My intelligence beguiles me, makes me
literal and monotonous, a bear who
cannot snarl, and therefore thinks
in a controlled and pleasant manner.
I am not this bear.
I graze in a field of drunken ranting
where my poppies and dahlias
bloom like gifted veins
full of wine or blood, or both.
I am a horse of many colors.
My body is a burden unto the
unseeable part of me,
it's all a mystery for the ages.
And it is lost on you, my beautiful one.
I am the paradigm of a menagerie.
In visions I live and lose my life,
claw by claw, and my wildness
eludes me, but my femininity
is so easy and abundant.
The cage is unlocked.
The loose girls roam free.
Sonnet
How does the mountain speak, through tent of night
An orator immobile with weight to bear
The age-old home for each thief's plight
Where fear and mice breed in the devil's lair.
He casts a shadow not, in spite of mass
Though his stone face lacks eyes, he cries in vain
His hooting caves, they swirl with sound, alas
No human ear can hear his vast refrain.
This peak is owned by trees, in state they lie
His heart was forged by time, a troubled core
Dark clouds churn 'round his brow and quickly fly
His runoff tears are kind, and nothing more.
The stars appear to beat like hearts alive
The peak yields to the ochre moon, and dies.
An orator immobile with weight to bear
The age-old home for each thief's plight
Where fear and mice breed in the devil's lair.
He casts a shadow not, in spite of mass
Though his stone face lacks eyes, he cries in vain
His hooting caves, they swirl with sound, alas
No human ear can hear his vast refrain.
This peak is owned by trees, in state they lie
His heart was forged by time, a troubled core
Dark clouds churn 'round his brow and quickly fly
His runoff tears are kind, and nothing more.
The stars appear to beat like hearts alive
The peak yields to the ochre moon, and dies.
On Hearing My Own Voice
I wish to boil you
in your words, to shriek
the needles from the pine,
to bask in vindication
derived from this
rotting inside me, but
there is always a fading
song with your name on it
and the truth of each lyric is
graphic, branded on
strips of tattered newsprint.
My pupils begin to leak,
spilling for a frigid, dark
December day when I
called on your humanity
your power to thaw me
and was made fertile.
I must wail, not for now
but for the poignancy of
what has passed me like
a slow train or
a silent scream.
I had such tremendous
hope for love.
in your words, to shriek
the needles from the pine,
to bask in vindication
derived from this
rotting inside me, but
there is always a fading
song with your name on it
and the truth of each lyric is
graphic, branded on
strips of tattered newsprint.
My pupils begin to leak,
spilling for a frigid, dark
December day when I
called on your humanity
your power to thaw me
and was made fertile.
I must wail, not for now
but for the poignancy of
what has passed me like
a slow train or
a silent scream.
I had such tremendous
hope for love.
The Coronation
Hovering in the friendly darkness
the door clicks closed beyond her
and scandalously, but without fear
they turn and turn closer
in a nest of dizzying leaves
in a cove of wandering eyes
Through these leaves she
catches a subtle palm,
messenger of his stormy mind
placed gently and purposefully
on her abdomen, equidistant
from hipbone to hipbone
Panting in the humming darkness
their salty skin is radiant
They blink slowly, as to
let the fluttering fury pass
and they kiss with intention
and they forget to falter
Through the silence he nods
and candles hang above the moon
His honeyed song grows wild
a blooming black poppy in her
rising chest, petals stretching
from shoulder to shoulder
Rattling in the settling darkness
her third eye never closes
and her fingers marry his
drumbeat, his driving force
Her voice is kept and watered
Her mind clatters ceaselessly
In this present there is
no past, not a silken moment
but now, a sly character who
slips along gracefully, departing at
the birth of an eggshell sun
the birth of unfettered joy
23 November 2009
the door clicks closed beyond her
and scandalously, but without fear
they turn and turn closer
in a nest of dizzying leaves
in a cove of wandering eyes
Through these leaves she
catches a subtle palm,
messenger of his stormy mind
placed gently and purposefully
on her abdomen, equidistant
from hipbone to hipbone
Panting in the humming darkness
their salty skin is radiant
They blink slowly, as to
let the fluttering fury pass
and they kiss with intention
and they forget to falter
Through the silence he nods
and candles hang above the moon
His honeyed song grows wild
a blooming black poppy in her
rising chest, petals stretching
from shoulder to shoulder
Rattling in the settling darkness
her third eye never closes
and her fingers marry his
drumbeat, his driving force
Her voice is kept and watered
Her mind clatters ceaselessly
In this present there is
no past, not a silken moment
but now, a sly character who
slips along gracefully, departing at
the birth of an eggshell sun
the birth of unfettered joy
23 November 2009
Dark Water
Out of the
murky docks
a wily dying shadow
howls
tangled in black
and aching for
swift currents and
the voice of a woman
Hurriedly, she beckons
as her toes
tickle shells
and moss anew
Love me on the sand
our whispering cove
will be within
the waves
With a rose
a breath, a coin
the tide in her
hair is born
she submerges her
listening ears
wisely resisting the
moon's magnetism
The sea courts her
with a fervor both
terrifying
and honorable
spreading his crackling
wealth on the shore
offering opalescent
shells in the pink dawn
Her jellyfish heart
pulses flourescent
and in its omnipresent
blindness
wishes only
to marry
the staggering
stars
11 November 2009
murky docks
a wily dying shadow
howls
tangled in black
and aching for
swift currents and
the voice of a woman
Hurriedly, she beckons
as her toes
tickle shells
and moss anew
Love me on the sand
our whispering cove
will be within
the waves
With a rose
a breath, a coin
the tide in her
hair is born
she submerges her
listening ears
wisely resisting the
moon's magnetism
The sea courts her
with a fervor both
terrifying
and honorable
spreading his crackling
wealth on the shore
offering opalescent
shells in the pink dawn
Her jellyfish heart
pulses flourescent
and in its omnipresent
blindness
wishes only
to marry
the staggering
stars
11 November 2009
A Brilliant Contusion
I am bruised, swerving
though my feet are planted
I am anointed with the
fragrant future
I press it to my temples
to my wrists where the
molasses moves along
We debate our way through
the headiest of conflicts
the wordiest hypotheses, but
in the blue-black cold, our
sweet lips lose their honey
and all articulation
A product or consequence
I speculate
of this crushing solitude
Aching lonely bones in a city
a crowded dance hall
a dust-cluttered closet
I swallow this hope whole
Its impossibility is unbearable
weighty, leaden, even, and
from where I sit
there is no dawn approaching
On this frostbitten night my
extremities are creaking, and
my heart
my heart
27 October 2009
though my feet are planted
I am anointed with the
fragrant future
I press it to my temples
to my wrists where the
molasses moves along
We debate our way through
the headiest of conflicts
the wordiest hypotheses, but
in the blue-black cold, our
sweet lips lose their honey
and all articulation
A product or consequence
I speculate
of this crushing solitude
Aching lonely bones in a city
a crowded dance hall
a dust-cluttered closet
I swallow this hope whole
Its impossibility is unbearable
weighty, leaden, even, and
from where I sit
there is no dawn approaching
On this frostbitten night my
extremities are creaking, and
my heart
my heart
27 October 2009
Ouroboros
Hold fast to mischief, you
sun-tousled child, brother
to anonymity and to knowledge
Take this as if you weren't
taking anything at all
You were grandfathered into
this scheme, your hope is
certainly not your own
Whatever comes
what never knows
frowns are extraneous
We narrate ceaselessly
conjoined at the larynx
This makes you feverish
Editorial jurisdiction cloaked in
bananaficarious trumpery unhinged
kneaded in domes hollow like icy
pipes in the crowded cold halls of
institutional, pubescent pondering
Heiress in chains
see all with a kiss
civil eyes
can find nothing amiss
Forego your due process
be not miserly or timid
proudly gouge the ribbed
mechanism that constrains you
Like a stained shoe
strained through
the one who claims you
never knew who named you
You with exhaled love
waver like red rubber
in a medicated wind
screwed into your
ancestral socket and
resign your thoughts
painfully
to the gradient darkness
Stuart S. and Whitney Testa
12 October 2009
(Stu and I used a very dysfunctional typewriter to collaborate on the preceding work. I will upload an image of the original in time, the retrograde implications of crooked Courier typeface do much for the art of it all.)
sun-tousled child, brother
to anonymity and to knowledge
Take this as if you weren't
taking anything at all
You were grandfathered into
this scheme, your hope is
certainly not your own
Whatever comes
what never knows
frowns are extraneous
We narrate ceaselessly
conjoined at the larynx
This makes you feverish
Editorial jurisdiction cloaked in
bananaficarious trumpery unhinged
kneaded in domes hollow like icy
pipes in the crowded cold halls of
institutional, pubescent pondering
Heiress in chains
see all with a kiss
civil eyes
can find nothing amiss
Forego your due process
be not miserly or timid
proudly gouge the ribbed
mechanism that constrains you
Like a stained shoe
strained through
the one who claims you
never knew who named you
You with exhaled love
waver like red rubber
in a medicated wind
screwed into your
ancestral socket and
resign your thoughts
painfully
to the gradient darkness
Stuart S. and Whitney Testa
12 October 2009
(Stu and I used a very dysfunctional typewriter to collaborate on the preceding work. I will upload an image of the original in time, the retrograde implications of crooked Courier typeface do much for the art of it all.)
Everything Was Right
Tresses anchor raven shadows
the season waltzes like a wildfire
the line, lyric and musty
rouses a harsh thrill
We lay our hands on wood
crudely leaving our mark there
Bark is our skin and our
fecund flesh is ripe
The sap on your tongue is
grainy, bitter, deadly adhesive
You are dilapidated like me
living on rice and greens like me
Each red leaf in the runoff
is rusty like me
pulling its weight like me
chlorophyll born and dying like me
For three days we arranged
slumbering smooth dominoes
and their graceful clattering was
most natural
14 October 2009
the season waltzes like a wildfire
the line, lyric and musty
rouses a harsh thrill
We lay our hands on wood
crudely leaving our mark there
Bark is our skin and our
fecund flesh is ripe
The sap on your tongue is
grainy, bitter, deadly adhesive
You are dilapidated like me
living on rice and greens like me
Each red leaf in the runoff
is rusty like me
pulling its weight like me
chlorophyll born and dying like me
For three days we arranged
slumbering smooth dominoes
and their graceful clattering was
most natural
14 October 2009
Downward
My lady folded her
foolish feathers as
the grapefruit sun
lay camp on the
shore of a light
blue sea and
though her heart
fails her while
waking, in
slumber
she plods
along
a
silent
prisoner
10 October 2009
foolish feathers as
the grapefruit sun
lay camp on the
shore of a light
blue sea and
though her heart
fails her while
waking, in
slumber
she plods
along
a
silent
prisoner
10 October 2009
Dahlia, Darling
Here where plastic peels, we fade in the altitude,
The leather couch sliding across the wooden floor,
The fire blue with love. I round the bend,
A rocking groove serenades my sallow heart.
Here, I live the entirety of my abundant life.
Here, I am wealthy, though dressed in synthetic rags.
An aluminum awning protects you from
A soulless street where curtains burn,
Where the patio is icy perilous and
One quadrant is strictly forbidden.
I am liquid, golden, warm,
Spun silly by rapturous luck.
You cupped my shoulder blades and
Your lips tasted of wine and soot.
You cannot give confession, and instead
Drip wax on the cold, wiry carpet,
Orchestrate earth-shattering discord.
I must call one chamber of this fading heart ours,
Though we are children.
Here we howl, alight at the first slow beat.
Here we rest, splintered at longest last.
9 November 2009
The leather couch sliding across the wooden floor,
The fire blue with love. I round the bend,
A rocking groove serenades my sallow heart.
Here, I live the entirety of my abundant life.
Here, I am wealthy, though dressed in synthetic rags.
An aluminum awning protects you from
A soulless street where curtains burn,
Where the patio is icy perilous and
One quadrant is strictly forbidden.
I am liquid, golden, warm,
Spun silly by rapturous luck.
You cupped my shoulder blades and
Your lips tasted of wine and soot.
You cannot give confession, and instead
Drip wax on the cold, wiry carpet,
Orchestrate earth-shattering discord.
I must call one chamber of this fading heart ours,
Though we are children.
Here we howl, alight at the first slow beat.
Here we rest, splintered at longest last.
9 November 2009
Echo and Narcissus
A grating peace goes on and
on in their tacet alcove
He sharpens his tools
readying her for the news
She folds down her sheets and
sheds animosity like lace
pillaging her adolescent mind
in pursuit of an awkward pause
Then her anger is like nothing he
has known in days past, a bloody
yearning, a spade that digs a
grave for her simple childhood
Class is over, all their learning
scrubbed clean by dripping day
dimpled with divine uncertainty
and hastily set afire
I mutter I love you again
again, until it means nothing
and in the whitewashed solitude
my sounds scatter like gravel
30 September 2009
on in their tacet alcove
He sharpens his tools
readying her for the news
She folds down her sheets and
sheds animosity like lace
pillaging her adolescent mind
in pursuit of an awkward pause
Then her anger is like nothing he
has known in days past, a bloody
yearning, a spade that digs a
grave for her simple childhood
Class is over, all their learning
scrubbed clean by dripping day
dimpled with divine uncertainty
and hastily set afire
I mutter I love you again
again, until it means nothing
and in the whitewashed solitude
my sounds scatter like gravel
30 September 2009
Counting Odometer
He saddled a bowl on his
head, hoping to drown
though perhaps the
pocket will sustain him
in willful defiance of
this thriving distance,
which across
dimensions shall
snuff his flowering
ability to sow
caresses from between
pinched digits, rough
and tumble like the
muddy soles
he walks upon
One cannot run
thirteen hundred
miles alone
16 September 2009
head, hoping to drown
though perhaps the
pocket will sustain him
in willful defiance of
this thriving distance,
which across
dimensions shall
snuff his flowering
ability to sow
caresses from between
pinched digits, rough
and tumble like the
muddy soles
he walks upon
One cannot run
thirteen hundred
miles alone
16 September 2009
Rant or Fail
Lilt unto the newest drop of
dew, or the cutthroat crest of
each stroke, every sigh, or
sight, diluted by substance
unknown and familiar still
Breathe sunken fumes into my
greyest thought, so I may
always be perceived as a
scaffold, a squeaky splint, or an
ever-loving sister to bendable art
We believe in the power of magma
magnified and multiplying in
secret, scuttling beneath the
starriest twilight and unsettled
day, ridden with fears unseen,
mottled with this moment's greed
You kill companions fraught with
joy, trumpeting their thoughts
on a windy day in the park where
proper nouns are gone away and
typos bark with creativity in
spite of every vicious warning
3 September 2009
dew, or the cutthroat crest of
each stroke, every sigh, or
sight, diluted by substance
unknown and familiar still
Breathe sunken fumes into my
greyest thought, so I may
always be perceived as a
scaffold, a squeaky splint, or an
ever-loving sister to bendable art
We believe in the power of magma
magnified and multiplying in
secret, scuttling beneath the
starriest twilight and unsettled
day, ridden with fears unseen,
mottled with this moment's greed
You kill companions fraught with
joy, trumpeting their thoughts
on a windy day in the park where
proper nouns are gone away and
typos bark with creativity in
spite of every vicious warning
3 September 2009
Panther Lies
No matter the time, this darkness
renews itself each vaporous eve,
an obsidian flower carved in the
midst of battle, where peace has
no home and silence is perilous
Here she lay motionless, save her
tail, upholstered in ebony and as
unfeeling as her claws splintering
the branch supporting her
panther belly and lonesome mind
The pine, sturdy under her
feline weight, is displaced from
some jungle, and she could snarl
rip into him, or bleed saline but
alternately she blinks and sighs
Though liberated, she is contained
by a velvet coat that leaves her
panting for the facts, and she clings
to the rusting needles under her
fleshy paws tattooed with pain
She, fierce and quite necessary with
colorless eyes, graciously sought
him under a new moon, here
where the wildest cat roars and
nobody cares to see
15 September 2009
renews itself each vaporous eve,
an obsidian flower carved in the
midst of battle, where peace has
no home and silence is perilous
Here she lay motionless, save her
tail, upholstered in ebony and as
unfeeling as her claws splintering
the branch supporting her
panther belly and lonesome mind
The pine, sturdy under her
feline weight, is displaced from
some jungle, and she could snarl
rip into him, or bleed saline but
alternately she blinks and sighs
Though liberated, she is contained
by a velvet coat that leaves her
panting for the facts, and she clings
to the rusting needles under her
fleshy paws tattooed with pain
She, fierce and quite necessary with
colorless eyes, graciously sought
him under a new moon, here
where the wildest cat roars and
nobody cares to see
15 September 2009
Aspen Soul
We, the swiftest of conjurors
fabricate and weave,
tuck forcibly into
disorder and drunkenly
swing, eyes clenched and
teeth grinding, at
conventional iconography
grasping at stones
learning not to
flail but to flow
In our thousand days
the world was birthed
for the first time
wobbling on her
sapling limbs and
exhaling acid from porous
bark, wiggling her
cloven extremities
into the blackest
flesh of the ground
You, friend, have
been proven
pulsing and
tepid, fragile,
perfectly earthbound
stabbing others and
bleeding sap
from gritty palms-
Salt-stained and
woozy upon waking
29 August 2009
fabricate and weave,
tuck forcibly into
disorder and drunkenly
swing, eyes clenched and
teeth grinding, at
conventional iconography
grasping at stones
learning not to
flail but to flow
In our thousand days
the world was birthed
for the first time
wobbling on her
sapling limbs and
exhaling acid from porous
bark, wiggling her
cloven extremities
into the blackest
flesh of the ground
You, friend, have
been proven
pulsing and
tepid, fragile,
perfectly earthbound
stabbing others and
bleeding sap
from gritty palms-
Salt-stained and
woozy upon waking
29 August 2009
A Chamber of Roses
I am roused by the vicious tide in my gut, calling come, sit or stand, shake your hair out, you've got to move and even the loitering clouds cannot commit to raining. I suppose my muscles still have some fuel, some will, some metallic anger in them, but I do not exercise their unalienable rights. Instead, I imagine that all language was born in my lifetime, in my butterfly mind, held at bay for all to enjoy upon my birth.
And while remaining prostrate, I turn you both over in my hand, my silver dollars fished from the drain. We are three in one, juxtaposing and contradicting, a salivating oxymoron- this is nothing precious. We all praise the moon and leap at the sun, having within us utmost logic and social stigma. There is always an odd man out, in fact, we install bars around our souls to push the others further, jingling our freshly-minted keys on the inside. We cannot continue in this blasphemous manner, attempting to weave beautiful lives while our screaming mouths are filled with wool. But I concede the following truths: we are of the same stuff, gold and velvety brocade woven to create, to snuff fear. Everyday we tweeze pearls from the muck of ourselves and take them to the world.
I lust heartily for you, two-thirds of me. I am a bowl of scented water, laden with yawning roses and saturated with unconditional love. My bed is a rolling vessel, gliding on the glycerine tide unto the shallows at the end of my life. A veil shields my eyes; it is black, grazing my knees, observing my hidden truths. I feel bizarre like never before. There is a billowing in my ribcage, a fluttering fear. I resist it, pulling my own hair in covered shadow, but it persists, rising to my collar and taunting my thoughts and I think what bad thing could ever happen here? and so I let you in--
With honey on my articulate tongue, I'm speaking your Christian name with conviction, and fear and love are like oil and water no longer. We are a contradiction unto science.
And while remaining prostrate, I turn you both over in my hand, my silver dollars fished from the drain. We are three in one, juxtaposing and contradicting, a salivating oxymoron- this is nothing precious. We all praise the moon and leap at the sun, having within us utmost logic and social stigma. There is always an odd man out, in fact, we install bars around our souls to push the others further, jingling our freshly-minted keys on the inside. We cannot continue in this blasphemous manner, attempting to weave beautiful lives while our screaming mouths are filled with wool. But I concede the following truths: we are of the same stuff, gold and velvety brocade woven to create, to snuff fear. Everyday we tweeze pearls from the muck of ourselves and take them to the world.
I lust heartily for you, two-thirds of me. I am a bowl of scented water, laden with yawning roses and saturated with unconditional love. My bed is a rolling vessel, gliding on the glycerine tide unto the shallows at the end of my life. A veil shields my eyes; it is black, grazing my knees, observing my hidden truths. I feel bizarre like never before. There is a billowing in my ribcage, a fluttering fear. I resist it, pulling my own hair in covered shadow, but it persists, rising to my collar and taunting my thoughts and I think what bad thing could ever happen here? and so I let you in--
With honey on my articulate tongue, I'm speaking your Christian name with conviction, and fear and love are like oil and water no longer. We are a contradiction unto science.
Debris Field
The bars of morning are refracted in the
Obsidian eye of the grasshopper
He leaks ominously
A prophet born in the mud
His small stature does not impede
Vertical lift from crunching toes
In my plastic state
He moves slowly
Though trapped in a
Silver web, I am not drained
Though I am not fed
I grow insane
I, bastion of madness
I, husk of digested love
A visage in cottonwood
A plastic Madonna on the freeway
Tumbling in the cackling light
Inhaling glory of his whitest night
11 August 2009
Obsidian eye of the grasshopper
He leaks ominously
A prophet born in the mud
His small stature does not impede
Vertical lift from crunching toes
In my plastic state
He moves slowly
Though trapped in a
Silver web, I am not drained
Though I am not fed
I grow insane
I, bastion of madness
I, husk of digested love
A visage in cottonwood
A plastic Madonna on the freeway
Tumbling in the cackling light
Inhaling glory of his whitest night
11 August 2009
Balcony Song
In wisest insect's name I chant
With haste of fire in brown grass flying
My cry not just a deadman's rant
Oak eyes observe earth multiplying-
She morphs into the finest dust
Her love consumed by moths
She dreams as every schoolgirl must
Her food composed of thoughts
She holds back miles of snow inside
The net that is her skin
Her sternum severed, open wide
Yet he never could come in
She was born in sticky starlight’s eyes
A simple anomaly
She would give her soul to realize
To climb, to strive, to see
With haste of fire in brown grass flying
My cry not just a deadman's rant
Oak eyes observe earth multiplying-
She morphs into the finest dust
Her love consumed by moths
She dreams as every schoolgirl must
Her food composed of thoughts
She holds back miles of snow inside
The net that is her skin
Her sternum severed, open wide
Yet he never could come in
She was born in sticky starlight’s eyes
A simple anomaly
She would give her soul to realize
To climb, to strive, to see
The Passing of the Mime
This night is too near a solstice
For a crouching, hallowed cool and
Evening settles like a crackling season
Here I read poems about aged ladders
Loitering beside trees without fruit
Here we sidle up to fierce loneliness
He is a surviving kind of friend
Who only rattles his bars as
Midnight sprints unaccompanied past
And a soundless, subzero moon reminds me
Meticulous death is glorious art
He isn't jarring, nor perverse any longer
He holds my hand, invisible as we
Cross the God-loving street, and I am
Sweating underneath the November snow
And this, this eating thing
Digesting the remains of my day
Reels me in with a distorted magnetism
The ink on my shoulder is a
Vomitous misrepresentation of a
Life spoiled, too ripe in the sun
But in this cage the ultraviolet leaves me
And a bundled childhood is my shield
And the mime's temperature and mine are
A similar number, plummeting in disrepair
In that room where windows leak dollars
And love festers, just the terminal choice I made
29 July 2009
For a crouching, hallowed cool and
Evening settles like a crackling season
Here I read poems about aged ladders
Loitering beside trees without fruit
Here we sidle up to fierce loneliness
He is a surviving kind of friend
Who only rattles his bars as
Midnight sprints unaccompanied past
And a soundless, subzero moon reminds me
Meticulous death is glorious art
He isn't jarring, nor perverse any longer
He holds my hand, invisible as we
Cross the God-loving street, and I am
Sweating underneath the November snow
And this, this eating thing
Digesting the remains of my day
Reels me in with a distorted magnetism
The ink on my shoulder is a
Vomitous misrepresentation of a
Life spoiled, too ripe in the sun
But in this cage the ultraviolet leaves me
And a bundled childhood is my shield
And the mime's temperature and mine are
A similar number, plummeting in disrepair
In that room where windows leak dollars
And love festers, just the terminal choice I made
29 July 2009
Shadow of a Decade
I have only twelve years behind me
These slats leave banded marks on my
thighs with their rubber claws
the card is tucked under my strap
Mint-green, damp, curling blind
The heat is harassing me and
he is not here to assauge me
so I dive, passably, and pull
half the length of the pool
I cannot focus in motion
My adrenaline roars in the
silent mosaic arena
I move symmetrically but
my knee pops like a bad habit
I spot him on land, yelling as I
bob and his flushed lips move and
he mimes with phantom palms and
Signals love from across the sea
He shouts inaudible rules
But I know them already
he is on his knees and
swathing my brand new body and
tadpole mind, effortlessly
I am the coyest, but I live to follow
him barefoot down rusting stairs
buckets in our virgin hands
I will misplace him without intention
My spun-out jewel in the maiden grass
26 July 2009
These slats leave banded marks on my
thighs with their rubber claws
the card is tucked under my strap
Mint-green, damp, curling blind
The heat is harassing me and
he is not here to assauge me
so I dive, passably, and pull
half the length of the pool
I cannot focus in motion
My adrenaline roars in the
silent mosaic arena
I move symmetrically but
my knee pops like a bad habit
I spot him on land, yelling as I
bob and his flushed lips move and
he mimes with phantom palms and
Signals love from across the sea
He shouts inaudible rules
But I know them already
he is on his knees and
swathing my brand new body and
tadpole mind, effortlessly
I am the coyest, but I live to follow
him barefoot down rusting stairs
buckets in our virgin hands
I will misplace him without intention
My spun-out jewel in the maiden grass
26 July 2009
Fantastical Exodus
Only clocks know what time it is
He calls out, retreating
into noxious fog where
she can swaddle him
tightly in the sway
of her ambrosial lips
His mind, in aquatic paradise
beats upward and unto itself
he chews thoughtfully
a basted coward with
one free hand
He can see the aquifer
internal wellspring of
her hatelessness
funded by nothing difficult, by
avoidance of all unhappiness
Exeunt, madam
leave this dusty scene in a
push-broom pile and
do as the man advised-
say adieu
26 July 2009
He calls out, retreating
into noxious fog where
she can swaddle him
tightly in the sway
of her ambrosial lips
His mind, in aquatic paradise
beats upward and unto itself
he chews thoughtfully
a basted coward with
one free hand
He can see the aquifer
internal wellspring of
her hatelessness
funded by nothing difficult, by
avoidance of all unhappiness
Exeunt, madam
leave this dusty scene in a
push-broom pile and
do as the man advised-
say adieu
26 July 2009
Tell Me Straight
We who choose with stinging eyes
In haze of wonder compromise
Without intent to patronize
Or discount wounds of any size
Feel base-compelled to fraternize
And in deep joy we colonize
As carpet under our feet lies
To sweep us up to weeping skies
They have been endearing spies
They've seen us legitimize
A day that's neither long nor wise.
The Sun in tawny throne he cries
As this, built in our shared heart, dies
Its ling'ring smoke to ceiling flies
And lagging pulse identifies
The time for rest, to exhale sighs
Alone and warm I nurse my eyes
7/16/2009
In haze of wonder compromise
Without intent to patronize
Or discount wounds of any size
Feel base-compelled to fraternize
And in deep joy we colonize
As carpet under our feet lies
To sweep us up to weeping skies
They have been endearing spies
They've seen us legitimize
A day that's neither long nor wise.
The Sun in tawny throne he cries
As this, built in our shared heart, dies
Its ling'ring smoke to ceiling flies
And lagging pulse identifies
The time for rest, to exhale sighs
Alone and warm I nurse my eyes
7/16/2009
Her House of Dust
She glides on molting wings
safe and sixteen, in what
should be a dusty field of
concord, flame and frivolity but
instead the meat of her heart is
rent from her ribcage and
slapped on the platter in her
irrational, shaking hands and
she carries it to the utilitarian
platform to be squeaked at by
pitying mice and those sorry
familiar pupils gape like sticky tar in
vacant buckets and spook her
a bucking, glossy mare in
the crosshairs of distress
she is bleeding at the gums
she thrashes in citron clouds
she prudently blames the moon
for her impending madness
15 July 2009
safe and sixteen, in what
should be a dusty field of
concord, flame and frivolity but
instead the meat of her heart is
rent from her ribcage and
slapped on the platter in her
irrational, shaking hands and
she carries it to the utilitarian
platform to be squeaked at by
pitying mice and those sorry
familiar pupils gape like sticky tar in
vacant buckets and spook her
a bucking, glossy mare in
the crosshairs of distress
she is bleeding at the gums
she thrashes in citron clouds
she prudently blames the moon
for her impending madness
15 July 2009
A Deceptive Tonic
If you cannot stomach it
it is an acquired taste after
all chartreuse and elevating and
admittedly positive, I suppose you
will abandon the whole sea
glass bottle to roll under the
clawfoot bed in which I drown and
in that echoing cove, I have to
clench my eyes and curl my
limbs and be unable yet to
wrap my mind around the
weapon of our happiness, hoarded
under my mattress and now just a
dirty clattering beneath me
14 July 2009
it is an acquired taste after
all chartreuse and elevating and
admittedly positive, I suppose you
will abandon the whole sea
glass bottle to roll under the
clawfoot bed in which I drown and
in that echoing cove, I have to
clench my eyes and curl my
limbs and be unable yet to
wrap my mind around the
weapon of our happiness, hoarded
under my mattress and now just a
dirty clattering beneath me
14 July 2009
West Eighth Avenue
He said exactly what he did not mean
He must love who that girl loves-
Woman loves
With a pentatonic heaviness
Her heedless life is set alight by
White-hot match on scraping
Bloody brick detonating a
Sulphuric explosion
Lifted to a fragile cigarette
Gloves damp and fingernails eaten
Flame is hurriedly ingested and
Vanquished by crooked
Wanting lips then
Flicked, tumbling, a
Blackened stump or
Amputated limb into the
Gluttonous jaws of some gutter
The smoker is sunsoaked at midnight
Aiming precisely for the
Heart of disaster, her nightmares
Screeching like an asymmetrical quarter
Spinning in the polished
Bowl of her calcified skull
Your truest love can slowly kill you
13 July 2009
He must love who that girl loves-
Woman loves
With a pentatonic heaviness
Her heedless life is set alight by
White-hot match on scraping
Bloody brick detonating a
Sulphuric explosion
Lifted to a fragile cigarette
Gloves damp and fingernails eaten
Flame is hurriedly ingested and
Vanquished by crooked
Wanting lips then
Flicked, tumbling, a
Blackened stump or
Amputated limb into the
Gluttonous jaws of some gutter
The smoker is sunsoaked at midnight
Aiming precisely for the
Heart of disaster, her nightmares
Screeching like an asymmetrical quarter
Spinning in the polished
Bowl of her calcified skull
Your truest love can slowly kill you
13 July 2009
On My Return
In stippled frost, a disk of
Moon is scratched
My city of black and white, of ink and air
True love of my quick-spending days
I will long for you until this
Orb recedes to outline
A line drawing of the fair desert
Frail in my bifocal lens
And I ask myself what home is
If, in space and time, it is
Living under the glass of my watch
Washing the feet of my friends
Or instead, where I spin love
Master potter in molting rooms with
Sticky tile, where we
Bleed our belief in indigo
Water and clay melt in my grip
Round us leaving mineral residue
Teaching me strength, eyes on the ball
Focusing my tone and
Tightening like a wire
Strung from peak to peak, diving
Noiselessly, ears cupping the wind-
Life is a field without a fence.
3 July 2009
Moon is scratched
My city of black and white, of ink and air
True love of my quick-spending days
I will long for you until this
Orb recedes to outline
A line drawing of the fair desert
Frail in my bifocal lens
And I ask myself what home is
If, in space and time, it is
Living under the glass of my watch
Washing the feet of my friends
Or instead, where I spin love
Master potter in molting rooms with
Sticky tile, where we
Bleed our belief in indigo
Water and clay melt in my grip
Round us leaving mineral residue
Teaching me strength, eyes on the ball
Focusing my tone and
Tightening like a wire
Strung from peak to peak, diving
Noiselessly, ears cupping the wind-
Life is a field without a fence.
3 July 2009
Memory the Voyeur
The facts have been
Broadly suppressed
Rumbling, ignored
Under the veranda
Under four feet swaying
In the semi-night
Owning, fluently, the
Adolescent city they see
Augmenting like a strobe
Pouring admissions of error
And the beast is there
Hidden from his view
And she knows
The pachyderm’s rotting
Shell is now burnt
Flaking in sheets like ash
His jaundiced eye
Laced with trails of red
Sees effortlessly through the
Slats smeared with varnish
Howling in cricket darkness
He who does not require
Breath to thrive, instead
Enters her tissue with
Icy bomb in teeth, and she
The stalked and stalker
Hides behind a western shade
Consents with shallow breath
Forging conviction in the
Treachery of his unsolicited gaze
3 July 2009
Broadly suppressed
Rumbling, ignored
Under the veranda
Under four feet swaying
In the semi-night
Owning, fluently, the
Adolescent city they see
Augmenting like a strobe
Pouring admissions of error
And the beast is there
Hidden from his view
And she knows
The pachyderm’s rotting
Shell is now burnt
Flaking in sheets like ash
His jaundiced eye
Laced with trails of red
Sees effortlessly through the
Slats smeared with varnish
Howling in cricket darkness
He who does not require
Breath to thrive, instead
Enters her tissue with
Icy bomb in teeth, and she
The stalked and stalker
Hides behind a western shade
Consents with shallow breath
Forging conviction in the
Treachery of his unsolicited gaze
3 July 2009
The Brazen Desert
With a sieve in her temple
snugly seated in crook of
cactus arm, her green rubber
skin is neatly parted by
sleekest blade of rapier
for the exorbitant display and
subsequent collection of
pulp glistening like coral
She is contained in clouds
smeared dirty by a racing
breeze and swirling hips.
This day may never end, an
era of conjoined
tractor afternoons and
dawns swooping crazed like
bats under the bridge
of an undersatisfied soul.
And now we have glossed over
the prickliest of spines
genetically fated to puncture
your olive skin and mine
waxen and vegetative.
I am engorged on the juice of
my forefathers, tuning out the
snarl of cicadas, the
whitest that noise can offer
yelping at the cumuli for
relief
The needles click, conversationally
knitting a garment of faith
burrowing like a microscopic weasel
slurping pureed flesh, organizing on the
platform or assumption that
hibernation will be permitted to continue
until we reach a streetlamp and
The peeled
The pink
The most backward crashing gate
The official departure of heat’s opposition
28 June 2009
snugly seated in crook of
cactus arm, her green rubber
skin is neatly parted by
sleekest blade of rapier
for the exorbitant display and
subsequent collection of
pulp glistening like coral
She is contained in clouds
smeared dirty by a racing
breeze and swirling hips.
This day may never end, an
era of conjoined
tractor afternoons and
dawns swooping crazed like
bats under the bridge
of an undersatisfied soul.
And now we have glossed over
the prickliest of spines
genetically fated to puncture
your olive skin and mine
waxen and vegetative.
I am engorged on the juice of
my forefathers, tuning out the
snarl of cicadas, the
whitest that noise can offer
yelping at the cumuli for
relief
The needles click, conversationally
knitting a garment of faith
burrowing like a microscopic weasel
slurping pureed flesh, organizing on the
platform or assumption that
hibernation will be permitted to continue
until we reach a streetlamp and
The peeled
The pink
The most backward crashing gate
The official departure of heat’s opposition
28 June 2009
At The Top
In his immaculate foresight this
Tender and precise father of lies
Renovates our temple of stone-love
Dragging weight from the
Quarry of the enemy’s victory
Slaughtering each tree on the rock
His armor, hammered copper
A signal to the gods he
Does not trust
Whom he toils to
Eradicate with his
Practiced muscle
Complex ferocity
His cistern considered a
Noble place of death
For a felon with
Sturdy chains on his
Sinewy soul
23 June 2009
Tender and precise father of lies
Renovates our temple of stone-love
Dragging weight from the
Quarry of the enemy’s victory
Slaughtering each tree on the rock
His armor, hammered copper
A signal to the gods he
Does not trust
Whom he toils to
Eradicate with his
Practiced muscle
Complex ferocity
His cistern considered a
Noble place of death
For a felon with
Sturdy chains on his
Sinewy soul
23 June 2009
Electric Beast
She is the stubborn
Machine that roars
Rushing the corner along the wall
Tugging at all fraying sockets
Her sphere bounded by
A short length of wire
Wrapped in rubber
Used to hypothetically hang
One’s proverbial self by the neck
A mechanical wonder
Jittering without fuel or fright
The raging beast gored her
Tusks of copper oozing white and
Teal after a year of rain
23 June 2009
Machine that roars
Rushing the corner along the wall
Tugging at all fraying sockets
Her sphere bounded by
A short length of wire
Wrapped in rubber
Used to hypothetically hang
One’s proverbial self by the neck
A mechanical wonder
Jittering without fuel or fright
The raging beast gored her
Tusks of copper oozing white and
Teal after a year of rain
23 June 2009
A Singular Morning
In the polished pane of
A dawn without ripples
Her eyelids roll , saucily
Airily dreamwards, skimming
Sweetest cream and
Painting the chicory sky
And the garden’s
Every cobalt lattice
With love born in a
Common, heroic moment
Refined with
Godless fervor and
With ravaged soles and
Wobbling extremities
Set to fly.
11 June 2009
A dawn without ripples
Her eyelids roll , saucily
Airily dreamwards, skimming
Sweetest cream and
Painting the chicory sky
And the garden’s
Every cobalt lattice
With love born in a
Common, heroic moment
Refined with
Godless fervor and
With ravaged soles and
Wobbling extremities
Set to fly.
11 June 2009
Fit for Spinning
It is her mania that eats at him
Scares him, bids him live alone
She scrawls thoughts on scraps
Flung into the world's vortex
She becomes the gate, locked
At dawn and pinning him without air
A thousand feet below the crag
A blast triggered by God-made man
This and a five dollar promise
Are the conquering heroes in their
Subterranean visions, mind-melded
Claustrophobics and regulators of art
Her ears decipher and illuminate
Palms strain for the creation they
Never could tow to the
Most final crest of fruition
She relishes the rambling pilgrimage
Slicing it thicker by the hour and
Saturating their lives in whimsy
Revived by the images seen in her soul
8 June 2009
Scares him, bids him live alone
She scrawls thoughts on scraps
Flung into the world's vortex
She becomes the gate, locked
At dawn and pinning him without air
A thousand feet below the crag
A blast triggered by God-made man
This and a five dollar promise
Are the conquering heroes in their
Subterranean visions, mind-melded
Claustrophobics and regulators of art
Her ears decipher and illuminate
Palms strain for the creation they
Never could tow to the
Most final crest of fruition
She relishes the rambling pilgrimage
Slicing it thicker by the hour and
Saturating their lives in whimsy
Revived by the images seen in her soul
8 June 2009
We Tunnel
For the support
Of breath leaking for
Oil like thawed glass
In cathedrals containing
The body of a baby
A waterlogged glow
Or a stirring, sinking
Merciless woman, cranked
And diving deeper
Curbed
Like a black oak
On a resplendent evening
In keenest territory of
Bewildered woods
4 June 2009
Of breath leaking for
Oil like thawed glass
In cathedrals containing
The body of a baby
A waterlogged glow
Or a stirring, sinking
Merciless woman, cranked
And diving deeper
Curbed
Like a black oak
On a resplendent evening
In keenest territory of
Bewildered woods
4 June 2009
Fly in the Face
In order to wander,
Follow flitting thoughts
Without sequence
Explore corners of the air
That do not matter
Discover beautiful
Blunders along the road
Aim to unearth
Chances left in the wake
Of a rusting ship
My shrewd body is
Stationary, veins dancing
In a prison of skin
My aptitude battering
The jail keeper
Live plainly
Deficient in nothing
Sing in empty alleylight
Exhausted concrete
Rising love
Avoid the compulsion
To sleep
Turn out kernels of concept
Adopt love
By the pound
Flip-turn,
Begin again
15 May 2009
Follow flitting thoughts
Without sequence
Explore corners of the air
That do not matter
Discover beautiful
Blunders along the road
Aim to unearth
Chances left in the wake
Of a rusting ship
My shrewd body is
Stationary, veins dancing
In a prison of skin
My aptitude battering
The jail keeper
Live plainly
Deficient in nothing
Sing in empty alleylight
Exhausted concrete
Rising love
Avoid the compulsion
To sleep
Turn out kernels of concept
Adopt love
By the pound
Flip-turn,
Begin again
15 May 2009
Warranted
It’s as if she steadies men
Prepares them, all beads and baskets
For more explainable women
She is killing dysfunctional
Swaddling anger in art and
Growing brighter by the drizzling hour
Tackling only the jungle in her
The dense and three times magnified.
And I, unable to commune with
Myself, larva that I continue to be,
Play like the tide and swindle
Men into whistling bystanders
Sandy-eyed and heedless
I build my image dollar upon dollar,
Murdering in the savannah
And shedding ne’er a tear
At this she is instantly uprooted
Her heart’s blood on the crest of the dune
She identified my manufactured passion
And intended to divulge my worst-
Gore sulking behind the eyes of a doll
So I will win a warm hand to hold
And self-satisfaction to the hilt
Now she is not so infuriated,
She floats in calm with the algae
Educated by her every pore
Open swings the padlock on her mind,
Freeing you of your rumored stronghold
Adopting neutrality’s child in state
She christens us manipulator and liar
And effectively eludes her every care.
9 May 2009
Prepares them, all beads and baskets
For more explainable women
She is killing dysfunctional
Swaddling anger in art and
Growing brighter by the drizzling hour
Tackling only the jungle in her
The dense and three times magnified.
And I, unable to commune with
Myself, larva that I continue to be,
Play like the tide and swindle
Men into whistling bystanders
Sandy-eyed and heedless
I build my image dollar upon dollar,
Murdering in the savannah
And shedding ne’er a tear
At this she is instantly uprooted
Her heart’s blood on the crest of the dune
She identified my manufactured passion
And intended to divulge my worst-
Gore sulking behind the eyes of a doll
So I will win a warm hand to hold
And self-satisfaction to the hilt
Now she is not so infuriated,
She floats in calm with the algae
Educated by her every pore
Open swings the padlock on her mind,
Freeing you of your rumored stronghold
Adopting neutrality’s child in state
She christens us manipulator and liar
And effectively eludes her every care.
9 May 2009
What Dry Eyes Say
I am a quiver of harpoons
Blazing through open water
Bolstering ruin from the inside out
The tarnished incarnation of
Maniacal selfishness, compulsive deceit, the worst:
The illicit use of deliberate focus.
Our seesaw is defunct
Loyalty, catapulted from its rightful position
By indulgence gorged on secrecy
And, stumbling homeward,
Loathing the sight of his own feet before him
He is greeted by a yawning door and a hungry den
Without a phantom to split the cost
Without a mirror to share the joy of the aching day
There, tumbling in distress
Insatiability will bankrupt his body
Solitude will lose its security
And craving his enemy is becoming the norm
In my fragility I lack the capacity to endure loss.
I am a bowl too small for swimming,
A stem blown to be splintered.
7 May 2009
Blazing through open water
Bolstering ruin from the inside out
The tarnished incarnation of
Maniacal selfishness, compulsive deceit, the worst:
The illicit use of deliberate focus.
Our seesaw is defunct
Loyalty, catapulted from its rightful position
By indulgence gorged on secrecy
And, stumbling homeward,
Loathing the sight of his own feet before him
He is greeted by a yawning door and a hungry den
Without a phantom to split the cost
Without a mirror to share the joy of the aching day
There, tumbling in distress
Insatiability will bankrupt his body
Solitude will lose its security
And craving his enemy is becoming the norm
In my fragility I lack the capacity to endure loss.
I am a bowl too small for swimming,
A stem blown to be splintered.
7 May 2009
On My Departure
I had never ingested such thick power
Intoxicated and shaky as I
Took my grudging leave
I was almost spontaneous with
The round city pleading with me
In darkest tones
You boys, you hit me
Like wall of traffic
How to leave this place where
The map is in my mind
Where the insignia of my memories
Confronts, beseeches me to change
I’ve been who I never want to be
I’ve become myself as I know me
A park in the center of my soul
Wheels of my chariot in a humble rut
What are we made of?
Is it palest pink, paste of compassion
Silken, stainless steel ambition
Fresh, water-indulgent vegetation
Spokeswoman of both God and Science
Or are we only lashed with red rope
Confident, creative, triumphant love
Married by commonality and deceit
I’ve packed my solitary life
A thousand times if I’ve done it once
Guide me or at the very least
Send me forth alone, or
I will abandon dear intuition
Over, under, over again
3 May 2009
Intoxicated and shaky as I
Took my grudging leave
I was almost spontaneous with
The round city pleading with me
In darkest tones
You boys, you hit me
Like wall of traffic
How to leave this place where
The map is in my mind
Where the insignia of my memories
Confronts, beseeches me to change
I’ve been who I never want to be
I’ve become myself as I know me
A park in the center of my soul
Wheels of my chariot in a humble rut
What are we made of?
Is it palest pink, paste of compassion
Silken, stainless steel ambition
Fresh, water-indulgent vegetation
Spokeswoman of both God and Science
Or are we only lashed with red rope
Confident, creative, triumphant love
Married by commonality and deceit
I’ve packed my solitary life
A thousand times if I’ve done it once
Guide me or at the very least
Send me forth alone, or
I will abandon dear intuition
Over, under, over again
3 May 2009
Las Alas de Mayo
Aquí existo, pintada de colores tristes
Hace tres meses
En aquella estación de Navidad,
Yo tenía esperanza como un parásito
Quemaba y me consumía
Pero, una palabra de tus labios
Labios falsos y famosos
Les mató a los productos
De mi mente fértil.
Estoy desmantelando nuestra historia
Como una cebolla para mi sopa
Lloro y como
Como un perro perdido
Mis pies son agotados
Pero mi corazón puede sentir
La energía del cielo
Sin los manos tuyos
Es una estación ilustre
De hola y no adiós
En la medianoche podemos huir
A las montanas negras
Por su ciudad baja del mar
Nuestros vasos están llenos de riqueza
Nacidos de la emoción más cándida
Ahora no necesitamos preocupar.
Respiramos.
29 Abril 2009
Hace tres meses
En aquella estación de Navidad,
Yo tenía esperanza como un parásito
Quemaba y me consumía
Pero, una palabra de tus labios
Labios falsos y famosos
Les mató a los productos
De mi mente fértil.
Estoy desmantelando nuestra historia
Como una cebolla para mi sopa
Lloro y como
Como un perro perdido
Mis pies son agotados
Pero mi corazón puede sentir
La energía del cielo
Sin los manos tuyos
Es una estación ilustre
De hola y no adiós
En la medianoche podemos huir
A las montanas negras
Por su ciudad baja del mar
Nuestros vasos están llenos de riqueza
Nacidos de la emoción más cándida
Ahora no necesitamos preocupar.
Respiramos.
29 Abril 2009
A Separate Blue
Simple, subdued, the flakes
Are lowered like marionettes
On slow strings
Making their peace with
Puddling spring
One man told me
He’d seen four seasons
In a single day
I thought
I have seen the passing seasons
In the face of a man
He strums his song like a gem
Losing flames of copper
His touch is tender
As I've never seen it
So I submit, I am fragile
As I hate to be
I’m on some couch
Turning internally and
Fleeing like a gypsy
My function is yet unknown
The critic cannot understand
The love of the artist
Are lowered like marionettes
On slow strings
Making their peace with
Puddling spring
One man told me
He’d seen four seasons
In a single day
I thought
I have seen the passing seasons
In the face of a man
He strums his song like a gem
Losing flames of copper
His touch is tender
As I've never seen it
So I submit, I am fragile
As I hate to be
I’m on some couch
Turning internally and
Fleeing like a gypsy
My function is yet unknown
The critic cannot understand
The love of the artist
Pretense Receding
When you call you inquire, opportunistically
What can be found in a heart this flummoxed?
There was another without wings,
Dancing on the right side, and
A subsequent nothing
A green eye and the other kind
After all, it won’t take long
For motorcars, a puppet on a string
To follow through, and so sweetly
The tragedy is that I cannot believe
In a calculation waiting to fade,
A broken bicycle for two, on your line
I am contrary, out of my mind
Get the saddest part, for the
Sake of the ending
I cannot afford the course behind the sky
I am sometimes downy, but the
Acceptable kiss was not of the heart
We do not swim but parachute
Recognizing useless degrees
I learned to taste the dew
Keen as eagles remembering
Our changes, and everything is alright
Baby, I’m a vixen who never could
Control love in the midst of feathers
This river’s course is fog-ridden
Your face painted in smoke
The rain tastes like it is leaving
17 April 2009
This is a found poem composed of lyrics from:
"Let It Die" (Feist)
"Junk" (Paul McCartney)
"Black Rain" (Ben Harper)
"You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome" (Bob Dylan)
"Ten Years Gone" (Led Zeppelin)
What can be found in a heart this flummoxed?
There was another without wings,
Dancing on the right side, and
A subsequent nothing
A green eye and the other kind
After all, it won’t take long
For motorcars, a puppet on a string
To follow through, and so sweetly
The tragedy is that I cannot believe
In a calculation waiting to fade,
A broken bicycle for two, on your line
I am contrary, out of my mind
Get the saddest part, for the
Sake of the ending
I cannot afford the course behind the sky
I am sometimes downy, but the
Acceptable kiss was not of the heart
We do not swim but parachute
Recognizing useless degrees
I learned to taste the dew
Keen as eagles remembering
Our changes, and everything is alright
Baby, I’m a vixen who never could
Control love in the midst of feathers
This river’s course is fog-ridden
Your face painted in smoke
The rain tastes like it is leaving
17 April 2009
This is a found poem composed of lyrics from:
"Let It Die" (Feist)
"Junk" (Paul McCartney)
"Black Rain" (Ben Harper)
"You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome" (Bob Dylan)
"Ten Years Gone" (Led Zeppelin)
Haul
I am a lens convex, sheepish
And waning, unable to magnify
A fucking thing
This is the daily norm
To call this I testify
Calling across five story skies
And lopping off shade
She has jittery knees
And blue teeth
And eyes that close when horizontal
I’m not intentionally perverse
My surroundings have
Cultivated a certain lack
Of agreeability, if
In your hand-blown wisdom
Such a tenet could exist
Boiling in inferiority
And doing things that are real
But I rub lids that are aging
In a formative state even so
After work, I leave the city
Behind me in the dark
With pistons firing, guzzling gas
A wind of velocity
Noisily surrounding me
In my husk, I screech
Tunnel-bound, in the absence
Of light, disturbingly attached
To articulation- this in stereo
And also yours
I spike my tea
At the crest most supreme
And am no longer unaided.
7 April 2009
And waning, unable to magnify
A fucking thing
This is the daily norm
To call this I testify
Calling across five story skies
And lopping off shade
She has jittery knees
And blue teeth
And eyes that close when horizontal
I’m not intentionally perverse
My surroundings have
Cultivated a certain lack
Of agreeability, if
In your hand-blown wisdom
Such a tenet could exist
Boiling in inferiority
And doing things that are real
But I rub lids that are aging
In a formative state even so
After work, I leave the city
Behind me in the dark
With pistons firing, guzzling gas
A wind of velocity
Noisily surrounding me
In my husk, I screech
Tunnel-bound, in the absence
Of light, disturbingly attached
To articulation- this in stereo
And also yours
I spike my tea
At the crest most supreme
And am no longer unaided.
7 April 2009
Historically Viable
I’m often alone, choosy
Carefree, searching for
Impossible parking
Just to be seen
To get frisky, at
High altitude, with a
Goblet of red, we recount
Sordid episodes in pride
After an out-of-date
Side yard jaunt, we aimed
To drive, freebased and
Puckering on cue
In my storeroom with
Cubicle for milkman’s delivery
Or out on the concrete stoop with
Dysfunctional door
Where rude women
Loosened by inexperience
Walk by and gawk at you
The unlikely root of me
On set, cameras are rolling
Lines mostly memorized
Under duress and uphill
Leaking from the short term
By week’s end
But your words stuck
Regurgitated by rote
Accompanied by a sense-
We thunder and grunt at
Our most characteristic
I am learning the nature of time is
Not linear but cyclical
4 April 2009
Carefree, searching for
Impossible parking
Just to be seen
To get frisky, at
High altitude, with a
Goblet of red, we recount
Sordid episodes in pride
After an out-of-date
Side yard jaunt, we aimed
To drive, freebased and
Puckering on cue
In my storeroom with
Cubicle for milkman’s delivery
Or out on the concrete stoop with
Dysfunctional door
Where rude women
Loosened by inexperience
Walk by and gawk at you
The unlikely root of me
On set, cameras are rolling
Lines mostly memorized
Under duress and uphill
Leaking from the short term
By week’s end
But your words stuck
Regurgitated by rote
Accompanied by a sense-
We thunder and grunt at
Our most characteristic
I am learning the nature of time is
Not linear but cyclical
4 April 2009
Hear, Feeble Ear
This morning I was christened by snowflakes that flew
Crazed, across antipathy, shrieking and lewd
Towards a goal, painted yellow, yet never erected
I seek, but futile words are proving defective
In sleet and in worry, poured out and molded,
He beats like a drum, for his conduct is scolded
By internalized structure, borne of his mother
She subsists, yet he knows not one shoe from the other
In minuscule storeroom he hides his delight,
His source of consolation and unfounded fright
In the brawl for his freedom, he has forged cuffs anew
He is locked down and gawked at in his own zoo
To overlook solutions, that’s the heart of the beast
Tragic, but intentional- not in the least
Constructing towers of sand, just to be sure
But there is a delay; I’m caught in the lure
In genuine form, agents unearth the facts
A revelation on parchment and written in wax
Sedated, blood red, like flesh of a fruit
Dilated our eyes, bodies to follow suit
In infant glow, wavering beacon of light
You are coldly acknowledged in the heat of my fight
I am appreciative, and although you do wander,
Of such serpentine aura I shall grow fonder
These notes coil and scuttle, no matter the speed
Validation through words and her power to lead
I am ironing curtains, beginning to cry,
Learning to dispense with each reason and why
Tender the pads of long fingers on keys
Starting tomorrow, I’m bending my knees
1 April 2009
Crazed, across antipathy, shrieking and lewd
Towards a goal, painted yellow, yet never erected
I seek, but futile words are proving defective
In sleet and in worry, poured out and molded,
He beats like a drum, for his conduct is scolded
By internalized structure, borne of his mother
She subsists, yet he knows not one shoe from the other
In minuscule storeroom he hides his delight,
His source of consolation and unfounded fright
In the brawl for his freedom, he has forged cuffs anew
He is locked down and gawked at in his own zoo
To overlook solutions, that’s the heart of the beast
Tragic, but intentional- not in the least
Constructing towers of sand, just to be sure
But there is a delay; I’m caught in the lure
In genuine form, agents unearth the facts
A revelation on parchment and written in wax
Sedated, blood red, like flesh of a fruit
Dilated our eyes, bodies to follow suit
In infant glow, wavering beacon of light
You are coldly acknowledged in the heat of my fight
I am appreciative, and although you do wander,
Of such serpentine aura I shall grow fonder
These notes coil and scuttle, no matter the speed
Validation through words and her power to lead
I am ironing curtains, beginning to cry,
Learning to dispense with each reason and why
Tender the pads of long fingers on keys
Starting tomorrow, I’m bending my knees
1 April 2009
The Newest
I roll restlessly on carpet
In a house you’ve never seen
Scaling rungs of a ladder
Gray and splintering
But it’s the ladder you built
In photos, I lose my life
Sucked dry and seen only
In pixels, pasted and stamped.
I have goals and knowledge, tools
Like gloves and buckets
Gazing at plums and forgetting
How to pluck them
Fine motor skills that need tuning
No calculus required, but
I am rusting in disuse
A canopy destroyed by hurricane’s gale
Being pampered and powdered
Taught us lethargy
Our skills of discipline are
Wanting, on indefinite furlough
In this imitation Mecca
We sow energy and seeds
Our liberators, fuming at the decline
Retail and dollars and budding consumers
And I sit vacant
I need Colorado peaches, dripping
Down our chins and staining our smocks
Sticky fingers kneading shoulders
We’re hair and coffee and indecision
Canvassing the town and scouring
For what,
I am still gathering.
I erase all anger,
And I am curious
At the ease.
In a house you’ve never seen
Scaling rungs of a ladder
Gray and splintering
But it’s the ladder you built
In photos, I lose my life
Sucked dry and seen only
In pixels, pasted and stamped.
I have goals and knowledge, tools
Like gloves and buckets
Gazing at plums and forgetting
How to pluck them
Fine motor skills that need tuning
No calculus required, but
I am rusting in disuse
A canopy destroyed by hurricane’s gale
Being pampered and powdered
Taught us lethargy
Our skills of discipline are
Wanting, on indefinite furlough
In this imitation Mecca
We sow energy and seeds
Our liberators, fuming at the decline
Retail and dollars and budding consumers
And I sit vacant
I need Colorado peaches, dripping
Down our chins and staining our smocks
Sticky fingers kneading shoulders
We’re hair and coffee and indecision
Canvassing the town and scouring
For what,
I am still gathering.
I erase all anger,
And I am curious
At the ease.
My Lover the Magnate
Judging my Muse, she is but one piece of scattered wits
Her adequate description of
Barbed misery is quite aesthetic
In best practice, one flees comfort simply to sense, and sense
In a manner acute
My fatal flaw is how I love to feel
I am angry with her, collecting bottles of distilled self, shutting down
And spurring on
Sorrow is dark green, death, blue glass in the riverbed
We are deluded, diluted with equal parts apathy and need
You lofted my blanket just so
There it loiters, teal gauze on metal
Who can predict the forecast
It is upper thirties out tonight and
I will be sleet-pounded and bruising by daybreak
Joining my song is no crime tonight-
Leave it all, three lazy blocks behind
Come and share my bed, you restless sleeper
I need someone else’s skin here, muddling heat, hoarding resource,
Congested in the finest way
You couldn't know the difference
Let us go back in time, I say, forty years or so.
There they cannot pity my technology
I’ll meet you there but
What wouldn’t I do
24 March 2009
Her adequate description of
Barbed misery is quite aesthetic
In best practice, one flees comfort simply to sense, and sense
In a manner acute
My fatal flaw is how I love to feel
I am angry with her, collecting bottles of distilled self, shutting down
And spurring on
Sorrow is dark green, death, blue glass in the riverbed
We are deluded, diluted with equal parts apathy and need
You lofted my blanket just so
There it loiters, teal gauze on metal
Who can predict the forecast
It is upper thirties out tonight and
I will be sleet-pounded and bruising by daybreak
Joining my song is no crime tonight-
Leave it all, three lazy blocks behind
Come and share my bed, you restless sleeper
I need someone else’s skin here, muddling heat, hoarding resource,
Congested in the finest way
You couldn't know the difference
Let us go back in time, I say, forty years or so.
There they cannot pity my technology
I’ll meet you there but
What wouldn’t I do
24 March 2009
And Back Again
My handwriting is messy
Certainly not clean and black
I have lukewarm tea to drink
We are far from what we lack
I remember, it sounded rough
Three and a quarter centuries past
For me, it hasn’t been long enough
I scribble a dreamless record
Eating fragments, seals of wax
Conceived for nothing but indulgence
Mindlessly discarded snacks
I am far from flaxen, steeped in smoke
And will be further before we’re done
Overheating, saturated, and broke
I had nowhere to turn but skyward
Your lizards splaying spread
Two were fighting rancor-bound
One desired my heart, one my head
Bend fresh pages, for shame
Say goodbye without a siren
Cry, allow your swollen self to drain
23 March 2009
Certainly not clean and black
I have lukewarm tea to drink
We are far from what we lack
I remember, it sounded rough
Three and a quarter centuries past
For me, it hasn’t been long enough
I scribble a dreamless record
Eating fragments, seals of wax
Conceived for nothing but indulgence
Mindlessly discarded snacks
I am far from flaxen, steeped in smoke
And will be further before we’re done
Overheating, saturated, and broke
I had nowhere to turn but skyward
Your lizards splaying spread
Two were fighting rancor-bound
One desired my heart, one my head
Bend fresh pages, for shame
Say goodbye without a siren
Cry, allow your swollen self to drain
23 March 2009
Stepwise
Tomorrow I’ll take a drive
I’ll be a dusty slate erased
Southeast as the crow flies
I hope the grass is dead
I am adrenaline panicked, holding headboards
Yours are such ordinary objects
Glory mornings stamped winter white
Standing in a sea of garbage
Crawling in time, imaginary in space
I would like to cruise helmetless
To scrawl illegibly
To expose my cracking ribs
It’s all too literal, angular
Living in a box like an oven
On a catastrophic delay and falling
Asleep early, for health and virtue
Here is the breadth of conspiracy-
You’ll find freedom in chains
Lick the floor of sand as the sea
Be provided necessities at your leisure
When ignited, I sink,
But the Din sustains
I’ll be a dusty slate erased
Southeast as the crow flies
I hope the grass is dead
I am adrenaline panicked, holding headboards
Yours are such ordinary objects
Glory mornings stamped winter white
Standing in a sea of garbage
Crawling in time, imaginary in space
I would like to cruise helmetless
To scrawl illegibly
To expose my cracking ribs
It’s all too literal, angular
Living in a box like an oven
On a catastrophic delay and falling
Asleep early, for health and virtue
Here is the breadth of conspiracy-
You’ll find freedom in chains
Lick the floor of sand as the sea
Be provided necessities at your leisure
When ignited, I sink,
But the Din sustains
Hard Case
She was colloquial by choice
Causing nothing but damage
It is deep, aching in sobriety
And makes me want to sing
She sat at the upright, her
Heel on dirty linoleum
Preparing to flippantly crush him
She, the high-functioning placebo
Do you need to taste cotton,
Touch denim, smell a dream,
See what is growing in two hearts?
The visuals are phone calls
Hammering an old bell
My heart is not young, halting in
Weak moments and
Running in a land of cars
Perhaps I self indulge, I leak words
In whirring silence
Here where I read and sleep
Here where I unzip my dress
I lace up my shoes, sudden haste
Raising happiness from sand
I round the bend sprinting-
He’s out on the corner, pores open,
Reeling in the rain.
Causing nothing but damage
It is deep, aching in sobriety
And makes me want to sing
She sat at the upright, her
Heel on dirty linoleum
Preparing to flippantly crush him
She, the high-functioning placebo
Do you need to taste cotton,
Touch denim, smell a dream,
See what is growing in two hearts?
The visuals are phone calls
Hammering an old bell
My heart is not young, halting in
Weak moments and
Running in a land of cars
Perhaps I self indulge, I leak words
In whirring silence
Here where I read and sleep
Here where I unzip my dress
I lace up my shoes, sudden haste
Raising happiness from sand
I round the bend sprinting-
He’s out on the corner, pores open,
Reeling in the rain.
My Terrarium
All the trees might be dying
Aborted for shutters of pine
Ingesting spores which travel westward
She will always be a vacant figurine
I dolphin kick with vertebrae of opal
Growing like a boisterous lily
All these ancient trees are dying
Processed by misers highly consequential
Molten brass deals lopsided light
I tunnel into the productive earth
Like a fiber-optic worm, freeze dried
A lily fueled with personal belief
These trees will die, hanging in sorrow
We are stringing up the terrified future
In the single pane glass my cheeks are wet
I've been found, located drunken
Allergic to speaking vegetation
And persistent liars
11 March 2009
Aborted for shutters of pine
Ingesting spores which travel westward
She will always be a vacant figurine
I dolphin kick with vertebrae of opal
Growing like a boisterous lily
All these ancient trees are dying
Processed by misers highly consequential
Molten brass deals lopsided light
I tunnel into the productive earth
Like a fiber-optic worm, freeze dried
A lily fueled with personal belief
These trees will die, hanging in sorrow
We are stringing up the terrified future
In the single pane glass my cheeks are wet
I've been found, located drunken
Allergic to speaking vegetation
And persistent liars
11 March 2009
The Anti-Carry
Pack up now please, boys
Girls want to go home and play
Much waits for us there!
Guest post by Kari Woodard.
Her first haiku!
Girls want to go home and play
Much waits for us there!
Guest post by Kari Woodard.
Her first haiku!
Elegy for Living
Professor of crackling life,
Spokesman of camaraderie and trade
You barter stability for solidarity.
You pace, driven, wiping your beak
On greasy feathers, soldiering on.
You scale twisting, white-washed bark,
And upon your arrival, you are free.
You juggle eggs, and allow
Each one to sink,
A lipid mess on the sidewalk.
Leave the multitasking to me.
You take the stairs in leaps
And trip, springing to
The summit, overexerted.
Your tenet of simplicity
A freeze-dried excuse
For equal and opposite gluttony.
The symptoms have been diagrammed,
Medically suffocated and immersed.
You love, practice duplicity,
Deface and devour me.
You prick lacy corners of me
Long-lain bandaged, for fear.
Your nape is cold and wet, sonorous,
Lips and eyes seal wet as petals
I read your couplet,
Erased but for the semicolon
That is dusk, a wrought-iron outpost.
You are but a madman,
A tightrope walker,
You trade the common need for love
For self-deprecation and sedation.
You have been coddled, roots-up.
Stop off in the lot and come to dinner.
I will feed you that which I cherish.
We are both scaffold and buttress,
Springing at the sky, made of stone
Avoiding jet-engines with lungs of turpentine
I am in rapid pursuit, taking this on.
Please, wind me and set me rolling.
Our brains are novels, battered textbooks.
For now, we suckle at the garden hose,
Cultivating green and waxen fancy.
We will curl underfoot, brittle, by day's end.
Spokesman of camaraderie and trade
You barter stability for solidarity.
You pace, driven, wiping your beak
On greasy feathers, soldiering on.
You scale twisting, white-washed bark,
And upon your arrival, you are free.
You juggle eggs, and allow
Each one to sink,
A lipid mess on the sidewalk.
Leave the multitasking to me.
You take the stairs in leaps
And trip, springing to
The summit, overexerted.
Your tenet of simplicity
A freeze-dried excuse
For equal and opposite gluttony.
The symptoms have been diagrammed,
Medically suffocated and immersed.
You love, practice duplicity,
Deface and devour me.
You prick lacy corners of me
Long-lain bandaged, for fear.
Your nape is cold and wet, sonorous,
Lips and eyes seal wet as petals
I read your couplet,
Erased but for the semicolon
That is dusk, a wrought-iron outpost.
You are but a madman,
A tightrope walker,
You trade the common need for love
For self-deprecation and sedation.
You have been coddled, roots-up.
Stop off in the lot and come to dinner.
I will feed you that which I cherish.
We are both scaffold and buttress,
Springing at the sky, made of stone
Avoiding jet-engines with lungs of turpentine
I am in rapid pursuit, taking this on.
Please, wind me and set me rolling.
Our brains are novels, battered textbooks.
For now, we suckle at the garden hose,
Cultivating green and waxen fancy.
We will curl underfoot, brittle, by day's end.
She Is Not To Be Imitated
Heel bleeding through my sock
I am counting minutes, eager
Like a dancer in the wings.
The weather has discouraged me not,
For I’ll be escorted by thunder
Weaving trails of synthetic cotton.
I am committed to attitudes of strength
And productivity in this cavity.
We coexist in congruency, and not at all.
My heart, detoxified and overly rested,
Loves the solitude.
I had forgotten my penchant
For Zen in my youth
Battling discord with the piano.
I was the last to run through the fields
Lying about new jeans
In shambles and desiring collagen.
For a blanket I traded my childhood
And it placates me still.
I was concurrently raw, far too adult
For most of the establishment.
This is all quite subjective.
I expedited and distilled love,
Not by way of application
But through the recognition of art.
In the face of waiting sod,
Knee socks and pneumonia
I wrote and chased men furiously.
We could publish the manual-
How to develop, escape,
Grow like a vine in the suburbs
Where every thought fits the grid
Besides the roads.
Haven’t we met before?
On floors of painted rubber,
Allegorical flowers in my hair-
I will compose the myth as it suits me.
I prefigured a morning, a decade past
In morning heat and shade of pine
Where cares were expunged
By vinegar and the need for rest.
We are more elegiac than the roots
Snaking beneath our tousled heads.
26 February 2009
All That Is New
His eccentric highness pursues me
In wailing silence- I perceive,
Logically, his inadvertent sermon
With new sunglasses and a cup
Of spiced heat and milk.
This reassures me.
I know you, you dreamer,
Reduced to survival on many planes,
Dissolving, hopeless.
But I’ll use my muscles,
Extract you from the mire,
Embody a chorus,
Hum your favorite tune.
However distasteful, I sleep alone
Betraying creed and tearing
The shrinking world asunder.
When your pages flutter by,
Anxious and sinking, my sight
Follows them into the mist.
Bathing in swampy, iridescent waters,
You will be fortified, I know-
They are for us, and
I am all for you.
Baby, we’re filthy rich, unconventional,
Healthy and brilliant when we choose.
My compass vibrates and cracks,
But I have a yellow sky.
My soul is engorged, devoid of fear.
25 February 2009
In wailing silence- I perceive,
Logically, his inadvertent sermon
With new sunglasses and a cup
Of spiced heat and milk.
This reassures me.
I know you, you dreamer,
Reduced to survival on many planes,
Dissolving, hopeless.
But I’ll use my muscles,
Extract you from the mire,
Embody a chorus,
Hum your favorite tune.
However distasteful, I sleep alone
Betraying creed and tearing
The shrinking world asunder.
When your pages flutter by,
Anxious and sinking, my sight
Follows them into the mist.
Bathing in swampy, iridescent waters,
You will be fortified, I know-
They are for us, and
I am all for you.
Baby, we’re filthy rich, unconventional,
Healthy and brilliant when we choose.
My compass vibrates and cracks,
But I have a yellow sky.
My soul is engorged, devoid of fear.
25 February 2009
Medulla Oblongata
Sweet darling, I rapidly learned
Of the erasure of your bliss
The appropriation of youth
I catch sight of his
Tousled hair, runny nose
Life snatches breath, without regret
He seethes in her treasured presence
Hating you whom he does not know
You, who carry more hindrance
You make waves without swaying
You exert, compute and emote
There was a surge in me
Not in splendor but in seediness
You, lacquered gold under a bulb
Of halogen, constructed beauty
I spilled tears at wasted days
You exist, in this space
Wandering your room or
Lying in bed unengaged
What I know,
Verboten as it may be, has
Stirred up inestimable aching
Tales only worms may tell
You are happy and handshaking
Eyes rolling backwards unstoppable
Are these walls of flesh numb?
Like a child, or a drunk,
I forget yesterday and
Put faith in what has failed
It is early spring three times over
And neither of us appear to be abandoned
We function on levels considered normal-
But for you I desire existence beyond bliss
Please love, even at the end of the world,
Never stop playing
Of the erasure of your bliss
The appropriation of youth
I catch sight of his
Tousled hair, runny nose
Life snatches breath, without regret
He seethes in her treasured presence
Hating you whom he does not know
You, who carry more hindrance
You make waves without swaying
You exert, compute and emote
There was a surge in me
Not in splendor but in seediness
You, lacquered gold under a bulb
Of halogen, constructed beauty
I spilled tears at wasted days
You exist, in this space
Wandering your room or
Lying in bed unengaged
What I know,
Verboten as it may be, has
Stirred up inestimable aching
Tales only worms may tell
You are happy and handshaking
Eyes rolling backwards unstoppable
Are these walls of flesh numb?
Like a child, or a drunk,
I forget yesterday and
Put faith in what has failed
It is early spring three times over
And neither of us appear to be abandoned
We function on levels considered normal-
But for you I desire existence beyond bliss
Please love, even at the end of the world,
Never stop playing
The Mystery of Technology
My pupils spin, marbled, appraising
Carefully both slumber and wakefulness
We compose our love in zeros and
Ones that glide soundless and timeless
Through the crowded stratosphere
I'm bundled alone, seeking attention
In all the wrong places
There are smoking glass
Jars in the dark and pigeons
Fluttering down the hallway
Excuse me, you must be mistaken
I saw him, traveling backwards
In time down the fiber-optic cable
I was temporarily willing to
Purge myself of material attachment
But being poorly adjusted and
Fruitful is far more graceful
Carefully both slumber and wakefulness
We compose our love in zeros and
Ones that glide soundless and timeless
Through the crowded stratosphere
I'm bundled alone, seeking attention
In all the wrong places
There are smoking glass
Jars in the dark and pigeons
Fluttering down the hallway
Excuse me, you must be mistaken
I saw him, traveling backwards
In time down the fiber-optic cable
I was temporarily willing to
Purge myself of material attachment
But being poorly adjusted and
Fruitful is far more graceful
Callous
In the lock box of sleep,
Anxiety rattles, a bullet
In a hollow panel, rough and stained,
Splinters like fiber, glass
Hastily swept into a filmy volume
Aching for the predawn
I scheme for a premature flight
Inside metal warped, commercialized
I feel the pinching of my disk
Nothing remains the same when
I'm alone
I see flesh on skin-
Never mind
My skull is woozy
I was turned over-easy
Unscrewed like a rotten egg
And surreptitiously scrapped
This life scampers parallel
Scribbling circles like years
I run without purpose
Even suckling life, I despair
A dirty kitchen for private tears
We twirl stupidly in place,
Casting a transparent line
Hope is a noun
As I observe waste and sloth and
In spite of myself, my cynicism
Becomes ingrained
I will train for endurance
Feminist that I am
For the primary purpose of validation
In silky sea salt
My eyes are feverish, loss-glazed
Full of rage and peering
Through uncelebrated expectation
We are carbon, emotion
And little else
Anxiety rattles, a bullet
In a hollow panel, rough and stained,
Splinters like fiber, glass
Hastily swept into a filmy volume
Aching for the predawn
I scheme for a premature flight
Inside metal warped, commercialized
I feel the pinching of my disk
Nothing remains the same when
I'm alone
I see flesh on skin-
Never mind
My skull is woozy
I was turned over-easy
Unscrewed like a rotten egg
And surreptitiously scrapped
This life scampers parallel
Scribbling circles like years
I run without purpose
Even suckling life, I despair
A dirty kitchen for private tears
We twirl stupidly in place,
Casting a transparent line
Hope is a noun
As I observe waste and sloth and
In spite of myself, my cynicism
Becomes ingrained
I will train for endurance
Feminist that I am
For the primary purpose of validation
In silky sea salt
My eyes are feverish, loss-glazed
Full of rage and peering
Through uncelebrated expectation
We are carbon, emotion
And little else
Timber
The dolphin, unhinged by the surf, dove
Headlong
Into the wreckage.
I'm talking myself out of it,
Sinking into moss and mica.
Like the Queen, I'm going mad-
I make the same mistakes,
I'm nothing new.
This, my cocoon, is but a
Carnal shadow of tepid, sleeping you.
We chant with each luscious bloom
Birthed on the breeze like a spore.
A coincidence.
Be the corona of my sun,
Ignorant of meters and minutes
Our glare will live in the fireflies-
Inking over my eyes, dripping down
Swollen cheeks, chattering chin.
Disorderly, delicious.
I am shaking, an unswaddled child, and
It feels a bit like free-fall.
Headlong
Into the wreckage.
I'm talking myself out of it,
Sinking into moss and mica.
Like the Queen, I'm going mad-
I make the same mistakes,
I'm nothing new.
This, my cocoon, is but a
Carnal shadow of tepid, sleeping you.
We chant with each luscious bloom
Birthed on the breeze like a spore.
A coincidence.
Be the corona of my sun,
Ignorant of meters and minutes
Our glare will live in the fireflies-
Inking over my eyes, dripping down
Swollen cheeks, chattering chin.
Disorderly, delicious.
I am shaking, an unswaddled child, and
It feels a bit like free-fall.
Postcard
Camaraderie, fluid life, thoughts composed in this head and transcribed by orbs of intuition. Across the kitchen table, fruit laden, covered in sooty life they pass. I'm lucky, not only for gifts of mind and body, but for intrinsic need to throw caution to the wind.
Moan and squawk you cannot, voice oozing like syrup, and magic, out of lips of mauve. In a small package, wrapped traditionally in brown parchment and twine, you arrived on my icy stoop one night. You are an eraser, pink and squeaky, leaving a trail on my pages as you negate any foresight I, the disillusioned speaker, pretend to have.
I know one consequence of my behavior that will certainly result, but I dare not write it, make it real, for fear of flippance. What is love? I know, being human, but I have never participated, going through each motion like the shadows on the lake...
The moon tosses energy towards crystalline clouds, suspended like muslin above miles of gravity. Expanding like my heart- I might implode from the gratuitous repetition. But such a smile, such metallic mirth. A warped ceiling tin, I bow and pop. I'm flimsy.
Moan and squawk you cannot, voice oozing like syrup, and magic, out of lips of mauve. In a small package, wrapped traditionally in brown parchment and twine, you arrived on my icy stoop one night. You are an eraser, pink and squeaky, leaving a trail on my pages as you negate any foresight I, the disillusioned speaker, pretend to have.
I know one consequence of my behavior that will certainly result, but I dare not write it, make it real, for fear of flippance. What is love? I know, being human, but I have never participated, going through each motion like the shadows on the lake...
The moon tosses energy towards crystalline clouds, suspended like muslin above miles of gravity. Expanding like my heart- I might implode from the gratuitous repetition. But such a smile, such metallic mirth. A warped ceiling tin, I bow and pop. I'm flimsy.
If I Could Take You With Me
"A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened." Camus.
We met, out of bounds
in a funny box that contained my life.
You sympathized and I shunned.
I spun circles across the confetti-strewn arena.
You were drunk and I was distracted
by your lesser counterpart.
In a place of business, I knew
you match me brick for brick.
You wooed and we both won.
How could we ever lose?
Every time I am forced to self-sustain,
I see how acutely
we delight in one another.
I have certainly depicted untruths,
images without prospect
and of a soul like a vacuum.
I have not done this deliberately.
What oozes from digits clacking on keyboards
is the byproduct of a life
lived fully and with risk involved.
A liability.
Little or no guarantee on precious capital.
You peel my petals like ribbons
and I grin, flailing yellow.
The instant in which I survive
alone
is an instant squandered,
for you actualize in me
pure joy like honey.
In life, fluid as water, time is all we've got.
Stunted Growth
Caress
me -
My heart is on the floor.
Sleeping infidelity is not a crime
I need not request acquittal
if the the act is not lucid.
I never say what I mean.
Lucidity, a quite strange concept
after our now complete twelve-hours journey.
Such strange words spoken without
transition and spliced like spare limbs
As curtains bleed, the gradient sky,
bright as day, is scarred
by cottonwood and fluorescence.
Your hands slowly played out
scale after natural scale.
I am far and away.
But only through a promise-
a terrifying yelp, can we be free.
In my spinning state, I read words
that light fire like flint.
Trying to cry, I gaze ahead
into prismatic faith.
Where does my insecurity reside?
If it lies within you
then I have yet to find it,
to find anything worth putting up with.
My integrity is fissured,
finely disintegrating,
beknownst only to me.
Even as my mouth objects,
my submerged desires surface
through seas of muffled cotton.
Had I the ability to merge realities,
sever ties, live in a world free
of obligation, possibility could solidify.
However, my heart is not
a sacrificial lamb for
the sake of my brain,
or at least it should not be.
In ten minutes, in steam and soap,
anxiety will be doused in a basic solution,
citrus and spice will fall away.
I can delve into the reasons
only when my filter is missing,
stolen by substances undefinable,
transferred from kiss to
kiss under a dark star.
Imprisoned.
In the stratosphere we hover
like forgotten dolls, with notions like
gauze in our porcelain heads.
You may choose to disengage,
but recall your frailty
in the womb and on the ground.
When presented with queries of the future,
all we have ever learned
shall fall gruesomely short.
me -
My heart is on the floor.
Sleeping infidelity is not a crime
I need not request acquittal
if the the act is not lucid.
I never say what I mean.
Lucidity, a quite strange concept
after our now complete twelve-hours journey.
Such strange words spoken without
transition and spliced like spare limbs
As curtains bleed, the gradient sky,
bright as day, is scarred
by cottonwood and fluorescence.
Your hands slowly played out
scale after natural scale.
I am far and away.
But only through a promise-
a terrifying yelp, can we be free.
In my spinning state, I read words
that light fire like flint.
Trying to cry, I gaze ahead
into prismatic faith.
Where does my insecurity reside?
If it lies within you
then I have yet to find it,
to find anything worth putting up with.
My integrity is fissured,
finely disintegrating,
beknownst only to me.
Even as my mouth objects,
my submerged desires surface
through seas of muffled cotton.
Had I the ability to merge realities,
sever ties, live in a world free
of obligation, possibility could solidify.
However, my heart is not
a sacrificial lamb for
the sake of my brain,
or at least it should not be.
In ten minutes, in steam and soap,
anxiety will be doused in a basic solution,
citrus and spice will fall away.
I can delve into the reasons
only when my filter is missing,
stolen by substances undefinable,
transferred from kiss to
kiss under a dark star.
Imprisoned.
In the stratosphere we hover
like forgotten dolls, with notions like
gauze in our porcelain heads.
You may choose to disengage,
but recall your frailty
in the womb and on the ground.
When presented with queries of the future,
all we have ever learned
shall fall gruesomely short.
Nectar From Tundra
Intuition stands loving and correct
And so it begins anew-
Moisture crackles my rusting hinges
Never have I dealt with such an induction
For each gram I wish a remedy.
In the midst of industrial velvet
Your dilated heart, a question to mortality
Striving to cradle brow in supple palm
Eyes, pores, teeth bulging
Heart evaporating, accelerating
Rising, wooden heel stomping toe
Through the dense, pasty fog.
This, being a battle of futility
Serves no master but Time
Bracelets rattle as we swing- limp.
Driven by reassurance, I muscle through
Achieving dedication by belief in optimism
Crucified on a bed of pine needles so long
My once-numb heart feels every stroking stab
Your hands sculpt and fall away
Spidery fingertips glancing golden
Feathers loft to safer places-
Heights protected by faith and sleet.
Heartless.
And so it begins anew-
Moisture crackles my rusting hinges
Never have I dealt with such an induction
For each gram I wish a remedy.
In the midst of industrial velvet
Your dilated heart, a question to mortality
Striving to cradle brow in supple palm
Eyes, pores, teeth bulging
Heart evaporating, accelerating
Rising, wooden heel stomping toe
Through the dense, pasty fog.
This, being a battle of futility
Serves no master but Time
Bracelets rattle as we swing- limp.
Driven by reassurance, I muscle through
Achieving dedication by belief in optimism
Crucified on a bed of pine needles so long
My once-numb heart feels every stroking stab
Your hands sculpt and fall away
Spidery fingertips glancing golden
Feathers loft to safer places-
Heights protected by faith and sleet.
Heartless.
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