Sunday, October 14, 2012

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.

Saturday, October 6, 2012

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.


Saturday, September 15, 2012

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.

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

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.  

Monday, April 30, 2012

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.

Friday, April 27, 2012

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. 

Thursday, April 26, 2012

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.

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

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.


Sunday, March 18, 2012

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.

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

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.

Monday, March 5, 2012

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.

Thursday, March 1, 2012

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.

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

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.

Thursday, February 23, 2012

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.

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

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.

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

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.

Saturday, February 11, 2012

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.

Monday, February 6, 2012

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.

Sunday, January 8, 2012

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.

Friday, January 6, 2012

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.

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

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.