Plain American Language

On the Bed, On Vacation

2011-12-29T15:57:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I would rather not begin

by stating the situation in which I sit,

neck bent. Nightly, instead,

I will go to the pool hall

and play half-silently, admiring

broken fans that,

perhaps, cooled a great number of players,

cues in hand, important, blue chalk dusting off their shoulders

like drifting children; they tumble down

covertly, ethereal near the construction site

Oh construction site, in the town in which I was born,

you light up the as if you

were hosting a Hawaiian barbecue,

or perhaps celebrating Channukah,

though that is slightly troubling

as your candles are innumerable and scald

a fantastic after-glow

on the dashboard, dirt piles

and football stadium, drifting children. So, then,

the problem: light, being.

Beams beg for walking upon and

you are months from completion--

no night-watcher will touch

a foot on you, blue-black whale whose mouth glazes

open like candle wax,

except in the future when

children roll their fingers on your cavernous walls.

Trains (completely unfinished)

2011-12-29T15:50:00.000-08:00

Opening wide the mouth of night

light is not an oracular ghost,

rather factual: stiff as military starch,

a lampost

trips the dark.

Morning you are woken with

clouds bombastic and purple night

a healed blister

a wisp of cold aluminum

drifting downward from the sky.

A loud breath, the throat tightens

as the whip of an opposite train goes by.

Not Really

2011-09-21T20:30:00.000-07:00

Driven like a nail through brick

stick dark as unstuck mud

on the boot left cleaved on the basement rug

a knife poking through a pumpkin

something like breath, a drachma unearthed

by a four year old, cloaked,

shivering: hexagonal,

seemingly gorgeous, a dream--

the picture of horse, the faint upward motion

of coin bounced on the pocket's

inside, it climbs without bearing

right or left, thumb coolly caressing

its image for more than ten years--

time passes, as a pear.

In the thinning, subconscious night

light enters the room like a horse's canter.

2011-09-21T20:24:00.000-07:00

Not tomorrow but soon I'll teach my students

about nuance, nooks and crannies

like a young child's hands, clenched

and dripping with fudgicle sweat--

meanwhile the child drips, content,

accepting. I used to think that silence

among two people was awful--

not knowing how to move from one end to

another, thinking, then, about sex, attraction,

interlaced eye contact like gradations of

color. I was constantly adrift. Now,

when I think of things and am with someone

who blinks at me like crystalline winter,

which is her laughter, which is, sometimes,

cold, I don't mind silence: it is part of the process,

the coming up with the idea, the forming,

then the coming out with it: firestorm

of I think I love you or we're missing

soap in the bathroom. Transient night

in Washington, D.C., such transience in this town:

we are constantly disappearing, books

being written, only backwards.

(no title) (i think this is unfinished, and could be added on to) (inspired by Arda Collins "Over No Hills")

2011-06-23T14:46:00.000-07:00

And in the deepest

sense, I am looking

for companionship, which for days

and, perhaps, all of March til May,

I had rationalized or

imagined as the recollected

amalgamations of the hands of

two old lovers--

I'm a bit of a cat-burglar in that sense

and freely admit

this at a coffee shop next to

an opened computer

finished latter and two strips of paper

curling around and over themselves--

I read through

so many of my old college papers

looking for something scholarly--

thinking of language and love,

now and then

thinking of the inconceivable

facebook status (wintry,

porcupine-esque, desired, fulfilled,

scared, rounded out,

proud and reasonable, pencil-

thin, as a mollusk

climbing on thin blades of

grass, looking at pretty

girls) but punctuated--

I think I should not eat my words

anymore, I think

I should be putty on the wall:

don't you use it to hang

things, to maneuver and tear

into use for the pleasure

of making your

house a home?

The Unknown Bird (I saw this phrase in an Elizabeth Bishop poem)

2011-06-23T13:48:00.000-07:00

The unknown bird sits atop leaves

and leaves of green--jays, pigeons

scooting up against the windows

the swooping, leaving

imprints indicating: birds, birds

this is the oven of us all,

four hundred degrees we simmer

in juices savory with lemon and dill.

Summer bakes us and will never treat us well.

Beneath the daytime, people pass each other

on the street. "No one smiles back at you,"

my friend complained. "No one says hi." We

watch as the ladies and gentlemen in

seersucker and fashionable period-dress

cycle by--we snap photos, imprint our

eyes on each gaunt hat and they are

changes as wood drifting down the river changes,

becomes the last sign of life, entering the ocean.

If I can swing it, my next lecture

will be titled: For My Next Trick: Residual

Patterns like Electricity Buried beneath the Wood.

Each word will contain sequences,

like bath and both and bother,

path, pith, patter, late, loath, lover.

Judge whether the path in the woods

with broken branches that are stormy weather,

leads out or simply further. The way

gets dark. It is an unabashed lover.

The most extreme weather I can think of

is a tornado. When I was young, I looked

out at the tail of Hurricane Emily wagging

darkness and almost filling up the drain pipes.

To have ripped off the roof of a school, to

gauge out the lungs, veins, of trees makes

nature seem overlordish, though it is not, though

we are making it be this way, us, caressing

as two pieces of used uranium nestled in their bed of shale

forgetting, later, that they never had known other than this.

Dating Scene (last poem of the 30 days, one day late)

2011-05-01T20:15:00.000-07:00

There is a box that I kept, cellophane

clear plastic sheet, blue exterior.

Inside, a brachiosaurus and water color

of the Hudson seen from Hastings-

on-Hudson. Where is the world you've

built--sapphire stones in groups,

dark seasoning on salads, apples

that break the silences of November.

I'm looking for a Jew, who speaks in

dialectics, whose hues range from green

to the browns around the pupiles, with

hair so curly it is its own forest

and she sings like glory-bound diaspora

like shapes and wavering trees or,

when June hits, dripping popsicles,

her power lies in electricity, her font

is Helvetica and the care she heaves

for the comeliness of things brings power

to this city, she is a glass building bridge

that frames an old post office

she is the camera, the typewriter,

the ribbon stretched across the park,

she slow motion, she is the tide,

she once was. I'm looking for a Jew,

a world to build; can you help with that.

#13: Rain (rain rain rain all day long)

2011-04-14T15:16:00.000-07:00

A dance on the garden for three days

rain you are my Rubix cube of night

tell me once again why, on facebook,

your relationship status says single

when my eyes married the sky and

your blackened clouds. I expect,

in the middle of August, you'll

be gone--flightless fox of April.

Let light carry you away moreso than

sour memories of no-fun Sundays; let light

break you apart like exhalations

#12: Rhyme (this was a lame-o rhyme...)

2011-04-14T15:15:00.000-07:00

Last night she Topeka

Tonight she'll tell her secret.

#10

2011-04-10T20:13:00.000-07:00

Knowing full well that the earth, lizard crawling

on a tilted axis,

would spin upon the sight of her

would that the earth would spin at the sight of her.

She controls the pits of him

the riptides and pools of him

the entrails of him the trails of him

how they blink, would that they'd blink

and set wind lauding the bricks and windows

of city buildings, wings that spin circles

City of spinning circles, would that you

Would, in light of love, int he light

And love would contest not

of its amber vision again,

that is to say, its amber vision is the power

that fills the canyon river and paints it amber.

II (#9, written by people on the street who were kind enough to write something, and a little weirdness at the end)

2011-04-10T20:11:00.000-07:00

I would like a life

full of Love

full of expectations, dreams

and hope above all

with trees, rivers, dogs and rain

In a world with trials and tribulations

I find myself searching

Looking for an answer

There once was a girl

who had the whole world.

My most favorite never

have what elephant

Butt: big crazy asophagus

Cherryblossoms, see.

#8: Observations & Anomalies (written at 826DC)

2011-04-10T20:10:00.000-07:00

There's a musk ox on the crate!

Parasaurolophus--is anything more unnatural?
Free popcorn--brought to you by Jesus.

Laugh Out Loud: tiny dog, purple leash.

Colest day in April and eating raisin bran.

Do I jog or bike on a Saturday?
Speak Spanish, man, or take a walk; something!

That's my favorite song: Something, Something I Love You.

I don't have anything: bobcat. I don't have anything.

Poem #7: The Charlie Sheen Poem

2011-04-08T19:34:00.000-07:00

Mother, I am full of Tiger Blood.

Get me two cigarettes: I've already

smoked the first so you might

as well get three. Have you heard

from the elders, they've found new

boysenberries, each tattoing a name

onto their shrivelled skin: mine.

Lover, find anything other than

wonder, you won't find it.

Bone-Flower Elegy (After Mary Jo Bang & Robert Hayden)

2011-04-07T20:46:00.000-07:00

(This one's dedicated to my Aunt Riv & Uncle Josh)

As him, in the dream, as her

as art is constant yet the destructor

of my wrists, I hold this:

I can't even remove my glasses without

not seeing, and that was what

I wished tubes were all we knew

brush past beds as lolling heads

whirred and clucked and snacked on

death crackers, dry and thin.

When I think harder, will you be there,

and what was worse back then

was thinking hard that you both in separate

coffins were not. Eyes dilate faster

what with the drops is the garden

blooming yet, reach to me your hands, I will check

Poem #4, Response

2011-04-07T20:44:00.000-07:00

(I forget why I said this was a response...but)

On through an eighty degree night, fact

of warming in the midst of cold April

breeze is blankets, though the sinus headache

and twinging uscles annunciate in my skin

felt hats felt in winter are for tomorrow

newspaper rolls across the street; heat

but the dark of it inside the new

flowers make spring finally here, as if it were

fall but with white instead of fire

Guac (A Found Poem)

2011-04-07T20:42:00.001-07:00

(Here, I took pieces of conversation while at a friend's house) (Each line should be cascading...unfortunately, blogger can't do that)

That's a lot of pressure

peanut

hospital

About Ocean City

that one

that was intense lightening

We can wash off the porch

We'll split it three way

Wasteland

I should tell her to clip out

She's not clipping out

There used to be so much:

He abuses strange materials

You think they'd keep that for next year

So this isn't a documentary.

So this is a documentary.

Poem #2: Three Short Poems at Qualia Coffee

2011-04-07T20:39:00.000-07:00

(Here I took lines from old poems that I didn't much like...and took the best lines and added some others)

Whistling through your picturing and finding naught

thou picture, beside

figuring, knit caps, glasses

bees, love, bees.

Janis Joplin has a way of crooning to the beads

hung by the sandalwood candles

O Janis, mine own candle

is not sandalwood--I got it at the factory outlet

it smells vaguely of the hanging gardens.

I am following the red ribbon attached to my journal

belittle rain fills it up

here is my coffee, I meditate over the cup

30 Poems in 30 Days Challenge!!!

2011-04-07T20:35:00.000-07:00

Hi folks, I'm participating in 30 Poems in 30 Days, as part of National Poetry Month! Yay!!! It's a great time to experiment, and have some fun, or be serious and not have fun (but really have fun).

Here's poem #1:

Will you be the ruiner of my objects, climb down my runny eggs

and lay flat on the tongue bedding

with the book of poetry

I am dropped and thump--

dizziness is a towel I wished

upon and get all the time.

Lucky you, jackets hanging on my chair--all you do is be brown

and corduroy and nestle in the corner. Luck you,

vines creeping out of the shelves,

lucky you orange twice bitten,

twice juiced and picked up,

luck you, ruiner of objects, vacuum-er of pens.

Creator and destroyer, where have you been?

Look Out (a very rough, rough poem taking a cue from Josh Beckman)

2011-02-14T20:27:00.001-08:00

From the way it looks, the view from the mountain

is just as clearly showing me smog

as the trees directly below my foot.

I remember when I was climbing Torres del Paine
I didn't understand

that not all roads that lead to Rome involve trodden-upon footpaths.

Kneeling on gravel, I prayed each time I grabbed a small tree

it'd hold. The phones almost entirely dead,

we communicated through the one computer

at the hostel, where coffee was strong, and delicious.

I suspect upon the moment that clouds fitted

themselves upon those mountains that rain

poured and pounded like the wind and gave

beauty to those towers. I think I read that.

Do you read? Do you take in air in quick sips?

I think that kind of thing is interesting, like how it howls

in zigzags like a terribly disoriented fox

up steep hills and that birch tree peeling like peanut

butter in a cold, cold kitchen.

I was listening to too much Tallest Man on Earth, and wrote a song called I'm Going Swimming

2011-02-14T20:17:00.000-08:00

(this rhymes and doesn't rhyme in parts...it's rough, and if you want to put it to music, feel free. In my mind, it is finger-picked and sung with a lilt, a little fast & folky)

I'm building diamond mines in Africa, my chest.

I doubt the workers will be getting any rest

too soon, but if I were you

I'd think about the cliffs in Martha's Vineyard and if

I were you, I'd paint them just a shade grayer,

or two. At 32 degrees

the snow will pile on my heart and leaves

will tell us stories of the wet and the blue.

If I were you, I'd head off to the south

and there I'd live without the fear

of stains of onion on my fingertips,

then touch my lips. I once heard a story

of a nosebleed that filled the world with blood,

I think it was the Nile, I might have read that

in a book somewhere. Classical literature.

Was it Dante or the Aeneid that said love

was floating above me, floating
like those glass-like bits of beauty

when we look up from under water.

And time, it is reflective of the glass-like

bits of pain, the breath we breathed accidentally again:

sometimes I can't see (x3) when I'm swimming.

One Bedroom

2011-02-02T20:25:00.001-08:00

The slip occurs more often at night

Tintinnabulations of brick, rust-colored light

Under the moon, your eyes look soft

Night music, a resting thing

Slower, farther, more patiently droplets walk up the back

Dreams like missing criminals, books like smokers' fingers

Your neon gait as you stride forward to the sheets

The ice of our closing eyes; wide, size; talk with your hands

Brick, brick, brick, night.

I Am Your Golem

2011-01-28T06:44:00.000-08:00

Apple me: make me red with grief

and longing, make me green and orange

and golden. I want to bloom

from a flower, stem from your roots

I want you to sway and drop me

until I split open with want.

Bake me, porous and earthenware, put

your everything in me, make me

what you will, bury me

and with one word let me know what heaven

is the ground I walk on before

you un-earth me like a strewn piece of clay.

A Recipe Box

2011-01-28T06:43:00.000-08:00

This papyrus is thickened by the roots

of cedars and Lebanese cyprus trees,

granted they travel underground and

papyrus walks in the hands of messengers

but when treating both in this concotion

we must note the irrevoable sameness

of the two: columns and lines like azaleas that

could have blossomed at night,

arctic whispers of solidity, how

smooth they both are upward into the sun--

to make the concoction harden, then,

pull these two elements together with a soluble chemical

and whisper three times like southerly winds.

Curtal Sonnet (revised)

2011-01-28T06:41:00.000-08:00

My eyes closed and my shoulder hunched

like bejewled solitude,

a pen run out of ink and the cold slip of a missed-placed s,

hard as lust, a violin tremolo,

a clicking wound round my ear the massive growl

tight against my jaw--how the undead

measure God, stackable as glass,

know what it is to crave

a clicking, roaming thirst--

how in a room both whisper and hiss

search.

At Night, Owl's Eyes Reflect Most Everything, While Moons Pass Over (before this was "Concentration Camp")

2011-01-28T06:39:00.000-08:00

Lately, I feel uninhabited--waking from dreams

in which I have been blinded by chemicals

pitted against stranger-adversaries

while a faceless, bloodied, ravenous onslaught powers toward me, a sudden wave

rushing, then, through my body

pushing it all back--waking dizzy--

waking later than I wanted to--slugging my hands through

the day--tea and lemon miracle,

ginger and quiet noises of fires,

the shifting of autumn, to walk and see reddened

oaks, then to fall away from the world

at night. When am I ever awake?

Concentration Camp (I dont know why it's called this, it just came to me...an overpresiding feeling?)

2010-11-18T16:02:00.000-08:00

Like a stifled sneeze, I feel uninhabited

at times--waking from dreams

in which I have been blinded by chemicals

and pitted against stranger-adversaries,

and while a faceless bloodied, ravenous

onslaught powers toward me

a sudden wave rushes through my body

pushing it all back--waking dizzy--

waking later than I wanted to--

slugging my hands through the day--

a miracle is tea and lemon, a miracle

is ginger and quiet noises of fires

and the shifting plaid and flannel

of autumn, to walk and see reddened

oaks, then to fall away from the world

at night. And in this am I ever awake?

St. Patrick Duck

2010-11-15T18:04:00.000-08:00

Now is when I climb trees,

cerulean sky and oaks and others

of red ochre (once love was

red ochre). Shaded underneath

these feet like roots

are timely footprints meshed into cement--

these are names these are rowboats

twisting around lakes

in Maine and Manitoba

where I am eating chuck steak

repeating again and again solitude,

solitude, solitude, fire, duck

and then am happy in certain

moments of spring.

Curtal Sonnet

2010-11-14T18:47:00.000-08:00

My eyes closed and my shoulder hunched
like bejeweled solitude,
a pen run out of ink and the cold slip of a missed-placed s,

hard as lust, a violin tremolo,

a clicking wound round my ear the massive growl
tight against my jaw--how the undead

measure God stackable as glass

how room for both whisper and hiss

a clicking, wound--this terrible lust

to know what it is to crave, to roam

searching.

2010-10-21T20:28:00.001-07:00

This glass is alone underneath

my table, my checkerboard where

once or many times I played with

my great-uncle that never was old

until he died. Whether it is heat

or something else that forms it,

an immensely chip-able object,

had I strength and a towel

I would think, later, to break it
as if the hand were street and glass an echo,

clink of song bringing itself back

hard bits and pieces, immense sleepless sound.

As I Have Said Over and Over Again, Love is an Ocher-Red Leaf

2010-10-21T20:16:00.000-07:00

Let me remind you of my hands, which have not felt love

in so long they ache of tendinitis

that strengthening will not help

whose ligaments are not dancing

little finger that once spliced over

a body that moved in time Tell me

time, track backwards an old

twist of words--what is motion,
something foolish, a wrist

so half-heartedly broken

and sprained in five places
while ash bristles the side of the chimney.

Love, I am underneath you, I am

as if blessed by you. Tell me
time, what roundness must
I feel in order to be like

water, clear and settled in the glass, how

tenderly it wobbles and nuzzles

toward the edge, tipping, undulating

being shaped by the hard edges

of a terribly breakable thing.

no title just yet, and a very rough draft...inspired by a line by Major Jackson

2010-09-28T20:10:00.001-07:00

Look, I don't want the lions ripped

apart. The mere thought of harshness

garnered from what faces receive

me through the doors and hallways

is old, unused milk I can't open or

throw away just yet. Milk was

once something I loved, it rhapsodied

the four solid eyes of each hour

of the afternoon, it piled, it was snow.

I can't tell now if milk means, moon
or enough; if careful means,

Come and ride bicycles with me, share

my hand as we walk. It is uncertainty

like a claw in the face of much more than that.

Teshuva (brace yrself, it's a long one)

2010-09-12T09:35:00.000-07:00

What we've never had is a song

and what we've had is a song.

When I was biking down 16th street,

thinking how to run a half-baked workshop

about forgiveness, I was more wrapped

in thoughts of reproach--blaming myself for

the misdeed of not thinking about this workshop

not putting the time into it, not reading enough,

providing contemporary examples. In the meantime

friends at my apartment drowned in cookie bliss

and, though the wind was thick and pleasant--

a warm towel thrown repeatedly by my face

and bare hands--there was very little calm.

We came to talking about forgiveness,

at the end, at the workshop, lasting and lingering on each one person's

tongue, a salted, unwondrous lick.

Pencils sharpened, I am in

front of everyone

this feels as if a sail wrapped around

I have just tripped on a banana

peel backward falling

feeling and the floating

moment before ripping up the

silence of a silent moment

with an awkward guffaw

as if seeing someone slip

on his own words. Then we

begin to think about forgiveness.

Teshuva, from what I understand, means turning, and not repentance. To repent seems too Christian and overwhelming and doesn't do justice, I feel, to the feelings we feel when we examine ourselves and the mistakes we have made so that we may finally ask for forgiveness. Turning, on the other hand, in which way, into which wind, into whose arms, into what broad field, into whose alliance, into what hand, into which direction. To turn, perhaps, as a wheel, or a chair or table, as a pencil or piece of fruit in the milken sun. Apples dipped in honey, apples dipped and honey, then we wait and turn to forgiveness.

Tell that old man

on Rosh Hashanah to tremble

only on the inside.

Everyone is waiting

for them to matter

though isn't this our day to do it.

He cried while leading--

who by fire, who by water.

I have been singing this

all day long--for what?

A call, forgiveness.

It is difficult to pinpoint

the song in a city

I am familiar with and love--

surprised as I am by these buildings on Porter Street

that were finished

and all that space

like blown glass--I am in love

with the fire set inside a glassblower's

I don't know what it's called, rod,

so incessantly orange

what glows like that on this earth,

not even dark or amber honey has that

distinct glow--

it sings as if it never had a song

to sing. Yet. At this point of the new year,

I am only hoping to be like glass--

there is always an ember

in it, it is still, lit--

just look at its stars

and speckles as it glows.

Eyes

2010-08-18T20:59:00.001-07:00

I am afraid to flex my muscles.
Though the wing span
of my arms outstreches my height
I am not gliding on the saddles
of northerly winds
much anymore. In the stable,
the horses sing wheat songs
and nuzzle each other
while memories of
their corralling
lingers as collective memory:
this once, the moon may ride
over the lakes again,
the one with waves that feel oceanic
and belittle the statures of
the men that come to marry in these parts.
I am of course talking of the city,
paper and folded lie lines
above book titles,
the creases of the pillow when your head is rested,
when your breathing becomes
softer--these are the nights like tin.

Golem Event

2010-08-18T20:54:00.000-07:00

(1)

With hands awash in the sap of a palm or spruce, or, with the bark of a cyprus, clap over a heavy tin, the many pairs of eyes follow from above.

(2)
Using a ladle and a heavy wooden spoon, gather water and place it upon the front steps of a newborn fruit tree. Wait until the water evaporates.

(3)
Along with millet or the husks of wheat, grind earth into a mortar, spilling some onto the table. The crows outside waiting in anticipation, will add wings to each crumble. Write the truth onto the table.

(4)
The fingers flex and contract over a book of stones.

(5)
Golem, whisper.

Candle Lighting

2010-08-18T20:42:00.000-07:00

I lifted a match and we all
started singing, and meant exactly
what it was we said.
There is a candidness here like
a permanent stitch of crochet,
and I am befuddled by it.
I don't mean to say I can't recognize
the need for sincerity, of
passing by geese and giving a nod
to the presence of God's tongue
lapping up the spray of wind
behind their tail feathers landed
so slightly on August grass.
What I am saying is that when I put on my t-shirt
it was for some sense of recognition
a smile, a hand hold, truth
like a key and a lock.

Grass Texts

2010-08-18T20:38:00.001-07:00

Last night, I laid down in the parking lot looking up for something that'd fallen. Today it was grass, toes dug in, clouds like pelican wings, a line, and birds in the likeness of a line. Slowly yellowing, walking. Sometimes I think I must have stepped on so much unwanted sidewalk. The gnats create walls. I hate to break them; my mouth is always open.

Chance Composition #1

2010-08-18T20:33:00.000-07:00

The bird is in the likeness of a line
where books rescue our purpose.
One, thereby, point:
other vast is dwelling.
Nature is named speaking SPanish,
grass texts,
pelican wings like venom
solidity like wretched expression--
thorn and thistles
exalted sleep--
they know this.

Waking Up Early (The Not Being the Difficulty of Sleep)

2010-08-18T20:20:00.001-07:00

At one point I was dreaming,
my eyes turned upward
and inward, so I like to think that
in my dream of hotels
when we rubbed each other's arms and
we were crickets, puttering
about old tunes that rhyme or don't,
we stood still
though the hotel had moved,
painfully aware of itself and blushing,
so then disappearing awkwardly
and I, bereft of touch--
then to wake with longing
in the mouth and eyes and therefore
mustering energy to
keep awake in this goddamn lovely
morning, the not being
the difficulty of sleep.

In Which I Compare Love To

2010-08-18T20:16:00.000-07:00

It was a revelation to know that there are different kinds of honey,
that clover is our most common

and that the taste of darker honey rolls in my mouth, slides
like two coats drifting off a crooked table--

twine like trees, like a trunk within five others,
an atlas.

In the evening, please post this on the board:
The marriage of two fingers is new and blows soft winds, eventually,

in the calmest sea--let there be an understanding that, originally, the table is set
without anyone ever having thought to organize it,

as if merely the clinging sound of fork against spoon were sound enough.

The Circulating Roots of the Cyprus Trees by the Pool Astound Me

2010-08-18T20:04:00.000-07:00

This is why I'm naming my poem

after the flies:

the umbrellas, with their plastic covers,

could manifest

so gracefully into flowers. They refuse,

like so many bugs that love

to crawl up into my leg,

suckle my thigh hairs

and gather nutrients

that will tie them over

by the poolside

where they stop to drink,

already steadied by the day's fruit--

lithe and endless fruit that

basks and languishes

intertwining and complex as a nervous system,

as a series of small trunks set into the earth--

to avoid being eaten, to

gather energy, to fly.

Made

2010-08-04T07:26:00.000-07:00

What's lost in the preparation of any act
hobbles around like dust motes
that whisper tinnitus in your ear drum:
when making a peanut butter sandwich,
eventually your hair will fall out;
to make love is a waterfall of sharks.

So many foods are rich and dense, yet
there it is like an unexplained
place setting on the table: thinning.
There are times when I wonder what an elegy
would smell like--burning of orange leaves,
a favorite book, the longest extension between
the letter O and empty breath thereafter?

This is the dizziness I've felt.
When I blink several times, yet the world still moves.

In Which I Compare Love To

2010-07-03T18:09:00.000-07:00

It is like the skin of a cucumber,
the odd breeze I feel when I say cascara
when I only mean orange peel.

A blonde hair left on the floor--
this will hopefully be a flower
and, on the off-chance, a wire tap,
a means to read the bumps on my head.

On the table: two apples, a small juice box, and a thick spread
of soft, longing smiles.

2010-07-03T18:02:00.001-07:00

The reach of dogs is immense--
running, creaming the hell out of
the frisbee, the jump not known
to human fingers and heels. Swamps
gardened and lingering in the backyard,
this is Florida, this is probably
the bayou, this is an immense mess of
bugs and frogs and a thickness
I can taste. The soup-smell of density;
the incongruousness of walking beside
pretty places, a hand to hold and the
feeling of walking upwards. Once
my heart fluttered and those thoughts
attached to it were you, dancing
in a dress that wore you, that clung to
your hips, melted the floor. Once,
when the water across the river had
risen, you dreamed about its length,
the wonderful words of the sun
and the row boat that looked like a wing
hanging on the lower lip of the drifting earth.

i think i'm making a series...called In Which I Compare Love To

2010-07-03T17:52:00.000-07:00

Rolling honey between our fingers, when will this somber walking turn
into what salad greens feel like at their last possible moment--a hook around the corner of your body, and mine?

It sounds as if love were wearing us like untied crocodile shoes, singing
about the ocean, checking its blood pressure with its right, big toe.

Donna Lee (for my brother)

2010-06-05T14:00:00.001-07:00

This is a drop of the past, this
strum, so fast
how it rides my brother's solid
fingers that sped as strongly
as they clenched, how they ride
his hair, his cool, tireless jaw
how cross his eyes looked
till that quick caress, how fast
it took to turn notes, licks
how cross how untired
that mouth that cawed
his sweet dat dweets, songful, each.

No longer mourning those blues,
brother how cross those notes
turned how fast they ride
behind you now crooning
lonely, lonely to new tunes
blues of the past no longer
this is rock this is elegy
no longer, this music, like water
how fast it rides, how past
it must feel, lonely drop
in your eye, how cross it must be
how cross your face gets how
it rides into your fingers like
the insides of flames when you reach
out for your six string case.

Heat

2010-06-05T13:40:00.000-07:00

The only thing I do to keep myself
cool is open the bedroom window
and turn high the ceiling fan.
The rest of the apartment swells,
slightly, on the precipice of summer,
as in the sluggish way the mint
creeps over to the window. It
is growing flowers (the mint), which
I've never seen before, since
I'm new to gardening, planting,
most things wild. They are
white and huddling inside a pod
(each) and hinting at something
though I can't really tell what--
green turning into green; a lilac,
if only just to say the word and hope
that is what it is, something white
like forgiveness ought to be
when colored inside someone's face,
inked around the edges, a depth of frame,
a finish of red, the sunburn after
standing outside for so, so long,
wallowing and sublime, like plant life,
like a perpetual blues song on play.

Untitled, After Reginald Shephard

2010-05-05T20:02:00.000-07:00

Petrarch likes my moves. He likes my use

of legs, desire of legs, smooth like moons

pinned to ceilings of little boys' rooms
(though the air wasn't on, the birds on

the wallpaper flitted about at around two

when he was awake and aware

of the viscosity of summer--how

it dove-tailed a bit then banked left

into a September known as birch tree,

ash and hush).

My bike's wheels rush like the music

of dolphins, clatter to the ground and wish

(I wish) to call out to my lost love (the

almandine shape of Spring--he is fifteen

and holds her hand as a tea bowl,

as a glass)(he is fifteen and begins to blow

his nose and think of marijuana). Petrarch

knows how to find my love, my hand.

He likes this,
this music where I give and give, then take a little back.

*note: the short, short lines should be indented all the way to the right most part of the stanzas...

waxing poetic, and some thoughts on the recent completed workshop

2010-04-28T19:14:00.001-07:00

so i recently finished a couple-months-long workshop hosted by the poet in residence at gdubs. i went there with great expectations: finding a community of writers, enjoying the benefits of shared poetry (i.e., commenting on each other's stuff, offering serious praise and serious criticism and receiving some of that for myself), and lastly being provoked to write in a serious and more productive manner. i think, after all's said and done, i got a tiny bit of column a, a tiny bit of column b, and not a lot of column c.

i really don't feel i've improved over the past few months. i think i've started to adjust to a different type of experimenting with my poetry, but improving? i don't know. i didn't feel like the tidbits this poet offered us were too worthwhile, and it didn't seem like he was always up for conversation afterwards. i have some pretty serious thoughts on poetry, and i feel the need to keep myself entrenched in it; i have burning questions and asked him plenty, but didn't really get too much of an answer from him.

i think one of the things that i encountered in this class is the type of reader of poetry that goes for the content of the poem, trying to get its meaning instead of what i usually see my writing as: an act. most of the time, i have an over-presiding idea or feeling--sometimes just a line or a word that triggers the rest of the poem. i don't always know what the message is behind it, but it always seems to want to go somewhere and then trail off to another place, kind of like that robert frost quote that i learned a while back: that a poem should be like ice on a hotplate--it goes one place, then off to another, it wanders. i like that about poetry, and i strive for that in my poems. but a lot of what i work with, and a lot of what i like to do and just happen to be doing is sensory things. the poem should sound for me, should cohere in a different sense that may not necessarily make sense, or apparent sense. i think that's the benefit of having a reader read things: there's meaning to be made within the reader's mind, and there shouldn't be any idea that there's a real message that the poet always wants to get out. images should be a manipulative inside the reader's mind: they're clay things and get molded by whatever the reader is intent on seeing.

now, is this me being lazy and saying, "i'm not going to revise?" i don't know, i don't think so. i'm going to revise...but perhaps maybe leave abstract things in? is that good or bad in terms of coherence of poetry, in terms of keeping a clear vision of what the poem wants? i don't know. i suppose when people say "i don't get it" there are two ways to see it: one, they aren't allowing themselves to read the poem in a way that leaves "sense" at the door; or, they don't get it because there's something too obscure that's blocking the image. perhaps it's a little bit of both.

like, take my poem "In Which I Compare Love To." I had this first draft, and it's completely obscure--to me, it's a lost-love poem, but is that line "Any longer and our smiles will refuse to point", etc. actually saying something? Is it too obscure, or is the poem allowed to actually stay that way and be fine? I don't know. Now, it's in partial rhyming tercets, Abb, Cdd, kinda thing. it's also expanded. that increases the "readability," but really, is it what i wanted? is the act of the poem that i originally had in mind, that i originally felt and wanted others to feel gone because i've expanded it? sometimes it seems that way. so who should i be? the one who follows his own rules, or the one who follows others rules? or, should i be the one that follows his own rules while taking others' into account? what did i do before, when i was in college, that made these poems i wrote different? was it the challenge of the class, the amount of talent and pure want to improve inside the room?

for now, i'm pretty sure of one thing: poetry is an act. it should be felt. it may be a dance, and a refined one at that, but at its core, poetry's got to be something that hits you in the gut somewhere.

i am having a bummer moment, so i wrote this to get it off my chest

2010-04-27T19:45:00.000-07:00

It seems as though the job or

the heart is to weigh heavy

on the footstools of the knees.

They knock and are unsteady,

kind of, because they're somehow pointing

in opposite directions, duckfooted.

The heart is a too-heavy dumbwaiter

and swears clumsily because it just drops.

To sigh means the branches of the day

are finally streching, but to which end--

when orange juice filled the morning's glass

or the blue paisly bed spread?

To beat hard against the chest is the heart's dream,

though the body buckles like an unlikely rickshaw.

a moment of poetic philosophy

2010-04-25T15:48:00.000-07:00

i wrote this on a fellow poet's poem as critique, but i think it's more about me than anything else:

"Sometimes, in my own poems I wonder if the shorter and concise-r I get, the more wallop I can achieve. To what end that is successful depends, I think, on the rest of the poem that precedes the ending, where I want that wallop. I think to (re)consider the ending would be to think, Did I say everything, or include everything in the rest of the poem?"

i clearly have a lot on my mind.

Whale Song (this is long and loose and I'll work on it later)

2010-04-16T15:08:00.000-07:00

Who's to say I can't let
the hippopotamus that follows me
daily swallow me whole,
who's going to challenge my want
of a spinster to hold hands with
chat with over cold tea?
If it's the prerogative of poetry
to save a life why not cry into the night
and grab someone's attention
enough for them to put a gun
to the uttered words and scream, I dare you.
That windowshade wouldn't
even shudder in the wind if it weren't
for the violence of the breeze whispering
cruelties into its ear.

I feel the need to exonerate light
to then diminish its importance
and, like deer in a wintery suburb,
flock toward it again and again...
It's like an untethered shadow, the confused
child running circles in the mall, lost.
I've been beached too long.
Someone rubs me gently with sponges
but it won't keep. I tangle
with squid and yet have not looked
the grizzly's fangs of asphalt and violence in the eye
boldly enough to say I love you, will you
please reach out to my hand.
If it is poetry's prerogative to save
and make differences, where is
the whale song reaching toward--
what community will the water droplets
reach once that gargantuan tail splashes.
Two clicks, a long mournful whine
deep within the ocean and the loam.

A Riddle

2010-04-16T14:59:00.000-07:00

I am low to the ground. I live in
the loam yet click and whirr beneath
layers of ocean. My life is long, and longer still
with my eyes closed. Short to me
is the breaths which fog on my surfaces.
What is the difference between my eyes
and the sound of walnuts cracking,
or else the stirrings of love. Differentiate
me from the stalks and strings
of plants: I grow and yet know no answer
to the question of altitude.
I have heard the knockings of wood
though trace my lineage in the asphalt.
There are things that separate
under the light. I am one of them.

In Which I Compare Love To

2010-03-30T21:30:00.000-07:00

Will you be my alerce tree and caulk the ship--blankets line the floors
and I am not a dog lying on the ground any more, I will not be a flower.

Any longer and our smiles will refuse to point, like a desert cactus with it a somnolescent k.

***

2010-03-30T21:23:00.000-07:00

He is a lake; moves
as if time compelled him to write
sonnets every hour and
therefore openly scratches
the surfaces of dressers
so as to ask questions of
the wood. He does not close his eyes.

In a rainstorm, he is the warm
blanket around frantic loss, he is
the fingers that stroke his beloved's hair,
the first pair of glasses
that wave a flag of victory
in the face of lost sight.

He is night, late, and reaches
out at birch tree branches
and calls them winter.
He is a call. He is winter.
He is winter. He is winter.

Sonnet for Zaidi on his 85th Birthday

2010-03-27T13:46:00.000-07:00

The process of apple eating:
a chuckle, your impressed laughter
as juice of every first bite--
deep red, a speckled gecko Gala.
Working away the outer edges

is the crisp sound of your smile, your
blue & white-striped pajamas
old reels of mom, Bobi, aunt, uncle
and invisible you--
though if anything you've taught,
invisibility is perceived; you are always here.

*** (revised sonnet)

2010-03-11T18:08:00.000-08:00

Death is soup spilled all over,
coloring the floor, the walls,
walking down your leg
zipping down your fly.

It leads you into the room
and asks, What is darkness,
expects you to respond with a question.

It leads you into the room
and pulls out the yearbook, points
at the autographs, the
wish-you-wells, at
every picture and laughs:
soup through bones.

It leaves like a leaking faucet.

Sonnet With a Line by Lorca (it's 11 lines, but that still doesn't mean it's not a sonnet!)

2010-03-03T18:17:00.000-08:00

O balding head, O sheathing night,
tattered remains of toast and jam,
O unfinished business, sleepless light:
Napping the daytime, drawing maps
on a clenching hand, tight
for more reasons than love or art,
O dog in the heart, O Labrador of my bones,
I wear you as gift wrap, as a solid warmth
through my body. Lapping up
the water in the soup leftover, the
thirst is great and I find it satisfying.

Sonnet

2010-02-14T21:14:00.001-08:00

Call this night visible. A hat:
a feature

a side of afternoon's rouged cheek.

This dizziness may only be felt in two instances:
Now, as when you are sick, or now
as when you are in love. Sleepiness,
that gaudy purple
or simply that which matches night.

Regarding the seas we wade through
it is not surprising that the floor is coated in starfish,
hardening.

Part One:

approach her hands like the light balanced
delicately on her tongue

Funeral (Love or Any Other Sorrow) (next revision!)

2010-02-06T19:54:00.000-08:00

Here you are, epitaphs:

Once there was a world

And the world was gone

Sleep, then, and tell us of birth:

Long ride down slopes

Of January's leaves,

Magnesium-colored world.

If a wolf were to hunt me,

And I, fearful submission,

Our eyes would lock

Tearing forever at the question, When.

Love is carved in so many places.

Hands like parchment.

Eyes like parchment.

300 Years

2010-02-06T19:48:00.000-08:00

A man's heart only breaks when it cannot.
He hears but only shortly
after his mouth has closed like a buttoned-up fish:
Here are the sewing stitches, flood songs.
It is the job of a man to know what comes,
what he should do, so that he may hide.
Otherwise it's up to him; it's upon himself
to deflect all hatred. Men are elk.

A man's heart only breaks when it cannot.
Because he said, How dare you,
and because he said, my people suffered
for three hundred years
and you're complaining he said, about a long day.
It rocks back and forth scratching itself as if never hearing.

You can't eat the heart, though that is a man's job.
In those four dark
chambers where a man can be kept years.

Stray (it's a weird one...here we go!)

2010-02-06T19:36:00.000-08:00

Beautiful snow and
babies, about old enough to stand with help
and curious, shocked at newness enough
to walk; Don't stray too far from mommy.

These are winter. Ordering tea
at lunchtime, or some time
between then and dinner, weighing
snow between fingers, like
a different way of doodling
though wanting--more profusely now--
to snap photos, to hear dogs smiling
at the snow, to scoop up a handful
of coats and set them down
next to love, which is a deer
wisping at the sight of man.

It is like figuring out the hardest thing
about almonds. Spreading seeds
around the ground and trusting
nature to go about its business.
Music is a more modern way to
peruse a street at night, or
grasp some figure close and bundle up.
Soon, a letter to the editor will read:
the most difficult thing about almonds is that
time won't let them weighed inside your hands.
People walk away from my snow-dusted street
like laughing potatoes rolling down hills.

***

2010-01-28T14:22:00.001-08:00

Death is chicken soup, ladled
repeatedly coloring the floor, the walls
walking down your leg
zipping down your fly.

It leads you into the room
and asks, What is darkness,
expects you to respond with a question.

It leads you into the room
and pulls out its yearbook, autographs
and wish-you-wells. It points

and laughs out loud at the jokers,
the jocks and nerds. Words, soup
through bones, I'm over them.
Walks away like a leaking faucet.

Contact Improv

2010-01-20T19:54:00.000-08:00

Games, that's all it is--
Are you moving towards light
Are you touching, tight
Round the insides
Edges, un-trodden feet
Hair, muscular, even
Body, angular hooks struck, stricken
Rows of moving teeth,
Bridges we walk toward
Trees we push absently aside
Limbs that bend as time
Socks strewn casually on the floor
Jackets on the hooks inside
Limbs that bend as time.

A Phone Call I Haven't Yet Made

2010-01-20T19:48:00.000-08:00

When I realize that the light is brief;
When I realize that water burns and trembles;
When I realize, suddenly, that the salt of the earth is the same that I collect in my hands;

When the opening door won't let me in;
When the herbs of your voice don't come out the way they used to;
When the wine I heat weighs down like the armor of a glance;

When I'm heading out and I trip constantly, unendingly;
When the table breaks like an invisible bubble;
When black pepper and balsamic vinegar aren't enough;
When the fish tells me what the sun already told;

When I consider that I'm afraid, that I rip out the roots,
Fog the window with mouths and mouths;
When I consider that I'm afraid of
When time inundates itself in time.

Una llamada que todavia no he hecho (soneto)

2010-01-20T19:37:00.000-08:00

Cuando me doy cuenta de que la luz es fugaz;
Cuando me doy cuenta de que el agua arde y tiembla;
Cuando de pronto me doy cuenta que la sal de la tierra es la misma que recojo en mis manos;

Cuando la puerta que abre no me da permiso;
Cuando las hierbas de tu voz no me salen lo mismo;
Cuando el vino que caliento pesa como la armadura de una mirada;

Cuando me voy saliendo y me tropiezo constatemente, interminablemente;
Cuando la mesa rompe como una burbuja invisible;
Cuando pimiento negro y aceto no bastan;
Cuando el pez me dice lo que ya me dijo el sol;

Cuando considero que temo, que arranco los raices,
Que empano el vidrio con bocas y bocas;
Cuando considero que temo
Cuando el tiempo se hunde en tiempo.

Funeral (or, Love or any other sorrow) (a sonnet!)

2010-01-13T20:00:00.001-08:00

Here you are, epitaphs:
Once there was a world
And the world was gone.
Sleep, then, and tell us of birth:

Long ride down slopes
Of January's leaves,
Magnesium-colored world.

If a wolf were to hunt me,
And I, fearful submission,
Then my eyes that day would blare
Just as loudly as these tears.
Love is carved in so many places.
Hands like parchment.
Eyes like parchment.

A Guide

2010-01-09T13:03:00.001-08:00

Dangerous waters inside
this bed: paisley
changed like the roaming wheels when
this bed bucks.
Our guide book tells us hotels,
amicable food stuffs
and our future of childhood dreams:
sweater-vests I could not rock
if you paid me
and torrentialy loving you: time-
tables, maps, clutter
like a crown you dance with
around a maypole.
Stay diligent, stay the course:
the forests, admire the pampas
and remember it is only
a double, so please stay close.
Do not stray. We will brave
this sea together, these
alien greens. This is the path
we've chosen: cloudy,
with a chance.

imagine every other stanza is tabbed over a tad...also the prompt was "Who are you?"

2009-12-16T18:13:00.000-08:00

Walking down the hallways

of Longmeadow Street

mythologies of autumn

and scarves like time around my neck

winter is passing and

there is another six inches.

Wind and violins

orchestras stoke that

flue inside the living room:

empty save constellations

of fires unused or

passed--where is the

synaptic drive
where are we going?

Ancient myths like

stars like finding, telling:

this is an island this

hand holding mine, this,

mine. Winter again

and another six inches

fill the coffee cup.

Open city, love. Open

city holding mine

though when it breaks, it

breaks holding cities

holding mine: warm

full like quick cups

of coffee

2009-12-01T19:01:00.000-08:00

Once, though, we were soft.
And terrible was the thought
of hindrances and winter
though I loved the idea of snow
covering our sweaters--
we, hiding inside our belts, our waistcoats
tough, which once we were.
The country, the wine,
and indelible the company,
when suddenly swiftly they go
out the door and out to
the country yet again.

Terrible that thought of
yesterday. Bits of salt
transformed into pieces
of cork floating in the
waves of wine. Soft, love.
Hold hands and sway slowly.
Take your temples in your
hands and sway.

Walking In My Own Country (old, but revised)

2009-11-29T12:43:00.000-08:00

I suppose the reason the snout
and upper jaw is missing from
my old plastic Tyrannosaurs Rex is time.

It's an old device to evoke the clock,
my own wall a quick museum
of successes and failure.

I got rid of so many books.
A favorite, still here, dog-eared
and coffee-stained. No, it
must've been torn off by me
or chewed by one of the dogs.

There's another dinosaur
with its horn filed down halfway.

What do you even begin to say to the morning,
as if the pillow were yanked
and shoes suddenly put on your feet.

2009-10-09T16:45:00.000-07:00

See, babe, the waters not so high.
It is autumn, we let things go.
We are Quebec, we are sauntering forward.
Like water above the knees like dresses
above the knees. Like rivers, like
oil, like frying pans we understand.
I hope. Bike around the city--
see the boys on Second and Florida
practicing kung fu or tai chi
at ten at night in the alley.
And how they move--so slowly
with staff and position after
carefully wrought position. Like water.
Like water, like breath taking in
sweet jams or the beasts inside frying onions.

2009-10-09T16:16:00.000-07:00

Lovely that autumn peeks on the vines
against the walls separating wood from concrete.
Tree and highway and everywhere we go is bumper to bumper.
This is a median: yellow
dumpsters filled with sand and water,
concentric circles like concentric
squares like leaves and cars
we are meeting in the middle.
Autumn, you exist only in hills.
We knoww you, highway, only exist
in hills. Travelers, pick your middle,
pick where you ride. Lastly,
speed, go slow, and as our
ribboned car doors pass by this season
let us know by letting us know.

Joyce

2009-10-09T16:09:00.001-07:00

Joyce loves things that are green.
Sweatshirts wrap her head to feet. I want Joyce.
Joyce says that Spring is oranges
and she meanns day lilies
though she loves things green and makes her
choices based on that. That
and that Joyce holds vegetables
in high regard, though, Joyce, you
cut them so carelessly and slow-cook
the sting out of lemongrass and my cheek.
Joyce: I want her and when sweat
wraps her head, sweatshirts
fall across the floor like garden parts,
and vegetable-getting implements
and in the park she lies and oh
Joyce, my Joyce can you tell us
what else is orange and never,
honestly, green.

Love Song (this one rhymes...weird!)

2009-09-24T20:10:00.000-07:00

If I were a windmill, I would grind up against you.
And, being thorough,
Continue to turn.
Please, though it may burn,
And the bottom of my floor
Is dusted; the door
Terribly hinged and the latch
Broken with a catch
When you open it a crack,
There is song in touch,
The stone, my back,
Your traces. Much

I've thought of you, and things that linger:
Your finger
Against mine.
Windmill, salt and grain.
Lengths of song, where it rests.
Winter, warmth, our chests,
And, what,
As if there were some answer
Cleaner than the mouth of a cut
Around a cord of wood, or
With more purpose?
Ultimately, it is the grain
The windmill is dependent upon:
Therein lies the song.

2009-09-24T20:07:00.000-07:00

Lady, the potatoes are done, mixed
with softened garlic, onions,
noise from the outside and the smoke
that wafted out the window
but caught a bit on the spider web in the corner
I am afraid to kill
or move, as the creature still lives
and so I ask myself every day,
Will eggs be lain suddenly
or will we live pleasantly,
the crowds outside, reggeton
and barflies not bothering either of us
as if noise were not a simple fact
rather a mere stroke in the curve of a letter;
though, thinking about it now,
so integral to the making of things
so then again, do I kill the spider.

I find it tough to cross the street

2009-08-27T19:31:00.000-07:00

I find it tough to cross the street--
14th, already, smelling of babies' cries
loving children and mothers in
two, almost three languages commanding--
sun at its peak, almost, of
night, haziness like the wave of a lover
across the floor, both old, new

at once a caress or a slap on the back
a scratch on the forehead
as the bus cries and weans
on the street's milk. Darker than
me, laughing hard, and me
smiling as a mug of coffee
dove-tailing and red.

Most days are long fingers
pointing either at me or out.
So tell me, fair: better, then, to
tattoo my eyes of my lids
or sit against the street, red
but looking.

[Things I am jealous of]

2009-08-27T19:18:00.001-07:00

Things I am jealous of:
the way in which some poems
may walk from living room
to bedroom, arm in arm
with a lover; and love,
in general, for being so steadfast
and terribly obscure
except in eyes, feet and longing,
and thus more accessible
as we touch, from living room
to bedroom, simple as broomsticks
or rather, painted bright red or green.
Eventually, the sun will draw
against my love's belly
and her body will remind me of a semicolon
one brief end and always
a continuation.

What's large should belong in my hands

2009-07-12T22:29:00.000-07:00

Love is
held purposely by harp strings
strangely enough, an instrument
I can't play
though try to what is
large should belong in my hands and
held together
by plants never knowing which
is favorite/love is/
gathered together like Queen Anne's Lace
walking down the road
love is
what is
large should belong in my hands
gradually and with pace
a slow twine grows thick on the
forest bed, strong
love is.

Caught

2009-07-12T22:27:00.000-07:00

Ruffled a bit, plowed through
vine-ripened, as if,
tricked up to a point
and most definitely fingered--not
in the sexual way rather
accused, rightly, of holding
something of value
salted sad strolling
keep in mind that the waves
you remember
pounded at a space
not chosen necessarily
they kept returning was and was
this is the beach
this the shore
and rocky, the colored cliffs.

Before the Year

2009-06-07T15:20:00.000-07:00

Crisp buttons on the shirts I ordered--
my dad ordered khakis, which I can
never spell right on the first time.
Lovely, these songs are for you, whom
I trust, who has loved me for months
and at times I wondered stupidly why. And
listening to my feet drum and a terrible album,
and checking available apartments then going
to the bathroom, suddenly. Dear lovely:
flowers, flowers in summer and honeybees
disappearing. Evening are cool and magnificent,
expensive cars swing their way down the street,
sweet pollen drifts with an easiness, a devil-may-care
attitude. Who will pick them up and carry them.
Mothers lining up at school, guardians, the walkers.

Poem In Praise of Not Caring

2009-03-30T18:37:00.000-07:00

I am pro no bullshit. Like a dog
is pro food. I am in favor
of taking my hand and never shoving it
down someone's throat, searching
for gold. When a bomb is
deconstructed, whose body is inside?
I vote our mothers'. That way when
it explodes, it spreads dust that smells
of a son's fear of punishment.
I vote our daughters'. When it falls
it screams the high pitched whistle
of a father's pride that dies
when disappointed, then suddenly rekindles.
I vote men. Men sell only three things.
Who counts the dead? Not caring is how land finds rest.

One Train (after Kenneth Koch and Daisy Fried, and a little comment on the sleeve)

2009-03-30T18:11:00.000-07:00

Intensely serious beneath a surface of lightness
one train clunka-clunks and swerves

just a tad on the track, and husbands
and some single men blink tightly, fearing

their choices--seat, career, this trip, this seat
--a lightness beneath the surface of intensely serious

while one train passes astoundingly
and quick flashes of children gloat at their real selves

giddily dancing, a speed-dream, a quick, delightful scare,
and they--being two--scream shrilly,

gleefully while husbands and some single
men, intensely serious beneath a surface of lightness

shroud themselves in love and what it means to them,
like shrill children or soft, caring fingers--cold, but only on the tips.

And while some men sneeze, one train
clunks to a slower-running speed, releases steam,

whistles--which never sounds high pitched, rather an alto's "Whoaaaaa,"
not a siren, nor a banshee, just a call.

Lightness beneath a surface of lightness.
Intensely serious, they whistle, as if all one train.

Untitled so far...

2009-03-17T17:27:00.000-07:00

It's just past dusk now, beginning
of spring,
a few robins already outside
& calling, which
gets me excited when I think
so much, so often & many times
of spring-like activities
that I probably will not do but want to,
like throw around a baseball,
which makes me nostalgic or simply a bit smiley,
or take long walks or bike rides
and something new: hike.

Not a few minutes ago I stopped
in my car
looking up at the sky with its fading blue
and long, quick line of orange-ish
and slowly, and reluctantly and heavy-heartedly
returned some videos I had rented,
thinking thoughts like "oh, poor suburban minds"
and trying to rhyme it with time
to be poignant
or introspective or accidentally
both. Daisy Fried, I want to meet you.

You know the city where my girlfriend lives.
I've read at least one of your books,
so you must know grit--
more than me, in my car returning videos.
And though a teacher here in Springfield,
only presume things have happened
to my Springfield sixth graders
to warrant their behavior.
But you seem to get it--
were you once
preggers and not wanting
(today I was flooded with pregnant conversation)
or did you know anyone who wanted?
Do city people return videos, stop
suddenly to look between buildings at
the lines you gravitate to
at dusk? I'm not picking on you,
I promise. I like you, is all. I'm jealous
and have questions like I usually do
as I pull back into the garage
and dusk, having blackened,
is no longer there to answer.

Warm Winter

2009-03-02T19:36:00.000-08:00

There are many times when
the weather is warm
and I believe I should be walking,
though for many reasons
my suburban body slackens
and becomes lazy,
and so, instead, I drive
to the drugstore to do an errand
and plan, instead, on
standing outside in the warm
dreariness of the fifteen minutes left of daylight,
to soak in early signs of spring.
It was the loveliest few fresh breaths
in quite a while.

On the way back, rain; and that tree with a few limbs cut off I always pass on the cul de sac
going into my driveway:
when I pulled in and the tree and its perspective turned, I shifted
into reverse and stared.
In my travels, I've seen so many
trees splayed out on the sky or else gathered or gathering themselves
from the trunk up, muscular roots and all
or else prostrating to false idols and the Patagonian wind. Not a few

minutes ago, the wind flittered
against the window. The trees brushed against nothing and everything;
the wind moaned a single story. That winter,
though it was summer down there, I promised myself I'd write something about
nature. Consider this a promise.

poetry news

2009-02-25T16:57:00.001-08:00

Patton Oswalt for Poet Laureate - watch more funny videos

what, you think he didn't defeat stanley kunitz?

The Wackness (i watched a not so fantastic movie with this title...)

2009-02-01T16:57:00.000-08:00

On a scale of one to wack
how would you rate
this? Would you take back

whatever you took?
What did you take,
anyway, to make life whack

you off from where you sat?
What makes life so irate--
or perhaps you don't watch your back

enough. That's what's wack:
no self-protection, no real pace
of things, and then everything spreads like an influenza that

can't simply put itself back
to where it should be. Here's the truth: no place
for the hope of things when gears of machines place tacks

under your feet. It's a fact
that nations, rising like yeast, face
each other: noses close together as face to breath, flat

and unflinching; that
the loss of a child means another race
towards more hands balled skyward and that

is where we find ourselves: wrapped
in a chrysalis, ominous, and hate
is a warm pie we eat on cream-colored place-mats.

You always look at
the dopeness, and, although I ignored it and ate
my fair share of bliss, it's just that

sometimes it--whatever it is--decides to drive into my head, a pick ax.
On the wackness scale, what's it rate?
You can tell me. From one to wack.

Three Woodblock Prints

2009-01-25T18:59:00.000-08:00

Maybe it's the huge smile on my face
or the boy's
(though it's dark (his face) and
I only get the impression of a smile--
miracles of art--) or
maybe it's the music I'm listening to
or my wandering eyes--
the young--is she young,
middle aged, seems slender;
she slumps like me,
except her gaze is slightly downward
(mine is up towards her)
--eyes?--where are the eyes?--
neither she nor he has eyes.

Why brood in the garden, slender woman, or drift,
as if Ophelia? The garden
is pasteled with beauty; his goose
isn't so into being held, prized.
I see love in those shadow eyes:
(eyes?): A new pet! The goose sees
death, or at least a bit of panic.
What saturated skies, what hair
in a tight bun, and oh!
the child on the mother's back!
What sound peaces,
even though we never see clearly
through the faces.

While Listening to French Music and Reading Daisy Fried (daisy fried's freakin awesome)

2008-12-23T22:07:00.001-08:00

Sometimes it's a terrible forcefulness
that takes me and I want to write and
push it out of me
like trying to force out constipation
which obviously gives you hemorrhoids
which is why I might or might not
have an itch that comes and goes.
Then other times it's all rushing out of me
the great idea
but it's crap, we know it's crap,
we've seen it before, I think, but laud it
cause it's the the stuff that helps you loosen up
breathe and sit down on a sunny day
in front of the Potomac or Charles or the Hudson
and set by the trees and smell the balm, all moist and not much else
besides a bit relaxing.
Yes, walking and sitting. More and less motion.
That, they, release/s muscles, even
when it's bitterly cold, and
all you want is a face to leisurely look at
and warm by setting your hands--
your silly, cashmere-lined, leather-impulse-buy gloves you love--
on it, caress it briefly. Love is that
leisurely. At times yes, at times cold, at times.
I find that writing is almost best sudden
but also best when you're so barraged
by aimless particles that you're bound
to say something sickening or meaningful
or both--something that in the movies
only seems to happen after impulsive sex
with an Oh! and Mmm and Huhn
and so many other noises that imply
a desire to break out of that stupid square,
that stupid my life is the doldrums/a conundrum
and where is my latte and personal
soundtrack?; and then he/she says it
and comes a laugh or the camera
zooms slowly in: Look
I'm changed, I've done something So
this is sex/fucking/love--and what's
love again, yes or hot mistake?
Ah, yes and hot mistake.

So, in all, I agree with movies.
There you are. There she is.
If only she'd eye your crotch, if only
I could stop eyeing her breasts then mouth.
What's so vulgar? I think meditation is lovely in that
your mouth, in some way, controls it,
just like your arms are the gateway
into someone else's body, which, a case has been made,
is also the mouth's job. Yes, I agree with movies,
meditations on life, and, poetry aside,
a pen and paper are really lovely objects,
or no? So many of them, hand-made and otherwise.
A history of them wouldn't be so unwarranted.
Yes, the world is lovely indeed in spite of it all--
the boots you wear, the shoes I wore even
after the heavy snow warning
and the sweaters we dropped food on and the wine
(so sweet, a dessert wine, though I had more Malbec)
you spilled on the carpet--cream, like paper--
and after wiping it up you tilted your head up
and we looked at each other as if love were spilled
all over our shirts and you said, Yes,
so where the hell's the poem after this, mm?

The Eye Like A Strange Balloon Mounts Toward Heaven (revised)

2008-12-19T13:52:00.001-08:00

after seeing "The Physical Impossibility of Death In The Mind of Someone Living"

Why even dare touch
your hand, a finger, to it? What huge nostrils,
huge teeth. What a vibrant aqua-marine tint,
what gills what teeth
what blank dead death eyes.

No body
could ever grow redder, shake so violently.
It was just so violent. Derailed.
Like the embarrassment after
too-short sex.

The moment when anger lets out, when eyes flare and the mouth gapes open.
Oh the eyes:
they fold over on themselves,
double over in hurt, sometimes, and sometimes
clap over the body, somewhere in between self-control and total abandonment.

It's the red! The red
of embarrassed, too-short sex!
That's what it is.
The color.
Deep and felt

and the eye
like a strange balloon slowly mounts
toward heaven.
If only that really happened.
Those eyes must widen: flesh, desire.

Hunger. Those teeth could rip anything.
Blackness worse than a dead, open mouth,
wanting you there. Ravenous,
gnashing like angry eyes. They stared at you.
They opened and closed.

Lebkuchen

2008-12-13T21:33:00.000-08:00

That's the good thing about bakeries:
They remind you of good times.

Each and every kuchen I ate:
Jumbo, a pasty crust.
Glazed, jellied fruits--not in the good way,
with granules of sugar that displease dentists, rather
the jell-o jellied: a rubbery top.

Frutillar, nueces. It must have been
caramelized, the store itself must
have been caramelized: trinkets,
wool, hand-knit sweaters and scarves,
the crust deep so that your teeth sink,
and that rich thickness: sugared walnuts.

Punacapa: we entered a church
(working backwards)
and admired the hundred-or-so year-old
cedar twisted and wrapped many times
by summer weather and bloom.
Kuchen, fruit, tart, maybe.
I don't remember much, except
drinking the sidra that got stolen
by accident on New Year's and how
it rained in Valdivia, down the river,
many weeks after, and I took pictures
of Claudia's grill and potted plants
and each drop was contentment.

Fragment 88 by Sappho (what a lovely poem)

2008-12-13T21:31:00.000-08:00

Raise high the roof-beam!
Sing the Hymeneal!
Raise it high, carpenter men!
Sing the Hymeneal!
The bridegroom enters, like to Ares,
by far bigger than a big man.

...i think there are different, slightly better translations. i'm working on it.

The Eye Like A Strange Balloon Mounts Toward Heaven (there's lots i'd want to change about this)

2008-11-26T18:19:00.000-08:00

Derailed. That's the feeling.
Why even dare touch
your hand, a finger to it?
What an off-feeling, like the embarrassment
after too-short sex. No, that's not it...

A hum and a slight wheeze out
the left nostril. What huge nostrils,
huge teeth, what a vibrant aqua-marine tint,
what gills what teeth
what blank dead death eyes.

No body
can ever grow redder, shake so violently.
It was just so violent. Derailed.
What do we do at the moment
when anger lets out,

when eyes flare and the mouth opens.
Oh the eyes.
They fold over on themselves,
double over in hurt sometimes and sometimes
clap over the body.

There is a moment before
they grow wider--
in between self control and total abandonment.
That gap. Choice.
Derailed.

It's the red! The red
of embarrassed, too-short sex.
That's what it is.
The color.
Deep and felt

and the eye
like a strange balloon slowly mounts
toward heaven.
If only that really happened.
They must have widened: flesh, desire.

Hunger. Those teeth could rip anything.
Blackness worse than a dead, open mouth,
wanting you there. Ravenous,
gnashing. They stared at you.
They opened and closed.

How to invite you in

2008-11-23T17:51:00.000-08:00

Look.

Read.

How to invite you in.

Do you ever journey.

Do you mean what you say.

Say it. This is graphite;

These are your thoughts.

Do not stand.

You swivel in place; you scratch your belly--

Do you ever journey.

Whisper like a long dash your subject

Onto the blank surface in front of you.

Swivel your pen. Do you ever journey.

Look. Outside

The world is cold. Sit. Open.

Do you mean what you say.

We prepare by organizing thoughts

Like acorns and berries before winter.

Scream, viciously, inside your head one, solitary, thought.

Do you mean what you say.

This is how you prepare.

Harbingers and Resistance to Signs

2008-11-18T19:13:00.000-08:00

A hum-mm after a cough.
Maybe trying to soothe myself
into a healthier state.
Dry, irritated cough. Seasonal.

The one true reason (out of several)
(an excuse to wear a scarf and
warm hats, for example) why
I look forward to winter

is the shape of bear trees
from a distance. Between branches
is light. And the oblongs
and semi-spheres of oaks, maples,

birches, willows slowly cross
the air with beauty between spaces.
I stood at the toilet overwhelmed
by the blood rushing my head

not two minutes ago. Like a twig
betraying itself and snapping
in the wind. This isn't a matter
of being suddenly cold; more so adrenaline and residual fears

of the dark.
This is the ritual:
turn one light on, turn the next on.
Turn the previous off. Run from room to room

in that same manner until safe.
Health doesn't ensure safety--
if that were true, I'd only be slightly
safe from outside this door.

Now we're in the bathroom,
every light is on. But the blood rush,
a louder hum-mm. Now we're in bed.
Now we're opening & closing our jaw

hoping our ears will pop. Hoping
our ears will hear more than they're supposed to.
Hoping the cough eases as eyes close.
Now we're in the dark.

As Usual (revised previous poem)

2008-11-18T19:06:00.000-08:00

As usual, I stand up from the toilet
closing my book of poetry (lately
I've been vacillating between
William Matthews and Mary Jo Bang).
I wash my hands. My back cracks;
my wrists crack. Scratch. Sniff.
Who says we aren't creatures of habit?
Perhaps in a more unrefined manner,
but I mimic the weather as much
as possible: my routines change.

Not as erratically as New England weather,
I suppose, and that is the only
difference and what I sometimes wish
I could change: how our winters
are sometimes warmer than they should be,
and my scarves and hats lay folded
and hung. What I ask for is consistency.
What we get is rain while the sun's out.
Those days are always the warmest and most curious to watch:
walking through moist August
then showered on, interrupted.

Do we expect these things to happen
always umbrella-ing our heads?
Or do we walk out into it, uncovered, nervous
about the inevitability that the outside--
like our insides--will change?
Bathrooms, on the other hand, were meant to sit in
and reach inner peace. On that cold seat,
whatever else drops out of you
rolls down your forehead
onto your lips like a sudden, relieved "Oh!"

Untitled as of yet...graffic scenes, just a heads up

2008-10-29T19:44:00.000-07:00

As usual, I stand up from the toilet,
closing my book of poetry (lately
I've been vacillating between William Matthews
and Mary Jo Bang). Today, nothin' doin'.
I wash my hands anyway. Scratch. Sniff.
My back cracks; my wrist cracks.
Who says we aren't creatures of habit?
Perhaps habit in a more unrefined manner,
but I mimic the weather as much
as possible. My routines change, but
not as erraticly as New England
weather, I suppose, and that is the only
difference and what I sometimes wish
I could change: how our winters
are sometimes warmer than they should be,
and my scarves and hats lay folded
and hung. What I ask for is consistency.
What we get is rain while the sun's out.
Those days are always the warmest
and most curious to watch.
Do we expect these things to happen
and always umbrella our heads,
or walk out into it, more nervous
than excited about mixed signals?
Bathrooms were meant to sit in
and reach inner peace. Sitting
down on that cold seat,
whatever else drops out of you
rolls down your forehead
onto your lips like a sudden, relieved "Oh!"

Living Among the Dead, after William Matthews (this may or may not be a direct copy, or just a good imitation)

2008-10-26T19:17:00.001-07:00

Living among the dead,
like opening a chest of moth-ridden clothes,
is harder each day: trees,
like us, sway outside the windows of the dead.

For the past few months I've lived in
my car, driving to and from
almost anywhere. Lots can be said
about driving, being encased,
becoming an almost-passive insider but
a keen observer of the wonderful.

There is a tree I once passed on the way to Hadley--
gnarled like an old war story.
It's the dead that place these
along the roads---
they still hold hands with you, tell you,
We placed Pepsi-Cola checker boards in your bathroom
to put your poetry magazines on and drift back
to our tables, our chocolate milks and glasses.

Even the ones I don't remember
track thumb prints in the night.
They lay them on your head
and the next morning
your hair is matted to the left.

There is no way to avoid the dead:
there they are, setting themselves inside
their own footprints,
putting your feet inside new shoes.
Curling their eyes upward
then downward, watching their progress grow.

to great grandparents, and great uncle and aunt

Poem With a Line by Elvis Perkins

2008-10-13T17:29:00.000-07:00

It worries me that there's someone on my mind who I don't see.
The kind of nervousness you feel when
meeting someone new
who you don't quite trust enough to say,

My heart bursts like autumn while you licked your lip to get a small
drop of iced coffee from running down your chin.

The kind that sickens your leg a bit,
makes it thrust forward--
a crunch and pain in your ankle.

Is this what love is, or just a fog soup
that's stepped off a pier in San Francisco
and turned to New England
to learn more about how weather will begin
to be erratic while internally
what is constant is turning and molten
and that's what you should most likely always
rely on: earth.

Poem Beginning With Two Words by Iron & Wine

2008-10-13T17:17:00.000-07:00

Love was a coke bottle lens
balanced on your head; a joke that your
brother laughed at instead.
Instead of lighting up the dark
we let the match flicker out;
instead of laying by your side
I propped up a knee and smiled.
Our thumbs will eventually crack when
we lift them up, wrestling like time
with shirts and coffee mugs.
We flooded the basement carpet
refused to collect the rain
that swelled up all of the beams;
but, then, isn't that the point--
to float your arms down rivers
that motion toward the body?
We travel a great many distances.
We, the Mississippi, the mighty.

Soledad (needs a lot of work) (taken after a song by jorge drexler, called Soledad) (i actually see this as a song, and not a poem)

2008-10-08T18:19:00.000-07:00

Soledad, aqui estan mis credenciales.
That's what I said when I left,
not knowing what you'll be doing
next. The guagua in Santiago
is crying, our parents are sick
and fighting. Things changed
ever since their divorces. Of course,
me, too, que nunca supe bien
como estar solo--there are
guaguas crying in Springfield
la micro by you is too.
How strange to see your hands
combing the hair of my sister,
every woman who brushes by.
Soledad, ahi quedaron mis cicatrices,
the pieces of glass that broke
the spokes gutted off your mother's car.

How we rolled when we reached the hill
in Olmhue. That's all I remember of that day.