Those Blues Again

I've got the singing dreams again
can't break loose of the tune
mmm I wake up humming
I got the three note blues again

If lady love has a home
I ain't been by to visit
If she's got a love of her own
I ain't shook his hand
If she's got her own baby doll
I aint been the one to hold it
but when she hums I sing along.

I've got the dancing aches again
can't break loose of the beat
Mmm my feet keep on tapping
I got the two step blues again

If lady love has her roses
I ain't seen them grow
If she's got her own supposes
I'm not the one to know
If she's got her grand parties
I aint been invited to go
but when she hums I dance along.

I've got the hurting heart again
can't break loose of this game
mmm I wake up praying
I got the lone heart blues again.

Confessions

You know me
always looking for the perfect
metaphor.
I would have said analogy
but when the lines line up
too neatly I get small frissions
on my teeth and feel as though
some frame of truth has fit itself
around my mouth
instead of the other way around.
Analogy is still better.
I want you to become
something that I understand.
Some thing. Of course, that's
the key.
Or in this case the answer.
There is no lock and therefore no key
to turn in such fictions as relationships.
The best I can stretch for is a guess,
a conceptual leap, intuition.
In tuition. The process of teaching.
 In two it shuns
the idea of self and selves.
either one or the other. Not both.
You learn and I teach, or the other
and we are same and unchanged
and transformed.
The words are what I pay with,
pray for, play in when it comes to this
us.
Definition and description.
I want you to become like this thing,
or more directly- this thing.

Things after all,
can be owned.

Spacetime Breakdown

Spacetime treats you differently
than the usual garden variety
in which things are planted, birthed, flourish and die
in a more or less methodical manner.
Spacetime sprawls
it bounces and stretches and snarls
itself with bright white spikes
of what could be daylight
or large sharp teeth.
Somehow you have attracted it
with your staccato sentences and
lanky legato limbs. It has swept
you up and away and into
a vortex of varied places.
You emerge occasionally
dropping vintage phrases and
spilling these sci-fi dreams that I
simply cannot understand. Spacetime
stretches and shrinks you
too grand to hold
and too tiny to fear and too you
to bear to lose. But there you are
with your shrugging shoulders
asking, no telling me,
that you need them both, together,
you need space and time
and I nod
and let you go.

The Leave Taking

Rain brings the Fey

The Fey tell the fate 

of those who know wand and wood

who would and want

Who bend bone and mend manners

in such a way as to stay.

Let the limbs grow straight

but stay ready to sway

and the need to believe

be greater than that to retreat

into that great non-thing reality.

Bring the babe to the woods

in the rain, the quiet rain.

Let the wind bring the fey

and listen them to them say.

This is the way, the way, the way,

that the story grows

This is the way, the way, the way,

that the tales go

A kiss on the cheek for me my love

A kiss on the lips for me

A kiss on the air for you my love

A kiss to remember my love.

The rain is coming

The wind blowing

The fey are dancing, love,

and it's the end of the day.

You say the times are changing, dear,

the weather is just a thing

But I say I am a changeling, dear,

and it is a gathering 

for goodbye, for good ways,

and for the Good Folk. 

So kiss the baby darling,

Hold her in your hands,

Tell her the stories, 

Tell me you understand. 

The Fey tell the fate

and they say that I am late

So in the rain I'll stand and stay

Love, it's time you were away. 

The rain brings the Fey.

Punctuation

The insatiable seeping of self

is the issue

a word which means both product,

and problem

a variance that smells like

both life and death, or perhaps

salt and iron.

At the very least it is a tension

the incapability of retaining

the sort of thing which ought to be restrained:

words, emotions, vital fluids.

On the other side of tension

is a laxity which begins with sleep

and grows into weakness

to both not move, and not desire to,

a slow-breathing passivity.

At the most, there is pain

both in loss, and in the failure

to prevent loss,

which is a different sort of ache

built on possibility and bruised somewhat

by statement.

The issue is, out loud, unstated

being in itself, a state

and therefore determined by such

boundaries as may be drawn

invisibly

across hills, or plains, or time

demarcating such things as beginnings

centers, and ends.

It begins with a hint of this

coming or building or swelling

and ends with an epilogue

a promise of sequel and series.

It is, internally,

and by necessity also externally,

a test of selfhood, an establishment,

of the empty self by emptying

or the invaded self

by remaining unbreached.

Both a signal and a symptom

of singularity,

and if not, of secondarily

another nature, of another sort

of another self.  

For the X in Sam's phone

A compass always points north
magnetic drag on the tiny arrow
and it's all up with freedom
There's only one way to go.
That seems to be how it works
with you too.
Up your arrow goes
and like a hound enslaved
to his sniffing nose
you are off
to wag your tail
around another painted hydrant.
Red is such a trashy colour.
Maybe that's your magnetism
working away.
Cheap tin, and plastic,
good enough to fool you.
So here's to gold, and here's to north
and to good riddance.
Follow your nose wherever it goes
I don't have to put up with your
shhh....

Snowfall

The earth is frozen

the crops die

the people starve.

It is the first winter.

There is no history for this

no warning of foliage change

no gradual autumn.

This is grief, sudden and vicious.

This is rage, indescribable.

Who has stolen the treasure,

has breached the sacred stronghold?

What is the daughter

but the mother's own form

made again to be shaped into

her own image?

Who then has stolen her self?

Demeter rages for justice.

The earth is emptied.

The womb is bereft

The cradle abandoned

each of these losses

Demeter has borne

for the filling of another space,

the orchard of her lilting laugh

the little rivers overflowed with her songs.

This theft bears no new fruit.

The seed is fallen deep into the earth

and has not bloomed again.

No salve for the soul

that has been stretched into two skins

that has been severed

into two selves.

Demeter is at once alone

and lonely.

The people starve

The crops die

The earth is frozen.

Six red seeds fall like blood,

are planted in the daughter's womb.

Death grows in her bones.

The self will not return.

A separate soul arrives from Hell.

Winter is born.

Future

You exist

in early mornings

when I am too awake

to fall back into dreaming

a weight behind my eyes

an anxiety in my bones.

I cannot sit still

I cannot go back to sleep.

besafebesafebesafe
I would build an iron box around you
a place lined with lead
with strong locks through thick latches

and then sink you into the sea.

The night is young and hungry
I am starved for sleep.
We prowl together
slouching, careless.
The hunt is short
the game up.

So is the sun.

You exist in early mornings
teeth and claws and kissing
the back of my ears.
You gnaw over numbness
and scar the skin.
You are more hungry
than the night. More starved
than me. More scared.

I cannot make you safe.

I am sorry. 

Invocation

Call out the young men
summon the strong guards.
Strip them of their duties
Relieve them of their post.
They will shout in protest
This is their land, and the land of their fathers
their fathers before them,
and their father's fathers.
Back it goes but before fathers there was the earth
loved, not lusted for, growing, not groaning.

Gather up the weapons.
They reek of rust
and old blood.
The bite of blunt blade is shallow
but poison
to eat all the living flesh.
Burn the reddened blade
the shamed branches that grew green
and have soaked up death
instead of cool waters.

Take the bitter ashes
and dig a deep hole
a pit not a grave
a mouth of broken teeth.
Pour the grey muck, the dust, the filth
like an offering
and pray that it is swallowed
not spewed hatefully as it spread
by man's hand
in young men's blood.

Let the hand that swung the sword
be given seed to sow.
Let the archer loose his bow
and bend toward the earth.
Commanders of young men retire, rest.
Take up the plow, drive only the ox
Young men, build homes
not barricades
and march in cadence
for the summer dances and harvest games.

The earth was young
and is now old.
Care gently for the seasons
and the turning tides
Treasure them up in your heart
and store them away like grain
to ripen and enrich your dreams.
Young men become fathers
who love the land
who cause it to grow.

Shalom

May peace which comes

in the middle of the night

with a thundering at the door,

with a phone call from a number

you don't recognized anymore,

with a coldness over the edge of your skin

with a house with all its lights on

or a room completely dark

May it come to you

like lightning in a drought

a cough from a child

a shaking head with no answer

a car missing from the driveway.

May the peace that passes understanding

reach you and take hold.

May it grant sleep and silence

a path with a light

grace and comfort.

Temptress.

Hunger is a thing

next to starvation

that sits the way the dog

paces alongside a coyote

scrawny and sharp

the sand coated shadow

that rises at evening and strikes

hollow howl in the dark.

The tracks are the same

broad padded marks

across the desert.

Once it's gone who can say

one was not the other.

The sweep of the tail

says little but the teeth

and the wail against the whimper

explain the fear of the night.

The dog will sit and be satiated

some stolen treat satisfies.

The sullen coyote skulks

skin stretched over skull

and starvation raging inside

his shaking bones.

To look at you

is to hunger.

To love

is to starve.

Not Just Dessert: Pheonix 2012

It is important to note

I did not know he was sick.

He did not tell me.

There was no polite cough or

suggestion of weakness.

He ate well and

we argued over the check

and threatened

to explode

or at least to burst

a button or two.

I told him

that if he went first

I wouldn't bother cleaning up after

and he said that I'd

better up the tip then.

We laughed about

a service charge

for such an event.

Enough laughter

to leave

you breathless

purple faced and

collapsed.

She Is Not A Tourist Attraction.

The exchange rate is up

and shopping is the cheapest

form of therapy these days

although drinking local beer

is a close second.

The leather purse is nice

one of the best knock-offs I've seen

in at least a week- from Itally

it's marked and I wonder if my mother

would notice the typo error.

Probably not.

Four thousand baht the shopkeep insists.

I would do the math

but it's not worth the time.

Perhaps instead a jade ring

or another one of those

kitschy elephants that acts as massager

and centerpiece at the same time.

Too bad teak is endangered.

It would look bad if someone noticed

I brought that sort of thing

home.

A massage though, would be nice

the kind you can get here

without the back alleys, or questions.

Language barriers make it all

much easier when it comes to questions.

Just "how much" and "how young".

Easier than most souvenirs

and of course, no need to take up room

in the suitcase back.

That one over there, and do you take Visa?

Just cash? Mai ben rai.

Thirty baht for thirty minutes

and then I'll go tour the temple downtown.

Thailand is just full of attractions.

notes on grief

the ivy on my house

is trying to get into the window

small hands

creeping around the glass

and throwing themselves into the crack

the valiant soldiers that fall

in the trenches

and the wet wax flows

quick down the pane

clear blood streaking the glass

they told me it was only raining

I walk hand and hand

With my sea monster

Liquid and cold

She wraps herself around my arm

And sometimes I find I stumble

In this shifting sand

Slipping on these slivers

Silver glass amidst the grey

And in falling I find

That she

My sea monster

Is no longer at my side

She’s slipped through the slits in my skin

And is stripping her way

Through my veins

Burning with her salt granules

That trace new wounds

In spirals around my soul

And suddenly I’m a seatossed flotsam

A figurehead

To a sunken ship

My sea monster stands beside me again

Wearing a familar face

For every swing of the clock

Pendulum pendulum

Drop again

Slice me in pieces

Once twice thrice

And then she’s gone again

Here I am

Panting and broken

A mermaid with legs

A womanly soul

On this wide expanse of sand

And I am alone

I am peeling off your handholds

With each breath

I find each exhalation

Is a little play of death

Sidewalk chalk

To Sistine grace

But a portion nonetheless

The sand in our sheets

That calls to the sea

And still it slides past the glass

In solemn lines of tan

A military funeral

Through this narrow channel

To the marching beat

Tick tock tick tock

And I am letting go of cold

Erasing the fingerprints

You have left on my skin

Even if this means

Raw edges and red lines

I am peeling off your handholds

In a freefall to the sea.

I would like to stab myself

With this electric current

Slit my skin

And watch the sparks pour in

Golden and blue

Small spikes of something else

I can’t control

And maybe this is the answer

Lock the door

That leads to my mansion

Of prison cells

Close the book of unhappy endings

And burn the library down

Watch the stream of spindled needles

Slide up and down my outline

I watch my shadow shrink

Under the pointed attack

And I think I will stay standing here

A shock of golden wheat

Heavy and swollen

And ready to fall back into the ground

These glittering lines gather and surround

These flexing drops of me

And my face is beaded in its glow

I never knew salt shone so bright

So here will I be

Great and golden

Frozen to the light socket

Till you want to try love again.

The Holiday

Flooding the street the voices rose in waves

as the outstretched arms rippled towards and away

from the golden hero, the shining god.

Adrift in the crowd, he came like a ship

sailing through the town on glory

and worshipping hands.

Let the town rejoice.

The day is new.

There is a king to rule

a duty to perform.

How eagerness grows from chaos

for the voice that claims to know

the way things should be

and calls himself king.

Let the fox eat the new grapes.

The fool dance through his belled shoes.

The children run rampant in delight.

The war is over and what he says is true.

Sing and lift the new king high

call out your joy and delight.

He calls himself the sun

and he has brought us light.

Fidgets.

The warm anxiety shoves

its way along my legs

angling roughly against the table

to bounce with excess force

as though to protest its restriction.

Restriction by existence.

It is a problem more common

than not.

The way my breasts thrust

through the future first

broaching the air before

my mouth, my eyes arrive

and as herald therefore

also definition.

Woman.

Existence with restriction

is more the norm

than not.

It makes me anxious

to have the self

by being

be not.

This or that.

Because of this

not that.

I push against the table

as if

shoving

will expel (explode)

these sensations of cessation.

The norm is restriction.

Existence more common than not.

Woman.

By being, be.

Make existence into

the morn.

O Zeus

Let us die then

if we must under lordly law

but give it up lightly

under the light- not darkness.

I can feel the pulse

thrusting against my ring

the tide tugging

the ship of my finger

against its golden anchor.

Keep calm, after all,

we are not adrift

a raft becalmed

but rather let the rift

between life and us

rise slowly like the dawn

and when the soul is full blown

open to the sun

then let us go

and die under lordly law

full of light.

Inscription Upon a Journal

To transcribe the heart as it were

(already done: in steady rhythm

the flush and flux

of aortas as though a sort of

a or b thinking did not

could not exist)

a wasted text.

The act of transcribing is

of course, translation

more moving when it depends

upon the ribs

and their actions as such

(the force and flex

of organic ridges as if rid

of a wave with which to ride

out the storm one must curve

in upon oneself eternal)

when not redundant.

To transcribe the heart as it were

is, of course,

redundant.

Nevertheless, I love you.

Cause and Defects.

I will continue to casually

destroy

these parts of me which can be

destroyed casually.

With cause

or without

but always on a case by us

basis

a sort of basic evaluation

by which value is laid bare by me

and then through process of excavation

destroyed.

Start then with the small pieces

above all else it must be peaceful

in order to maintain causality

in a sense to render those last

moments of despair into an ode

an old poem or fact

of destruction.

After all we are all

quite casually

casualties.

Letting off Steam

We missed the sunset

walking among the streets

not noticing the time or clouds

or other such trivialities.

You were in a fine rage

on destiny and dynasty

tying them up with bloodlines and battlelines

in the triptoungue way you have

and I was walking adrift

in the wake of your street preaching.

Perhaps I should scatter coins

or applaud

but I am entourage not audience

and so I follow, encourage

by silence and such things

until you subside at last.

We sit on the sidewalk in the shadow

until you whistle cheerfully again

and suggest a cup of tea.

The Nylons

There are strips in your stockings

where your skin shows through

startling in its hue.

The moon has crept beneath your eyes

all pearl and silence across your cheeks.

The heather swells delicate in your veins

as they run purple across your wrist.

The willow has woven itself

into your hair that weeps past your waist.

All nature has bent itself to your making

All earth lies sleeping

waiting for your waking.

Yet when you walk, all they wonder

is if you know about the tears in your stockings.

How foolish to judge a nymph by her nylons

like the wind by its weight

or the world by its waiting

or the heart by its loving.

Proper places

To rebuild the earth

to restore the glory of the world

to prophecy that beauty

shall debut again

is beyond me.

Let me announce the quiet

turning of spring to summer.

Let me stand as herald

to the place where cold water

comes up from the earth laughing.

I will be the louder voice,

the longer hymn,

of the already present song.

I will take up the full-hearted pen

the ream of paper

and act as historian and mapmaker

inscribing worlds as they were and are

but ask not of me the future.

Do not question me for truth

in it's deeper patterns.

I may tell you how it appears

but not how truth be

that too is beyond me

to track it in it's essence

and not merely it's effect.

Let me stand as herald and announce the world

but leave the judgement to a better Lord.

Exit wound

When the tide retreats the sand

lies in lonely lines

ridges like arms

that could not contain

the beloved.

When the sun sinks the trees

stretch sunken shadows

fragile like fingers

that have lost their grip

on sanctity.

When the summer fades the water

hardens into harsh hiding

frozen like feet

that cannot follow

the track.

When you leave the room, the world

disintegrates into despair

silenced like my heart

that hates to remember

being alone.

The Game

Kissing the corner of my mouth

weighs me down

tilts the sky

spins the sun haphazard

Galileo's marble on a slope.

I become a lost thing

the treasure in the field

the pearl in the palm

of the child

along with his cat's eye toy.

You force me from the circle

drawn in the sand

by the ruptured silence

of your smile against my skin.

Kiss the corner of my mouth

scoop me up into your hand

Win me the way you would

the marbles on the cement streets

crowing your victory

and I will slip into your pocket

content.

Cape Cod Suicide

The sand seems a strange place

to choose to die.

Strange to think of swimming in

to the shallows

scraping the soft grey skin

feeling the tide strain to pull you back

towards its black-blue embrace.

Pressing on

to the burning light, the heat,

the eternal sun.

The asthmatic gasping

the salty thrashing

and all five hundred pounds of grace

expended along the shoreline.

At night, Brody walks alone

into the sea.

Past him,

the dolphins swim

to strand themselves

upon the sand.

The Garden

Almost too heavy to bear

your white cheek on your white hand

draped like a willow wreath.

There is too much of weeping in the curve

of your neck as though it aches.

The summer sun is cruel to beat so

across your shoulder.

Winter's weight has not yet lifted from you

for all the full season's blooms.

Almost too much to bear

watching you from the doorway

sitting at the iron cross the flowers cannot soften.

But soon you stand

and shaking still reach out to take my hand.

It is almost too much

but summer will come at last.

Creator debt

When you die, he will die too.

They will place you both in a narrow coffin

packed too tight to bear

such cloesness for you two.

In the darkness you go first

and then him so close behind it is

almost not worth the diestinction.

You first- it is only fair

since you came first as well

and bore him along as on a leash

a long wet cord from which he issued

went forth into the world but always returned.

When you die he will die too

and it is hard not to hate you for it

for giving such life as is possible to love him

and the taking him silent in your crowded tomb.

Author mother be kind

and let him die alone

before you claim him set him free

and bury him on his own.

Ex-Galatea

I have carved out the curve of your head

in wood, in sand, in stone

with rigid curls and sloping strands.

I have shaped the structure of your skull.

I t has taken me years deep in coffee grounds

waking from dreams to find in the sheets

the contours of your face folded tight.

The hang of curtains tied and pulled

have formed your silhoette in shadow

and in the garden grows

a topiary trimmed to fit your shape.

I have carved out the curve of you

with knife, with hand, with thought--

the back of your head on the train

with no return ticket.

Hey Cleo

You lie by the sea

like a sarcophagus

hands folded across your chest

with all your worldly goods scattered

at your feet in tribute.

The gold of your skin sits solid-

it frames your face in heavy light.

All still and silent

the ocean waits for you to wake.

I settle into the sand thinking

it would be no good to be alone

in the eternal secondlife.

pardon the pun.

The first flight fell

all light and air with no strength

no core with which to stab at

the greedy grip of gravity.

I will not make that mistake again

to fly is not to float, to drift, to dream.

It is to take in one hand the heart

and with all its beating power thrust

into the imperturbable sky.

No waxen wings then will do.

I shall weld myself a weapon

a pointed shaft by which to drill

into unyielding blue and having driving deep

emerge triumphant and engorged

with all the wealth of air unfurled beneath me.

With iron bar and steeled accord then,

I will strike into the sky.

It is, after all, man's Wright to fly.

Without Comfort

We are both pregnant

but on you it sits heavy

pulling the jowls of your face

into a mournful caricature

and swelling your large hands

into overripe fruit, close to bursting

Your belly does not sway with your thickened thighs

but sags like concrete on a muddy hill.

When you lift your feet

it is a reluctant charge, a duty preferred forgotten

and your mouth lays closed

lays like the earth under snow that will not melt

We are both pregnant

but you have slept through the dark

and seem to carry only despair.

Ignite

To find you

cropped short, ungrowing

but stretched like wax

across the long couch

is to see a candle with no wick

all potential and no power

a cloud that cannot rain.

You move like thunder

with eye flashes to herald noise

but all the time distant.

I pour water, dig deep

but you wait like that holy vine

the mistletoe that grows on air

my platitudes and pleasures do not reach you.

Poured like wax across the silk

you will not melt nor burn

but only bend around me

till I am the thread caught fire

and at last we conflagrate.

Chapel

It is hard to get paint to sit

the way air does directly after sunset:

A lover who, once alone, lets down

the curtain of her hair

and becomes an open stream

a current pulling to nowhere

but beyond, always beyond.

To do so demands patience

the right mind to mold the blues

and the desire for darkness

with all the warmth in women's wrists

hot skin with the life beating beneath it

It's hard to do

but somehow Rothko manages.