliot, rumi--
to locate myself in this ever-shifting world.

to remember, understand, anchor
the feeling of my body
filling with the light of the full moon.

did you know
that come
comes from the moon?

as life is becoming quieter
the voices in me become shriller.
perhaps this is anxiety, or fire.

i have filled my new small cabin with bins and boxes.
there is not space for all my books, so i will have to choose.
for hours, there is no sound unless i sing or speak aloud,
or the pings and pops of jar lids and things ready to fall from their perches.

i am afraid of getting lost. i am afraid
of the quiet incubating desperation of winter
of dreams without movement.

love, fear. fear, change. change, death. death, sex. sex, desire. desire, liberation. liberation, shame. shame, silence. silence, waiting. waiting, wanting. wanting, giving. giving, taking. taking, opening. opening, change.
change, love death fear death sex death desire liberation change waiting silence death shame opening giving love silence waiting fear taking opening change. sweet potatoes, woodstoves, pine pitch, bitter leaves, coconut oil, toothache, blankets, car exhaust, gasoline, cancer, collapse, elections, morning rituals, small songs, the moon my body the moon my body.

we are moving into the darkness now,
sun stealing away earlier and earlier,
even noon gray-dark with clouds.

missing times, longing times, quiet times,
dreaming times, visioning times, cozy times,
wishing times, deep times, learning times,
resting times, planning times, slow times.

so we dance--
around fires,
on wood floors,
in parking lots,
in the grocery stores,
in the waiting moments,
like our lives depend on it,
like we are dancing for the dead who long for the pleasure of being in a body.

i.
Wherever in this city, screens flicker
with pornography, with science-fiction vampires,
victimized hirelings bending to the lash,
we also have to walk . . . if simply as we walk
through the rainsoaked garbage, the tabloid cruelties
of our own neighborhoods.
We need to grasp our lives inseperable
from those rancid dreams, that blurt of metal, those disgraces,
and the red begonia perilously flashing
from a tenement sill six stories high,
or the long-legged young girls playing ball
in the junior highschool playground.
No one has imagined us. We want to live like trees,
sycamores blazing through the sulfuric air,
dappled with scars, still exuberantly budding,
our animal passion rooted in the city.

from twenty-one love poems
by adrienne rich