Loss as lunch

Old slick slice of turkey
No bread
No mustard
You will nourish me
When you are gone
And I'll remember eating
Without you
You
When next I have bread
Even a dead dog
Can be missed fondly
Never: if only
Only: never again
It's  ruff
But we lose
Things
Each other included
And if we find ourselves
In the kitchen
We eat

ITEM: considering upping game on practice

On sparse occasion I acknowledge the intent of this blog, as enshrined in its subtitle

"writing practiced"

and lately after some lapse I've again practiced at writing with regularity

but I'm maybe up to pushing myself to practice structure. Which gives me fits and I loathe.

So maybe very very short essays at a 2nd grade level will appear here soon amidst the offal poems.

One more restless before bed

Trees not trees dark mountain cloud
Lumbering under grey
Sky not sky
Always demanding specificity
Surrounded by blur and glare
The sharpest thing
Is my mosquito bite
And it's always been the same mosquito
Foot my foot
Purple cracked
The story goes
Was one mosquito
Not my story
Nor my foot
Not my body
Then or now
But we repeat the same
I repeat until my history is biblical
The mosquito my snake
The first bite
Gave all knowledge
All these years
And every mosquito
Was one mosquito
Trying to tell me
The world is blood
And pain

I have stared and studied love

Squinted and marveled and made all my focus the little elements and large motions 

Of 

But in my memory

All eyes

All feet

All kisses

Burn one flame
Melt to one

Grotesque amorphous body barely seen

A waxing monster in the shadows 

Thighs

Where lips are looked for 

Or a laugh

When the back of the neck is sought 

No hair

Until hair is conjured

No hand to hold

But a hundred hands together

When hand is spoken

Despite my memory

I long for you

Ever surprising comfort

Refuge from the haunting

Of your shade

In some cell of my body
Death
Can I find it
Like a cool breeze in the desert
Faint harbinger of cold
But welcome in the heart
Of stifling day

Waiting for hope
Is not hoping
For love
Not loving
For life
Not living
To stand straight
Straighten
Always

Unobserved verginity take 2

The stars beyond our sight

Free of our binding

From a center point 

have spilled their light

Into galaxies 

We are hunting them

With names

Their light is green

As leaves in darkness

Or love in sleep

If they sing our names

Our memoriam

Before we are made

Or harmonize our names together

Lights to bind us

Though we, hunting,

Hide

memory is the kneading of an instant gone

I am eating an excellent plum
in the case between our kitchen and dining room
I was eating an excellent plum
I had washed
I was eating
the black purple skin
and dense fruit
and the pit is still in my mouth
I am worrying it
I was
eating a plum
after a nap
which made me feel ill
I had gone up
inspired by
vivid imaginings
of your
hot afternoon
dense flesh
and fallen asleep
in the hot
afternoon
I was
wet juice
excellent
plum
I ate so quickly
what seemed an experience
all meals
kissed
all moments
held
from is to was
are dense fruit
let go
full of joy
allowed to pass
and gone

I sat in the shade of an Oak
Wide and tall
from there observing a sea
Of differentiated greens
And browns
And bright where the sun reflected

I had studied before arriving
how to discern the shapes of leaves
And textures of bark
I had learned to know one tree from any other
by the differences

I thought I would know every tree from myself
No thought or want or muscular feeling
Would give me
Roots

What tree
would be
for me

The wind
blew

whispering all and nothing