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