N i c h o l a s G r i d e r


















from     THE BOOK OF FORMER WISDOM







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You’re not a family, Moshe, and there’s no instruction or “nor should you” only a you’re not a family but you are a coordination and a wave, and are loved

spitting distance of alarming and you don’t even mean it like all of humanity in fellowship or blood is blood, although it is, and so are you, and this is not that

the love true albeit not real, nor is it science, at least not yet or not enough

you can’t even wash your hands there

[                     ]

once formerly was an everything floating, was a long-acting anxiolytic


now formerly is a trail of broken doors and an angelic “fuck yeah”















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Meanwhile there are some wells that can’t ever be dug, some solo flights, sometimes “sometimes” is always, God is always always, and so is isolation, but welcome not, nothing to write home about or petitionary as in please may I actually exist

or is this some kind of sourceless story

you’re somewhere else doing a somewhere else thing

if you Dear Abby it the advice is the word “belong” doesn’t actually mean anything, neither always nor sometimes, nor for purposes of Dear Diary

[                                  ]

the black pillar’s on your calendar, your calendar is a bullet train, your elsewhere is an electric fence people keep telling you to go ahead and pee on

[                                  ]

sometimes mere evidence and reason do not suffice

and always isn’t always forever and ever














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The kind of silence that continues long after you’ve left, liturgy doesn’t really handle it, correct pronunciation of some other putz’s tightening up doesn’t get you past the gates

“forever and ever” the gates are, not that bitching is a gate key, and this song sounds better in private, maybe that forest should grow larger, intimidating taiga, the malachim say c’mon kid sit still and shut the fuck up

but there is an entrance fee, but it’s not holy

the only money God gives an anthropomorphic shit about is charity

[                      ]

last to the finish line, still what some folks like to call “on fire”

forever and ever being on fire is

[                      ]

there’s always a question, you cannot even