nat raum (they/them) is a gendervoid creator based on occupied Piscataway and Susquehannock land in Baltimore, MD. Their other ride is a decomposing body of flesh and bones.
we should all support poets, thousands and thousands of poems are free in the world, consider tipping nat @moshpitdaria
time is a construct
i mean, think about it—the earth
only gave us days & years. one
rotation on crooked axis, one revolution
around slowly dying star. what is an hour,
a month, a fortnight, but something
created by man? & what is a construct
if not something by which we are
ceaselessly bound—the way we have
created a forty-hour work week
that churns for decades until we drop.
do you really need that by next monday,
patricia, or do you never question why
deliverables have become life or death?
why i can’t just laze in a garden & let
my belly tell me when it’s lunch time,
let my body tell me when it’s exhausted
itself. what i am saying is i’m through
with the ruse of a clock & a calendar,
a week, a century. i am only interested
in time when it can be passed between
two oak trees, rope hammock strung
up & paper rolled around an herbal
remedy. i am only interested in constructs
as they relate to the architecture i might
stroll by on a leisurely walk through
a lamplit paris. what i want is simple—
a cessation to the ceaseless.
please lord, it is not my choice to exist in a body
brave body, who art in stasis, turgid be thy limbs,
or so it would go were i a believer,
were faith not so inextricably sutured
to the decay of a body still alive, still
surging blood through tired capillaries,
thy tendons come, thy breaking done in body as it is
(& it is, for it keeps a calendar of its own)
in spirit. give me this week my ration of spoons,
my finite slate of tasks before my back
& neck & shoulders form a phalanx
of tightly packed knots, & who could
blame them when i’ve treated this flesh
suit like a trash can to set aflame in the sort
of back alley i’d find myself cutting through
on my way home from the bars
& forgive me my past disasters as i forgive those
who were a disaster of their own accord
& careened through me like hurricanes
come unscrewed,
who may or may not have contributed, & lead me
to something less spiteful, less like a hex
from the ghosts who hold all my dark corners
hostage, & not like a drug, at least not
the sort you can drink, not like tequila—
something that actually helps, can pull me
not into tension, but deliver me from pain
until i free myself from the creaks
in my knees when i stand up & the things
i see when i lull myself to sleep,
for thine is the power, the glory, & the strength
i never knew i had until splenetic
nerves frayed themselves inside
my torso & i learned to bear
their weight,
forever and ever. amen.