4/29
WINDOW Poem
For what she sees inside she cannot be,
the table harboring the words, the deeds.
This family composed familiarly,
with years to prove endurance, grows from seeds.
The conversation turns on future's pledge,
existing when today's extremes disturb;
even the calmest child, she would allege
domestic order's stitched a strict proverb.
Outside the family, outside the walls,
the slightest gestures gather force. Who speaks
or doesn't, who allows the phone, its calls
to echo, ever asking, days and weeks?
But time cannot contain the overgrown;
unlike that house, it shifts with each stone thrown.
WINDOW Poem
For what she sees inside she cannot be,
the table harboring the words, the deeds.
This family composed familiarly,
with years to prove endurance, grows from seeds.
The conversation turns on future's pledge,
existing when today's extremes disturb;
even the calmest child, she would allege
domestic order's stitched a strict proverb.
Outside the family, outside the walls,
the slightest gestures gather force. Who speaks
or doesn't, who allows the phone, its calls
to echo, ever asking, days and weeks?
But time cannot contain the overgrown;
unlike that house, it shifts with each stone thrown.
4/28
When I arrived in the city, to a place that is no more,
the woman, the wood, the room waiting, the slant of light
through the station's windows, a western composition of hue
and promise. A woman targeted me to save, but did I need
saving? She would have made me hers. I must have looked
quite young to her. And in point of fact, I was.
In every corner life began, crossroads, decisions, basements
where someone played guitar and striving voices entwined.
The shape of a woman's hand was illuminated in full spectrum,
her knuckles where regret might traverse before a word
was spoken.
Across the bridge, buttressed by ambition, within this nightclub's
manic throb, she lit a cigarette to breach the boundary
of without and within, to make of her time an overture in E.
I cannot find my way back there now, this doorway, this hallway,
a drunk man crying. The Pacific Ocean's vastness
has no memory of me. I was the shorn girl writing lines
as the sun became a slice, thinking the city was my lover.
I dragged my dirty clothes to the corner laundromat
on Sundays, as anyone who lives here might,
emerging in a new black shirt, something some
other girl into garage bands left behind.
4/27
I never tire of my desires
even their eternal range.
I had no god in childhood
and have bucked the line
between since then,
glimpsing oneness
in fleeting fabulousness,
as a reassurance not to sweat
death too much, or at all.
It was not self-denial
that would save me;
there were martyrs a-plenty
everywhere and for what?
I could flaunt wit and whoopsie
as undergarments to what
seems to find my own fractal right there,
unpack all those pigments accoutred to smut,
quite immune now to comments and stares.
4/27/21
What's for breakfast, mon amour?
Wake up, my transient lady.
If you'd smelled smoke before you woke,
We wouldn't be facing Hades.
What's for breakfast, mon amour?
Wake up, my transient lady.
If you'd smelled smoke before you woke,
We wouldn't be facing Hades.
4/27/21
Keubiko
Two brothers, one called Moses, are at it again,
loud as the blows of a hammer. Turn up the TV,
will you Lydie?
The older one, what's his name?,
is drunk again, out on the front porch.
What's he saying? It's hard to tell.
The two of them, it's a weekly
occurrence, and their father, that nice man,
with all those irises out there.
He's really got the touch, and his chickens --
he speaks to them, all named for movie stars.
Wait a second, what's that? The boys' words rising
with that girl in it too. She's fairly new around here,
the last few months, friend of the younger boy, Moses.
Hold on, what's the other one saying?
"You always" do what? Always what?
Oh my god, get down, Lydia. They're shooting!
The old man standing between them. Get down!
Where's my phone? Somebody's got to call the cops.
Hold on. Oh no, look. That young one,
Moses, he's finally snapped. His brother's crumpled.
And listen to the old man. I've never heard a cry
so deep -- kneeling between his two sons,
his clothes hanging, shirt pulled loose,
like some kind of lank scarecrow, bereft.
4/26/21
Of the many who'd entered their names,
I won the chance to dissect the lone sand shark babe,
myself. Everyone in my class had worms, frogs, then fetal pigs (so nearly human, some students were excused
from incision), but the shark was outre, ultra, mine.
When school let out, I'd make for the lab
where with a text and no other lead,
I met and breached the placoid scales.
My friends called her "Jaws", for she was female -- I'd discovered her oviducts
opened to her ostium --
and our time feared her species.
I explored her form and function, spiracles
above her eyes for water intake, the sleek
configuration of organs we species share,
and her othered, two-chambered heart,
adapted for great depths.
For weeks I went around town with X-ray vision
and cheerful morbidity. I ate, imagining peristalsis
and chyme. I slept with my mind's eye open,
dreaming of nictitating membranes
lowered before attack.
During gym, I swam with borrowed myotomes,
zig-zagging across the pool's tiled floor,
while the kids in my class sang that "Duh-duh, duh-duh,
duh-duh" theme song, audible to me, immersed.
Of the many who'd entered their names,
I won the chance to dissect the lone sand shark babe,
myself. Everyone in my class had worms, frogs, then fetal pigs (so nearly human, some students were excused
from incision), but the shark was outre, ultra, mine.
When school let out, I'd make for the lab
where with a text and no other lead,
I met and breached the placoid scales.
My friends called her "Jaws", for she was female -- I'd discovered her oviducts
opened to her ostium --
and our time feared her species.
I explored her form and function, spiracles
above her eyes for water intake, the sleek
configuration of organs we species share,
and her othered, two-chambered heart,
adapted for great depths.
For weeks I went around town with X-ray vision
and cheerful morbidity. I ate, imagining peristalsis
and chyme. I slept with my mind's eye open,
dreaming of nictitating membranes
lowered before attack.
During gym, I swam with borrowed myotomes,
zig-zagging across the pool's tiled floor,
while the kids in my class sang that "Duh-duh, duh-duh,
duh-duh" theme song, audible to me, immersed.
4/25/21
Song
Have you really no time for me?
I am the child I once was and still.
If you ignore or put me down,
it feeds the broken girl.
Had you never opened the door,
had you turned left instead of right,
we'd be en route to a rooted more
doomed to carry on the fight.
I'm not the kind who can order mess
or make a pattern of finding gold.
I've always bent with a suppleness
not the strict count of who's bought and sold.
Who told us "two" and to honor us?
Who made a you that's distinct from me?
The one it was is omnivorous.
The one we are exceeds mere unity.
Song
Have you really no time for me?
I am the child I once was and still.
If you ignore or put me down,
it feeds the broken girl.
Had you never opened the door,
had you turned left instead of right,
we'd be en route to a rooted more
doomed to carry on the fight.
I'm not the kind who can order mess
or make a pattern of finding gold.
I've always bent with a suppleness
not the strict count of who's bought and sold.
Who told us "two" and to honor us?
Who made a you that's distinct from me?
The one it was is omnivorous.
The one we are exceeds mere unity.
4/24/21
For some unknown avian reason,
Mei-Mei and Eva no longer love the roost
we've so lovingly laid with woodchips. Why?
They are chickens but does that mean they're chicken?
They'd found a sheltered spot in the woodpile,
until we found that too, and gently worked a narrow
rake to roll their hoard out. But as birdbrained
as they are, they've masterminded a new, undiscovered
spot in our jumbled backyard, making me all the more
aware how unkempt it is, that means welcoming,
sheltering, warm to inhabiting.
My hands are spotted with pitch stains
while somewhere three or four lovely eggs
are stashed and safe from our grasp and gaze.
]4/23/21
The Window
When you leaned out the window,
your baby daughter in your arms,
you were already dying, but nobody
really knew, knew when, knew what of.
I saw how tenuously you appended,
how you were both lever and hinge,
face alit with daring, the material you,
a complex song.
When you called me
out, you didn't stint fury,
but slapped my claim sideways,
delivered in a gust
of truth and strident garland --
you never cottoned to folly
or tripe-packaged pretense.
You had your ear to the hidden chord
echoing from way back. Even then,
and ever, and never, even now,
with the force of forever, even the odds
were stacked against you, and how you
counted and countered, you knew it,
declared it, in a world naked and raw,
with the ferocity taken from the full,
unfettered savannahs, and brought
to live, for a cheated season, in a tight pen.
The Window
When you leaned out the window,
your baby daughter in your arms,
you were already dying, but nobody
really knew, knew when, knew what of.
I saw how tenuously you appended,
how you were both lever and hinge,
face alit with daring, the material you,
a complex song.
When you called me
out, you didn't stint fury,
but slapped my claim sideways,
delivered in a gust
of truth and strident garland --
you never cottoned to folly
or tripe-packaged pretense.
You had your ear to the hidden chord
echoing from way back. Even then,
and ever, and never, even now,
with the force of forever, even the odds
were stacked against you, and how you
counted and countered, you knew it,
declared it, in a world naked and raw,
with the ferocity taken from the full,
unfettered savannahs, and brought
to live, for a cheated season, in a tight pen.
4/22/21
|
There Was a Woman Born of Loss
There was a woman born of loss
who claimed that none could be her boss.
When she made for the outer wood,
'twas night that served her as a hood.
When she danced on our culture's grave,
it was our souls she thought she saved.
When she wove together daisy chains,
'twas after three days on the train.
And when she sang her prairie song,
'twas all about how she'd gone wrong.
When Tuesday dawned as still as death,
she blamed it on the demon meth.
And when she stole or cheated others,
she hearkened back to her two brothers.
When someone seemed to fall in love,
she cursed the sky and clouds above.
And when he wooed her with sweet words
she acted like she hadn't heard.
When just this one would take her hand,
she'd knocked him down upon the sand.
Then when she was at last alone,
she folded future into bone.
There was a woman born of loss
who claimed that none could be her boss.
When she made for the outer wood,
'twas night that served her as a hood.
When she danced on our culture's grave,
it was our souls she thought she saved.
When she wove together daisy chains,
'twas after three days on the train.
And when she sang her prairie song,
'twas all about how she'd gone wrong.
When Tuesday dawned as still as death,
she blamed it on the demon meth.
And when she stole or cheated others,
she hearkened back to her two brothers.
When someone seemed to fall in love,
she cursed the sky and clouds above.
And when he wooed her with sweet words
she acted like she hadn't heard.
When just this one would take her hand,
she'd knocked him down upon the sand.
Then when she was at last alone,
she folded future into bone.
Scanner Update
Tweaker out in a Dollar Store parking lot --
I don't want to be mean, but that's how he reads --
blew his car up, processing hash in the back seat.
Bystanders were alarmed but not shocked.
The explosion shook the birds,
throwing a debris field 100 feet in all directions.
Crawford, the unfortunate,
had burns on his face, hands and chest,
all non-life-threatening, though many who wrote in
seemed to wish it otherwise.
They called him worse than tweaker.
They talked about the Darwin effect
with wishes attached. They damned
his proclivities in a public sphere.
They made comparisons to people they knew,
tagging friends for confirmation,
called in God and his emojis.
Some even went so far
as to consult the public
record on past arrests
and violations to deliver
their own sentences
on the man whose confused
face graced the account.
(domestic violence, drug possession, forgery,
vehicle theft).
Listen to me, I'm as bad as they are.
The car he cooked it in stood in the lot,
the top blown out like tinfoil
over popcorn. All kinds of clothes
and gear gaped out,
like maybe he was living there,
maybe this was all he had
in his messed up life,
this and the echoing confusion,
the glare-truth of cause and effect.
I don't want to be mean, but that's how he reads --
blew his car up, processing hash in the back seat.
Bystanders were alarmed but not shocked.
The explosion shook the birds,
throwing a debris field 100 feet in all directions.
Crawford, the unfortunate,
had burns on his face, hands and chest,
all non-life-threatening, though many who wrote in
seemed to wish it otherwise.
They called him worse than tweaker.
They talked about the Darwin effect
with wishes attached. They damned
his proclivities in a public sphere.
They made comparisons to people they knew,
tagging friends for confirmation,
called in God and his emojis.
Some even went so far
as to consult the public
record on past arrests
and violations to deliver
their own sentences
on the man whose confused
face graced the account.
(domestic violence, drug possession, forgery,
vehicle theft).
Listen to me, I'm as bad as they are.
The car he cooked it in stood in the lot,
the top blown out like tinfoil
over popcorn. All kinds of clothes
and gear gaped out,
like maybe he was living there,
maybe this was all he had
in his messed up life,
this and the echoing confusion,
the glare-truth of cause and effect.
4/19
Several thousand miles away, a man in captivity has refused
food for weeks.
"any aggressive actions by participants,
especially attempts to provoke clashes
will be regarded as a threat to public safety,
will be immediately suppressed"
For many, the world is merely a sphere on a strict axis, spun
around an iron stake.
If people die, or worse, they hardly register in the official account.
Blood tests indicate impaired kidney function.
This man has taken the state of his country into himself
the harm and neglect, the misuse and betrayal,
after they'd dosed his very underpants with Novichok.
When a country crumbles from the core,
when an unmapped secret palace harbors skating rink
and casino, while the people starve, one man -- for it is only
one man -- it is only one woman, only one, this one,
and this, outspoken or hidden or marching
in the scorched streets, when he or she cries out
truths in protest, it's distilled to the pitch of one raw voice.
Several thousand miles away, a man in captivity has refused
food for weeks.
"any aggressive actions by participants,
especially attempts to provoke clashes
will be regarded as a threat to public safety,
will be immediately suppressed"
For many, the world is merely a sphere on a strict axis, spun
around an iron stake.
If people die, or worse, they hardly register in the official account.
Blood tests indicate impaired kidney function.
This man has taken the state of his country into himself
the harm and neglect, the misuse and betrayal,
after they'd dosed his very underpants with Novichok.
When a country crumbles from the core,
when an unmapped secret palace harbors skating rink
and casino, while the people starve, one man -- for it is only
one man -- it is only one woman, only one, this one,
and this, outspoken or hidden or marching
in the scorched streets, when he or she cries out
truths in protest, it's distilled to the pitch of one raw voice.
4/19
We started by tracing her neighborhood's streets
towards the end of her life,
because doctors said, and in everything
she was a good student.
She had won prizes and scholarships
she'd been unable to use, dutiful to family demands.
Little had changed, all the years a course had set,
and she, steadfast, upon it.
The old bicycles left to rust.
The garden shifted to an altered sun cycle.
New people come to live now in this house,
this house, that house, and that,
painted, spruced, new asphalt and benches.
Her feet were as small as a second grader's
in their new blue sports shoes
and the steps she took precisely spoke of her precision.
All of the moments she had lived were with her now,
foldered and sorted by year and grade.
She wanted to show me the length of her scar,
but modesty prevailed. The incision site's shine and hue
were visible at the neckline, drawing her small frame
into focus, the place where she had opened
and had been then sewn closed.
We started by tracing her neighborhood's streets
towards the end of her life,
because doctors said, and in everything
she was a good student.
She had won prizes and scholarships
she'd been unable to use, dutiful to family demands.
Little had changed, all the years a course had set,
and she, steadfast, upon it.
The old bicycles left to rust.
The garden shifted to an altered sun cycle.
New people come to live now in this house,
this house, that house, and that,
painted, spruced, new asphalt and benches.
Her feet were as small as a second grader's
in their new blue sports shoes
and the steps she took precisely spoke of her precision.
All of the moments she had lived were with her now,
foldered and sorted by year and grade.
She wanted to show me the length of her scar,
but modesty prevailed. The incision site's shine and hue
were visible at the neckline, drawing her small frame
into focus, the place where she had opened
and had been then sewn closed.
4/18/21
And if I sought my particle in the whole,
wouldn't I take to the woods and shoreline,
to find still waters in dappled places,
where, if you train your ear to its murmurs
and verdure, you enter it with blurred edges,
where, if you climb up onto the bluff,
where only the largest waves can only sometimes
strike, you calm your span to take in surge
and lost sailors, offering an equation
of plus and minus and a sinewave simple
as heat transfer, on a much longer timeline
than the earthly one you've got,
being born fairly close to the instancy of now.
And if I sought my particle in the whole,
wouldn't I take to the woods and shoreline,
to find still waters in dappled places,
where, if you train your ear to its murmurs
and verdure, you enter it with blurred edges,
where, if you climb up onto the bluff,
where only the largest waves can only sometimes
strike, you calm your span to take in surge
and lost sailors, offering an equation
of plus and minus and a sinewave simple
as heat transfer, on a much longer timeline
than the earthly one you've got,
being born fairly close to the instancy of now.
4/17
First you have to imagine what it's like to walk along on two knobby,
clawed talons, unconcerned by most terrains, to be warm-blooded
kin to flight, to listen to the world through red crepe, through wind,
through grass grown tall enough to hide you. Their wings, dappled
and shirred, near flightless, softly feathered , tucked at their sides
like fine bolts of damask. This is my song of thanks for one named Rima,
effortlessly lovely, iridescent and inky, who died today in the mouth
of a Great Dane. She was wary and skittish, but not quick enough to skip.
She was drawn to the snack in a second, flock-happy,
a lovely example of avian-kind, the living culmination of her species.
4/16
In each cell, structures for its work and end,
this, to become the texture of bark,
this, to line the girl's throat,
the girl who sings, "me, me, me!"
Far later, with our inner parts doing
what they do best, she and I
would have it out, with full-throated
screams, under the alders.
"You think I'm limited to what I am now?"
she growled. "The span of your days
can't touch me." There was no way
to tell her how infinite I could become.
I let my silence surround us.
She was still talking, her mouth full of bees,
leather-bound ledgers and ship logs
surrounding her. She may have never lived
before, but she took her minute
as it expanded to embrace her.
Physical facts pressed in against our bodies,
call of living cells for consideration.
I took her in hand, demanding she take me too.
We were already miles from our original states,
she faced a direction I hadn't yet discovered.
In each cell, structures for its work and end,
this, to become the texture of bark,
this, to line the girl's throat,
the girl who sings, "me, me, me!"
Far later, with our inner parts doing
what they do best, she and I
would have it out, with full-throated
screams, under the alders.
"You think I'm limited to what I am now?"
she growled. "The span of your days
can't touch me." There was no way
to tell her how infinite I could become.
I let my silence surround us.
She was still talking, her mouth full of bees,
leather-bound ledgers and ship logs
surrounding her. She may have never lived
before, but she took her minute
as it expanded to embrace her.
Physical facts pressed in against our bodies,
call of living cells for consideration.
I took her in hand, demanding she take me too.
We were already miles from our original states,
she faced a direction I hadn't yet discovered.
4/15
I'm buoyant-blessed, winning in water,
drawn to and in the brightest colors.
The sun and sea and sky combine
in a vast canvas that never stops moving.
Around me are familiar creatures,
loud as leaves, lovely as living water.
I might have forgotten,
when my own life tides took,
but now, held aloft, I am as a larger continent,
together with it all, involved in my own
aquatic metabolism, like a shark's gill
granted wishes. If you love long
and hard enough, well, as described
by the one loved, watch how and what
you become. Under the pits and pocks of rain,
curving your back to sluice, not shield,
nothing is better than its light touch.
Life unthought and the full moon wait,
as certain sons of darkness,
but I cannot care too much.
Never does my own anatomy
admit a mechanized doubt.
Let me tell you this once more,
and once more,
tidal and its fluid answers.
I'm buoyant-blessed, winning in water,
drawn to and in the brightest colors.
The sun and sea and sky combine
in a vast canvas that never stops moving.
Around me are familiar creatures,
loud as leaves, lovely as living water.
I might have forgotten,
when my own life tides took,
but now, held aloft, I am as a larger continent,
together with it all, involved in my own
aquatic metabolism, like a shark's gill
granted wishes. If you love long
and hard enough, well, as described
by the one loved, watch how and what
you become. Under the pits and pocks of rain,
curving your back to sluice, not shield,
nothing is better than its light touch.
Life unthought and the full moon wait,
as certain sons of darkness,
but I cannot care too much.
Never does my own anatomy
admit a mechanized doubt.
Let me tell you this once more,
and once more,
tidal and its fluid answers.
4/14
Yskamp
In the predawn light, pink along the living edge, fog sighs
through the hills. I walk to the stump, skates thumping
my back. Breath-blooms hover, when I sit.
With new laces, these skates pull tight over my woolen socks,
and with my boots tucked away in my sack, I'm off.
That scritch of traction and the cool course smooth
between the riverbanks, my body works its metric,
a coordinated criss-cross gait. I'm flying, winterbells.
I'm singing and am the song of the frozen river,
motion tracing its curves. It's 10 km to the first stand,
and I've increased my speed each morning,
competing with my own achievement, muscles
knowing way and work, mind finding the ancient groove
this river's made in all seasons, seaward.
The jolly smell of coffee, chocolate,
and the ticking heater in the corner finds me
at the bend. This is the homestretch
and with muscle-hum I hasten, skates now
synched to breathing.
Märtha is at the yskamp, perched on the river-edge,
cheerful and welcoming, already fixing
my frothy mug, ready to celebrate today's new time.
Yskamp
In the predawn light, pink along the living edge, fog sighs
through the hills. I walk to the stump, skates thumping
my back. Breath-blooms hover, when I sit.
With new laces, these skates pull tight over my woolen socks,
and with my boots tucked away in my sack, I'm off.
That scritch of traction and the cool course smooth
between the riverbanks, my body works its metric,
a coordinated criss-cross gait. I'm flying, winterbells.
I'm singing and am the song of the frozen river,
motion tracing its curves. It's 10 km to the first stand,
and I've increased my speed each morning,
competing with my own achievement, muscles
knowing way and work, mind finding the ancient groove
this river's made in all seasons, seaward.
The jolly smell of coffee, chocolate,
and the ticking heater in the corner finds me
at the bend. This is the homestretch
and with muscle-hum I hasten, skates now
synched to breathing.
Märtha is at the yskamp, perched on the river-edge,
cheerful and welcoming, already fixing
my frothy mug, ready to celebrate today's new time.
4/13
News is, you don't have to worry anymore!
There is no more famine in Somalia, Yemen, Ethiopia,
no more drought, blight, illness. All weather
has fallen into easy rhythm, bringing rain, in season,
sun, the nourishing inhalation and exhalation
of an untroubled living spectrum.
It's inexplicable, but very real,
the return of abalone to the shoreline,
the birth of storm petrel and Tristan albatross,
abundant and robust, from shells
both strong and smooth.
The waterways are full and clear,
and along their shores, crayfish and river mussels
thrive. Inexplicable and immediate,
this altered course has saved us all, families
with the one child, by decree and consent,
to join with their conscious neighbors
in celebrations of local, seasonal foods and wines,
in biodegradable vessels, crumbs sprinkled
on the field for the sparrow and the lark.
News is, you don't have to worry anymore!
There is no more famine in Somalia, Yemen, Ethiopia,
no more drought, blight, illness. All weather
has fallen into easy rhythm, bringing rain, in season,
sun, the nourishing inhalation and exhalation
of an untroubled living spectrum.
It's inexplicable, but very real,
the return of abalone to the shoreline,
the birth of storm petrel and Tristan albatross,
abundant and robust, from shells
both strong and smooth.
The waterways are full and clear,
and along their shores, crayfish and river mussels
thrive. Inexplicable and immediate,
this altered course has saved us all, families
with the one child, by decree and consent,
to join with their conscious neighbors
in celebrations of local, seasonal foods and wines,
in biodegradable vessels, crumbs sprinkled
on the field for the sparrow and the lark.
4/12
I was revived from my corpsicle (the cryogenic time-out
of who knows how many decades), croggled by the datasphere.
Death rays may have arced across the dirtside, but earthborn
of elsewhen, I was unfazed. Vastness might be turbocharged,
but I was alive and there's the wonder, still self-sound
and rigged for duty, though land-legs a little on the wobbly
(stasis pools the blood in extremities). I made for civilization's
light weave, bearing the words of lost generations, translated
into 78 modes of cryptographs. As a survivor, if that is what I am,
my message is not of longevity (fie), or endurance,
not of any linear measure, more the reassurance,
past to present, vast to minute, of living sparkle, intermittent time storms,
and the fact-scope of fancy, the bold and delicious now,
given entry and transfer, the ineffable entities that buoy
and barrage, out of this world and utterly of it.
I was revived from my corpsicle (the cryogenic time-out
of who knows how many decades), croggled by the datasphere.
Death rays may have arced across the dirtside, but earthborn
of elsewhen, I was unfazed. Vastness might be turbocharged,
but I was alive and there's the wonder, still self-sound
and rigged for duty, though land-legs a little on the wobbly
(stasis pools the blood in extremities). I made for civilization's
light weave, bearing the words of lost generations, translated
into 78 modes of cryptographs. As a survivor, if that is what I am,
my message is not of longevity (fie), or endurance,
not of any linear measure, more the reassurance,
past to present, vast to minute, of living sparkle, intermittent time storms,
and the fact-scope of fancy, the bold and delicious now,
given entry and transfer, the ineffable entities that buoy
and barrage, out of this world and utterly of it.
4/11
"The path up and down is one and the same." Heraclitus
You walked there and back, you should know. Though the shudder
of feathers made you jump, coming down, and what you'd done
changed the vista, which was lovely from afar, shaped to fairly smart
farming, and the roads necessary to converse, it looked like a home
better than you knew, and your leaving it was part of the reason
why. Your father, everyone in the town marked his ways, and they feared
him, with that, made concessions, for they pitied him the more.
So instead you took the side road, away not back, and even Heraclitus knows
that's a way to change the path, at the intersection, am I right?
"The path up and down is one and the same." Heraclitus
You walked there and back, you should know. Though the shudder
of feathers made you jump, coming down, and what you'd done
changed the vista, which was lovely from afar, shaped to fairly smart
farming, and the roads necessary to converse, it looked like a home
better than you knew, and your leaving it was part of the reason
why. Your father, everyone in the town marked his ways, and they feared
him, with that, made concessions, for they pitied him the more.
So instead you took the side road, away not back, and even Heraclitus knows
that's a way to change the path, at the intersection, am I right?
4/10
Uighur Internment
In the room, they are chained, silent,
made to repeat, to repeat,
unclean, unfed, made to recant
and repeat, chained hard
so their wrist skin abrades, left
in their filth, in their filth,
trained to look away, to flatten
their eyes, trained to say, to not
say, to sing the words
in the cold room. They are scanned
and observed. They are tested
and recorded, blood taken,
facial recognition. They are inventoried
and observed, made to stand, to sit,
to stand until they're swaying, made
to repeat phrases of fidelity, suspect
every word of echoes, suspect every other
as dangerous detraction, suspect one's own
actions as interpreted. They are scheduled
to strict time, timed to the minute,
made to eat enough to recant again,
made to unmask others, to uncover secrets,
to understand necessity, to undo what's done.
They arrive each week on Wednesday,
their legs in marching rhythm, those that can
still walk, their bodies form strange equations,
thousands identified by individual digits
or details, thousand of pages rifled by the wind,
thousands upon thousands with no right
to voice, made to enter and to say, made to stay
and reform, to anticipate the command
and comply, vocalize as drummed, to do as told,
to do as told, every day until the end is declared.
Uighur Internment
In the room, they are chained, silent,
made to repeat, to repeat,
unclean, unfed, made to recant
and repeat, chained hard
so their wrist skin abrades, left
in their filth, in their filth,
trained to look away, to flatten
their eyes, trained to say, to not
say, to sing the words
in the cold room. They are scanned
and observed. They are tested
and recorded, blood taken,
facial recognition. They are inventoried
and observed, made to stand, to sit,
to stand until they're swaying, made
to repeat phrases of fidelity, suspect
every word of echoes, suspect every other
as dangerous detraction, suspect one's own
actions as interpreted. They are scheduled
to strict time, timed to the minute,
made to eat enough to recant again,
made to unmask others, to uncover secrets,
to understand necessity, to undo what's done.
They arrive each week on Wednesday,
their legs in marching rhythm, those that can
still walk, their bodies form strange equations,
thousands identified by individual digits
or details, thousand of pages rifled by the wind,
thousands upon thousands with no right
to voice, made to enter and to say, made to stay
and reform, to anticipate the command
and comply, vocalize as drummed, to do as told,
to do as told, every day until the end is declared.
4/9
How about some friendly cross-genre check-in time,
like, hey there from poetry world. What's going on
with all your foreground and figure, your context,
pretext, time lapse, and texture? That's cool
if you can't put it into words. Just flash your frame.
There you go, with your jagged and smooth,
your long view and closeup, but can we talk a minute
about titles? What in fact do you mean by "Wednesday"?
I guess it's evocative, not declarative,
and it may have "verisimilitude" that feels
"incontrovertible", but you don't want to come off
as snarky, anti-arty, unless of course you do.
I get it, magic of light, oh yes, and the meaning beyond,
why certainly, desire, compulsion, no, no, I get it,
but that's just the thing -- "the imprint of man"
how can you not be skeptical of what's visible?
How can you not wonder at the human range?
Even with the symbolic use of location and its blue hour,
even with a burst rate timed to rapture?
How about some friendly cross-genre check-in time,
like, hey there from poetry world. What's going on
with all your foreground and figure, your context,
pretext, time lapse, and texture? That's cool
if you can't put it into words. Just flash your frame.
There you go, with your jagged and smooth,
your long view and closeup, but can we talk a minute
about titles? What in fact do you mean by "Wednesday"?
I guess it's evocative, not declarative,
and it may have "verisimilitude" that feels
"incontrovertible", but you don't want to come off
as snarky, anti-arty, unless of course you do.
I get it, magic of light, oh yes, and the meaning beyond,
why certainly, desire, compulsion, no, no, I get it,
but that's just the thing -- "the imprint of man"
how can you not be skeptical of what's visible?
How can you not wonder at the human range?
Even with the symbolic use of location and its blue hour,
even with a burst rate timed to rapture?
4/8
Motility of Flight, of swimming, swinging branch to branch,
of drifting with the wind, or hitched
on moving others, with restless necessity, on this wing, on that.
The humble unsung arctic tern travels 43,000 miles between poles,
tracing the earth's meridians, stopping at the Azores to feed on zooplankton,
before nesting in a shallow scrape, to loop the globe again.
The bold and Punk-sung rock lobster beelines en masse from cold
to warm in a conga line, unswayed by human intervention.
How am I supposed to find my way? By magnetite or polarity,
celestial navigation or side scan sonar system?
How the creature? How the long path? With parallax
or tuned neuron? While my sense of direction is better
than most, plop me in the heart of Seattle, high on Alaskan
Thunderfuck, surrounded by the Sound, Lakes Washington
and Union, Spin me three times, blindfolded, with a donkey tail
extended in birthday highjinx, and I might wind up
in the Dunwarmish, which I hear is a Superfund site,
and that will not do! Better to rise with the accretion
of mountain tops, these sixty million years, journeying
on cloud shape, leaf smell, sun, moon, and stars.
Better to enlace the earth with natural confidence
of going far and its return.
Motility of Flight, of swimming, swinging branch to branch,
of drifting with the wind, or hitched
on moving others, with restless necessity, on this wing, on that.
The humble unsung arctic tern travels 43,000 miles between poles,
tracing the earth's meridians, stopping at the Azores to feed on zooplankton,
before nesting in a shallow scrape, to loop the globe again.
The bold and Punk-sung rock lobster beelines en masse from cold
to warm in a conga line, unswayed by human intervention.
How am I supposed to find my way? By magnetite or polarity,
celestial navigation or side scan sonar system?
How the creature? How the long path? With parallax
or tuned neuron? While my sense of direction is better
than most, plop me in the heart of Seattle, high on Alaskan
Thunderfuck, surrounded by the Sound, Lakes Washington
and Union, Spin me three times, blindfolded, with a donkey tail
extended in birthday highjinx, and I might wind up
in the Dunwarmish, which I hear is a Superfund site,
and that will not do! Better to rise with the accretion
of mountain tops, these sixty million years, journeying
on cloud shape, leaf smell, sun, moon, and stars.
Better to enlace the earth with natural confidence
of going far and its return.
4/7/21
Shadorma
Farallones
Salt water
akin to our own
Horizon
beckoning
Beyond the gate, or own scales'
equilibrium
Shadorma
Farallones
Salt water
akin to our own
Horizon
beckoning
Beyond the gate, or own scales'
equilibrium
4/6/21
Yes, I believe in the miracle of chance,
if that's not a contradiction. The way that piano
appeared on a street corner in the Lower East Side,
on a morning when I was shaky and hungover,
after a night of brash endings. I, who had somewhere
but really nowhere to go, felt the gravitational pull
of urban disjuncture, the Dada heft of a Bosendorfer piano .
I stopped on that corner to place my grateful,
living fingers on the planed tusks of elephants --
I think they call them the naturals --
to play the child songs I still had.
While everything else about NYC was continuing
as launched, this piano and I joined in notes
that took upward, along tenement face and awning.
I'd closed my eyes to hear better so I hadn't seen him
appear, but he did, a man who knew how to join
complexity to rudiment. When I awoke
to our sudden duet, a rough-looking stranger stood
at my side, his hands upon the upper keys, timing
his signature to my clumsy fumbling. We played
that abandoned piano, as the traffic laced around us,
and people hurried, and the pigeons took to the air,
their grey wings shuffling our song.
Yes, I believe in the miracle of chance,
if that's not a contradiction. The way that piano
appeared on a street corner in the Lower East Side,
on a morning when I was shaky and hungover,
after a night of brash endings. I, who had somewhere
but really nowhere to go, felt the gravitational pull
of urban disjuncture, the Dada heft of a Bosendorfer piano .
I stopped on that corner to place my grateful,
living fingers on the planed tusks of elephants --
I think they call them the naturals --
to play the child songs I still had.
While everything else about NYC was continuing
as launched, this piano and I joined in notes
that took upward, along tenement face and awning.
I'd closed my eyes to hear better so I hadn't seen him
appear, but he did, a man who knew how to join
complexity to rudiment. When I awoke
to our sudden duet, a rough-looking stranger stood
at my side, his hands upon the upper keys, timing
his signature to my clumsy fumbling. We played
that abandoned piano, as the traffic laced around us,
and people hurried, and the pigeons took to the air,
their grey wings shuffling our song.
4/5
As if each plant contained a future shoot
already lashed and earth approved, still pent
and sure. As if each day predicts a fruit
far sweeter than an apricot, its scent
and taste returned to childhood's vast quarry.
Although the globe is spinning on its past
achievements, dystrophic surge, glory
of mountains' pleated mantles, we have cast
our hopes with wider spans, with deeper dredge,
two eyes to look and look beyond, a mouth
that shapes a song to meet the awkward edge,
a compass calling east from west, from south.
What grows along the highway's steep divide
will flourish given nothing but outside.
*
At dinner's end, no one wants to stand
into the night, for time too has been consumed.
Yellow candles curve the walls
by generous indulgence,
opening an almost bodiless reckoning
meant to stay giddy.
No one speaks
when the moment expands.
I have echoed backwards on my years,
now: a smaller and smaller bell jar,
ridden the fields of long past
on horseback to unpinned location.
We are full adorned within our moods
but together here, round the table,
We have maybe lost the path
again, if going is meant to deliver
arrival; if not, the evening is,
as they say, still young.
As if each plant contained a future shoot
already lashed and earth approved, still pent
and sure. As if each day predicts a fruit
far sweeter than an apricot, its scent
and taste returned to childhood's vast quarry.
Although the globe is spinning on its past
achievements, dystrophic surge, glory
of mountains' pleated mantles, we have cast
our hopes with wider spans, with deeper dredge,
two eyes to look and look beyond, a mouth
that shapes a song to meet the awkward edge,
a compass calling east from west, from south.
What grows along the highway's steep divide
will flourish given nothing but outside.
*
At dinner's end, no one wants to stand
into the night, for time too has been consumed.
Yellow candles curve the walls
by generous indulgence,
opening an almost bodiless reckoning
meant to stay giddy.
No one speaks
when the moment expands.
I have echoed backwards on my years,
now: a smaller and smaller bell jar,
ridden the fields of long past
on horseback to unpinned location.
We are full adorned within our moods
but together here, round the table,
We have maybe lost the path
again, if going is meant to deliver
arrival; if not, the evening is,
as they say, still young.
4/4
My country rats are lean and lovely,
fed on abundance and long, warm nights.
They've got their warren in the blackberry thicket
that sconces the venerable redwood trunk.
From my study's window, I watch them
run the sloping length of thorns
to the rainspout and down, up the length
and back again, fueled by fruit and scavenge.
I'm telling you they're well-organized
and adorable. I used to have a thing
against the tails of white mice, albino
skin so small a divide, blood beaconing
redly, but these little ones look well-tanned
and camouflaged, crosshatched gold
and darker brown. They seem the living force
of forest function, focused and deserving.
My country rats are lean and lovely,
fed on abundance and long, warm nights.
They've got their warren in the blackberry thicket
that sconces the venerable redwood trunk.
From my study's window, I watch them
run the sloping length of thorns
to the rainspout and down, up the length
and back again, fueled by fruit and scavenge.
I'm telling you they're well-organized
and adorable. I used to have a thing
against the tails of white mice, albino
skin so small a divide, blood beaconing
redly, but these little ones look well-tanned
and camouflaged, crosshatched gold
and darker brown. They seem the living force
of forest function, focused and deserving.
April 4
Threshold
She said she was often touched, unbidden, touched
in passing, negating will,
that she was not fully
in possession of a will
to be before others, touched,
or un--, that she was unaccustomed
to voicing boundaries,
that her edges smiled outward,
even when she didn't smile, and she gave for money and by custom,
an unsmiling dominance, unspoken,
that she was small and smaller, though holding larger men in thrall, without the space around her to expand,
without the sheering reason expressed, without sufficiency, awoken to an awakening sensation
of selfhood, distinct and discrete, that the colors bled,
unbuffered, that she was both diluted and infused,
that she walked miles to the edge of the landscape
looking for her outline, far beyond train-tracks
and telephone wires, far beyond any voice calling out her name.
Threshold
She said she was often touched, unbidden, touched
in passing, negating will,
that she was not fully
in possession of a will
to be before others, touched,
or un--, that she was unaccustomed
to voicing boundaries,
that her edges smiled outward,
even when she didn't smile, and she gave for money and by custom,
an unsmiling dominance, unspoken,
that she was small and smaller, though holding larger men in thrall, without the space around her to expand,
without the sheering reason expressed, without sufficiency, awoken to an awakening sensation
of selfhood, distinct and discrete, that the colors bled,
unbuffered, that she was both diluted and infused,
that she walked miles to the edge of the landscape
looking for her outline, far beyond train-tracks
and telephone wires, far beyond any voice calling out her name.
April 3
Perhaps they're worried
their children are at risk
with me, and my wild
expressions. Just think.
What could be learned
at the knee of such errant invention?
"Too many possibilities clog the scanotron
of grades and other values," they say.
They say, fill the form out thoroughly
for it to be rejected. "That has to happen
before your true time is marked
against your scheduled hours."
I think that's what they said.
It sounded something like it.
Perhaps they're worried
their children are at risk
with me, and my wild
expressions. Just think.
What could be learned
at the knee of such errant invention?
"Too many possibilities clog the scanotron
of grades and other values," they say.
They say, fill the form out thoroughly
for it to be rejected. "That has to happen
before your true time is marked
against your scheduled hours."
I think that's what they said.
It sounded something like it.
April 3
Curled or cupped or clenching,
the bottle shapes the hand
in real and imagined moments,
refracted, by whose lights?
It's then the point of view finds drunkenness
as the only way to claim liberty of true
self-expression; thirst alone is serious motive,
but this man has to measure angles
for effect, confirming to all viewers,
ranged around,
that he hasn't really had a beer yet, or has he?
Curled or cupped or clenching,
the bottle shapes the hand
in real and imagined moments,
refracted, by whose lights?
It's then the point of view finds drunkenness
as the only way to claim liberty of true
self-expression; thirst alone is serious motive,
but this man has to measure angles
for effect, confirming to all viewers,
ranged around,
that he hasn't really had a beer yet, or has he?
April 2
Escobar's Hippos
When Cocaine Kingpin Pablo Ecobar was killed --
shot through the ear on his very own birthday --
his pet hippos took to the Columbian jungles
to mingle and mate, wallowing
in the mud of the River Magdalena.
With no natural predators, they rule and rise,
numbering one hundred, occupying a niche, vacant these ages.
"They're just like Trigonodops --
last seen in the pleistocene --
in all but fermentation type!"
"Just look at the poop on the shoreline, those big guys!"
You've seen water buffaloes in South Africa, tramping around
like gliptodons, horses in Siberia, keeping the permafrost as cool
as the mammoths once did! Why not Cocaine hippos in the River Magdalena?
Escobar's Hippos
When Cocaine Kingpin Pablo Ecobar was killed --
shot through the ear on his very own birthday --
his pet hippos took to the Columbian jungles
to mingle and mate, wallowing
in the mud of the River Magdalena.
With no natural predators, they rule and rise,
numbering one hundred, occupying a niche, vacant these ages.
"They're just like Trigonodops --
last seen in the pleistocene --
in all but fermentation type!"
"Just look at the poop on the shoreline, those big guys!"
You've seen water buffaloes in South Africa, tramping around
like gliptodons, horses in Siberia, keeping the permafrost as cool
as the mammoths once did! Why not Cocaine hippos in the River Magdalena?
April 2, 2021
The truth is, or my truth is
I take to the woods to undo
my own thoughts, (oneness, loneness
and decision, selfhood and purpose).
Before me, sorrel and sword fern;
under my feet, the compassionate,
buffering duff, understory to my own.
Light tattered by leaf edge.
Senses strung on a horizontal.
I would be of more use as mere matter,
but I love my own hum so.
I'm not leaf or spore, more a library of longing.
But here, worshipping the untranslated
with the fervor of an alien heart,
I hold my breath to deny
my own necessity. I close my eyes
with hopes of revealing the unseen.
The truth is, or my truth is
I take to the woods to undo
my own thoughts, (oneness, loneness
and decision, selfhood and purpose).
Before me, sorrel and sword fern;
under my feet, the compassionate,
buffering duff, understory to my own.
Light tattered by leaf edge.
Senses strung on a horizontal.
I would be of more use as mere matter,
but I love my own hum so.
I'm not leaf or spore, more a library of longing.
But here, worshipping the untranslated
with the fervor of an alien heart,
I hold my breath to deny
my own necessity. I close my eyes
with hopes of revealing the unseen.
April 1, 2021
Unidad/Unity [from Pablo Neruda]
This leaf is all leaves.
This flower is all the petals there are.
Abundance is the big liar.
All fruits are the same.
All trees are one.
And the earth is just this one flower.
It's not just to teach us to survive,
learning from each near-death
and its distance; there's also memory's
rhapsodizing function.
It lets you live -- strung remembrance,
shock and charm -- with the child you were.
A hill of stark white snow
and the challenge it presented
to your gravity is force for adaptation.
It also is a sensory bomb, not to be
forgotten. She, he, and I
there, steeped in speed, frozen.
Unidad/Unity [from Pablo Neruda]
This leaf is all leaves.
This flower is all the petals there are.
Abundance is the big liar.
All fruits are the same.
All trees are one.
And the earth is just this one flower.
It's not just to teach us to survive,
learning from each near-death
and its distance; there's also memory's
rhapsodizing function.
It lets you live -- strung remembrance,
shock and charm -- with the child you were.
A hill of stark white snow
and the challenge it presented
to your gravity is force for adaptation.
It also is a sensory bomb, not to be
forgotten. She, he, and I
there, steeped in speed, frozen.
April 1, 2021
Tracing out the roadmap for him,
I go back twice. Where the way divides,
I write notes of when, which explains why,
drawing pictures of once.
"How will this help me arrive?" He asks
and I take the sheet back from his hands.
"Hold on," I say, "I forgot to include the quail,
the woodpile falling to shagging mane,
the strands of wind that trace the trail,
confirming direction."
My pen is running out of ink.
I light a match, run it along
the pen's barrel, coaxing
memory to emerge.
It's then I hear his steps out front.
What do you know?
He's heading out, unmapped.
I can hear him whistling.
Tracing out the roadmap for him,
I go back twice. Where the way divides,
I write notes of when, which explains why,
drawing pictures of once.
"How will this help me arrive?" He asks
and I take the sheet back from his hands.
"Hold on," I say, "I forgot to include the quail,
the woodpile falling to shagging mane,
the strands of wind that trace the trail,
confirming direction."
My pen is running out of ink.
I light a match, run it along
the pen's barrel, coaxing
memory to emerge.
It's then I hear his steps out front.
What do you know?
He's heading out, unmapped.
I can hear him whistling.