Different Kinds

He is so good at being wanted and not wanting
Make you like a bird with only the sound of fog
not looking for your food but for his nose, black
stretching up for you.

dec 14, 08

For Faith

He was so fucked up.
I couldn't keep from praying it
and tried to lick it off my lips.
Was Jesus in danger of contracting
what I choked on?
He knew how much God loved him
and threw his dirty head into the Lord's arms
as if he were only a dirty baby
who needed changing.
and all I had was fuckery
for faith.

dec 14

Moss Eyes

Moss grown in a cold shade
a hidden geometry
was wall tree ground
was a tan speckled skin
was a moss knot
skirt of a swelling stone
with enough cold shade
to hide geometry
gathers enough snowsky
to fly suddenly with no sound.

12, 15, 08

4-letter

Your name, that word
4 letters like others
but I hold it soft
without breaking it against my teeth
I lay it on that last light
the daily mail.
I say it soft
for all the hard world
to collapse at
all the hard world you're looking at
and asking for just a 4-letter space.
Your name, that word
held like breath
then said
rolls those mountains into your sea
a soft place
to hold all
of you not said in 4 letters.

dec 15

A Girl Smokes from a Window

The (pink) shadow of a vine
of vines and vines
I walk under
and disappear in (same-colour) arms.

dec 15, 08

Godot of the Sparrow

God of the sparrow,
you know.
But so what if you are a divine spider,
eight periscope eyes
spying our amateur tragedy
awkward tears.
Isn't it rather an insult that
the field lilies are clothed in the morning
and every bulge eyed bird has your attention
but we, your
"little lower than the angels"
must only wait for you?
and talk of going.
If paradise cannot be here, I don't want it
and if paradise is only more of being watched by you, what is it?
Didn't you sneeze eternity into us, like damp tissues?
Haven't we an invitation to form the Holy Quantity?
What are we waiting for?
The sparrow has fallen,
the grass of the field withered and thrown,
our turn.
Verily, I say unto you, unless a seed falls
to the ground and dies, it
will never grow to
bear anything.

dec 11, 08

Cigarette Box

Fingers white as cigarettes in a box, and as cold.
Fingers cold and dry and straight
and hidden.
When I come I'll light them pink
prickling.
They'll bleed or burn
but they will give up something
and fall
cooling and bent around something no longer there.

dec 11, 08

Mountains Morning Wise

The mountains yawn morning wise
dispelling such Christmas wrapping fog as
time, distance, no letters, the cold
They roar some barbarian
morning wise groan of I AM.
And we, their witless am-less subjects,
are struck.
Suddenly I must open my mouth to breathe
breathing like licking ice
injesting mouth to mouth
from the mountains morning wise
such a violent kiss.

nov 28, 08

High Pine

The cold reminds
that a warm body for a nest
is needed.
Not a mother's father's built
not a lover's or friend's offered
but a self
Limping some high road
in some high wind
gathering glowing brush
and flying with wings full
to pine limbs.

nov 28, 08

The Watches

I watch you lay your hands on daily things
a handle, a table, an apple, themselves
and can only remember how they laid on me
Can only see the shape of bones and not the impression
of dead things on skin and tissue
Can only see the space where something of mine belongs
and not these useless things of late.

I watch the shape of your mind waves
rolling in and out under the predictable and unknown tide
kneading and sucking
knowing where they're going, they won't stay there
knowing the space they leave and all the things
it leaves space for
and what you fill with it
crushing the space I breathe in,
it just won't stay there.

nov 23, 08

Not Rorschach

Re creating a world where breath is possible
and every haphazard spill takes shape.
Measure and cut time as I like
fasting from it
until I no longer need its flesh
until hunger is the only appropriate sensation
for such a world.
Every orange tree transliterates
"breath."

nov 23, 08

I'm Apart

I'm measuring the water that has washed me since you watched me.
I'm measuring the hands I've held since you taught them.
I'm measuring the rush in my ears since you began speaking.
I'm measuring the temperature of ashes since you burned in me.
I'm measuring the air I'm trying to breathe between you and me.
I'm measuring the heart I'm trying to leave between you and me.
I'm measuring the smell that leaks between you and me.
I'm measuring the distance between here and the floor.

nov 17, 08

Hello Again

Is this what blood tastes like
eating years like this
eating your own misplaced fear
eating the only regret you ever carried
around long enough to redeem?
Is this where you can turn in tickets
for time,
some lottery of minutes
turn in silence
for everything you tried to say in it,
turning in your ears but never in your mouth?
You must have your heart lifted
into your throat
till you can taste it on the back of your tongue
while you say "again."

nov 17, 08

In Circles

perhaps you don't know why i should ask for you now
you gave such all in all and i walked away
in the broken word "ago."
you don't like the past to loop, perhaps
but that's all i can remember
that now i love you
and once i did
and i can't find the middle. i think
you have it.
I'm sorry, I forgot something here,
I think I
left something here.

Lose Such Things

We used to make out in shameful fashion
and it's some of my fondest memory.
I used to never sleep and I
learned more from all that loneliness
than the books that have since befriended me in swarm.
I used to catch cold, and not resist with tea
or honey, saltwater, or positive thinking
except, "you're welcome to leave, voice,
return as you please. I'll be waiting."

I'm waiting to lose such things again.

nov 11, 08

Wok

The rain spits
and I am disoriented
in its hiss
are these bodies
drops of oil, shiny, almost clear
sliding over iron woks
soaking searing blending
what falls on us?
And is the rain not haphazard sweat
from some over hand
accidentally whipping us into flame,
and noticing only then?


nov 6, 08

Through the Window

I crawl through the window
just to give that a try
does that make me amoral?
To see how a unused way works,
feels, is?
Am I in some danger
of breaking those ever-gripping spikes
on my conscience gear?
Possibly, yes, but If so I'd better
remove the apparatus entirely
from that soft nest.
So nothing can burst its vital skin
so nothing will dig where there's no hole
No violence will be done to its infant flesh
Or cause premature hardness
of scars that blood no longer feeds.

My child heart and I shall climb
through the window.

nov 6 08
will it become this
o o o
did the Lord tell you really
o o o
he was keeping something
from you o o o
what did he tell you o o o
o o o
o
you can never be this
o o o
but how you long on days
on long days
when all you need is night air
night sound night touch
when all you need is
o o o
what did the Lord tell you
that he'd give it to you o
that he'd give you o o
only what you o o o
ask for
plus everything

Stir

Stir
won't tire
of being this shape
of creating this shape
of being this wrong
out of line
stirring
blue parallels with their perpendiculars
wash
reality in poetry
you in poetry
your fear in
anything but that
washing
the iris from the eye
the eye from reality
until i don't see i am you
are we are we stir we wash
we stir lines we are out
of line we poet we poem we
won't tire.

nov 5, 08

Get Away With It

River in ears
May be hearing clearly
maybe drowning
in a river moving on
in a river never staying
never stopping by
never holding.

nov 5, 08

P r o nouns

Stop breathing for amoment
like to stopbleeding
can't continue comingwhen y o u c a l l
can't play
can't w a l k now
Put yourhands away
Put yourlips and breath
farther away
I can s m e l l you
Didn't want to allow my
ownpronoun in withyours
P l e a s e, go farther, past theriver
past those trees.
Are youin the grains of air?
You don't sticktoskin like human skin
water, notoil
you don't lienext to ...
but youwon't leave ... let ...
l i e b y ...

nov 4, 08

Kin Experiment

Who am I apart from you
let's try it, stand
over there,
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I don't mean
to laugh, I can't, I'm sorry
I stretch! I blur!
let's draw a line
good. more. blacker. scribble!
That feels funny
I arch I bend.
Put a knife there
I don't know, I heard about
it somewhere. I just want to
feel that. Oh, feel that?
What is that?
I'm sorry, it feels like you took
my arm off, and tickled the
plastic joint in my armpit.
I think, I-
even if you were one of those green butterflies
we'd be together
like this.

nov 3 08

What Dissapoints

So happy even the sun is a disappointment
after weeks of rain
Rain connects, becomes the matrix we move in
Fragments of that, run together
like wine
to m a k e p o e m s
or at least joy.
What a big word. What a small feeling.
How sincere reality is.
How we distrust it.
How we scar ourselves to feel it
How we look up to Heaven and envy.
When God sent us here out of Heavenly
loneliness. The trinity
visits, to feel our sincerity, to feel
our scars, and joy, our fragments, our
smashing into sand daily.
Then they make a star
out these small sounds.

nov 3, 08

Notes

Making notes for when
I come back -
don't forget
you were asking,
this,
it was important
Stare into shades of night
shades of cloud
What was it
was important
(cross that line
re write the same)
I don't remember
(insert care)
(cross it)
Find the line between sky and all
There there there
You'll never forget the difference there.

Nov 3, o8

Preoccupied

What happens when I'm not preoccupied
with my own hands
on you
on your spine and hips
on your hair and ears and lips
What happens when I simply love you
with you or not
caring or not
if you kiss me good morning or good night.
I hardly know them from one another.
Preoccupied with my hands sliding down this pen
till they are gripping the inky triangle
and soaking dark dye
that will not wash off.
And you'll know what I've been doing
That I can't eat with such fingers
And I cannot touch you
until I've bled the rest of this pen
until I can't feel my own blood
warm or cold
I'll love you without feeling
that is love deeper running than this illness
I'm so proud of. So devoted to.

nov 3, 08

After You

I take your room after you
looking for what you might have left
what might have broke in here
a piece you missed in your tidying.
My hands over the desk, the bed, our clothes
a chair, you're so tidy.
you're so gone.
And I am startled to wonder
were you ever here?

nov 3 08

Children

Almost angry at the children
the kingdom of God
the blessed
Almost violent to such hearts
that beat and bleed
wild and tame
but not hard or heeding
that do not know what hits them.

nov 3, 08

Fisherman

What a fisherman knows,
that life is watching water
losing focus as his pupils recede
back into his own water.
The cityman squeezes his
black spot tighter
against its glint, he makes a rock,
a pavement, over his well.
thinking to himself as his shoes
clack
"I am I am I am here I am there"
his lips smack the prayer.
And the fisherman holds
a steady bamboo and line
to plumb the deeps of his green mind.

nov 3, 08

Fall Parade

You are the beauty
of life which is passing
the weight of its passing,
the way we can't take our
eyes off you
our bodies off you.
You shatter us till we
shine in your sun
chimes in the wind.
You invite us where we cannot go
to lie down in beds
not ours
to hold bodies
not our own.
You only laugh as we sigh
at such a god.
You flush, we drain.
You taunt and say "I am here and you are not."

nov 3, 08

Dedication:

This is the quietest the city has ever been
as I sing to it.
does it listen,
does it wonder at my polaroid image,
all white and blues with yellow corners?
The florescent window that always blinks in the left distance
doesn't,
The growl of the rain in the river
doesn't gnash tonight, this night.
I dedicate this quietest, this singing, night
to loneliness
Bless-ed breathing room
Bless-ed open-air
Spin, around, spin and fall
on no one
around here.
This is the quietest the city has ever held my hand
not afraid for itself,
holding breath
holding hands.
Not afraid to show its trees are graying, dying
its people are lying down, dying
its river is rising and falling, dying
its throat hurts from screaming life.
my throat hurts from crying...
holding breath
holding hands.

nov 2, 08

Breath in an Envelope

How will I ever lose the image of you sitting by a window
and the window expanding ever as you fly?
How will I remember the way you say my name, you
can't, except with everything you say, you let me say it?
Your face too uncomplicated to wonder at, or even look for,
I won't remember how your lips fit your chin,
I won't forget it was like always holding a warm hand
even in winter when we were stiff with cold.
How will I ever lose your head in my arms, your
hair under my hands, black and forever?
When you sing I've already left you, you're so lost.
I can't listen to your child's voice airing a song
I have to breathe it. How will I remember
to breathe like this?
When you hold my hand, when you are happy
not speaking, I've already lost you,
I can't keep such an ache,
it is enclosed in this moment.
breath in an envelope.

nov 2, 08

Hands in Position

If I can't listen to you, I just
won't listen, I'll keep my eyes closed
my hands in position, to hold yours
when you're ready, you'll say something
obvious, and I'll stay steady,
We don't need to know
now, we don't, it doesn't matter
somehow, but I can't
help but hope it does and will,
and I'll keep my eyes closed till you say so,
you're ready.

Nov 2, 08

You Nervous?

Does she make you sweat, nervous?
It's a been a long time since she has
been able to know it.
She remembers the night she first had to sweat
for someone else.
She had lost the talent for stringing him along.
And some fish line, invisible, yanked her a direction
she had never fallen.
Head over damn heels.
Somewhere she never wanted to be
when the bait was cheap and showy.

Open

even sneezes satisfy more
when alone.
when open and flat
and rolled out
with no curves or corners
no seashell shape.
nothing protecting
nothing catching
just rolling
rolling rolling rolling
off.

Into My Legs

I knock the wine down
into my legs, get it where
it always goes faster.
Re calling every night
I have ever nursed wine,
white or red,
and the few mornings.
All the tastes of dry fallen leaves
of redorangegreenbrownyellow
of the feeling that
I could make love with anyone
this warm
Anyone that goes into
my legs this fast.

nov 1, 08

Sidewalk Chalk

I need to offer every word
pressed warm between moist folds of my brain.
I need to spill
-how-
in brokEness, light, and revolving -
and anywhere.
don't hold your nets under me
I need to land
on whatever concrete is below me
and laugh it off
leave my blood batiked in skin
like sidewalk chalk.
like clear oil and dirty water.
To break all bones
either before I hit, or after
to come undone
to come open
Thread of all these seams trailing me.

Nov 1, 2008

Difficult

Sit in the cold
and breathe something hurtful.
Graceful
only when eyes are closed
tight and difficult
like gravity just turned inside out.
So that pure feeling
without senses is a martyr.
Graceful
only when knees are
touching some stone
accepting something difficult.
A blessing
leave the grid of home
with electric heat and lights
Sit in some cold
eyes closed, knees flat.
Graceful


nov 1, 08

Where Is My Thorn in the Flesh?

You will absolutely not hurt me.
And sometimes I am sad
That I won't despair
That I'll love, I'll laugh, I'll bore.
And not bare.
But even if your voice rises against me
your heart won't.
I am fearless and fogged in.
Where is the horizon that would
strangle me
That would beat me back
from the sky
Where're the waves (oh Oz!) that would
pin me
Against rocks sunk in the chalk
of their past strength
Where's the one who would refuse me
but want me
Tell me no
and come anyway
only after breaking my hands?
I have a God to mutually adore
I need an antagonist
or to be one.
I have a God to always love and bore
I need a suffering
or to be one.

Nov 1, 08

Eyelash Vanguard

Trapped in strings of
rain, like the
blind bard's dulcimer.
He can't tell me
the name of his hands.
Rain like this dings
ting jing leng beng
I watch
chasing
Then I see between
the strings.
The brightness.
The no object
some light
that throws open iris fists
so that I wonder
and know
how long I have been
squinting
into life half closed
half dark
eyelashes out in front.

oct 30, 08

Lost So

Lost so far
from the sky
lost deep
from the day
that can find out
dig up smash open
for the air to lick wounds
for food.
Buried or dropped
or slipped
into a pool
some cool or warm
some colour complimentary
to this dung world.
No smell of piss
of smoke or worse.
Own hands unravel
unbraid
uncomplicate
into stones
and sink so lost.

0ct 30 , 08

Bowl

I want to gift them.
Why should I love
these thirty faces?
They ripple, and my blood jumps.
I'll break my hands and lips
over them
to let gifts run out.
To see their naive
eyes close
in baby joy.
To never see their eyebrows meet
To lose my hands and lips
in their lostness.

10-30-08

Willing Suspension of Disbelief

You are not the woman
who talks of rape in giant art,
who makes us squirm and wish
we had not ordered gumbo.
You give and take hearts
daily under a vow of
slow silence.
But you can't keep such faith.
So you fill a circle of
open hearts with only talk,
and stony, sickly talk,
You take the night out.
You are not the woman
like the things you say.
You sit quiet in your home,
saying good morning as you slip into bed
to your lostboys the world over.

10-30-08

Baptism, Devour

Didn't we all die in a soft desert?
Didn't we walk under the cloud and go
through the sea? Didn't we all
eat the same spiritual food and
drink, the same drink which flowed
from the rock that followed us?
Didn't we all watch a rock
follow us. And feed us.
And drink us when we were
too dry to spit.

oct 30ish, 08

You Come in Disguise

You came disguised in your clothing
what colours is the skin between hems?
You came disguised in your silence,
and your leaving.
You sit by, leaning over some fire
stirring until your eyes water
in its coaly brilliance.
You woke a moment ago
wearing no clothes at all, no silence, no leaving
not brittle fragile as stirred ashes
but a body of cloud
feeling yourself whole, as all particulars touch
particles through the ether.
You go no where
but wrap yourself in new found arms
a waking, most coherent, child.

oct 28, 08

Boy Hips

He likes me here (when he arrives)
but I've ducked through a crack in the bricks
to the other side
of him and myself
to the other side of us.

I climb a path I found that climbs the sky
or knifes through bedrock
a dimension I don't know how, just know.
Brambles tear thick canvas, thick indigo
the skin of bald feet, still perfumed.
I planted them here to keep me away
until my skin can take and heal wounds.

I wear stripes to measure my breath,
but as my belly grows they seem to cross, twist , switch
My spirit's a boy's, not grown
should I slide jeans over hips like a boy
or should I lie in wildflowers
I myself planted.
Caring not the contradicton
caring not my belly's growing,
my hips always showing.

They climb a mountain I,
I myself, planted
to keep me away
until I willing climb in hips
to lie in wildflowers.

oct 28, 08

those i know

the birds are flying
i'm drawing them in
we're learning
the grass burns
the old stalk burns
we're up in this smoke
we clench our unused arms
our hands and bellies
and open our noses and mouths
the birds line up
and swell our ears
they're drawing me out
we burn in our unused bodies
we're learning.

a long time since

it's been a long time since
a burnt tongue and sleep
held each other (one moment
from totality).
only twenty-five percent of my life ago.
that time will only
shrink
and shrink to nothing.
but it may be a long time yet.

june 7, 08

Mosquito Mass

Mountain come.
hard winter.
Take what covers. our negligence
leave only. Green needles
above and brown
below. to take our blood.
Treat us. Leave us clean.
empty cold.
to every season's nausea.

oct 13. 08

Hell is Other People

a blue dragonfly
a red one
in a nothing colour city.
no mind that it
could not find another,
(a hell),
like itself.
pure heaven in my
city, full of hells,
full of people to
look and say and
stand next to me.
to say I Am this.
Are you or not?
I Am just like the
blue dragonfly
a red one
who's whole paradise
is itself.
but I must also
drink blood from so
many other heavens.

What the Shadow of Tree Knows

The meaning of us
that even the big shadow of a tree knows,
That our essence is unlimited;
it cannot be spilled. It has no well.
But existence
means an eternal breath
touched a page, and we are left
knowing we are breath
but unable anymore to breathe.

In moments of dreaming
or laughing
we lift from the page.
We gasp in unused essence.
We are breath in the universe;
then we are not
We are wet paper.

We mourn. That I were still essence.
This existence is condemning.
But we moaned as breath,
crying like children who cannot find
your face behind your hands.
Do I exist? Do I exist?

And somewhere, there is probably God,
completing our trinity.

oct 13. 08

Return To Your Senses

Where should you be, God
if not in me?
What should occupy you,
distract you
from your senses?
Walk in your nature, God.
Walk among your eyes and ears.
Walk among these tongues you confused.
What should you wear, God
if not skin?

oct 11.08

Everybody Whistles

The country that has a landscape like gods' knees
slathers road side ferns and tile tops
in sweat and dust.
The country that grows a man's
hands hard and weighty on his wrists,
fingertips swollen,
scissor curls a perfect magenta ribbon
from lip to every baby lip.
Their faces don't wrinkle when they cry.
The country that squares bricks,
so dives for coal,
stacks it
beside giant, alien chrysanthemums
They burn used vegetation like us
They bring down mountains like us
They say, no thanks, even when
they're curious like us
They puke like us
They whistle like us
Everybody whistles.

sept 27, 08

Perforated Lifeline

The palmreader
said my lifeline is perforated
like my heart is a skipping stone,
a heavy, flat one,
good for long distances,
many skips.

oct. 15. 08

How Reality

One day you must come. You must
see just what you want to see. For why
should we be concerned with reality. And
what is it?
Plastic stools, paper cups with tea leaves limp
in the bottom?
Is it me who emptied five of those cups and now
must pee?
Or is it the ancient, immovable, undrownable, un photographed
mountains sinking and soaring
in mist. And the feeling
that behind the sky there are not
stars but more of such giants hidden.

Is it phone lines and how they got there? Is it
rubbish swimming in a soup of our exhaust? Or is
it the river that really is a dragon and we shall
never tame it, laugh nearby as we may.

Is it rock, touchable, slapable? Or is it
the suspicion that I could swim
towards it and never make it. Is it that
you are nowhere in reach, past, now, later, but
I can't leave you there.
I think of you, someone I don't know, and what
you would not say. What you have not said,
but maybe we share?

Is it the acid smoke from the man leering near me, or the
pallable absense of your face, blank and taken away by such
mists and clarity?

Is it the passengers watching, always and especially
when I raise my face (or watching nothing but the cards
they've bet change on?) Or the man in clothes the colour
of his land, straigtening up as if to watch us all, clowning,
passing his constant home from which
he cannot, will not ever move,
and is not seeing me, but the ghost
of mountain and cloud that has led me like a pillar
and covers me. These? Whose people are they? Are they
not mine?

How I have to blink slower to breathe.
How I wonder at warm tears and thus, selfish, stop them.
How reality.

Birds

Pistachio shells skitter
and we are birds with droppings
not knowing when to go to one another,
how to talk without lips.
We sing trapped songs
come come come
come to me.

And we don't go.
We wait for lips to move
We spit pistachio shells.

Oct 2, 08

Before This

before this
i was small
but hard
and unaffected -
i was fight
and round and fetal.
but i spill i spill
now i spill.
and i don't know what you'll say
to such
a me.
What you'll do.
it's careless
as uncontrolled yet difficult
as birth.
i'd do it in another room
but i don't have one of my own.

oct 1, 08

I Leave

your kiss there
a bit of pie i haven't
napkined off
a sip of dreamshake i
don't swallow yet
a foreign stare i don't
glance from.
I let the cold red leaves
fall, holding my jacket.

sept 30, 2008

Barbecue

A dry rub, your strength, on my skin as I crackle
You brush, you brush a barbecue spackle
You smell, you hold, you bite
I wait, warm and falling apart.

Aug 29, 2008

Aloud

My whisper to you is as loud as the world
you hear me as a mute
Your right hand around my neck
listening
I tell my secrets aloud for the world
to you.

Aug 29, 2008

Nirvanic

No one touches those tops up there.
Only the Bodhisattvas who decided not
to come back. Leaving us
to level and burn mountain ribs
into something bigger than us, dumber
that will vault us
one day into atmosphere
where we'll exfoliate rain,
weighing down nirvanic smiles.

Sept 1, 2008

Things Fall Open

Things fall open
like my literature text book
to one page
dug into more and puckered
with tea gruel and tea cup fingers
with half dry pens and eyes
still wet at the tips and showing it.
I fell open like that
in front of you.

Aug 29, 2008

A Game I Play

A not bad song plays and gets better
as I imagine I am in love
and letting my hands rub one another,
in humid, unaware distraction
rather than because I just finished an infrequently
delivered thread of affirmed life
in a script beleaguered so by self consciousness
as to become my mother's own and cramp my unused bones.
I make them twist and pay for their misattendance.

Aug 25, 2008

Mid-Autumn

Your iris filling the corner of your eye
is a quarter moon made of herb flour
a perforated cake I can
weigh on my fingertips
and devour.

Aug 25, 2008

Sky Sympathies

How does it go
to be the sky
everything forced away?
While reaching holding
dropping losing (weight)
getting ahead
nothing keeps apace
nothing clings.
As different daily
as two people touching God
the damnable rest
of the world (of God)
dropping
drippings losing sight
of their giver.
Sky alone
arching a spine around
that last visible spittle
before it is shoved up close to the earth.
Sky alone.

Aug 2, 3008

On a Mountain Track

The pianos go too far
and we must sit back
against something
connected to the ground
to keep from falling
between black trunks
onto faces
ivory with teeth.

Sept 1, 2008

Into

I stumbled upon the feet of the universe
and covered my own with wings,
whispered, who's there?
A response blew open my span
and an inhale
sucked my heart into the world.

Sept 1, 2008

Pulled Down Sky

Pulled the sky down over ears.
Now we wear clouds for eyebrows.
And some make a commerical living on the trash.
A whole fleet of trash hawkers, trash sculptors, eaters.
We're pulling the sky down over them too -
now everybody can touch
with their sawed, or their squeaky raw clean
fingernails.
Pulled threads from it and poked them full of holes
for offices.
Or beat them with elbows and fits for roads.
Or swallowed them so our teeth look and our breath smells
like it.
Like something we shouldn't be touching.
Now the roof between here and there is an oil
splashed window,
burned to an uneven yellow.
Showing shadows instead of reflections.
And we're still pulling, eating it -
by the handful.

June 9, 2008

by this river right before

By this river right before
it trundles into the big city
the child in man stands behind me
above me
saying words only God's ghost understands
prayers and a voice to prayers
I haven't said.
Two water spiders ski upstream
One dove cools the heat with her weeping
One arching stone bridge rolls its underbelly
in four jade ripples
Like I could stand on that full circle,
sitting hip deep in the stone smelling flow
And it doesn't give away that it's afraid, or bitter
to know where it's going and to what it will be
reduced.
It doesn't betray curd and weed, dust and walls,
not feet, no hands ruffling it there.
Only threads from gravel and trash too close to the top.
Only threads from rare wind hovering
like a sweat bee to lap it dry.
Now it's here. Smelling itself, smelling hands
feet, spiders' legs and wild grasses' legs
smelling mud it mashed itself, smelling
the under belly of a stone bridge.

June 7, 2008

Seeing Eight

I can't keep my concentration on you.
I feel and almost brush against, see
the breath of
the web of connections
conjunctions
- we're, don't, they'll, you've,
can't, I'd, would've -
The strings bounce and pull each other
pull under me (with you).
They exist. They exist.
My legs and pincers on this tight thread
vibrate under my legs and pincers on
a tight thread four rings away.
A me and another "you" I can see
in kaleidescope
seeing me
then scuttling away
in this sticky constellation
with some another possibility.

5, 24, 08

medicine

When I know I'll see you I cry
with unadulterated remorse
that "I" includes "will"
"will" stands between then,
more than months, than road.
I'm sick with miss.
My throat waters from swallowing
air
rolling into me, empty
bringing months, bringing road.
And any shade of your skin or hair
or teeth in the sunset
only tastes the same as
"will."

may 24, 08

Pale

Every pink thing I try to like, I wear and bear
I drop a pen, headlong onto the front,
or break it on some tree branch
I wouldn't push down and break.
My pink looks like my mother made me
and i still love my father.

5, 24, 08

Drawstring

As she was dying we noticed
she would draw up her shoulders
and stare at her knees.
First, just when being helped
to the bathroom,
then when refusing to finish
her hamburger and gravy pulp.
Then when refusing to stay
awake to sing.
There was so much effort.
This is dying? So hard to do.
Then today, I found my subject of study
the hem of my underwear between my knees
as I helped myself to the toilet,
with my shoulder blades gathered up
by a string on my spine.
I wondered how long she had
put so much effort into
each living deed.

may 24 08

Neighborhood

A window, a florescent moon
cut into the concrete sky
built on a dark giant,
a black farmer
breath to the floor
ebbing to the
skin of his
wife, jade white.

5 . 12. 08

Baby

My ideals were offended in bloody underwear.
A red shadow only stretches after women and death.
And they said "baby"
until it moved up under my ears
and bloomed an apple blossom,
as if blood made apples,
as if blood made petal clusters to hang above babies.

What are women and death
that they should drain so?
The things they treasure, they hide.

may 12. 08

this is

Bread dough
scraped from your palms
someone sweeps together
and points to the beginning.
This pulp of dried sweat,
flour and water - this is
our soul.

may 6. 08

2 madeleine, i miss

What will she look like in heaven?
Myopic.
Neck too long to see her hooves
trip, scattering scraps missing
the wastebasket (a plastic latticed safety deposit).
How will it hurt to bend a neck inside out?
Twist its nozzle upside around
till her head thumps on the floor
smashing into wadded glacier deposits
and filling her lake again
with what is true
- the part she knew had no shore -
and what else is true
- the sand in her lake, the skycap -
Then they'll invite her in.
Fashioned some comic crazy straw immortal.

may 10, 08

madeleine, i miss

She moves me,
a grandmother who never
stopped writing in the dirt.
A woman there to the ones
who come.
And I do these things for her,
to her because
I never sat my
dusty hands over hers.
I imagine her lifeline as a transportation.
I sink rocks into a movement.
That's her - stones
sunk to the bottom of an
aging rush.
Where death is like another
decade
to be insecure and haughty over.

may 8, 08

What Tips the Bowl

They felt alien without
their breaths, their skins
rubbing another's.
Shakily, they climbed and fell
down from shoulders to caress another
with noses.
Re finding the primeval bowl
that pours its contents from
under hips to the base of navel.
They shovel earth
back into houses they made
on the shoulders of the horizon,
the hard floors they made to keep
the bowl steady and indifferent on breath or skin.

5- 8 -08

to the Touch

Naked to the touch,
I shiver to a cymbal crescendo.
There is an eye at the thick of a needle
to slip into, and then through.
Nothing fits but the bloodiest muscle of self,
that slick, compact drop
which cannot sacrifice one glint.
It curls to your touch,
it glints like that thrashed cymbal.
We two are made of that, are squeezed as that.
Too self to bring apologies, anything
but the memory of a needle we came through
to touch.

may 8, 08

Upturned Umbrella

A body bowed up
spine through crown
with everything underneath
a terrorized nest. The warm birch branches
rolled together, against one another, unable to hold
air water matter.
Rocking between a squat and a kowtow
barely tipping the silky web of an upturned
umbrella, filling
as if for a bath.
Everything outside that tipsy arc
lands on it.
A bath is just the world gathered
into an upturned umbrella.

may 8, 08

Self Addressed Envelope

If she sent her shoes
would you put them on and walk
away from whatever
you're writing
and just say it in words that
breathe and disappear?
Would you put her shoes,
toes to toes,
blue scuffs to what ever she's got on,
and tell the truth?

ap 11 0 8

A Nose Does This

Close your hand.
You're not here.
All that shows is a nose and
why should it be all that's left?
Nothing to land softly against
but a nose.
It will not land like that.
It will slide over what ever is left,
breathing between our skin
keeping it apart.
And only landing
after all is exhausted.

ap 11, 08

Playground

I forgot
I almost
forgot.
I'm not supposed to keep
being this insane.
I'm supposed to love you for it,
then go.
Wander some distance from this play ground,
this sunrise field.
Take a walk to some disaster noonday.
You take a smile at it.
You play so.
I peek over the shoulder of such a short shadow,
and you've rolled our place into a knapsack;
you're coming with all the ludicrousy of rose embryos.
And I stay this insane.

ap 11, 08

Between Others

Am I on the earth,
sticking up from it into something other.
Or am I under it, in it, a cave, arching and dark.
Or an egg, close and almost translucent,
almost the almost of something other,
close to picking a chink, close to collapse.

ap 10, 08

signed

What does it say when it
says fuck.
What does it say when it
says fade.
What does it say when it
says all
and not another
(not come or stay)
except signed,
someone here.

ap 11, 08

Baritone Ring (another Her Ring)

her ring against porcelain,
some tall, thin shape,
and the ring silent there
is wide and dark, wanting to be violent
over something.
It shadows long, thin fingers
so thin they rest on everything
without lifting or holding.
They are so unable that this very mug
is holding them,
and they show it.
But the ring does not care.
It will rest so deeply on something
that it will be like holding.
Its finger gives a start at the thought;
the ring gives a low but clear ding.
ap 11, 08

Her Ring

Her ring on a mug,
some country blue lattice,
cool under her natural manicure,
under cool red fingers, never chewed at.
Her cold ring, loose, hanging between her knuckles
clinking, beaming
with a dip where a diamond used to clutch.
Beaming like that's better.
The porcelain alters to a low burn,
molecular, dull, like boiling something live.

ap 11, 08

Settled and Gone

She moved the plants higher, dug a ditch,
froze the deli tray, thought of Charleston,
of May, of next May.

He thought I have you again
of coming back to the house with
her in it only,
of Charleston, of summer tomatoes.

She heard settling
of pages, of water ruined and well massaged pages,
of the still, of distilled metal to quiet,
quiet sheets,
her own breath.
The quiet parts between her own.
Of space and often
the things not in corners.

ap 10, 08

Handwriting Analysis

Skinny,
but not a liar
and not an architect,
though stretched like a derrick
hanging over something underneath.
Blue coordinates measure only breadth,
unwavering as a graph,
braced,
to pull something from the depths.

ap 9, 08

No Romance with Glasses

There can be no romance with glasses on.
They are trapped and twisted in a kiss.
Industrial laces, glass
concaving into the space
two faces should lessen, and then erase.
But they are there so you know where to find my lips.
A blurry posy X would not do.

march 18, 08

Relief

Don't go away when
I won't come to you,
or do and let my loneliness stand
in batik relief
to faces and clover, vulnerable requests,
to sunlit bugs, to kaleidescope limbs,
best intentions.
Let it last.
Let me unravel my end
until there's nothing here but your end.

mar 18, 08

Upside Down in Heaven

The leaves are confused
when the limb snips them off,
and they fall, sudden but peaceful.
They heard heaven was up,
that white glare they turned to,
turned their faces to.
They heard fall already happened;
they were spared original sin.
And swept shimmy-shackle,
reds on greens and seams all in between.
They only compare old songs
and consent, heaven
may be this way.

march 18 08

No Convenience with Poetry

London fog, an earth breath,
an earth beat, earth sweat.
My own poetic
lost in, following it,
away from light bulbs
and hardwood, away from
cold drinks and lattes,
away from going, getting some where.

A continent of ice collapses, and the winter
is pleasant.
The swaggers of the season
do not spin the room.
I sit, collapsing,
mild,
with still breath, still sweat.
Pleasant.

Earth Rise

The audience are crowded
planets rising, "earth-rise."
Stage lights sun
their foreheads down to the tips of their noses.
Their nervous system expanding
in the heat of the stage lights,
and in the gray color
that black turns when it's magnified,
and in the light blue spittle
that the earth turns when
resting on a pixel
rather than an axis.

mar 17, 08d

Down, Dawn

Dawn with a cocktail I'm ready
to drink.
Lick the rim of the glass, the rim
of my lip.
Sip the clear, clear portion down
to the mellowing red syrup, down.
Dawn, my day-long order,
My dull paper cut from licking the rim.
Day long until the just blue glass remains.



also marchish

A Fast Drying Dream

The sun rises, a tooth,
dull, sharp, not white
encoring a fast drying dream.
Everything in dust -
the boy's dirty kite tied to a handlebar, neon,
the rainbow an oil leak runs, neon as well,
small talk of music and letters means
be sincere, often neon.
In a place like this,
all covered in dust,
pixels so small they squeeze
between our own pixels,
dried then blown away, neon and dust probably.

marchish

Bad Habits, Bad Hearts

Came short of the benefit of the doubt.
Bad habits, bad hearts?
We accuse ourselves, but refuse our guilt.
I wanted to be, I still do, I think,
a good habit, a good heart,
with ears good enough not to believe themselves,
especially when they hear rumours of
my bad habits, a bad heart.

Mar 16, 08

Things that Can't be Helped

When the dishes we soap are warmer than we are, it's the same
as when she held the last tablespoon of
her lemongrass tea
with both hands out to me,
so that her "You're welcome" spoke
first and clearer
than my "I thank you,"
even when tried in her language.
It's something like bells that say more than a poem.
It seems like a failure that helped.

Mar 16, 2008

try it

Don't smile, you're prettier when you try it with your eyes,
and they grow older just trying it. Just lifting the weight
from the corners of your mouth.
But face, oh face, they are so good at it.
They turn ancient and unborn at once, trying it.
And the corners of your mouth are weightless
with ripples, away from the pebble i dropped.
the pepple i drobbed.
the pebble i dropped.

feb 23 08

american nails

Nails are clean
like the money
and floors
White, translucent,
Red triangles in place of loose cuticles.
They touch no one but themselves.

feb 21 08

snow dying dream

Stiff hands, alone in a lowered sky at the end of a daily matinee
Becoming more unable to move the longer they stay that way
Brushing the velveteen folds of the heavy drapes
In a snow dying dream a girl comes with thin dry fingers, cold as well
But moving, and she brushes them against the dying pair in the folds
And makes the velveteen move against two faces instead.

feb 21, 08

asking

The night when I was cold, it was a good thing
because that wasn't why I shook,
but you thought so.
And that night, instead of opening a music box
with the ballerina broken off,
you told me "don't do that,"
like you knew what I was asking for,
but you weren't telling.
Like you would if I asked again,
but were asking me, don't.

feb 21, 08

in the dark

I wanted to show you the way a hand glows in
the dark,
and shows up in the spaces between stars.
By that, I wanted you
to understand that you glow in the dark
and you are as interesting a place to
stare into and point into and open my mouth to
as the space between the stars.

feb 21 08

The Size of Apples

The apples in the backyard are
the handful, mouthful size, no more.
their skin is pale and matte, catching
not even the glint of lipstick or teeth closing around one.
There was an apple, at least one, that
she needed two hands to measure.
And when she noticed that its skin was
as deep as a kaliedescope, she used her two hands
to pull it to her face,
staring across a glossy red world,
her face magnified to a perfect likeness.
And the deciever didn't have to
tell her how perfect it would
be to eat.
To shake clinging green placenta that reflected nothing,
to injest and be injested
by herself, by the image of
the original.
to know his blood as he
knew hers.
It seemed only natural, only
deeper love.
It was not until later, she was
decieved that her image in the glossy skin was
the original.
and nothing is too perfect to know.

2 25 08

sincerity

losing worlds under microscope
shoulders collide gently and firm,
the lens catches
thousands of worlds knocked into orbit,
meteors in reverse, stars in
the birth canal.
hands crush gently and firm,
reducing a thousand and a thousand
worlds
into new boulders, only boulders.
song flys gently and firm,
splitting a liquid iron core
shaking all worlds and their moons,
their rings, comets, satelites, their suns
into a divine tumble.
the worlds shake free,
fall and float apart, under foot,
shivering with delight of diaspora.
gently and firm, sincerity.
worlds fall
from our shoulders, our hands, shed
from ourselves, shed from God.
we fall apart into a thousand and a thousand worlds
until God and I are reduced
to crystals of sand lying
next to one another in the shadow of a tide.

2 23 08

times

searching hands and ankles and even
knees
for clockwork,
for the angle and interval of a second.
under the skin a timex rises blue
and spills its glow under
wrinkles and over deposited calcium, through hair cuticles.
until she is aglow, under her sheet,
and curled into the face of a timex.

2-20-08

lobster

my mint chocolate square melts in
a puddle on the curb of the tub.
my hair itself, the bundle, is sliding off kilter.
floating on the surface,
i'm boiling my epidermis
turning red like a fresh, white meat
lobster.
turning tender inside until
you can peel me open, joint to joint,
and float those shiny parts in your mouth.

feb 21 08

under your breath

how can you take the question i
thought was mine only
and ask it from under your
own parted lips as
yours?
now between
us, neither owns one answer.
our
tongues catch and roll looking
for that sweet tart, that
seed
to spit in one of
our hands, and press it to the
other's,
a spit shake
a vow of silence.
then, really we will lick our lips,
under our breaths,we
will both rasp the
other's answer.
stolen out from under our
own two lips.

feb 23, 08

Off a Line

One of the dozens of twigs an ant takes
and commits the afternoon of her life unto,
we didn't.
The unworldly blank above and below caught
us by the hair
as we fell from one dozenth of the possible world
onto the outline of a galaxy of bare twigs.
By the hair.
In between the dozens of twigs an ant takes
and commits the afternoon of her life unto.

feb 23, 08