4/23/22
Dragon Eyes
At the yard sale,
the FAB LAB
Halloween Craft
Dragon Eyes
were free.
[Much to my delight
and glee.]
The man selling threw them to me.
Large as a mason jar lid,
each one, and green-flecked
every eye, in one set of two,
two sets of three.
Dragon Eyes
At the yard sale,
the FAB LAB
Halloween Craft
Dragon Eyes
were free.
[Much to my delight
and glee.]
The man selling threw them to me.
Large as a mason jar lid,
each one, and green-flecked
every eye, in one set of two,
two sets of three.
4/22/22
There are those who from the first years plan; they might even chart in pencil the course of a life proceeding through university and focus, years dedicated and faced forward, accruing expertise and recognition, all the way to worldwide status in a field, living and breathing entomology,
say, or East Indian artifacts, with publications and lecture circuits, honors and discoveries.
Asked the reason, the purpose, the trajectory,
these experts are well-armed.
And those of us who daily dally and dabble, who have taken the dog-leg path, are inoculated
with a certain serum, are held rapt by concerto,
carried by a fiber engineered for load and longevity.
There's room for us all on the longboat.
Yes, there are those who starve before three,
who are born addicted, with failure to thrive,
who draw the short lot and suffer.
Every "self-made" someone is lucky or lucky enough,
every doomed dead body, very much not.
Walk along the frontage road and count
to one thousand. Keep counting, keep walking.
How many more steps until you get there?
What's the final count?
There are those who from the first years plan; they might even chart in pencil the course of a life proceeding through university and focus, years dedicated and faced forward, accruing expertise and recognition, all the way to worldwide status in a field, living and breathing entomology,
say, or East Indian artifacts, with publications and lecture circuits, honors and discoveries.
Asked the reason, the purpose, the trajectory,
these experts are well-armed.
And those of us who daily dally and dabble, who have taken the dog-leg path, are inoculated
with a certain serum, are held rapt by concerto,
carried by a fiber engineered for load and longevity.
There's room for us all on the longboat.
Yes, there are those who starve before three,
who are born addicted, with failure to thrive,
who draw the short lot and suffer.
Every "self-made" someone is lucky or lucky enough,
every doomed dead body, very much not.
Walk along the frontage road and count
to one thousand. Keep counting, keep walking.
How many more steps until you get there?
What's the final count?
4/21/22
The door you closed, locked, forgot
was not as impenetrable as your will,
or your poise, or your efforts
to array around you the gracious quarters
of cool calm. I know I'm like a drunk uncle
to you, the one that knocks the tent down,
the one who fucks your brother and laughs
about it, later. More than that,
I think I got you to overstep
your own boundaries of delicacy and discretion,
and that would never do. I think of you,
from time to time, for what that's worth,
feel there is a common chord between us,
even still, I who never shed the strands
extending from dense knots of becoming.
I gathered the day's mail into three piles:
absolutely not, mild maybes, and have others
read for worth, from Eshleman's suicide tower,
our windows gave on to Bancroft.
It was enough to be granted a key to a room
in a stall stack of endeavor and excellence,
the inner angles focused on. Though young,
we never doubted our insights.
We launched our little boat on rhyme and flavor.
Tláloc's charted course is angled on forward motion,
cantilevered with where and how, relations
of geography and wind variants.
It has the texture of progress
though stasis keeps its design.
8 points exert a tension
every outline has:
what is within and what without?
i
The door you closed, locked, forgot
was not as impenetrable as your will,
or your poise, or your efforts
to array around you the gracious quarters
of cool calm. I know I'm like a drunk uncle
to you, the one that knocks the tent down,
the one who fucks your brother and laughs
about it, later. More than that,
I think I got you to overstep
your own boundaries of delicacy and discretion,
and that would never do. I think of you,
from time to time, for what that's worth,
feel there is a common chord between us,
even still, I who never shed the strands
extending from dense knots of becoming.
I gathered the day's mail into three piles:
absolutely not, mild maybes, and have others
read for worth, from Eshleman's suicide tower,
our windows gave on to Bancroft.
It was enough to be granted a key to a room
in a stall stack of endeavor and excellence,
the inner angles focused on. Though young,
we never doubted our insights.
We launched our little boat on rhyme and flavor.
Tláloc's charted course is angled on forward motion,
cantilevered with where and how, relations
of geography and wind variants.
It has the texture of progress
though stasis keeps its design.
8 points exert a tension
every outline has:
what is within and what without?
i
4/19/22
Fond Wishes for my Students
Don't let them cut off your hump
or tame your wild fronds.
They'll have you assort: smallest
to tallest, in some configuration of function,
of gender, skill level, denomination;
stand, but shape shift, become
the free creature of liminal passage.
Keep your voice tuned to your song
and learn how to harmonize for overtones.
Enter sound as you would a dark room,
slowly, expanding. Keep a spare shirt
and taxi fare at the ready, and know when
best to bolt. Let their words float along
the surface to see what depths
can be sounded. Let them know your confusion
is fertile, is seeking new forms, a condition
for truer certainty. Fly between stations
with copper banded feathers, new to you now,
an accident of contrast, felicitous as flight.
Make of your injuries a guitar, strung
with taut moments and tuned to the climate
of your birthplace. Sing that song
that came to you yesterday, of itself,
the one for which only you know the words.
Fond Wishes for my Students
Don't let them cut off your hump
or tame your wild fronds.
They'll have you assort: smallest
to tallest, in some configuration of function,
of gender, skill level, denomination;
stand, but shape shift, become
the free creature of liminal passage.
Keep your voice tuned to your song
and learn how to harmonize for overtones.
Enter sound as you would a dark room,
slowly, expanding. Keep a spare shirt
and taxi fare at the ready, and know when
best to bolt. Let their words float along
the surface to see what depths
can be sounded. Let them know your confusion
is fertile, is seeking new forms, a condition
for truer certainty. Fly between stations
with copper banded feathers, new to you now,
an accident of contrast, felicitous as flight.
Make of your injuries a guitar, strung
with taut moments and tuned to the climate
of your birthplace. Sing that song
that came to you yesterday, of itself,
the one for which only you know the words.
4/18/22
1.
Out in search of someone who could kiss me
who could catch that slipknot created by James Dean,
who moved with grace's momentum,
spoke with assurance, shot with skill: pool balls colliding.
2.
The skin between was stretched on time's armature,
inner, where it began, and outer, all the arcs and rays
of others' launched stories. I really did believe
I could prepare myself for the night.
3.
Or joined, mirrored, laughing, we two,
urging and nudging, the soundtrack in back.
How much would we show to draw
closer to the as yet unrevealed?
4.
So much was juncture:
grand entrance, storming out,
all those smoked cigarettes
centered on statement.
I was forever crafting
the knockout phrase, the inky margin.
5.
Dawn cracked the next day
always, too light blue, too dry
mouthed, too talked out.
But there was a song for that, also.
I sang it on the way back home.
1.
Out in search of someone who could kiss me
who could catch that slipknot created by James Dean,
who moved with grace's momentum,
spoke with assurance, shot with skill: pool balls colliding.
2.
The skin between was stretched on time's armature,
inner, where it began, and outer, all the arcs and rays
of others' launched stories. I really did believe
I could prepare myself for the night.
3.
Or joined, mirrored, laughing, we two,
urging and nudging, the soundtrack in back.
How much would we show to draw
closer to the as yet unrevealed?
4.
So much was juncture:
grand entrance, storming out,
all those smoked cigarettes
centered on statement.
I was forever crafting
the knockout phrase, the inky margin.
5.
Dawn cracked the next day
always, too light blue, too dry
mouthed, too talked out.
But there was a song for that, also.
I sang it on the way back home.
4/17/22
We tried to not be breedist,
every pup, given good training
could be a good dog --
but perhaps this little black and white
morsel of wriggle and climb,
who stepped on the heads of her littermates
to appear above and beyond, had a fierceness
in her, waiting to charge.
Were we wondering, the dog lot called
to ask, for if we were breed-biased, that is,
for the attacks gathered in news columns
impossible to ignore, we could say now and be off
the proverbial adoption hook.
We had two small children whose smiles
were as yet unperforated by fang,
who loved their adopted brethren already,
loved her young, wild, will to live large.
Unlike other less human breeds,
her eyes faced forwards and missed nothing.
She was sharp and perfectly formed, each muscle
delineated by purpose, each limb communicating
with will and way. If countered, and she was,
she applied her strength exactly, no more
than necessary to communicate her supremacy,
and she was utterly uncontainable.
Build a fence six feet, and she would jump seven,
build it higher to see how with paws she could climb
and top it. Nobody wants to encounter a loose pit
on a backwood trail or neighborhood byway.
So there was that. And then, she fell in love
with our neighbor's brother who promised he'd take her
to a a shoreside range. So, we relented and let her go.
Little did we know he would station himself
a half-block from us, in a camper (the window of which
she'd bust through, left alone. ) To Pepper Olompali,
such a wondrous beast, thank you for being
such a dear and remarkable creature, allowing us
to call you ours, for the time you did.
We tried to not be breedist,
every pup, given good training
could be a good dog --
but perhaps this little black and white
morsel of wriggle and climb,
who stepped on the heads of her littermates
to appear above and beyond, had a fierceness
in her, waiting to charge.
Were we wondering, the dog lot called
to ask, for if we were breed-biased, that is,
for the attacks gathered in news columns
impossible to ignore, we could say now and be off
the proverbial adoption hook.
We had two small children whose smiles
were as yet unperforated by fang,
who loved their adopted brethren already,
loved her young, wild, will to live large.
Unlike other less human breeds,
her eyes faced forwards and missed nothing.
She was sharp and perfectly formed, each muscle
delineated by purpose, each limb communicating
with will and way. If countered, and she was,
she applied her strength exactly, no more
than necessary to communicate her supremacy,
and she was utterly uncontainable.
Build a fence six feet, and she would jump seven,
build it higher to see how with paws she could climb
and top it. Nobody wants to encounter a loose pit
on a backwood trail or neighborhood byway.
So there was that. And then, she fell in love
with our neighbor's brother who promised he'd take her
to a a shoreside range. So, we relented and let her go.
Little did we know he would station himself
a half-block from us, in a camper (the window of which
she'd bust through, left alone. ) To Pepper Olompali,
such a wondrous beast, thank you for being
such a dear and remarkable creature, allowing us
to call you ours, for the time you did.
4/16/22
From under, a creature renders
open air as surround,
discloses deeper urges.
Unknown to our species, genders.
We strain to hear the sound,
the flipper-fin mandala surges,
both rare and native.
Binoculars catch a mound,
two heads, darkness merges
with denser dark, imitative dirges.
From under, a creature renders
open air as surround,
discloses deeper urges.
Unknown to our species, genders.
We strain to hear the sound,
the flipper-fin mandala surges,
both rare and native.
Binoculars catch a mound,
two heads, darkness merges
with denser dark, imitative dirges.
4/15/22
I'm at his mother's house on Thanksgiving Day
and here's another reason I know it can't last.
The television, with a football game, exerts
its force from the corner, everyone arrayed around it,
but the women, who cook the meal
and join only to perch on a chair arm,
or shout from the threshold.
I look at all the players in their team colors
and strapped on carapaces, helmeted to disguise
their features and to mass them, united.
Even the opposition, the contest between,
alienates me, the outsider in every way but one.
I've made a dish no one will eat.
I huddle with the children, with my markers and odd accent,
drawing denizens of an underworld, all embossed gills
and gnashing teeth. "Touchdown!" cracks the room in two,
and from my place on the floor, I see a shard of autumn light,
and out that window, a crow far above, bracketed by the sunder.
I'm at his mother's house on Thanksgiving Day
and here's another reason I know it can't last.
The television, with a football game, exerts
its force from the corner, everyone arrayed around it,
but the women, who cook the meal
and join only to perch on a chair arm,
or shout from the threshold.
I look at all the players in their team colors
and strapped on carapaces, helmeted to disguise
their features and to mass them, united.
Even the opposition, the contest between,
alienates me, the outsider in every way but one.
I've made a dish no one will eat.
I huddle with the children, with my markers and odd accent,
drawing denizens of an underworld, all embossed gills
and gnashing teeth. "Touchdown!" cracks the room in two,
and from my place on the floor, I see a shard of autumn light,
and out that window, a crow far above, bracketed by the sunder.
4/14/22
Estate Sale
An older Toyota, with a dented back panel drives up to the house marked with a picket. Several other cars are parked out front and people stream out the door, carrying floor lamps and framed sailboats, the linens and a pachinko set.
I start in the kitchen, where the counters are lined with crystal from shot glasses to champagne flutes, unshattered sets of celebration and service, silver shined to a festive gleam, stacked Noritake at the ready, long past need.
The dining room is arranged with gravy boat and turkey platter, soup tureen patterned with a hunting scene, collections of abalone inlay and sterling footed decanters. The chairs are where chairs have been the sixty years the family's 6,5, 4, 2, sat for their meals, to have conversations balanced on announcement and occasion.
A mahogany framed mirror captures the absence now: $175.
I'm magpie to this family's dissolution. I've picked up an odd demitasse spoon, shouldered with tiny leaves, its terminal a nest with three small eggs, unpriced and precious. In a corner of the next room, I find a shoebox of old photographs, album rejects, no doubt, as each is a little off: the cat caught leaping from an auntie's lap, the look of sheer hatred brother to small brother.
I will not allow myself to look through these now, but tuck the box under an arm, and continue through the house, climbing the staircase to the bedrooms. There, a smell abides, despite windows thrown wide; age at its end. Blankets and sheets, pillows and shams, a bathroom with the stuff and jumble of cure and care.
In a study, shelves of books for hobbies and expertise, college course and more current popular foray, inherited tomes leather bound and ink inscribed. I've found two I want as mine: elements of plumbing , with illustrations of lead work and fixture, and a first edition (!) of Eliot's Marina.
Inside the closet -- the realm within the realm within -- our dead hostess has her clothes arranged from daily to formal, in a breadth of size and style that indicates both her continuity and reluctance to abandon what was complimented or otherwise associated with a happy time, she could re-occupy with a touch of silk or crepe. Each era is represented, though our hostess seems more understated than daring. There is one print dress that leaps from its padded hanger, statement-wise, in lime green and teal, flowers large as a hand, in my size exactly. I take that one downstairs with me.
When I bring my haul ($14 total) out to the car, I'm blinking from the bright daylight and disjuncture. "Where to next," Doug ask at the wheel. "Where are we headed?"
Estate Sale
An older Toyota, with a dented back panel drives up to the house marked with a picket. Several other cars are parked out front and people stream out the door, carrying floor lamps and framed sailboats, the linens and a pachinko set.
I start in the kitchen, where the counters are lined with crystal from shot glasses to champagne flutes, unshattered sets of celebration and service, silver shined to a festive gleam, stacked Noritake at the ready, long past need.
The dining room is arranged with gravy boat and turkey platter, soup tureen patterned with a hunting scene, collections of abalone inlay and sterling footed decanters. The chairs are where chairs have been the sixty years the family's 6,5, 4, 2, sat for their meals, to have conversations balanced on announcement and occasion.
A mahogany framed mirror captures the absence now: $175.
I'm magpie to this family's dissolution. I've picked up an odd demitasse spoon, shouldered with tiny leaves, its terminal a nest with three small eggs, unpriced and precious. In a corner of the next room, I find a shoebox of old photographs, album rejects, no doubt, as each is a little off: the cat caught leaping from an auntie's lap, the look of sheer hatred brother to small brother.
I will not allow myself to look through these now, but tuck the box under an arm, and continue through the house, climbing the staircase to the bedrooms. There, a smell abides, despite windows thrown wide; age at its end. Blankets and sheets, pillows and shams, a bathroom with the stuff and jumble of cure and care.
In a study, shelves of books for hobbies and expertise, college course and more current popular foray, inherited tomes leather bound and ink inscribed. I've found two I want as mine: elements of plumbing , with illustrations of lead work and fixture, and a first edition (!) of Eliot's Marina.
Inside the closet -- the realm within the realm within -- our dead hostess has her clothes arranged from daily to formal, in a breadth of size and style that indicates both her continuity and reluctance to abandon what was complimented or otherwise associated with a happy time, she could re-occupy with a touch of silk or crepe. Each era is represented, though our hostess seems more understated than daring. There is one print dress that leaps from its padded hanger, statement-wise, in lime green and teal, flowers large as a hand, in my size exactly. I take that one downstairs with me.
When I bring my haul ($14 total) out to the car, I'm blinking from the bright daylight and disjuncture. "Where to next," Doug ask at the wheel. "Where are we headed?"
4/13/22
I'm not going to lie,
of all the phases, stages, steps
to nowhere, this might suck
the loudest, but you're young still,
don't worry, a taste of things to come.
Take it as some kind of 20 questions
guessing game, not a child, not grown,
most of the responsibilities, few of the perks,
big teeth, acne, stained crotches, broken voices,
of course I know the litany, the betrayal,
the pitched whispers, the storms of desire.
Here's what to hold onto with those bitten,
half-painted, nails, declarations penned on jeans,
more hole than denim, your skin smooth,
praise Jesus. Your wanderlust will take you
farther in, your disgust farther out.
Make up new words for this and write them
backwards for a mirror, cut and dye
your own hair in a way that makes you wish
you could stay home a week to recover,
but you have that stupid report with C.,
who has done pretty much nothing
but distract you, drawing switchblades in the margins.
And Thursday's the frolics, for which you're going
to do that thing you've practiced forever
in that shirt you just got that makes you look,
you think, like you haven't thought about it,
you simply are, casually, that is, fucking hot.
Graph the slope from the slope intercept
equation, with the given variables, easy,
paragraph toward conclusion, the clutter
of terms far-flown from anything real,
voices rising from below, like a storm
of steam. At least you've got headphones
that can shut you in with grit teeth and guitar,
knowing that this now will be clicked
into a compact you might wear around your neck
but never open, not even asked to, late at night
by that kid who knows the words
and chord changes to your favorite song.
I'm not going to lie,
of all the phases, stages, steps
to nowhere, this might suck
the loudest, but you're young still,
don't worry, a taste of things to come.
Take it as some kind of 20 questions
guessing game, not a child, not grown,
most of the responsibilities, few of the perks,
big teeth, acne, stained crotches, broken voices,
of course I know the litany, the betrayal,
the pitched whispers, the storms of desire.
Here's what to hold onto with those bitten,
half-painted, nails, declarations penned on jeans,
more hole than denim, your skin smooth,
praise Jesus. Your wanderlust will take you
farther in, your disgust farther out.
Make up new words for this and write them
backwards for a mirror, cut and dye
your own hair in a way that makes you wish
you could stay home a week to recover,
but you have that stupid report with C.,
who has done pretty much nothing
but distract you, drawing switchblades in the margins.
And Thursday's the frolics, for which you're going
to do that thing you've practiced forever
in that shirt you just got that makes you look,
you think, like you haven't thought about it,
you simply are, casually, that is, fucking hot.
Graph the slope from the slope intercept
equation, with the given variables, easy,
paragraph toward conclusion, the clutter
of terms far-flown from anything real,
voices rising from below, like a storm
of steam. At least you've got headphones
that can shut you in with grit teeth and guitar,
knowing that this now will be clicked
into a compact you might wear around your neck
but never open, not even asked to, late at night
by that kid who knows the words
and chord changes to your favorite song.
4/12/22
We bought one of those wood signs, with the edges
rustic and singed, naming out property something
folksy and fun, "Cabin a real good time," while within
the loamy needled ground, under the "nature trail,"
(oxymorons R us), a mycorrhizal network connects
this tree and this, in ways that would topple
a metaphor in sheer wonder, with kin recognition
and cross-talk, interspecies communication
strengthening resiliency. Look around and count
species, you who collect, number mourning doves
and lichen, pine marten, marbled murrelet,
all dependent on structures intricate and adaptive.
Were there introduced microbe or toxin,
a warning would release volatile hormones,
communally, I mean, an understanding, just that,
standing under all the upper regions of growth
and harbor, of screech and song. They change
leaf shape and angle towards or away, together,
I'd say as one, but what does that mean,
coming from one sitting beneath the canopy,
above a fungal lace of collaboration and common sense.
We bought one of those wood signs, with the edges
rustic and singed, naming out property something
folksy and fun, "Cabin a real good time," while within
the loamy needled ground, under the "nature trail,"
(oxymorons R us), a mycorrhizal network connects
this tree and this, in ways that would topple
a metaphor in sheer wonder, with kin recognition
and cross-talk, interspecies communication
strengthening resiliency. Look around and count
species, you who collect, number mourning doves
and lichen, pine marten, marbled murrelet,
all dependent on structures intricate and adaptive.
Were there introduced microbe or toxin,
a warning would release volatile hormones,
communally, I mean, an understanding, just that,
standing under all the upper regions of growth
and harbor, of screech and song. They change
leaf shape and angle towards or away, together,
I'd say as one, but what does that mean,
coming from one sitting beneath the canopy,
above a fungal lace of collaboration and common sense.
4/11/22
For the two weeks before he killed his father,
he lived in the base of a hollow redwood,
his food bag hung from a burl.
Storm-struck sixty years ago,
the charred core smelled of smoke.
He didn't notice; from boyhood,
ranging back there, with pack and knife
and dog, learning early to sound out
his longing on a harmonica, and make
of the shadows explanation for what was.
One neighbor, naked in her hot tub minded.
Another, concerned by his haunted gaze, called.
He'd been in the woods so long, he didn't look
modern. He didn't seem sighted or worded:
heard in the leaf rustle and twig snap,
lurking like voice's own shadow,
thoughts on reverb, low enough to confuse
the blood. And after he'd done it,
and many of us heard the laggard shots,
he pressed his forehead to the sequoia's
bark, knowing he was also a mere instant,
a fleck. The tree told him nothing
he didn't already know.
So, he made his way upward and through,
purpose from motion, over ivy and sorrel,
past privacy and privilege, deeper and more solitary,
the danger done, the fragrance of leaf-break
on his pant legs, the sun coins on his shoulders,
the magnetism of the place reversed.
He was expelled from the verdant enclave,
discovered walking in a neighborhood,
miles away, aimed elsewhere,
identified by those red shoes he always wore.
For the two weeks before he killed his father,
he lived in the base of a hollow redwood,
his food bag hung from a burl.
Storm-struck sixty years ago,
the charred core smelled of smoke.
He didn't notice; from boyhood,
ranging back there, with pack and knife
and dog, learning early to sound out
his longing on a harmonica, and make
of the shadows explanation for what was.
One neighbor, naked in her hot tub minded.
Another, concerned by his haunted gaze, called.
He'd been in the woods so long, he didn't look
modern. He didn't seem sighted or worded:
heard in the leaf rustle and twig snap,
lurking like voice's own shadow,
thoughts on reverb, low enough to confuse
the blood. And after he'd done it,
and many of us heard the laggard shots,
he pressed his forehead to the sequoia's
bark, knowing he was also a mere instant,
a fleck. The tree told him nothing
he didn't already know.
So, he made his way upward and through,
purpose from motion, over ivy and sorrel,
past privacy and privilege, deeper and more solitary,
the danger done, the fragrance of leaf-break
on his pant legs, the sun coins on his shoulders,
the magnetism of the place reversed.
He was expelled from the verdant enclave,
discovered walking in a neighborhood,
miles away, aimed elsewhere,
identified by those red shoes he always wore.
4/10/22
Sweet, soft breath in sleep,
so near me, the human nestled
in repose, his face, my horizon
so dear and known.
On waking, his ideas enlace
in words that grow, his timbre
of wood and weft, of trillium
and clarinet. And when he speaks
to me, my love, I am opened
and affirmed, I am coursing
conduit, cantilevered to his questions
and long depths. When he places
his hand upside down along my leg,
I see and feel everything we've ever
held together, ever held apart,
ever endeavored to set free,
his touch and grasp are his,
and they are, by near knowing,
mine too, for he is utterly generous,
all the vast happenings he daily gives
with the cadence of his own sense,
with the attentions of his regard.
4/9/22
For Rose on her Birthday
At her 70th birthday, she sang
though her voice wasn't trained or pure
and on high heels she teetered.
Humor is just as good,
or better, courage,
her flashing eyes, her fresh red mouth.
For Rose on her Birthday
At her 70th birthday, she sang
though her voice wasn't trained or pure
and on high heels she teetered.
Humor is just as good,
or better, courage,
her flashing eyes, her fresh red mouth.
4/8/22
Between and Underneath
Between what is and was
said and gestured, at the juncture
of word and intent,
the parting of the lips,
there I can find what's known and wonder.
Laughter adorns the awkward
confusion for this can seem only odd
and inexplicable; normally, I don't try
to offer logic or even the odds.
I wear whatever I want in crowds,
tune my voice to human audibility,
offer adjacent apologies to insects
and birds, so often disregarded
in this veritable opera of power and deceit.
Under a leaf, in the river's eddy,
at a dogpaw integument
between pad and claw,
there are other thoroughfares to other channels,
to sense and sound experienced
as a new kind of light.
Entering, I shed my shyness,
no longer gawkmaster or blurthurter,
no longer overlarge and undercooked.
Who'd have thought in a world record contest,
in an exhibition shockwaved from all shores,
a talent for transmutation, unbodied and unbothered,
would be my reward, a child forgotten
under the table, making sense of knee, shin, and aside.
Between and Underneath
Between what is and was
said and gestured, at the juncture
of word and intent,
the parting of the lips,
there I can find what's known and wonder.
Laughter adorns the awkward
confusion for this can seem only odd
and inexplicable; normally, I don't try
to offer logic or even the odds.
I wear whatever I want in crowds,
tune my voice to human audibility,
offer adjacent apologies to insects
and birds, so often disregarded
in this veritable opera of power and deceit.
Under a leaf, in the river's eddy,
at a dogpaw integument
between pad and claw,
there are other thoroughfares to other channels,
to sense and sound experienced
as a new kind of light.
Entering, I shed my shyness,
no longer gawkmaster or blurthurter,
no longer overlarge and undercooked.
Who'd have thought in a world record contest,
in an exhibition shockwaved from all shores,
a talent for transmutation, unbodied and unbothered,
would be my reward, a child forgotten
under the table, making sense of knee, shin, and aside.
4/7
Insomnia
The way it's supposed to work
is with a fresh mouth and clean face,
loose cotton nightshirt, a kiss to my love,
a chapter or story, not too long, but long enough,
pillow plumped and fitted to a shoulder,
lights out and the lashes borrowed from ferns
lowered at a brook bed to dip their tips in the flow.
The release involves no struggle or thought,
no concessions to a greater force, more a recognition
of inner, native lambency, limber as new growth,
as it ever is. Some nights, last night, I am a caged
animal tracing the wrong steps that found me here,
muscles alert for take-off, but stranded
on this rocky shore. Quite uncontrollably comes
the excess of errors and misspoken words, year-old
scenes of my own depredation, misspoken, mistaken,
mishandled moments that echo like an emotional
kaleidoscope, reeling in revolting array.
In case I had not hear the phrasing of my own stupidity
that on a playback reel as background to a kind of planning
that can't escape the ordinals of onset, cannot shake
the cape of personal obsession, the trailing ends
muddier and muddier, until I need to mentally slap my own face
to snap out of it, already, for won't you be exhausted tomorrow?
And what if I am? Do not look at the clock, for that is truly
calamitous, or turn on a light, or get up to read.
You must lie there as the coffer of your own deeds and the undone,
anxiety stitched to the cheeks and knees of those you love,
a briny mix of this side, not that, of diaphanous plans
that evaporate on contact with a hammer, a shuffling
of pages you keep back-filed under use or need.
Sometimes the man I love who sleeps beside me
will console and soothe me with his steady course,
his living inbreaths and exhalations, powering his skiff;
the warm-sweet smell he generates from his very being
can be antidote to that inner churning.
I can say, get in step with his native rhythm and it quells
the storm, he and the cricket and the wind and the distant
ocean, for somehow something (finally), bless it,
takes me in and down.
Insomnia
The way it's supposed to work
is with a fresh mouth and clean face,
loose cotton nightshirt, a kiss to my love,
a chapter or story, not too long, but long enough,
pillow plumped and fitted to a shoulder,
lights out and the lashes borrowed from ferns
lowered at a brook bed to dip their tips in the flow.
The release involves no struggle or thought,
no concessions to a greater force, more a recognition
of inner, native lambency, limber as new growth,
as it ever is. Some nights, last night, I am a caged
animal tracing the wrong steps that found me here,
muscles alert for take-off, but stranded
on this rocky shore. Quite uncontrollably comes
the excess of errors and misspoken words, year-old
scenes of my own depredation, misspoken, mistaken,
mishandled moments that echo like an emotional
kaleidoscope, reeling in revolting array.
In case I had not hear the phrasing of my own stupidity
that on a playback reel as background to a kind of planning
that can't escape the ordinals of onset, cannot shake
the cape of personal obsession, the trailing ends
muddier and muddier, until I need to mentally slap my own face
to snap out of it, already, for won't you be exhausted tomorrow?
And what if I am? Do not look at the clock, for that is truly
calamitous, or turn on a light, or get up to read.
You must lie there as the coffer of your own deeds and the undone,
anxiety stitched to the cheeks and knees of those you love,
a briny mix of this side, not that, of diaphanous plans
that evaporate on contact with a hammer, a shuffling
of pages you keep back-filed under use or need.
Sometimes the man I love who sleeps beside me
will console and soothe me with his steady course,
his living inbreaths and exhalations, powering his skiff;
the warm-sweet smell he generates from his very being
can be antidote to that inner churning.
I can say, get in step with his native rhythm and it quells
the storm, he and the cricket and the wind and the distant
ocean, for somehow something (finally), bless it,
takes me in and down.
4/6/22
Grown Cold
Elsewhere in the city, she was ending it.
Long after night had wings or even sleeves,
in a way that could be called accidental,
if it all hadn't been aimed at always,
as always is never's intimate shadow.
I didn't know that then. I saw
her radical disregard as cool, her missing tooth,
uptown insouciance, her dark smile, colorblind
to class or chaos of misery, no beauty
of talent could ease. Elsewhere in the city,
among the muttered, cluttered tales,
I was wrapped in a embrace that urged me further,
unfurling from within, on a threshold of some loud
crush and intricate overlay of bus routes
and drunken wandering, rats coursing
from pipe to grate, taxis with their blaring radios
heading to their fares, a mosaic of sequin and shard
and mirror. I couldn't contain the multitudes.
In a simultaneity of symphonic discord,
one woman eased to die in tub-water long grown cold.
Grown Cold
Elsewhere in the city, she was ending it.
Long after night had wings or even sleeves,
in a way that could be called accidental,
if it all hadn't been aimed at always,
as always is never's intimate shadow.
I didn't know that then. I saw
her radical disregard as cool, her missing tooth,
uptown insouciance, her dark smile, colorblind
to class or chaos of misery, no beauty
of talent could ease. Elsewhere in the city,
among the muttered, cluttered tales,
I was wrapped in a embrace that urged me further,
unfurling from within, on a threshold of some loud
crush and intricate overlay of bus routes
and drunken wandering, rats coursing
from pipe to grate, taxis with their blaring radios
heading to their fares, a mosaic of sequin and shard
and mirror. I couldn't contain the multitudes.
In a simultaneity of symphonic discord,
one woman eased to die in tub-water long grown cold.
4/15/22
Alexis Amann
Miasma Migraine
From a spear of light piercing dark, groined chambers
and the empty space around me less empty, sliced.
Garlands gather and divide on the margins.
Jagged rays crest and expand in a rhythm I thought my pulse,
not of blood, maybe, more something wired, electric.
The known world gets cracked and fractals of exhalation
hinge dimensions, folding in and emanating out, Escherish
and steady. There's brightness and its frame, crenelating
ever outward, with me as its power pole,
with my tiara of fireflies, my mute wonder.
Alexis Amann
Miasma Migraine
From a spear of light piercing dark, groined chambers
and the empty space around me less empty, sliced.
Garlands gather and divide on the margins.
Jagged rays crest and expand in a rhythm I thought my pulse,
not of blood, maybe, more something wired, electric.
The known world gets cracked and fractals of exhalation
hinge dimensions, folding in and emanating out, Escherish
and steady. There's brightness and its frame, crenelating
ever outward, with me as its power pole,
with my tiara of fireflies, my mute wonder.
4/4/22
Empty yourself of set answers that proceed from a thesis
and gather mumbled moss and supposition.
Breathe in the mix of oxygen and mood,
airborne pollen and this manor's regrets.
Have on the counter three sharpened 5b pencils,
3 pens, two with black ink, one blue.
Face west in the morning, east in the evening.
Sit in a straight-backed, low-cushioned chair
at a table or desk, arms forming 8o degree angles
to place your palms flat against its plane.
Make of your mind a magnet drawing iron truth and hinge,
flat-headed nails and screws, marked by use and service.
What you will be building may not know the world as yet,
nor be recognizable as like, for all originality steps clear
of the swinging door, the cliff edge and fondness for sweet.
There in rare atmosphere, when all past performance
might predict a sudden plunge, you will have fashioned
a craft unlike all others, with abilities and angles
utterly fit to form, headed for uncharted discoveries,
powered by a fuel of uncompromising octane
and originality, collecting the possible
in a basket woven from hair strand, silver, river reeds.
Empty yourself of set answers that proceed from a thesis
and gather mumbled moss and supposition.
Breathe in the mix of oxygen and mood,
airborne pollen and this manor's regrets.
Have on the counter three sharpened 5b pencils,
3 pens, two with black ink, one blue.
Face west in the morning, east in the evening.
Sit in a straight-backed, low-cushioned chair
at a table or desk, arms forming 8o degree angles
to place your palms flat against its plane.
Make of your mind a magnet drawing iron truth and hinge,
flat-headed nails and screws, marked by use and service.
What you will be building may not know the world as yet,
nor be recognizable as like, for all originality steps clear
of the swinging door, the cliff edge and fondness for sweet.
There in rare atmosphere, when all past performance
might predict a sudden plunge, you will have fashioned
a craft unlike all others, with abilities and angles
utterly fit to form, headed for uncharted discoveries,
powered by a fuel of uncompromising octane
and originality, collecting the possible
in a basket woven from hair strand, silver, river reeds.
4/3/22
The measure balances a horizon
that favors neither shore nor sky.
That's how fair settles,
after a long day.
Understanding with all human
consideration.
That's how bold I was,
gathering echoes around me.
There's long lore for fishermen,
but this is not part of it.
Back again, as flotsam, message
in that bottle, flipflop, styrofoam
icechest, shipwrecked stories.
Gulls have offset nautical deeds,
trawl stored along the shore.
We're born to trust rhythms,
hearts' and waves', to measure
moments in increments.
How relieved are you, when spring
fibonaccis around you again?
The measure balances a horizon
that favors neither shore nor sky.
That's how fair settles,
after a long day.
Understanding with all human
consideration.
That's how bold I was,
gathering echoes around me.
There's long lore for fishermen,
but this is not part of it.
Back again, as flotsam, message
in that bottle, flipflop, styrofoam
icechest, shipwrecked stories.
Gulls have offset nautical deeds,
trawl stored along the shore.
We're born to trust rhythms,
hearts' and waves', to measure
moments in increments.
How relieved are you, when spring
fibonaccis around you again?
4/2/22
It was that this all happened without her,
without notice or regard, dark soil things,
underlayer things.
Before the season had shifted to cold, and long rains
had taken the hills, she'd sat on the edge
of the garden bed and made a kind of inventory
of endings that leaned forward to other starts,
the lace of tomatillos, dry filigree
with an intricacy of angles and air,
tiny seeds like coins, barely contained by the fine strands.
Now these seeds had been taken and made use of
the rough and wreckage around them.
Nothing is for nothing. They had expanded their circle
and begun to root in April's first days.
She didn't have to go to know. That this could happen
without her, but beside her, was the season's gift,
announced by mourning dove and earth odor,
rising to the window where she worked.
It was that this all happened without her,
without notice or regard, dark soil things,
underlayer things.
Before the season had shifted to cold, and long rains
had taken the hills, she'd sat on the edge
of the garden bed and made a kind of inventory
of endings that leaned forward to other starts,
the lace of tomatillos, dry filigree
with an intricacy of angles and air,
tiny seeds like coins, barely contained by the fine strands.
Now these seeds had been taken and made use of
the rough and wreckage around them.
Nothing is for nothing. They had expanded their circle
and begun to root in April's first days.
She didn't have to go to know. That this could happen
without her, but beside her, was the season's gift,
announced by mourning dove and earth odor,
rising to the window where she worked.
4/1/22
In his joy to see me up so early, my little dog leaps and leaps to love me,
leaps and lunges, me on par, lolls and lengthens.
His claw catches the warm inner reach, my arm just bared
for bed, draws a path in blood.
I try tonally to scold him, and he gets it, and yet,
it's morning! We're both on the floor of the dining room,
the day is so thrown open for joy.
He licks my length, wriggles around to lick my bleeding.
* * *
Forever might be short if spied through a spyglass backwards,
caught by a circular lens to appear domed and dimmer
not here, of course, more distant, but not by much.
When I sang "away, away," with a heart yearning
for travel and confusion, it was another now I sought,
with sarongs and shirts fashioned on traditions
I'd not yet encountered, with different names
for emotion's array. Nobody has enough days
to set foot upon every earthly inch, or greet each face
seen above the fence-line or through a crowd's bustle.
We choose and adhere. We sort and shed.
Whales may migrate half their lives, crazy distances,
but not we. We may have gone off to school
in a new region and thought our thoughts
were disencumbered by longitude
or other attachments, but we gravitated towards
accents and aroma, the way his golden velour
evoked a lion, catching his breath
in the branch of a fever tree, but was the shirt
of the man we met for coffee, time filtered
through a strong focus on each moment,
shadow boxes with glass panes,
gathered totems, charms.
In his joy to see me up so early, my little dog leaps and leaps to love me,
leaps and lunges, me on par, lolls and lengthens.
His claw catches the warm inner reach, my arm just bared
for bed, draws a path in blood.
I try tonally to scold him, and he gets it, and yet,
it's morning! We're both on the floor of the dining room,
the day is so thrown open for joy.
He licks my length, wriggles around to lick my bleeding.
* * *
Forever might be short if spied through a spyglass backwards,
caught by a circular lens to appear domed and dimmer
not here, of course, more distant, but not by much.
When I sang "away, away," with a heart yearning
for travel and confusion, it was another now I sought,
with sarongs and shirts fashioned on traditions
I'd not yet encountered, with different names
for emotion's array. Nobody has enough days
to set foot upon every earthly inch, or greet each face
seen above the fence-line or through a crowd's bustle.
We choose and adhere. We sort and shed.
Whales may migrate half their lives, crazy distances,
but not we. We may have gone off to school
in a new region and thought our thoughts
were disencumbered by longitude
or other attachments, but we gravitated towards
accents and aroma, the way his golden velour
evoked a lion, catching his breath
in the branch of a fever tree, but was the shirt
of the man we met for coffee, time filtered
through a strong focus on each moment,
shadow boxes with glass panes,
gathered totems, charms.