sticky situation

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sticky stuff

i'm imagining myself into

you're coming

and then leaving

somewhere in between

the moments where

thinking

is just prickly and unnerving

there is sense to be made

not a bed to be had

or a singers song to share

just the delicate simplicity

of your fears

that if

you give too much in this moment

we'll both imagine ourselves

into some kind of shipwreck

and there we'll be the last two people

stuck on an island

facing each other

and hopefully

like each other fine enough

love

this your fear

and leave.

To Be My Mistress

Forgiveness hangs warm

on your breath

as you brush the hair from your face

and by your

own suggestion

swallow the secret let it

plunge to the sea floor

let it

sink heavy

Gossamer you bristle gently on

my neck

and pull away stray

hairs from my face

your residual

wiped away you regret

that no things stay here

that this is an object

that this is an agreement

that this is me stalling

that this your memory

we share momentary.

Ten

The Ten

Figures remain anonymous

not people but types

each with a secret

sneaky ten percent.

10% subtlety. Ten percent aloof.

When you're super sexy

you can be missing your front tooth

flipping pint glasses

in low lighting

and the girls are likin' all of it.

I know you, faceless blotch.

You're that paint stroke

in the precipitating audience

moving too and fro

like a field of flowers with their faces

pointed at the sun

eating free sun beams.

We, all, matching in little bits:

You with your low brow

second hand ol' diamond in the rough.

The common interest is forming

a tribe.

But

Your 10%

a filigree form that shutters inside constant

and pulsates a hum electric

Your ten percent speaks German

and thinks that the screwdriver

is to a screw a molester.

Ten % is kept in that letter

you have. I have.

Hidden and preserved with the careful, clammy drawer

that keeps so few things

so commonly used.

No, a mass of bodies here.

Not identities but types.

And the 10% hovers above the room.

Home

Home

Your hat all hung
a drop of laudanum,
a tendril dangling on the brink
of a shallow glass:

sight budding,
open me up how I want to see.

The narrative calls itself home.

Home,
the house that gave birth
to coevals: stories securely boxed up
inside its humming walls;
we leave her when what is unwritten
seems to hang on the wind
ringing chimes outside the window--

bells that resound always home.

Home,
separated bodies of water
the growth of vegetation
pulled from warm soil.
This verdant earth is ours
it’s worth dying for, but we can’t just stay here.

Home,
That standing on the water’s edge, we look on at the far reaches of our
letters
our tiny prayers adrift like a gas above
home.

That home is the distance between us and our occurrence.

Poems that are works in progress from 2011

J Taciturn

Squint
and tell me you see something you don't
no objects but cloud-like
vespers of prayers
hanging above us
snagged on power lines.

Ahead of time you say,
'take an x ray
to be sure I'm not too damaged
for the monumental undertaking

of trusting.”

“Well, you seem fine to me.”
But what the fuck?
I'm in the business
of exchanging secrets
and figuring ways to re-define them
if need be: if there's an emergency.

Re-working things
including a wire-like sense
of direction
which scans the terrain with a giant feeler
and wraps itself around
swinging folds
to catapult us to mecca

Can't you just follow me, for lack of better things to do this afternoon?
I think, I'm better than most things.
Over-whelmed with the city-spell
that intoxicates us
with weekly gatherings
that re-work the deeds>
into something crystallized
sincere and momentary.

Time to find ourselves.
Pretty trite, after all.
finding in the act of disappearing
and the letting go
and the moving
and the returning
and the doing-it-again until I stop caring.
Somehow, we are between where we were and we will be. Together.


C buttoned up

Patience is the plea
seldom resourceful for the
nautilus swimming forehead first
with eyes closed

her trail a wheel spinning
gold glints
threads that bind in long strips
twisting from end to end
into larger threads
held between her teeth
she plans something geometric


The thing budding
grows in a hole
with no atmosphere
a hole stretched with every passage
a biting sense of placelessness:
aspiration


Day 14

Day fourteen of up-rooting.

Paying minimum of $8 a day for sustenance.

Sustenance makes harder the time it takes

to think on other things.

Sex on my break

seems like a secure plan

to unstuff the foamy froth

that envelops my efforts.

More sex more

awkward bodily fluids

and noises, sorry about those.


We are so connected

you and me

embarrassing how sticky and stuck

skin can be when its

fuck now

existential crisis?

Are you crying in front of me?

It's so simple.

Just stop.


Free up. Free it up. And down

clean it.

Ready for consumption.

Time it takes to think on other things.

Gardeners and Sailors

Sisters swinging
sharing stories of gardeners and sailors.
Here, in high hammocks, rock Helios and Selene,
Perched upon pendulums
the Horae brushing their hair
while humming mortal laments.
Those verses that skies catch
those etched upon a spinning orb
it releases

little prayers like a gas
adrift from the surface

a broken-clay terrain upon which erected monuments—materials masculated,
strain to reach at the sky
appearing as time pieces to the Horae.

They look onto Helsinki today.

Helios elates herself watching scurrying
the collecting of sassafras.
Little buckets of harvests glint gold in tufts of
dust and bramble.
She traces the sewn lines with her sparkling fingertips
appointing gardener grid-makers to chart her brightness;
to thank her with a hand upon their brow
as they squint at the sky.

She yawns at the long day of work
at the shovels plunged into the cool dirt
to rest upright
and releases herself upon them
outstretching warmth
that cascades in iridescent white gold.

It is love-making when she releases herself to the gardener.

Selene, still looked fixedly to the shores of Helsinki,
admiring the building of little vehicles
along the waters edge.
The Baltic is always in her clutches,
it moves two and fro
to the echoes of her laughter.
She watched her singular ship
let it ride into the darkness
as she poured from a whistling teapot
a silken white strip of light
to guide them.

The more she watched, she began to caress herself
as though her cloud-composed skin
were as the ocean
moving all over her.
Excitement she laughed clamorously
stirring like drift wood thrown through crashing waves.

It got away with her
the pleasure of her movements
and a wave was torn over her coveted ship
with all its crew pointing their faces
at the starry sky like a field of flowers.

She scrambled to part these waves
with her breath
finding only the empty vehicle
bobbing in the waves.

Her wailing remorse now stirs the skies
as dark blue clouds converge over the settling ocean
lean white light no longer draws across the water
and the night becomes very still.

Sisters comfort and recline
seeking respite in the tender embrace of the Horae;
for despite their dominion the day is done
and time goes on and songs are sung:

To touch these mortal lives
the Horae hum,
is to pleasure oneself in fleeting delight.

An Explanation of Mag-Big, Second Attempt:

1. Splendor in the yellow sweet
dripping peach. Perfect, momentary.
Soil down, and up
white silhouettes—bugs through beams.

2. Whispering, “please, oh please” to air
or something fear cannot unbind
and if it hears a desperate plea, it is listening.

3. Intoxication because in the moments before
hitting the water
Icarus smiles at the sun.

4. Animal love.

5. The song that understands and how it seduces
over and over
until it is a lover we cannot be with
any longer.

6. A lighthouse casting a shivering slice
through undulating fog;
the mariner catching it in a glass sphere.

7. Pages and pages of crumbling yellowed words
my grandmother at eighteen
believes in crackling radio broadcasts.

8. The lover, how he stretches, and in his slumber
rests his hand upon the breast.
Now becomes tempered by certain impermanence.
Still, his dreams are a Grecian urn preserving her.

9. When dying words are unselfish,
such as,
“try to be happy,” or “smile, my love.”

10. When trees creak
like whale songs,
it becomes certain that without ears
the forest is still a symphony.

11. Awaking to snow
how it covers churning streets with impenetrable silence
and we play, for the first time in years.

12. The painter, how he cannot stop
with birds and feathers
plumage plucked from the wing of an osprey.
He considers himself from birds eye view.

The Adulteress

She has learned how to
endlessly wait
drawing his presence
from residuals
in linen, buried secrets.

She loafs and answers
and by her own suggestion
doesn't ask.

She is unconditioned
and admires intoxication, how
we free ourselves
in me minutes before we fall.

unfinished about funnels

tunneling for channels in paneled funnels
[air gets in. same air is breath.]
funnels on fingertips and tips of tongues
and rumbling drums [those are ears]

the funnels in holes make small the big
and shoot out small as big like trumpets.

firing off funnel tipped wires with senses
like chemicals through the mill

tirelessly churning, always gathering
little bits no larger than a firefly;
[though despite being little, the firefly
steals your dreams and buzzes god's buzz-- they say].

tiny cargo traveling in bolts

(to be continued...)

6 "word" memoir

composition notebook

hallelujah

red

hatchet

oregon

early-bird

dream farewell

she told me last night
that the beetles were gone.
she tried to see where they went,
blinded, squinting at the sun.

as i gaze at the distance
the mile-high window
admonishes the light
blinding. inpenetrable.

i wonder where they could be.
and if she's lost her faith.
her faith in me.

i bet her love for the world.
but i believe i will return.

the apple

the apple

speaking of eyes

 age old, interpretting the waves

complacent and without intent.

i am reminded once again of the apple.

that bite

   as old as god

and the heavy souls of our mothers. 

the ladder

the ladder

there are ladders,
boundless steps and wood
shrinking and stretching
rejecting the nails we've trusted for years

i am the builder of these conjunctions
i believe in rooftops
and the sun projected through glass

enclosed in materials masculated
here, i sit, alone
mourning the solitude
of the ladder beneath the light

the swimmers pt. 1 & 2

the swimmers pt 1 & 2

pt.1
as the polar ice caps have widdled to their last three days of solid form,
the earth is flooded to its highest peaks,

where hundreds of humans huddle with their mouths
pointing at the sun like a field of flowers.

this is the last of us
upon these mountains,

and i have somehow been separated from my family.

the heroes, in these last days, are the swimmers
who travel from mountain to mountain
with our messages of love.

i care no longer about trying not to drown.
i'll not even tread the water that envelopes me.

sure that my last breaths exist only to speak with a swimmer.


pt 2.

i've suddenly become very conscious of the lateness of things,
though my dream taught me many lessons:

that at the end of the world, if the swimmers are the heroes,

then, technology, of course, has failed us.
at last, the golden thread of WTL (will to live)
weaves through our words,

we die believing we are

connected.

the hero doesn't try to save our lives.
the hero swims with our letters in the final triumph of humanity.
we get to say goodbye, in the end.

of all the things to swallow

of all the things to swallow


the compass reels apace
because i swallowed the northstar.
it rests like the mariner's shame
dormant, and glowing in my belly.

don't i repent having gulped it?
forsaking, as always, the very atoms that compose my frail structure.
it hangs on the wind
like a sound or a smell

sure i must cut in.
extract and liberate my guide.
out of fear, biding my time.
knowing damn well that the answer is inside me.

just a thought

a riddle, more over.

saving's the thing:

on boxes
on scrap pieces of paper

on money
on religion

on culture
on art

on all things made by humans,
even if humans die.

the bell-curve i fear

the bell curve i fear
(contemplating the loss of youth)

were i encased in a plaster shell
made into a mask of these coveted features
a timeless troubadour
without any lines of aging cowardice.

the reverie of my charming wit
would belie the green eyes i flicker at them
as i intake and age
embittered by the shelf-life of beauty

can it be that envy drips from these wounds?
that it is blood that churns within me
and flesh that covers it
wizened by the waxing moons.

might i clutch the counterfeit forever?
or wear it over the sagging epidermal fabric?
might we exist as we are once,
or is all that we need know:

time is truth, and truth time?

inkless increment

inkless increment (dedicated to my dying pen...)

pulling through the thin shaft
requires warmth to unbind the tired ink.
it fights for the union of paper
where curves and symbols
are the only freedom
and there must be some reason,
i should need to say this.

challenging the dying instrument
calling forth its will
and faith in predecessors.
the feathers pulled from the body
of a magnificent flight bird

dipped in the darkness of perpetual longing
bound to expression
and the notion of purpose.

(i'm not done).

train

train

there are no sails
to interpret these winds.

the journey is made
of chains and rails.

tiredly pulling
assuredly panting.

we face behind us today
bidding a farewell
to soothe the aching metal

perhaps i'll even sleep.

venice and intoxication

venice and intoxication

the world upon your shoulder
is etched in by conversations

knits of personage
and the veil we lift
made up of visionary truths

in which you are the bookmark,
and i, a tomato.

tumbled awe and universal wonders,
we take on the bigger questions
we ask them as we lay in bed
believing, there, in the profoundity of human creation.

share this bottle with me,
and know that we have made this moment together.

long flight

long flight (to italy)


blues and greens in those seers
envelope your black eyes
like spanish pools
of mosaic tile pieces, bound by clay

looking on with insatiable longing
newness, unreachable
and what is i do to you

being a woman
standing much taller than she is
demanding, so early, that we...can...go...tall....

like this machine
20,000 feet above you
riding against the dark

it is perpetual morning here.
i am always waking up.

being and nothingness

uncoiled before indifferent seers,
but an accident and a vow,
i'll learn of being and nothingness.

retracting and compressing
into the comfort of incessant planning.
clutching tightly to the thread
weaving a vain concept of time.

time in a cassette tape
recorded over and again
knits of identity dulled by strings
that fray the songs.

dissolve dissolve,
it's a serum
drink drink,
twisting into the bloodstream
catalyze movement.
i'm dancing. i'm free.

muscles wrap tightly around the skeletal infrastructure.
resign against the dislocated shoulder.
dissolve dissolve.
the moments are binding me.

the boxer

the boxer

j'ai senti le boxeur.
le trot rhythmique était de droite à gauche
le pendule surveillant mon prochain mouvement.
je balance et je manque.
je ne regardais pas.

button silencers

Button Silencers

Awake in the reality of paper and numbers
where buttons are silencers.
Twist like an earthworm,
deeper into the shielding sheets

cover ears.

It is the fall of mankind that chimes
incessancy.
”beep beep, beep beep,”
before the sun has even had its say.

cover ears.

Burrowing into myself:
more trustworthy machinery.
Composed of blood, muscles, bones,
of God, hard-wired in my nerves collecting sensations.
There are boxes stacked upon boxes
memories, malleable.
Input. Access.

Beckon those humans making moments
where taste, touch, sight, and scent are a muse.
Thoughts, above all things, peel from the still frames

and finally, the poem that befalls the sturdy paper.
A bridge, more like.
slicing the billows
of light and stimulants.

The fight is inside.

demons in the hibernaculum

demons in the hibernaculum

the demons i battle in my slumber
emerge from the plathing hibernaculum of my imagination.
i, too, beckon a father's wish
and find it simpler to confess it all
in the guise of wordsmithing.
lines hung like hats along my frecked face
trancend my medium.
out-stretch.
surpassing the subtleties.
over-step my ability to govern interactions.
i want to make physical all the attention.
let it pour between my fingers as barley grains
that i know i can't hold onto.
to be proud.
to say it perfectly.
and to stand alone despite it all.

the trade

the trade

please take all my love.
drain me of it
access it through every orifice
and imbibe it like a tonic.

i will be left a sack
my youth and my essence deplete
i will cease to scan the earth for things to put into myself.
i will be hollowed-howless and hung.

then again, we could trade.
if you've light and colors and dreams
replenish the palate of my mind.
give me new dimensions.

i await await wait

the clipper

the clipper

today he was an enzyme.
re-animated
i laughed
and untied ties.
he said that my eyes were telling stories
and that many of them
were as old as god.
i laughed again
timorous and flushed
holding my sides tightly
fearing the scab would split.
when he chanced at placing his hand on my neck
i suddenly remembered
that i was awake
in a reality of traveling instruments.
i bid him farewell
and said i'd be going to the coast
more alive today than i had been for sometime.
i thanked him with a nod
wordless, promising
the grey-white light
befalling the powdered sandy sediment upon my damp skin.
i am the ship; the great clipper ship.
conquering distance and the magnitude of ebb and flow.

log

log

trains rotating over tracks
pound the rhythms emitting from my chest.
carrying him through greenery
from beach shore to beach shore
where he can look at the water
and beckon for purpose.
dutifully, he'll keep a log
of these days that freedom forms chemical bonds
with the oxygen in his lungs.
i tell him to breath deep.
in my time, i'll collect books
and find beacons that illuminate a path
i think i'll walk alone.
sure as i am i've never believed in sureness,
the spectre of motion and tracks assures
that distance and time defeat me.
tonight i cradle myself
and think on the sun that pours over him.
i surrender him to the sun.

epilepsy

epilepsy

the scar that adorns his head
crawls behind his ear like a wire.
awkwardly he mentions how it got there;
that he has a piece of his brain missing
due to a surgery he'd had a few years ago.
the melencholy on his beautiful face
is sketched with perfect features
dark eyes that look-on with senstivity.
these eyes wear the fete of disablement.
they are composed, still, and hopeful
like the wizened in the hour before his death.
simply trying to taste it all before its gone.
for this face, i must believe in many lives.
that in next, he will be the pilot.
and be able to dream when he sleeps.

response to mag big

response to mag big

speak to me
bridge east and west.
while you stop to think
and the waters, they face you.
i've told you once before,
sure you were not listening;
we just don't have time.
forget.
forget my heart in bangkok.
too much to see not to forget something.
scatter yourself:
salt the earth with memories
one can only create on a road;
a road immeasurable.
i, for one, once touched big
standing upon the butte.
i dreamed big.
i dreamed you before the flesh.
and found an earth inside my stomach.
i cut in.
the insides that poured out
through the hole in my side.

i held tight, when i was around you.

still it bled through the linen.
turn white to red
red to black
harden and link;
a stentorian voice; rock-like, butte-like figure.
alone in the coming months,
even though i'll find you in expressions.
if you died in a way,
i revived you
when it snowed unexpectedly.