all things bright

                                                                                                                                         


                                     The names of god       must not be erased    
                                          only words          
                                           to preserve    
                                                                    until they can be buried

          words are                       read                      like bones
                                                                        trees are bare in
             sacred                     when they                      fall
           


            all things                    must be read                  
        are of the earth                                                  
                                           paper once was              leaves                    
             sacred                        hard to find              
                                              will be again                 green
                                                                        
       and must be read                                              with care


         acknowledged                                        then the god
                                                                  that made all things

                                                         the                                tree
                                                                       and       book
                                                                             names
            all things                
                                                                   bright
                                                                               and
                                                                                        beautiful

            perfect
                                                                           

sacred objects

     The name of god                                          must not be erased
                                          is only a name          
                                            to preserve  
                                                                       until it can be buried

                               like bones
   books should be                      kissed              trees are bare in
                             sacred                     when they                       fall
                                                                                   

        Paper was once so hard to find                      will be again
                                                                                 green

                             
                                      All things are                             sacred
                                        of the earth
                                                                                 made   sacred  
                                     and must be read                      with care


                                         acknowledged                   then the god
                                       that made all things

              for                        the                               tree
                                                   and       book
                                        are                                      names

all things                                                         bright
                                                                                 and
                                                                                         beautiful

must be
                                                                                       perfect

Sirens

We've heard the sorrows
And the sufferings of men

who venture far in their wood boats
which break on little things like
rocks, and time, and promises

How beautiful they are!
Their bodies taut at oars;
on the rigging, nimble-footed
their eyes shining in the salt sun

How beautiful, with outstretched hands,
delicate-fingered, strong-grasping,
oh, beautiful,
even to us
they sing!

Good

to want
Or wait
Or wish
in the dark
To remember
Or expect
To cross the two
Want what was to will be
Wake wanting
Even when it was
Want to have wanted less
Or wanted what was
So the wish would be

F

Forensics

I'm here but how
muddy tracks
missing persons
insufficient evidence
Impressions on the bed don't match
The occupants
This life reads like a cover identity
But in too deep to call out
Maybe they'll pull me out
And I'll go home again

Edit: Aug 15 2012

I'll never read every
regret

Far away but
longing

 

names
for life until

nameless

From april 5, 2011

she'd arrive in the morning, and they'd walk to school.

they met years later in a gravel lot, and wanted something new, but couldn't ask.

cold without degrees

Can't I still play with your ball
or I'll eat mudpies
with your stupid sister
and kiss her
for spite

At the end of a day - as though those end -
it's gone, or 'behind us'
dragged by the horse of memory
and the stories come:
"lived well";
"productive";
"lesson learned";
but if not,
not.

spartan boy and fox (unfinished)

The spartan boy caught fox and hid it under clothes.
The fox, though warm, and held, and loved, and caught, brooked none of these, for he was spartan now
and so, true to his boy, clawed to freedom, tearing skin and guts.
they made the boy a hero, sung his song, for bravely bearing death
and made the fox a king, for bravely killing.
followed fox to hunts on rabbits
slept in dens
and let their fields grow high grass
abandoned words
and

Navigate a painted world (to edit)

Start where you end
You're scattered through it
Trees are planted in all strokes
rooted nowhere
Walking means remembering what the world will look like when you see that you've arrived.
tying your shoes forever
having them tied
sleeping behind the house in the foreground
wait for the paint to wear away
paint yourself in the window...
carry paint to all roads
sign with footprints
sneak a brush under a pillow
in case change sneaks in at night
repaint the city, paint a day
canvas takes new layers
paint runs out
or dry
then you're stuck as you were

Daphne in the storm (unfinished)

The wind shakes thrushes from her  bosom. branches break. the river god reclaims his daughter limb by limb. rain drops like tears.
the archer's hunting other maids.
He'll top their hair with laurel wreaths, forgetting where he found the leaves.
he'll kiss them, too, as though they've won some race, then fly off,  and their green crowns will turn gold, and brittle in the wind.
he'll pass tomorrow, sun in tow, not looking down to see what's warmed, what's missed, what's burnt to sand.

The ghost of a tree stands pale
in a pile of leaves, dark on the ground,
its children burying one another, body over skeletal body.
Passing cars illuminate the massacre in flashes like lightning.
Sometimes drivers check their rearview mirrors, sure they saw someone they knew, still young as in their memory.

---------
---------
Sirens,
Fragments:

and fish were kissing their bones
and they swayed like weeds.

to hear them sing
but

We've been below to kiss them
join them but

their lips were kissing fish, and silent.
And our voices bubbled in the sea

We've kissed those lips
the fish have kissed
We've whispered, our voices bubbling in the sea
"we remember"

 see the drowned,

to praise our voices, as they fall.
how beautiful
as they dash against the cliffs

the fish who clean their bones ignore our voices:
bubbles in the sea.

who comprehend death
how beautiful they are

the drowned who heard us last, who now hear nothing.

Sirens

We've heard the sorrows
And the sufferings of men:

who venture far in their wood boats
which break on little things like
rocks, and time, and promises,

How beautiful they are!
Their bodies taut at oars,
on the rigging, nimble-footed
their eyes shining in the salt sun

How beautiful, with outstretched hands,
delicate-fingered, strong-grasping,
oh, beautiful,
even to us
they sing!

Our sister, giggling, dove below
 to kiss them

but, she said, her voice was only bubbles
and she could not find them in the dark.

Outside your door
I'll drink the rain
Eat minutes
Pet passing strays
Take nourishment in waiting
Til you say again
"come in"

"Saratoga."
I've never been there.

anything will do.

would it be any less banal
to talk of love?
"the weather there is cold"
"my heart beats faster"...
should we march against injustice
should we touch together in the night
should we speak of hours passed with television
try embracing? fear regret?
the weather is so cold
and could we talk a while, together?
could we meet, a dalliance,
an hour, a family, life, a decade, two,
could we speak of weather, always,
could we dance, not knowing the steps,
to next door's music?
this longing's like a magazine,
something to read by the fire while  the days grow...
if it was more, I've forgotten.
Anything will do.

same and same and same
the light of long gone, reflecting from the walls:
I snuck from bed to read, when sleep was unwelcome
as now, same,
and the carpet was like grass of the meadow
now it is hard wood,
but at night, I hear my pulse, when my ear is on the pillow,
same as same,
and it rushes by, with birds in it,
so I wake again, the same
and see Orion, same as same as same the belt and arrow
same the cold air
same over michigan beach, same over philadelphia houses,
stars same over grass with a she, pointing the stars
same alone, remembering, one kiss,
another, same
all same
so many same things, small same things, grasping
in the dark, to remember them
each, the same, an Each, each star and she,
and i, struggling against sleep, in the same dark,
i, small, as then, the same,
i wondering, the questions too the same,
how so long can be still to come,
how a night can be a year, the same,
all, waiting,
waiting.

c-

c is also for clown
here comes a clown!
see him dance
he is dancing.
Is he in a circus?
no.
The clown is not in a circus.
he is not a circus clown.
Is he a sad clown?
no.
he is smiling! and dancing.
A happy clown.
where is the clown?
where is he dancing?
now he dances in the cemetery.
why does the clown dance?
why does he dance?
because he is alive.
There is no circus for the clown.
The circus is in the cemetery.
The elephant is in the cemetery.
The ringmaster is in the cemetery.
Look at the clown dance.
Now he is drinking.
Funny clown.

A menu

Sugared nostalgia
Fatted hope
filet of possibility, regret glacé
Aspic, lost love

it lives in memory, briefly,
between one want and another want
 voice and hearing
  the thought to step, and the feeling of stepping:
the silence
or near silence, or distance from sound

Then: whitman's song is behind you
the words garbled like muttered sex

or television through a door

a thrum in which the sounds of voice
are found and lost
and doubted

standing, in that stillness, listening,
 one can see the black water
and how still it is.
 Imagine the depth of it
and the coolness

fish, bright at the surface, snatching at bugs,
throw off the light,

 return to dark places

because there is no way under the face of the waters
but into the waters,

because the dreams one has had
are tied to other words
and those words are faint

We'll build a better world
We'll build it blind
Perfection in our milky eyes
Like god's own work.

D

Pregnant letter...
She kept all my children as secrets
for some other man to share
Like a joke half told:
"why does love, who"?
A joke half told...
leaving an unmade bed still dry.
Kissing goodbye.
eating pomegranates alone.

A fucking mess, to edit later

thrushes nest in laurel never crying "daphne", "daphne"
the wind shakes them off
branches breaking in the storm
River god reclaiming leaves
her sun drenched
tear soaked skin
Thrushed fly to new shelters
Gods forget, move on, chase other maids
wreathe them like olympians with leaves
As though they've won
fly with the winds
And leave them with their prizes turning gold
Like brittle coins
faerie treasure
Crumbling in the wind,
withered economics of caprice
beauty without memory
The sighing dream, wet dried by morning
Why shouldn't they cheat, who've never regretted becoming a tree
Why shouldn't we let them
Who've never regretted envying
The stupid thrush, the careless fae,
The river...
Let them sell us charms of change
Or autumn gold or potions of youth
If we'll buy them with our last white cow

C

Until I hold you
And smile, because I no longer
Wander like ulysses, I
Will think of leaving my boat:
sinking down until
The songs of the siryns are lost
To the embrace of heavy waters
And the eyes of the deep,
Which are many and one
which shed and drink the water
Which are glimmers in the darkness,
Drink my memory.
In the tide of far shores
As you travel like erikkson
You may glimpse my bones like dolphins
skipping close to shore
to guide you home.

The velocity of apple skin

Past the point of no return:
Where reflected light forms a blinding ring on the curved slope -
Flecks of white on the skin elongate,
thin, speed toward the blossomed wound.
No escape. Time's stopped...
They'll approach until their universe decays.
Theories differ there, on how:
A slow dissolution into component sugars, or a sudden end - the big crunch -
there are hidden layers of this cosmos,
Underneath... The fleshy star. The galaxy of seed. The core, whose gravity is subtle, too much so to hold even itself against the grasping forces of the soil.

B's a house, to live in,
 but below, above, the capital's got
two (b)
       stories, each apartment keeping all the secrets of its many guests,
who've come and gone with children and with languages,
and above, the roof, on hot nights, saw shared love: neighbors in humidity
while the steam rose to tenement clouds for the seraphim.

A is for academy
where time's compressed
and pickled
canned
if necessary sulfured
but between class hours
teachers dress as cats
and all the rank of students line together,
climb the wall (past a little stand of flowering bramble)
and together watch the girls pass by
from bus to where they go

I've found a page, stuck between one and the next
I can't quite decipher the text
but I think it's my death, as written maybe by Garcia Lorca
perhaps he saw me in a dream, or wrote me there
but if I peel the page I fear
like Alice waking the king
I'll dissolve into the word and float away

Bad ritual

The microphone feeds hissing speakers.

Every other word of song is missed.

a man on stage smiles often: who is he?

The sikh man introduced: maharishi.

Leads but does not explain ramasada chant (earth, moon, universe, I am thou)

A gospel song.

A hebrew song. 

A bell.

Some raise their arms. Some lower their heads.

"what are those"? (hanging bronze censers)

"please turn to the person next to you"

giggles.

All present try.

Photographers move with purpose.

The seated crowd try.

The leaders try.

The speakers turned off.

What should we do?

Knowing why but not what.

Not knowing but wanting.

The sacred space but wondering

Whispers.

Music.

All gathered for a purpose.

One body.

Many minds.

A drive-through funeral

We are going to the funeral. For kim.
A cousin, I'm told.
Lutheran, according to the obituary.
Lutheran funerals do not expect non-christians to participate. According to an article.
And going to the funeral, in a car with a father and a brother and the oil in the car will all be gone soon, according to my father.
Casinos are depressing, according to my brother.
Capitalism is ending, according to my father.
We're 20 minutes from the funeral home, according to Megan, who drives the car, who lives with brother, and even in Bethlehem PA
SIGNS blight the neighborhood poles, WE BUY HOUSES
and if we are going to the cemetery,
back please the car into the parking lot
We the family, who do not remember her, who have slouched to Bethlehem through rain, who will shake hands with  mourning strangers, who will think of other dead, who will dread the next, who will remember, who will not remember, who will shovel dirt, who will lay flowers, who will fuck desperate in the coming hours, who will praise jesus, who will mock jesus, who will "stay in touch", who will drink at the reception, who will plan the coming days, who will disperse, who will live eternal in the promise of another promise, who will feel in sleep the brush to their hand of marble crematoria, or of wet faux-wood umbrella handle, or of tear on cheek, or of mother's old hand, and the night will come, and the day, and phone calls, and traffic, and rain through the window of departing car and rain over the desert and rain over all the graves.
We are riding to philadelphia.

and she asked me, with her red hair, after I'd understood her story was about herself
(an easy guess, though she seemed so surprised)
"why it had to be about sex"or something to that effect.
and I answered "why not"? or something to that effect.

in another apartment, later, I was gifted caramels, and slept alone on a sofa
but the caramels were lost, somewhere

and I haven't seen any of them
in years now.

in the plane
I couldn't sit for long.
I'd carry books, and the journal that was meant to hold my travels
the words of the trip were meant to come on the plane rides,
but I could never sit.
The seatbelt light would end and I'd be up.
sometimes only in my seat, but standing, just enough to feel standing,
or in the aisle by the crew - who never minded conversation
I'd do taiji by the bathroom door
I'd only sit to sleep, and so, the writing went undone.

Under bathwater
rushing pulse
heartbeat
ringing like a wineglass
the singing of cilial cells

I enter bath because:
I can not relax

I exit bath because:
I can not relax

the foundation
"always because"

always consequence

here I am
because:

all the choices
were not choices
depends on the reader, hey

but like gravity
I have fallen

and think
"now I am still"

but where was I then?

in bed, smaller, so much smaller,
though I never felt like growing
now I feel no fall

then I heard my heart beat
pulse
in my ears
and could not sleep
for the noise
and fear of stopping

do we hear, can we will
we hear our own silence?

 enough to name it?

  that ringing in the ears
 
   like the crickets sing

   winter
 winter
winter

love!

I'll never read all the
regret

Far away and no
longing

Tired of but where is
ennui

disa

names
for all the

life, until

nameless

"end"

no more maybe

as in a dream:
some words are bigger than others
but no matter
        more
no more matter
end
 denial barga some other stuff
and then
shh
accept
she's gone
my soul
it'll be a long wait
why write
 when it's empty
words
worlds
some are bigger
but
it'll be a long wait
but
it'll happen

And then i

Scanned the roofs for snipers,
As though I knew how. Old reflex kicking in: 7th and race in view of the race st buildings. None on roofs. None in windows. Maybe. Behind the tint, who knows? And the trees: the tiny snipers hiding behind leaves, and branches, distributed fibonacci-wise as nature taught them...
Why was I searching? Wanting the shot, or dreading it? As voices rose and fell, one poet or another reading, speaking, laughing, waiting, voices in the grass taking their pot-shots, papers falling like magazines, words rapport in the chambers, speed of sound...
I rose and fell, left the side of my companion She, found the side of it my father, once my father, now my father, him in this crowd known and hugged and heard by hundreds, half-wholly, him half-holy... I could claim his shoulder without asking. Did so. Stayed. Observed a circle drawn in sitting bodies, empty hanging from ears, or full eating under ears, or dying, one too many words in the chest...
I scanned the roofs, the leafs, I named the bodies, "c.a." "f.s" "She" "father" "absent she" "r.m", "eating man", "asshole", "beauty", one whose toothy smile would blind an aiming bird in its nest... And waited for the echo to write itself?

6/20/12
the dogs you remember are gone
under/over
one trick or another took them to ground
and out the window now
where they ran
children
impossibly young
without being yours
nor progeny nor kin nor self
what then?
you inside waiting
for them to call you out
here boy
down the winding road
to the sea

--
8/6/12
The dogs you remember are gone
One trick or another took them under
to ground, and now,
out the window where you watched them run
are children
impossibly young!
not yours,
if progeny or kin,
never yours - not self,
what then?
you, inside, waiting for them
to call you out:
"here, boy!"
 to play
 or run
 down the winding road
  to the sea

fingers bitter
like the pith of orange
earlier today I crushed poison ivy
to find out what would happen

once I chased nieghbor children with the stuff in hand,
it did nothing to me but turn me bitter
oily poison
so I laughed as they ran
like the stuff passed my skin to my heart
and made me
sting

now
the bitter like strychnine
what have I touched?
rummaging through old shelves
finding boxes thought lost
maybe hidden
did she know they were
and hide them
of malice
poison ivy
 or forget
like the poisoned pregger
too full to recall

6/10/12

No I
not am
dying and
these words
are always hers
longing ex
tolling
idolatry
as without
her these words
and cells
send the signal
blood flow
winter
does not sum
the whole of
silence
to come

The Golden Ticket

In late 2009 I took advantage of a unique opportunity, an at the time unprecedented offer by JetBlue airlines: travel, for one month, on any JetBlue plane, from any airport JetBlue serviced, to any airport JetBlue serviced, for the cost of a single $600 ticket.  I jumped at the chance for adventure, and for one month, with no driver's license, little prior knowledge of my destinations, and only the luggage I could carry in a black canvas backpack, I set out to explore thirteen US cities.
Charlotte, NC, my third destination, was a personal challenge: how would I fare in a place about which I knew nothing, not even apocrypha?  I'd never heard, or read, so much as two sentences about Charlotte.  But this journey was about discovery, and so, late on the night of my 30th birthday, I boarded a flight from San Francisco to Charlotte.   Arriving in Charlotte early in the AM, I bused to a nearby Motel (I couldn't find a hostel) and caught some shut-eye.  Early in the morning I bused to the nearby business district and began exploring.  After a few hours I began to feel discouraged - I'd footed to every corner of the downtown grid, and found little to do.  More worrying, there seemed to be little beyond the business streets.  Convinced no city could be this dull, I questioned the locals.  A few mentioned "NoDa", Charlotte's arts district, as worth a visit. I'd found my grail, now I had to claim it.

not a poem

The kid turned his head to the right, and caught an eyeful of his own eternal glory in this moment - his image, reflected in a glass display window of some sporting store. His reflection matched almost a the mannequin behind the glass: a sleek alabaster plasticene model, arm at 90 degrees in perfect running form, torso pitched forward in the midfall of a stride. The model's clothes were pastels, robin's egg and one of two hundred shades of pink, and impossibly clean. The kid wore a grey hoodie, scuffed at the elbows, dark green with greying black tentacles printed all over. His face was almost as smooth and sharp as the mannequin, but his eyes had not just life but glee. He grinned and saluted the mannequin, stolen pipe still in hand, then his left foot pounded pavement and he was past it.

He tossed his prize from right to left hand, and glanced over his shoulder. His newest victim, a portly man in a checkered jacket and newsboy cap, had quit the chase after only a few steps, and now stood impotent, square, amid the mid-day pedestrian flow.

Mischief in full flow, the kid hopped out of his run, turning to face the poor son of a bitch who'd had the misfortune to stand too close to an impulsive moment. He grinned and brought the pipe, still lit, to his lips, and blew as hard as he could, spraying sparks and red tobacco into the air.

Open, closed

How joyful
And how shaming
to encounter you
How funny
Shying in your sight
And dancing naked
Wanting to be seen and see
how foolish
to peer hands cupped over your eyes
Kissing a circus mirror
our two distorted faces
Wondering

Anger

Under  city hall philadelphia
From 15 to 13 hearing old man penn
Stomping to be heard over the  indifferent roar of
Train
Council
Pacing police
and the men whose hands he shook
Are exiled to casinos and midwestern enclaves shouting unheard proclamations :
"independence" "betrayal" "renewal"
As in greece a retired worker pulls the trigger in the town square "dignity"
He says he is preserving
And he falls with the prediction of public hangings
Meanwhile signs from 13th street shout "buy"
"clothing""buy"
"freedom" "buy"
"pizza" "buy"
"companions" "buy"
Andeven vanity metal signs say
"cynical frustration" "buy"
So if you shout "fuck you"
They'll sell you back the echo as the train rolls past and Willie Penn points wrongways with his exposed scroll toward northeast philadelphia and the waters waiting to rise

an injury

I have discovered I am trailing blood

and walk to the garden to water what I find.

Healing, perhaps, is a hopeful dream.

Those injuries one finds -one may lick, and sorrow over

but as in the parable of the wagon,

the blood is not the injury,

nor the exposed muscle the injury

nor the uninjured skin at edge the injury

and often I imagine the cause

but the imagining is not the injury

and the flowers can not drink my memory

even if I pour it over them in words or tears

the scab is not the injury

nor any pain the injury

nor the dull pleasure of the suffering, the injury.

still, the planted rows, and the unplanted weeds, and the creeping grasses

drink what blood they can

and grow if they are wont to grow.

When daphne cried

she cried as veins that branched like fibonacci's dreams pale blue and downy hair like faint calligraphy found alchemy to bark and bud each sinew rising from a central bone a small ballet of spoking twigs

her eyes beholding it

so wide

her mouth an O

as she first drank the sun

observations, possibilities

the trash bags

The many electric lights

and sockets

The stairs

or the window above them

a bottle of cleaner

scissors

pens

glass shelving panes

the little brown ibuprofen

that rattle in a large bottle

so like rain

the passing cars

and trolley

song like faroff thing

a love song

like a mountain

seen at distance

from the road

lyrics murky in morning mist

rising with the tune

under the beat

of your steps

but you can't see it all

until you run

your first real one

to sing

the song is rising

and it's closer

as you walk there

knowing, now

it's yours

to give

and on that hill

you're looking down

and you can see it's

bigger but it's

meant for you

to understand it

then the road is past

you've run too fast

and

in the distance

looking back

it's oddly small

and slightly stupid

in the way it leans

there's a love song

by your shoulder

if you bother

looking over

but it

tends to hurt

your eyes

the way it gleams

Oh daphne,

daphne cried

and veins that branched pale blueneath olive skin like fibonacci's dreams

and downy hair above like faint calligraphy

all turnied crisp to bark and bud

each sinew rising from a central bone

a small ballet of spoking twigs

her eyes beholding it

so wide

her mouth an O

as she first drank the sun

The promises
When she says no
The tales you learned
When she says no
The songs you sang
Don't matter
And the faithful dog
Snot there
In wandering
she won't be
The white deer
When you find her
the moon
You can't reach
won't be her wish

a line or two

---

most dickish when you don't know it

sometimes

---

---

song like a faroff thing

---

There's a love song

like a tower

in the distance

on the road

lyrics murky

tune keeps rising

under the beat

of your steps

but you can't see it all

until you run

your first real one

to sing

the song is rising

and it's closer

as you walk there

knowing, now

it's yours

to give

and on that hill

you're looking down

and you can see it's

meant for you

you understand it

in the distance

looking back

it's oddly small now

little tower

slightly stupid

in the way it leans

there's a love song

by your shoulder

if you bother

looking over

but it

tends to hurt

your eyes

the way it gleams

---

---

--

Observations

--

The trash bags

The many electric lights

and sockets

The stairs

or the window above them

a bottle of cleaner

a scissors

pens

glass shelving panes

the little brown ibuprofen

that rattle in a large bottle

like rain

the passing cars

and trolley

if you should look for me
Try visiting the little house we built
of sex and photographs
Before we learned to build with stone
And lost one another in the long
Meandering halls

I may be
Toiling in the garden
pausing on occasion to lean
Sweating on the shovel handle
And count the clouds reflected
In the window where
Our Bedroom
never so much as
became.

Reading Ferlinghetti at cantina los caballitos

Reading ferlinghetti by candlelight
Diffused through a bad old fashioned
In the wrong glass
And I can't find the poem
I'm looking for
He's mad
And talks
                With eager energy
Of the world washing away
And the noise of the bar room
Mimics his universal roar
And outside
Starts to rain

II

An afterword:
Turns out - misheard my order.
"old fashioned" became "manhattan"
as in the poem the island becomes
Again
Manahattan
And indians
Take to their canoes

When we loved

I remember in particular your orgasm,
that one I found when I lived with my head in that pretty house between your legs,
with the magnificent long view over the one point perspective up your thighs, so near where your hips were raised up high pointed peaked like waves at the edge of your belly, receding to the distance of  your hand on breast, not clutching but confirming, and the soft of your face, as I relive it, shining large and crisply out of reach as moonset, and the sound of you especially I recall, oh try to recall, can never enough recall: cascading "ohs" not screamed but declared "oh, oh," with plaintive surprise. 
And the moment remembered again, from above, from orbit with you as the whole curving earth,
and the same, again, unfinite, rosary moments, "oh", from beside you: face galaxy large against my own, body twinning mine, two stars. and looping mantra moment, "oh", a mudra of that memory, "oh" bead by bead of "oh" so that it was all times, in all beds, all hours, our years of extending my hand toward your rising setting face as "oh" the pull away and twitch and still, still, even now, there was nothing before it, or after, but my small fingers reaching out to catch the moon.

at the diner

At the diner -

she clutches her spoon like a weapon and her mug like a shield

break the skin of my coffee with a sugar cube  - the crystals soften, darken kiss farewell my fingers

I hear a hundred ‘how is everythings’

Water glassed filled after every sip - if these waiters stood above the sahara it would blossom

someone in the corner is reading a novel over her eggs

and she is the fifth person today to remind me of the same old friend.

I remember a sunny field of grass where as a child I stepped on a wasp

perhaps the sun shone then as now, or perhaps there was then the same cloying smell of white flowers as the trees stickied the spring air

last munch of eggs

outside these doors the world will gnaw my underbelly

I will stay a little longer with my scraps of toast.

Wicked witch

Off camera Margaret exposed her body, green and beautiful, and smiled toothy mischief.

Less coy than certain she extended

Cool under the backstage light

The name of a 90s band.

It grew blossom to ball, seeds gorged in fruit. Picked, carried, set out to pass and perhap praise.  Someone, somewhere, seeing, set passivity aside - maybe thinking of the homeless, or the holocaust: they couldn't idle by. The pumpkin now named, weight in hand, held, measured, tasted, smelled, explored to flat chunks. The shallow rounds of rind rubbed raw on road.  Which - all a part of plant plan - god of seed to seed, who maketh the apple blossom sweet, who maketh the squash some fun to smash, who this and that, renewal through temptation. We smash and suck the plumpest fruit. The 4H is the plants displaying us. The chimpanzee that learned to feed the chimpantree.

Creative writers strike!

Free pickled eggs in bars. Quieter bars. Living wages and benefits for writers. unionize! Strike! No writing til demands are met!

An old one hammered at

That bitter surprise:
that the faces coloring the bar twin others
one moved to another city
another served your father in his hospital bed
or stopped your calls
or lay with you

naked and

promising


all



vanished in magician's smoke
to be forgotten
remembered
doubted
glimpsed
in the strangers whose
hair
jaw
voice

until
your grail becomes
the curve of knee
the tilt of neck
the rarity
the new you can not quick.

and then the shade
who smiling
whispers

this one's gonna need some editing

tears, born of stars by way of ocean
therein born the first that lived
but these were born of those -
that swam together
their school a knowing thing
that walked
and talked
and shed the salt that bore it once
ouroboros
finally knowing
it could not swallow
without being swallowed
the rock shaking
in the roots
of the first tree
and still - again - those tears
a silent ragnarok
the ravens flown
the one eye
blind
in its own salt
like oedipus
last seeing
the body
under the fallen robe
and broach in hand...

let's keep writing?

and words and words.

There's something in 'stream' that feels like the start of something bigger. Wanting expansion and maybe refinement.



Trouble there, when revisiting and WORKING on a piece rather than writing it and then running away, I get the chance for the self-critical voice to get heard and I panic.



But I'll keep at it?

-

That morning he said
"no sun today"
and waited
hoping he'd be right
and terrified

Here is a joke

A man with a very tall hat
Walks in to a bar ?
God's under his hat you see.

The stream down to the river

There's no contentment without fear when life so wants, our cells and mito (so we're told for who has seen them speak) explode themselves to make anew and be have been, be post-content and breathing heaviest when least content and fearing death or wanting it one lap in another piston slick hips like frames for the painting of eden, and around these words a frame of light or dark or plastic, or framing all words the rests and measures, music made from noise with waiting, and in that waiting, without wanting, breath held, listening for what note next, sounding the sigh of it coming, like light through air, the first sun of morning blessed for rising, from river or hades or tomb, for they tell us, singing, rising comes, but we in dark under the too dim lights look west where we went down and east again and the dark a rest and in every pulse of blood a rest and before each next we know our dis content until we are and end.

---

A disparity crawls between a desire for happiness and the discontent of having it - or between the happiness of seeking and the disappointment of finding.
Things we know for seeing or know for being told or know for expectation of a repetition, and the doubt we keep of our knowing, however it comes, so that the coming of a sunrise brings relief, surprise, and maybe regret at the loss of another desire. Again that discontent. The wish for endless night, for the sun to stay up or stay down just for change, or for the satisfaction of our fantasy seen in the world, for why should our dreams receive less truth from the world than the old dreams of others, god or man?
And the old stories there, where the sun goes down, where the spring sleeps, the coming morning and the chariot aflame and the pomegranate wife, the old monster death coupling to she, wheat daughter young and pretty, and that coupling the bitter winter long, undeserving old to young or death of life or selfish trickster to her grain bounty salted with the sea, and even in the undeserving, our undeserving, one of another, but our clinging anyway, one to another, because the joy is there, even without deserpt.
And all those stories then, are ours, to tell and to feature in, and to save ourselves, and to carry the sun, and sweating, as we will or have or wish, one in another, limbs akimbo, to tell ourselves the story how we came to be there, how we'll part, or where in the other we might reside, as spring or as winter, as knowing or doubt, as content or desire, or, forgetting all stories, die, and find that other part of our music, the silent rest, between.

---

Persephone,
above to below,
Spring her dress' train
returns

and asks the farmers
grateful busy planting
for tales of snow
which while she
coupled underground with
him
she could hear falling
above, and could smell
for so much smelled of snow there
but never saw
or felt
and when she rose
it melted

won't they make for her
a dress of snow?

---



That morning he said
"no sun today"
and waited
hoping he'd be right
and terrified

heroin

Tom Waits wasn't playing yet.
No music.
Voices, though: from many bodies, laughing, playing games.
And she through the door did not belong: too wan, too wide-eyed needing now.
Selling before she asked to sell.
And was it smell, or face, or carry of body? That made them, every one of many, look away, intent not to see her?
So that she wandered in the crowd alone,
and left alone,
cash in hand Callabash,
The lights on Lancaster dimming over her
and the rain
under her feet falling
because she knew
how to find it

Some nonsense

Been a while since last post. But last year did bring much more writing on this blog than both the previous years combined. We'll see what this year brings.

To start - some kerfuffle. I enjoy this sort of nonsense building, but it takes a lot out of me producing it - the research alone! Really!

‎"...though atypically restrained for a work of this period in Rosetti's life, "Sesso Signoro con Orso" exemplifies Dante's obsessive longing for a more direct eroticism he had yet to comfortably embrace in his later work. The lady, likely Wilding again - though here more ephemeral than in her earlier appearances, appears in the popular motif of the period: donning a full body lace glove, posed in an ivory chair, bear cub on lap, gnawing sloppily on a fish - but where for others of the period the bear might only serve as prop, here Rosetti places much on the creature - the bear, large-eyed but bristling in the lady's lap, shows us the unbridled power of nature contained and captive to the civilizing power of woman, but awake and eager to bite. That the bear resembles a wombat may be chalked to Rosetti's peculiar picadillos - if one of his pets served as model, it would help scholars to settle some controversy on the painting's date."
"The lady gazes toward a grove of Ash, inaccessible, mysterious, guarded by that enduring icon of paintings of this period, the St Bernard, whiskey barrel at neck... its eyes here a captivating mix of fierce danger and alluring mystique - the St Bernard here could be Uriel before Eden - a familiar but foreboding guarian to the faerie world - an imagined otherworld for which our gloved maiden longs, but knows she can not visit without forever being lost, and unbeared."

"Although fossil records indicate early attempts to domesticate smaller bear species such as Ursus americanus in North America, it is likely climate change and a lack of stable agricultural civilization prevented those efforts from taking hold. Though amusing to imagine a 'lap bear' as a modern alternate to the pet dog, it is unlikely given modern attitudes towards animal treatment that such a pet will ever now come to be"