Dizzy

(freewritten)
The thought circles back like Gravity's knife:
there's a hole in my skull and all the good stuff's falling out.
Cold bodies cuddle neuroses and fend off their nightmares
worried fingers panhandle and pickpocket but rarely get pinched
even as the holes in the keyboard open wider
the "O" and the "0" are really just 2 stretched open-terrified eyes
but no.
no.
I'm getting it wrong
the whole is in my skull
a second mouth where typos fall out
and the fingers plug and push and staunch the words back in.
My body is stroking slowly as the cortexes collapse into each other's gravity
and the thought circles back
quick like Gravity's knife.

On Christmas day

you can see a child's laughter
through cracked palms,
Beat out the
and overzealous precipitation
with a field of candle-flames refusing to die.
And when you try to sing
there is nothing but miracles in your throat.





(after writing this poem I had to listen to this song
and yes. I do know how cheese and non-xmassy that is)

after the holidays

Written in a nauseous daze after too much holiday spirits (mostly of the dark and aged variety):
Dreams find themselves doubled over in pockets
dank clouds of peculiar ill
hang
waiting around corners
teething under the sidewalk.
Innards quiver like a salamander on fire
peeling lizard skin splits rubbery & dry
the consistency is not leveling out
sleep arrives crooked
propped up on the couch
(beneath a foreign overcoat)
& when I open my mouth, the salamander comes out.

The Day After Christmas
When Morning's body fell wet into our door
we rushed in to cover the sound
and shoved her slime under the table

Opening the Mail
I watch the envelopes build up in the wastebasket
my favorites are the official ones
whose previous cargo may have included:
bank statements
medical information
or a reminder about those student loans.
Serious messages
come clothed in dancing pinstripes
an inward-turned somersaulting of endless hyphens.
The tessellations keep you safe,
help you keep all your debt to yourself.

The small things make it worthwhile,
broken drill bits and four chocolates between the two of us.
I loved the way we laughed as we cleared out the corners.




Our skin shook the air
loud like thunder
our turbulence took flight.
We are stormy weather
eating through the sky.
It rained for hours
& by morning I could almost move.
This is the kind of thing you don't recover from.

I've been sick and not had a computer available for a few days. Sorry about that.

Erin
Your freckled softer-than-jersey face is a feeling stronger than a papercut.
Your presence is better than pulling off the stilettos at 3AM
the dancing enthusiasm loosened through the night,
I am jagged edges in the stairwell
and your arms rocked me anyway
-my body just a curl of a person
but your hands didn't brush me away like pencils shavings.


Christmas Shopping
1 week out
I huddled in the boisterous bookstore corners
the teenagers in puddles
philosophize about the social capacity of space:
"I can't. I'm shy. I can't if somebody can hear."
A boy in their group grunts rhythmically,
she punctuates by counting out gritty restrooms as well
the disapproval weighs down her words,
points at the missing spaces in their group.
The bookstore groans,
& they purchase a book about flatulence.


After Xmas Shopping
Screaming heels
and a small taste of sleet slanting off the forehead.
It stings then melts
like getting shot down in front of the bartender.

I Made it Home
My body is more that just a smear on the highway,
I've got moving parts like everyone else,
parts that move like no one else.


Solstice Poem
She's got hornets in the throat
& lizards in her feet.
Her face smiles
like the guttural howl of a motorcycle in a churchyard.
You can tell that it's winter by the thickness of pumping exhaust.

She is cowboy boots 2 sizes too small,
blistered histories that tried
(maybe) too hard.
She leaves her heart on the field
wrapped in sleeves and lengths of small intestine
drops a kidney and a set of tonsils on her way to the sidelines.
She keeps her liver to herself.

& lastly
beneath all the clatter
her eyelashes gather into tiny triangles
-long with salt and regret.


Torsion
You're body got crooked
while working toward my sleep,
& unfurled the torsion from 5 different contraptions.


Light
The light collided
and their friction colored the windows
the world obscured by misty blue-green geometry.

Drunk haiku

I love eating cheese.
Sometimes it tastes like yellow,
sometimes it tastes orange.

running

I've got penmarks built up in my scarf,
the pinkness shortens my stride,
and I get by
counting cracks sidewalks.

Bother+Sister=Metamorphic

I called it archeology
because the big word made my mouth feel good;
helped the two years between us shorten
and stand small, but strong next to the millennia.
Together we learned how the stones were cooked and bent and compressed:
Igneous,
Sedimentary,
and Metamorphic.
Only wet rocks show their true colors.
In the backyard we took hammers to granite
smashing our way through a molten backstory.

These days I steal beach rocks by the pocketful.
And sometimes, when I know nobody's watching
I'll spit on them,
think wistfully of hammers,
and remember who they really are.



done for poetry potluck week14

missed connection (pizza delivery edition)

To the boy with bulbous black glasses,

fingerless gloves

& pumpkins rotting on the front stoop:

you are beautiful when you apologize.

unravels

Stuck on my sinking bedsheets
I succumb to a broken gravity
let the sleep pull me down.
When I rise my center scuttles away
and I am dancing lopsided
in a many-mirrored room.

for last night, when the internet died

This tension is dizzy with vinegar,
boils over the body
and simmers into a toxic calm.
With chemistry working against me
the dust smothers to a motionless haze.
The anxieties
have got thousands of tiny mouths
one for ever membrane.
If you're not careful
corners of the soul can be corroded;
All you dream
subjected to a rusty and jagged sigh of escaping.

Singing Cedar Memories

(image sourced from Magpie Tales)

The geometry has tilted,

our eyes slide too fast and too far down,

gravity gets hungrier with the years.

When the body takes a moment to remember

our legs make bruises on the sidewalk.

And when those cold footsteps crest,

we pull that deep red nostalgia beneath us

and slide down on singing cedar memories.

Not at all

All over-planned love letters fail.

The words come without timetables or perpendicular creases

sounds bigger than the filling of black spaces.

&

After our legs pulled us underground,
our words rushed together,
&when he kissed me
his mouth curved my heart into a series of overzealous ampersands.

If I could, I would buy you flowers every day

Last night I dreampt of red roses
blossoming into a thorny alphabet.
With stemmed parenthesis
and jagged leaves
I left the petals of a love letter in your bed.

A heavy-handed norse power ballad

My body was built by the Valkyries.
Ribs spread wide as victory,
then curled together like wings
striking curved against a bloody gravity.
The whiplash began my heart's electric rhythm.

I could catch you in a glimpse,
and long before our bodies even think of colliding,
I've got your battle cry churning beneath the skin.
I speak in raven feathers
and honeyed gasps.

I fill the air after it's been emptied of souls
my body keeps the night from tearing into nothing.

Based on a wackadoddle response I got after typing "daily writing prompt" in to my google

"On December 3, 1967, the first successful heart transplant was conducted. It is important to keep your heart, along with the rest of your body, healthy. Create a list of ten (10) activities that will help keep your heart healthy."

Hearty
(a list poem)
1. Cheerios have a really great ad campaign,
hits your chest dead center,
with blond children and health benefits.
2. Steer clear of falling and(or) feeling unfulfilled.
3. Keep your laughter from hurting
4. (both transitive and intransitive).
5. Get at least halfway though half of the things you set out to do.
6. Help your bicycle up the hill
she really wants to see what's up there
and I'm sure both of you would like the way the relationship grows
(bruises and bike grease are worth that sort of thing).
7. Find at least 4 kinds of love in your life.
(no fill-in-the-blanks, this is an essay question for your heart)
8. Learn.
9. Drink.
10. Enjoy.

The words of a clock

The minutes got hungry and ate themselves while waiting.
The air is sour and emptied by each tickticktick.
Machines gnash their teeth in circles
Spinning gears
whose mouths measure what they cannot touch
Time cannot be caught
only hollowed out
by the words of a clock.





(written in 3 minutes)

cold relationship poem.

This body chose to forget you
I can see your face through calculated window panes.
Outside those walls the memories crumble
& deteriorate like newspaper.
Your name separates into grit and tawny debris.

I love you
& I know how cold it is,
but no amount of forlorn
could frown this door back open.

If I let your shadow in,
you'd collect all your footprints
and leave your longing
pristine with the snow.



For magpie tales.

Ava

Tonight was the first night we slept together
soft and warm
and only 4 years old.
Her mouth spins the spectrum as her body dreams,
stealing an absolutely impossible amount of covers.
She shouts angrily against the green and slanted night
slaps my book with a drowsy hand,
lonely in her dreams
she pushes at the papery insomnia
and laughs so hard I can see all of her teeth,
Whispers in words too dream-shaped to decipher.

When her morning voice prods me into waking
her eyes are rounder than two chocolate moons.

flem is nasty

Even small amounts of lull
can accumulate in the corners of your throat
and infringe upon your lungfuls.

Well

You can you tell it's getting better
because the sweat smells worse
and the body puts some effort into resistance.

unnecessary violence

yesterday I saw a cop hold up traffic to aim at a teenager's knees
flashing lights are loaded
and really you need three cars to crack down on two 15-year-olds?
After their bodies were hustled into the background cages,
their bikes waited on the streetcorner with lonely eyes
the spokes will be broken
or gone within the hour.

Thanks

11/26
She spent the night
coughing into her turtleneck
& slanting cynicism over the tablecloth.
The buildup was almost bearable.

11/25
(in a tryptophan daze)
This feeling weighs 10,000 pounds.
Slowly the art becoming coughs magic into the dust.
I've got love letters smoldering in my pockets,
their alphabet eyes blink once every 72 hours.
& the sleep is snagging me down
warmth on a steady increase.
The conversation sags like an unsupported dance floor.
From opposite ends of the room
loud laughter shuffles together like playing cards
or the shutter of a camera.
The repetition is more comforting that you might think.
What?
You might think the numbers are onto you,
but the clock will forget you
the moment you close your eyes.

the Streets of Seattle

The ice will trick you the moment you look away.
It's the difficulty that makes winter so precious.
The water crackles
as the smokers lean out their windows.

The blizzard is receding:
shiny fingers melting off the sidewalk,
lazy tires hiss sloppily in their chains,
the railroad is exposed
white with geometry.

3 days in
By this time
all the streets are crumpled & gray.

SNOW!

11/23
A Walk in the Snow
Queen of the hashbrowns burning,
my body fantasizes in equal parts mountain woman and glamazon,
makes sharp outlines in the canvas that shook angry from the sky.
My footprints are arrows
punctuating a path.
These dreams will find me wherever I stop to rest.


11/22 (an obscured dialog between Mai Li myself and the fire.)
Holing up for the night
This warmth is not squandered
our bodies braced against the cold
long walls of white mean nothing
swirls of snow catching only themselves.

cold
FUCKING cold
and this is not for my expressing
but the brutality of my fingers and the turning of my incomplete fork.

The words have potholes
and we all know each other well
enough that the spaces left between don't matter
like the difference between breath you can see and the breath you can't
we breathe back and forth in typewriter ticks.

3 skulls are enough to hold it all in
our mouths solder them together with laughter.
It doesn't matter how fast the snow beats down,
the cold is just an idea we've cornered into submission.

falling poems stick

11/21
Fingers, Wings, and Pickled Butterfly Laughter
Weak wintry sunlight slipped through the window
& found the place where our fingers shared matching band-aids.
I can barely stand the stiffness of it healing.
It's stopped bleeding (I hope)
but its empty throbbing has yet to feel.

Jokes half-whole came easy
beside the mouth of the furnace.
Your laugh makes the open sky nervous
(robs it of it's cold)
I want to catch it,
cup a mason jar to your quivering chin,
keep that rocking chuckle like a firefly in a jar.
I bet its sound would continue to flicker days before the wings get tired.

Our fingertips share the same nicked affliction.
The healing is stiff,
but still, we make the most of November's sun
and buying your laughter with words so light
is like trading dust for butterflies.


11/20
Your laughter is like butter,
spreads rich through darkness
we melt into sighing
& smooth over the topography of breathing.



11/19
Things don't always go as planned.
Skin cracks & leaves purple spots on the fingers.
Dust rushes into the mouth;
the air is too tight for words.

The distance between me and my past

the body is no longer made of papers,
our moments have been twisted and properly burned.
I've been lifted from the 1-inch margins,
and this fog has gone up to touch the sunshine.
These storms can't belong to any combination of key strokes
the patterns of genius are gathering spiderwebs
to better weather the electricity,
and I can pick any fucking font I want.
Perception is everything
and all the power in the wor(l)d is useless
without the ability to feel powerful.
And I am crawling out of my puppet fingers
lifting off like fog becoming cloud,
becoming unpredictable weather
I rumble in time with my own lightning
and swallow the counted spaces between light and sound.
Soon
my stormy body will be pressing back against your numbers.

wordgames

the words mix purple on the floor,
big drinks pour down bigger hearts,
sounds getting larger
and ripening the musty air.
our laughter rattles the windows,
the innuendos are exploding,
her breath crackled with the unsaid
And I've been stealing syllables directly from your throat.

Sore

This beat body is a bruised brick factory
weighed down by history and fat smokestacks.
Too many angles snag,
hysteria pools in the stairwell,
as my mouth got away
& I laughed away all my lightness.


Fenceposts
Everything is getting away,
all of the fenceposts have turned to ash
gray floats boundless in the air
& every breath is a lungful of the uncontrolled
what happens when a body can't own up to its actions?
The body breaks and ideas fall birthless from the teeth
a cold brain runs through each miscarriage frame-by-frame
hoping a time-lapse might unlock the unthinkable
that it could find answers
about how to put fire in reverse
and stop the lightning before our bones turn to glass.
And these footholds are actually only shaped like wounds
in the ground my nails scraped together.
I feel like my arms got stole in the middle of a cartwheel
and my skull is being filled with the earth
land that don't mean what it used to;
all of the fenceposts have turned to ash.

So, turns out I need a new laptop

And am super short on the funds to do so.
Even after saving for 3 and 1/2 weeks to try and get my old one fixed.
It has taken me that long to save half of what I'll been needing for a new machine.
So please, if you can buy a copy of my chapbook:
it's 5 bucks and filled with joyful noises.

Also I will write you a poem by commission if you so desire.
$5 for 10 lines on any subject you desire.
an additional subject or 10 lines is an additional $5.

If you can at all help I would deeply appreciate it.
Thanks.

Typos abound froM my ipod

11/11
The introversion is bottomheavy.
Unmasked, the fairy tales drip with mythic scandal and wolfbreath.
The teeth are hollow
poetry injected through hardened poetry
this song is a snakebite.
The scales team up before shuffling off,
a raw balance is peeled from syllabled skin.
It takes such great intuition to find the serpent's throat.
My legs are too overbearing--
forked like a tongue
And I just can't seem to find out where that hissing's comming from.



11/12
Advice to young women, and girls working to become them:
Say "thank you." more often,
And in more ways
Than you say that you're sorry.


11/13
The holes in my tights run
like rain on Winter's windshield.
This poem is a dollar shoved between my breasts.


11/14
"ineedyou"
my body says
in a single sway of simultaneous motions.
The tingles in my skin have rendered me ridiculous
& my hands are pulling out all of the wrong musics.

The ill

After a false start
and two cups of brew,
the blankets called me back.
At 2PM
I am finally ready.

so small

11/9
Your laugh is a lantern
made of fireflies and mason jars.


11/8
The air is crisp like a paper knife
A barely-there moon snags a threadbare brightness
from the night's deep cobalt throat
and tonight clarity is a curved papercut,
an ivory crescent who waits for red.

11/7
Karaoke
Somehow
the words made plopping noises
as they hit the microphone.

I love writing "I was born" poems

"Stay dry out there."
Falls from empty lips toward my rain slicked wrists,
I smile and dodge the warning.
This was the wet sun I was born under,
air as wet as a child's crying breath.
As soon as I became
my body was covered in the amber leaves that sky shook down.
When my mouth first cried out,
the sunflowers were on their deathbeds,
gravity pulling yellow back to earth.
Under a bloated charcoal sky,
the horizon sighed
relieving the trees of their heaviest colors.
I am a disciple of eye drops and chapstick and long soaks in the tub (any tub).
My bones were born with mildew already inside.
I learned to grimace by watching the pumpkins bear their teeth
like candle-lit watchdogs.
If you carved out my face you'd find the flickers they planted there.
On one soaked and slanted evening like this
beneath the same hangdog sky
I came wet into the world.





11/5
(sick)
breath sucked into my belly
I got caught in every motion
my temperatures flew by like a firetruck
angry flashes cornering the night.

what a day.

11/4
$4
My waitress had a constellation on the back of her neck,
spit politics out the side of her mouth,
hid her age with a smile.
She held 4 conversations in the palm of her hand.
Her mouth struck like a match
whose burnt aftertaste bent a question into m mind.

I looked away as she poured my coffee.
Thanked her softly.
You don't just go around asking to tip your waitress in kisses


11/3
Maybe I came on too strong,
like a poet with peppers falling out her mouth.

Spooky Avalanche of Poems

11/2
When breakfast is all you can manage
don't skimp on the spices.


11/1
My notebook has holes for you
&the binary date is echoing your name.
This humming hollow is just the right shape
for the dips and nods of your laugh.
The hours are sideways without you,
waiting to be tipped by your smile.

10/31
Despite the fishnets
Tried too hard.
Fucked up.
Made less money than usual.

10/30
At 3AM I was ready to crash in the back seat,
a bouncing red voice drew me out.
Danced fearless until a 6AM sunrise
By then our voices had faded to the perfect pitch of orange.


10/29
On my birthday
the smallest children discuss Harry Potter at the breakfast table.
The devouring is slow and spiced
smoothing over the anxious footprints.
I can taste that the croutons were yesterday's bread.
my waitress opens the air for the sharing of stories,
our mouths hitch-hiked from Santa Cruz to Alaska
a thumbing tongue coaxes a red smile from the brake lights.
After a thin saunter westward
my body is finally the weight it should be.
The boots don't matter anymore
and my soul is stuffing dance under the table.
The desserts jeer from their perch near the cash register,
their doughy mouths giggle as I break eye contact,
this doesn't worry me
I've got a kinder pie at home
&it's really not breakfast anymore,
she got drunk on too much sunshine:
October was never supposed to be this good.


10/28
On the edge of 24
my body took a walk in my grandmother's boots,
each stride tried to muscle past the loneliness,
I leaned back from the gravity of my comforts
and waited for my New City to swallow.


10/27
This body is not a dog or a pony or a bearded lady,
this body is a tightrope
balance radiating out,
like the glow from a beautiful face,
not just reaching out,
but dancing in every direction.


I should be writing a poem,
but I've opted to stay in my skin,
gonna eat all the pleasures in the room
split & pit each fruitful noise
and let the the bitters crawl back to November.

november coming

I can feel November pulling the rug out from under me
from where it waits around a festive corner.

10/25

Meeting new folks (mood set by the lovely Mongrel Jews)
the past pushes from their mouths
with barely an initiation,
the rafters are itching with implication
& your mouth is making my fingers crackle and dance
as the conversation falls too close to the sun.

Like melting wax
handshakes drop from the sky,
the conversation hooks it fingers into moon craters
she winces to a thumbnail crescent.

Astronautical hearts drink deep,
a starry intoxication,
pointed brightness cutting deeper
in familiarity's skin
the words bleed out hot and wet
& after those winged lips give me their drop
I'll be picking wax and scabs for days.

Found another console, hope to find another soon

10/21
Meditation on the Front Row
Only the fearless take the front row
or the fools
and by fool I mean the desperate kind
the kind of soul that stays in the ocean tides after their muscles have turned to fried eggs and salt.
In the front row you'll find bits of teeth
broken by a blissful shattering.
Necks craned back to the farthest arching
this layer of watchers harbor a hunger so strong it disregards the body
like the starving stranger who breaks the baker's display window
intending to down every confection.
Front row souls inject energy in the shape of a jumbled alphabet,
Small breath marks boiled away in the charred spoon bowl of performance,
the chemistry makes their faces ageless
as the words rush off the stage like a river of angry lemmings.
At the edge you can feel the carnage breathing hot in your ear
so close your body can't remember what the fuck was pristine anyway?
In the front row every utopia shatters
like the proverbial wine glass in an opera singer's fingers
there is no distinction between wine and blood,
the hungry ones drink it all.
You either crawl up to it
or leave your seat crawling.
Those willful suckers
bent on being unsettled,
poised for rupture
somewhere ear & mouth & ear.
They hold open their hungry triangles,
front row souls
waiting to be rung.



10/20
Wearing Purple (in response to the youth suicides in September)
Their bodies became a series of ghost towns
punctuating a paranoid highway
beneath the cracks caused by too many wheels
they planted their fearful children
like ivy their shadow hands strangled the difference
from every incongruent thought or feeling or expression,
jagged fingers
bruising the human architecture
and our children are crumpling like origami hearts,
Beautifully chambered whispers missing any rightful canvas
these words are only echoes
their bruises hang in the air like broken ghosts
whose mouths have been sewn shut by childlike violence.
Hate's wastebasket became a megaphone on national TV
as the newsmill & its puppets suddenly decide that it's time take notice.
They invite purple into the light
because every bruised soul deserves a canvas.



10/22
Dad
We smiled over a green breakfast
I sipped the coffee diluted
as he filled his hands with a glass of coco-cola and 4 slices of bacon
the yellow walls breathed assertively
Yes- I am awake,
and I love you Dad.

10/23
Jessie
She always gives me too many beers
and feeds my body pancakes
after being convinced to stay the whole night through.

10/24
Delicious Brains

The conversation go so damn good
we nearly upturned the party mix
and placed our brains in glass bowls on the table.

finally a computer

10/19
legs moved like criss-crossed lips
heartbeats growing larger fell from our journeyed mouths
a cobbled-together consistancy makes a vibrant reality throb
the sunlight is merely a symbol of our story
the words falling maeasureless through the distance.


10/18
Bloody Sunset
Pigments let loose
and screaming across the sky:
a horizen the color of your liver
breathing a soundless fire into the heart of sky
where each hue smolders to a pitch.

10/17
in the sommersaulted afternoon
we exchanged innuendos in the backseat
and chuckled all way to the supermarket.


10/16
Some Satudays occur
only for the rain to rupture.


10/15
Reading alloud makes my throat ridiculous
pushes my tongue to dangerous speeds,
this poem wants you so bad
I
am
forgettting to breath.
And the words shove on,
topple over the flimsy body of logic
any plan spills out into milky puddles
no breath left to cry for them.
The storm builds behind my teeth
and shakes nervously, too heavy for my jaw
the words are atoms splitting to an exponential song.

10/14
the need to scratch it out makes me greedy
punctures the curtained world of sounds meant only for you
a recording device which speaks to nothing but the needle,
grooves devouring each
beats sidestep the earskins
far too drunk on threadbare syllables
these words swing
straigh into the electric recognition,
sounds spark bright between pen & page
the light is just enough to expose the motions
our shadows make as they hold in our loneliness.

look I made an awkward

Stilted the words come out
painfully rehearsed
crinkle the air
with intentions becoming acid,
I
don't know
what to say to you anymore.

tech troubles might muck up the daily posts

The coliding conversations
made delicious stops in the swerving music
you could almost taste the dance moves.

Tomato seeds

under the knife
the tomatoes separated into shining red doubloons,
the kitchen breathes quieter
between each slice
nearly convincing me
I had strawberries at my fingertips
as the tabletop mumbled over seeds,
I was nearly deceived.

um... hangover

Booktrade
Between the dishwater, and errant moppings
our fingers exchanged pages in the basement.




Dancing
My feet helped me fake it
on the bubbling dance floor
I discovered the closeness of my comfort zone
dissolving trust into touch
spinning reckless joy in every direction.

Costumes make up for lost coffee

A bit of fabric can save you,
especially when pulled over the those dusky shortcomings
fishnet breaths lead you to a laced back story
and together we forget what might be missing
look for it in the motions between motions
its magic is a heart-strung catapult:
a loaded love song ready to release.

wrote a poem on a friend's cast

Swathed and elevated
the afterbirth of a motorcycle catastrophe
makes its bolted sleep
stilled muscles will rise again!

Poetry exercise

Pick a point and fixate,
chew out each color,
and extract every possibility,
rearrange to satisfy your senses olfactory,
kiss in a ticking heart,
and breathe those words to life.

groups of 2

Even after picking out the sour spots
the free bread was delicious.



The old smiles instantly became congruent
we laughed together and dug for costumes in the dusty closet corners.



Under all that sunshine
October has become roasted and ridiculous.

Joy

Our shared sweat choreographed a feeling so strong,
that the afternoon got lost
and crashed down around our togetherness.
I learned that day
that a heart dancing so frantic and full
can only perspire through the eyes.

running on empty

a dizzy spending will take you all the way around the block
the pavement generates a righteous hunger
and pushes open an empty center.

Baby I can drive your pizza

The pace put dances in my feet
each toe twich demanding:
"Can I put fire in your kitchen?"
as the cheese melted into my mind
and sweet basil coaxed the nose to a pointed joy,
I churned my my wheels for a dime
and made an investment out of smiles.

You have to look at the moon

September nights are just about the best
for sharing the moon.
After I watched your fingers use up
all the sugar,
you disappeared
and I added an extra something special to the decadence.

the anti-groceries

Too hungry
every resource reduced to nibbles
cereal everywhere.

small things

the fluid pushes against a heavy weathered night
in the small things we find reprieve.

Shyness

We pooled anxieties in a smallish corner of the dwindling festivities
our lucidity more deeply pronounced by the rain-drunk backdrop,
the Icarus words fell feathery from our mouths
each kiss pulling closer to the sun,
in small moments of cloudy purple afterglow
the danger ripped us past out nervousness
and we made savage whispers in the strangeness of the night.

Mai Li and her party

I gave you my sweat
and the night churned out sweet music
born of innumerate voices
vibrating to a single possible consciousness,
we each become
swooning disciples of your skin
drank out every scrap of swinging meaning
grateful for the lingering vulnerability.

eating together

No more oblong meals
no cereal in the afternoon,
the air around your body is nutritious,
sweet flavors bring vitality to the doorstep,
every bite seasoned just so
happy mouths lead to happy hearts.

Nonchalance is just a waste of good exclamation points

I'd like to be a somersault in the season of your mind's catapult
Show you how time unlocks
measurement by measurement
and never again
let nonchalance waste our pointed exclamations.

long walks

Stretched every inch of the legs,
pushed the limits of the stride,
pulled back by thick fabrics,
let the ache rush in.

presage

9/17
tangled limbs create fully developed shadows on the sidewalk
the rain
while constant,
never admits its conciliatory role
in September's seduction,
pulling fall down sunshine's legs
"yes please" screams a distant but possible winter.

Every descending molecule is loaded
I will meet you in the winter
and we'll make the most of whatever the cold my bring
find the marrow in any weather.


9/18
Critically developed temperaments
create strained containers for affection
what we make of our sensations
is what separates us from the sponges and barnacles.


9/19
We slept on the front porch and drank sunrises
to stave off the hangovers
who danced ominous on the leftover dance floor.
Softly ridiculous
the words meandered like sleeping bubbles
our heavy swirls were popped by the occasional rainshower
and sometimes a parting partygoer might puncture our balconied dreamspace
a hushed tension would gather sober footprints
and we would giggle in their passing absence.
The thin ashy down didn't even tickle.
Your laughter helped whales breach my imagination,
breathed light into the peeking-out sandbar
and knitted whimsy into a purple sky.

9/20
In each dream I could be
cursed and furious
because I slept
just that
deep.

blurp

the chain-link fence growls in the teeth of a distant wind,
aren't you happy it's raining again?

effing jobsearch

Acid buildup is corrosive to possibility,
been harvesting against it
pocketing possibility
for the later peddling of every trajectory.

Hoist the Colors

In my hands our hair blends together
suspended by cries getting higher & higher
the colors lose meaning between fingers
your hands making the most of a fidgety soul.
My ribcage is the mousetrap that ate the beating canary,
spring-loaded mouths clench the mixing metaphors.

I've stopped caring about being obvious
just being there & there & there,
fully living in our skins,
making every movement a journey
which refuses to be anything but about itself.

When the destination found our bodies
sweet yellow meaning flew singing from our chests.

for yesterday... (a potluck got in the way)

Sharing Rhythms
all around the table we danced
and devoured each other's laughter,
gold foamy joy pools into a smiling belly
you grabbed hold of my make-believe
and I listened to the sounds in your hands.

so much romance!

9/11
Dancing drunk on a bicycle train,
music moved via pedal and the blurring of spokes,
we played in so many circles
caught exhaustion as the tires growled up the hill
curled into an elongated, two-wheeled togetherness.

9/12
how silly of me
to think,
just because we couldn't feel it
time got lost in the afternoon between us.

typewriter light

two lamps drink the darkness
devour the shadows who fall though window
a small moth hides winged shapes behind the typewriter,
flying secrets held in by dust and zippers.

scummy buildup

9/6
support
wrap
and hold.
Pull & pull & pull,
canvas for sunspots
skinsea of sunflower memories

9/7
Clarity bells on either side of the chest
shudder and sing,
that smile brings so much color to your face.

9/8
little purple memories pressed into the skin
smile and slick over as my body narrowly misses the rain
plunging into afternoon
each stride is full and unafraid,
thoughts fold softer
like construction paper oragami
an uneven puddle could easily undo all the angles,
and I am thinking of you
when the motions settle
your words make me hungry for life.

9/8
Body, body why can't you live without a goddam lullaby?!
such movement stuck me too much in my body
hours after the coffee was exhausted
every cell is still awake.

9/8
With small swoops of magic
you can hide a story inside two hanging hats,
pull the words inside out
don't be fooled by your amazement,
this bliss is no trick.

9/4
Subtext
Couldn't leave
that long blond body in the door frame
drew me back from the nearly irresistible dancing
restless legs pull toward the doorway
in that passage we were much more than shadows
we fell into subtexts of light
mouths moving between the lines.


9/4
Less than settled
unkempt
a compression in chest
tangles over the air around you.
The quality of tension can't stand definition.
For the moment
I'll send you what I can
maybe tomorrow they'll be chocolate on the horizon.


9/3
Escape
the laughter crackled like baklava
sweet triangular sounds
fractaling through the air

too much covered skin
as the heat melted us down to our cores,
small words uncurl out the window like a rope ladder
or a rusty fire escape
jury-rigged to serve the purpose of other escapes
motivational twitches sing our bodies closer
and we bring the pinstripes to life
into each subject sounded
we inject the size of a song
stupid music pushes, pushes, pushes every boundary.
When you hang you legs out the window
the entire sidewalk unravels.

Breakfast poems

Stair-step ivy is a diagonal smile on the chain-link fence
green makes its crooked saunter into the sky
where the shattered clouds refuse to gather.

Poetry is the black rattle
of a crow's hidden mouth.

Soon

I'll be close
close enough to blow a whisper into your sleep,
bottle laugher and deliver it fresh at your doorstep.
Without a word we'll share the same slice of sky,
mouths tired
from too many smiles smiled together
memories live in the corners of the mouth
the sweet soreness of pointed yesterdays
promises a closer tomorrow.

I found this poem in the crack between my bed and the wall

Suddenly I've got eyes
who refuse to translate the heated metaphors
clever black feathers
his face turned away to the place morning can't touch
its dew hands pushed away by dreams
the brightness barely contained by thick curtainy green
the bed is still comfortable
after 6 drunken hours
the sunlight doesn't matter,
limbs rearrange
in sleepy affection
no matter how sharp it tried,
clarity could not become that smile.

been making zines so poetry energy has sort of gone into that

the adventure buzzed ahead of us,
the traffic jam tearing its splendors from our reach
we followed for so many hours
caught it with expense and urgency,
this is the right time for talking,
and telling stories about spaces we filled:
voices in every modulation and medium
left their marks in the air
and even though the both of us have gone
that place will remember our names.


threaded along
this homeless game
is sharpening its teeth
as the stakes raise
I can just about cough out a bluff.

grumble

the hours winnow out
and patience cracks
loyalty leaks through the cracks.

got too hot on the ride home

the brain is too slow for a sizzle
grilled cheese of the mind is limp and less than crisp
still cold
stiff in the middle.

up too late (no edting)

tender angles
I hope that feline motor sings you dreams so sweet,
So sweet the birds won't be able to touch your morning.
behind the eyelash curtains
possibilities play out their caramelized rehearsals
with every run-through it gains in gossamer and tension
it's the small movements that matter the most
In that magic geometry all the angles mattered,
even those measured by touch alone.



When you smashed insects out of their twilight lives
some of their wings flew back into the night



Scratching for the rent money,
I let the eyes fractal over;
dry-red,
the desperation stratifies my dreamspace.

such a sad climax

heart not just broken,
but shredded up the spine of the story
cracked throat
wound to a dry silence
not every story lifts the voice
this endgame is a miser of sounds
swift movements auction off the possibility of tears.

3 day yard sale

We hung them in the yard
as a series of dusty anecdotes
price-marked talismans
drink sweet breathy sunshine
and hope for new journeys.


Too many sharks on the airwaves,
shakes down radical intentions
leaves the trees lonely and thin.


Found your mouth,
sunshine-strong
letting the language grow
so small.
In the shade of our near silence
we dodged metaphors all afternoon.

Well that was unproductive...

Sometimes the tension festers beneath the fingernails,
pins you down all day long
fastens the mind to every too-big intention
and spins the fingers into a web of missed possibilities.

Unproductive visit to campus

While the afternoon pursed its lips
the leaves were making so much noise!

up way too late.

grumbled insomnia
absurd
but cozy.

a poem, very slowly wound

A light cracks under the door
and a burnt shoulder freckles to life,
movement smooths over the hallway sounds
and both mouths transition—
become a doubled pocket watch
meticulously twisting into balance

I lost gravity in the angled space,
between that curving spiral arm
and time made slow, sweet strides across our numbered faces.

I LOVE THE GINGERS (Collaboration with Jessie)

I want your biscuits
and snow on the ground
there is synesthesia in the weather
and you are raining down
in huckleberry drops

I am diner coffee in your veins
while the foyer boys headbang
to the beat of your heart

the music floats
with the grace of a bumble-bee
stops- and collects
in an atonal mist
around the neck

tonguing the shape of "S"'s and "L"'s
up the nape into your ears

There is a small thud
as music crashes into taste buds
crisscrossed feelings radiate out
and the absurd
takes our laughter
for a bangin' ride

partypost

Sweet beets,
we ALL lost some clothing
and the mosquitoes punctured themselves into
sweet red joy
this show requires at least 3 costume changes
and the correct alchemy of pressure.

Smidgen

In the middle of the sunshine
waiting for the time to ripen
leisurely decisions yielded delightful disorder.

Marrow

a jagged cornerless page:
the lines missing didn't make a difference.
I plan to replace that pen.
The concave thought is enough.
convinced to tolerate the earwigs
I dizzied until the sprinklers came out.
In the distant creek beds
your voice rattles off the rocks
so soft,
the mosquitoes don't even matter.

small collaboration:

At 10:37
The streetlights are throbbing like ten million moons,
I'm out in the yard
screaming like a lawnmower
and threading a song in the spokes of your bicycle.
When the music reaches you
our minds climb through the roof
and I am circling your sleep.
If you let me in,
we would make good metaphors.

What am doing with my life?

the heaviness came from somewhere
adding density to splayed brain-fractals
ideas losing electricity to a smiling gravity
the game gets serious.

few

My proximity to a computer has been really spotty lately. sorry about that.

8/10
There is something
from the distance
rushing in
and beginning to cusp.

8/9
Our closeness devoured the hours
found us dry (and drinkless) 4 in the afternoon.
We out-geeked each other
and edged past the middle of night.

8/10
The termites flew into my windshield
& died like a tangerine sun
suspiciously colorful.

Poem Bomb

8/7
Romantic
and wearing only shoes
our skin became a topography of light.
In thousands of salty pinpricks,
the flickers folded around the body.
It was too cold.
We laughed uncontrollably until it wasn't
and ignited magic in the shallows of the sound.

8/4
reconstituted atmosphere breathes paltry music
the swelter is only 40% suffocation
the coffee deposits the leftover numbers.

8/3
our shadows tremble-
the rectangular edges wiggling
as they sweep over the dry terrain.
I can smell the onionfields
breathing into the colorless air.


Through the fog
a yawning rad ladder and its arced pinstripes
climb up to sky.
Softly swaying exhilaration is punctuated
by winking dolphin backs
they cut sharp little ruptures
in the infinitely flinching surface,
green and wizened
the water dances like a time-worn tarp in the wind.

8/2
As the dreams leave you
school children become less like birds.
the fog settles asymmetrically
and we have to climb towards the sunshine
as the steel arteries race beneath out feel.

7/30
smaller tones of morning burble out from gypsy mouths
traveling tongues scale the brambled hillside,
the colors collecting around the ankles and knees
like bees
harvesting the sweet intensity of yellow.

7/29
Bearded hero
dusting the roadside with literature and anarchy
scaffolding humanity with words frantic & desperate.
Using distanced language
& backward anthropomorphic metaphors
the legal tropes are tendered
toward him from stubborn uniforms.
Each objection falls hollow and tinny
against 6 rocky syllables
"We are all citizens."

7/28
We picked up two hitchhikers
and bonded in bookstore
as they scribbled away in the back
I could feel my body being written into their stories.

7/27
The force behind those eyes is soul splitting.
That hard-edged gaze plays Hiroshima on my heart,
each feeling fractures and explodes.

I drempt last night
of walking through the streets of your poetry.
Buildings composed of pure music,
punctuated by thin cobblestone alleyways.

We at garlic bulbs like they were apples,
stripped off and discarded any trace of nonchalance,
we walked until our legs were sore,
and both out souls were a little bit cracked.

7/26
Even beneath the overcast morning
the roadside is shades brighter
than those deep ominous trees back home.
Maybe the salty sea-fog
contains invisible level of yellow.

7/25
with sound
Led Zeppelin lubricates our relationship with the road
we gaze hungrily forward
as our wheels hunch toward the coast.

7/24
a drop of spotted shine
floats nearly full in the late July skyline.
Down by the froggy fingers of lake,
the trees look thinner in the moonlight.


Post-Mortem Break-up Poem
I loved you so much
I let the sunsets slip through my fingers.
Touch losing the colors
I was slowly forgetting how to use.

Instead of that proverbial knife,
you cut my like a rusty hacksaw from WWII
slowly
embedding nostalgic particulates with each toothy twitch.
I'm still picking pieces of you out of what left of me.
No way to distinguish what might make me stronger
just a body
not letting go.
A hole.
New world where I can't close my eyes
from how it all looks different now,
like beautiful only meant something we could share.
Give back my beauty!
I'd like at least half of every moment we shared.
My beauty is too big for those small hands,
to rich and deep to lose its color
& baby I'm climbing back out and up that horizon
Gonna recapture my sunset.

7/23
Soft chatter blankets the brain
my body finding more weight in the simple
while waiting,
the mood softly settles
A family breathes beneath the words
"We all love you"

7/22
List of things done today:
bunker music
gambled with distance in an afternoon race (all the way past Sequim)
Typewriter altitude overlooking La Push
Switch-backed roads tunneled over with forest
Lemon drops & a whiskey sour
Pulled a lever and drinks were on the house
10+ the last dollar in my pocket.

7/21
1
When the ocean exhales a small patch of death
sea birds swarm on that far-off spot
like fleas
fighting over the smallest scrap of skin.

2
Small adventures stretch their legs
we made a 15-minute friend.
He was very obviously Canadian.

3
A tangerine that glows pink
(or maybe it's a clementine sun)
the waves shivered into its colorful disciples
& yawned purple into the sky.

Another day.

Playing at the engine
and balancing pressure to reach the right gears,
I narrowly missed the sunflowers.
The afternoon consumed each hour
so easily
as the blue crept down from the sky
and made the mountains dusty in the mouth.
Only the windows could keeps us in
as we ascended to a mutual unwinding.

A few things:

7/16
Playful
the wild in this life is colliding,
greasy passions crash into each other
like drunken dancers
who've forgotten their shoulders.
Enticed into fighting,
challenged trust does not wear thin,
the sounds do not back down
pushing points beyond the hands of sarcasm,
Our songs play past the reach of pathos.

7/17
Afternoon Maps
Summer is series of maps drawn for walking,
Arrows pointed toward bare feet & herbed lemonade,
the lawn is hungry to dirty your soles
and draw out you callouses.
Sunshine breeze is worth the insects.


(this piece might be continued at a later date)
Zephyr
I pulled and prodded those tawny-auburn ears
Old and Mellow,
his wisdom would take naps by the fireplace.
He could yawn any other dog under the table.


Stranger on the Subway
The tumble of light revealed only what florescence could manage.
Identity quickly losing saturation,
color dissolved,
faces getting blanker & blanker.
As the distance passed around us,
a dying bulb spasmed,
stealing distinction with each weak flicker.

small ones

7/16
Decadence
We passed about
the small sweet glasses,
wound whimsy around the garden,
and devoured 3 different desserts.



unfinished from 7/15
granulated question marks
smooth over like crystals in the the wind.
You don't have to worry about the music unanswered.
Paper flowers more are susceptible to the breeze
and dance during the florescent after-party.

The right stuff

7/14
Sometimes when the words are right
they refuse to move at all,
tremble at the switch of the clock's twitching wrist,
In this shape
meaning is too big for a single moment,
too heavy to be netted by a collection of letters.
The weight will release you from your skin,
no matter how hard you cleave to the page,
but it is vital to make those g(r)asps,
stretch the legs of your heart,
one foot tickling God
the other still hooked into gravity.

Happy. High. Drunk. And in love.
Will not lockstep to any rhythm,
but sink into the footprints,
dissipate like dust in the dry horizon.
The right words dance along every quantum frequency.

A Poem for Star

Sweet little Starface
with a smile that can crystallize neurons,
turns thought into sparkle & shine,
and puts a silver lining on my gray matter.
We sip sweet things & sing our miseries.
The delights builds in their absence
as the air is filled with succulent nothings.

Under the Weather

Still dizzy
after a reverse pizza
thoughts evaporate
without a sizzle
the wind smiles loudly
and my brain disappears.

Vacation poem stockpile

7/5
Through the pass
our car quickly became an upward-tilted lullaby
as our wheels churned away from the ocean
the sun punched through
what I'm sure was the most beautiful part of that dream
shocked from my sleep
my eyes process the light in patches.
When we arrived,
I quickly collected
10 very angry punctures
their mouths aching for a volcano itch.

7/6
The colors flattened out beautifully
& I found myself more often
brushing up against the limits of my vision.
We filled the sage air with attempts at comprehension,
chasing social fallacies
pitfalls for the classic mind-set.
The colors of the mind resist flatness,
even for the sake of the beautiful.

7/7
Like strangers in the subway
Dreams press their bodies against me,
we become acquaintances through skin.
Their intentions fly through me
and my slow breathing body.

I knew all the faces
(because their identities were only half-hidden
beneath the gossamer of appearance)
the locations changed nearly too fast to recognize.

Their words pressed closer,
and after a frantic sin
we had alchemy for breakfast,
I woke myself
by rubbing tinctures into my dream-skin
then stretching it
tight over consciousness
at the first drumbeat
we ruptured into morning.

7/8
Breakfast tastes better
the closer you get to the sun,
up where the wind can't seem to make up its mind.
The gusty thermals makes games out of the birds
who call their own names
in their own birdish language.
the rocks are uncomfortable
but very prestigious.
From that dignity
our eyes expand in multiple refractions possibility
Perspective means everything
or gives meaning to everything anyway
& here I am
astride my paradise,
bridging the gap between earth and sky.


Small mouthy flowers
make the wind their trembling serenade.
The rockface is dotted with their pink
full-bodied surprise.

7/9/10
the air creates a constrained sort of ecstasy
dryness pulls the skin tight,
a thinness begins
between outside and inside the body
in the heat
tension is a slow demon,
lays you out without your notice
leaves you sticky
& contentedly inefficient.

7/10
On the ride home
the cemetery erupted in roadside sprinklers,
misted-over my windshield,
a fairy tail is stacked on a street corner
5 mattresses high,
the pink light bruises
when bent over a July horizon,
Got salt in my hair
& sand in my shoes.

7/11
I still think of you
sometimes so hard
my breath begins to shatter,
threads of time pulled tight
fray into the shape of your name,
& when I sit down to write it out
the pen explodes in my fingers
the ink is sticky and staining,
You've left an indelible effect
on the way I touch and color this world.

4th of July

Before night was broken
by a series of fickle flickers,
we played together
and when she laughed
there were picnics in her eyes.

Catch-up

7/3
Steady Afternoon Decline
Three waves of music intersect:
soft backyard guitar,
a serious groove needles out the Cure,
as a distant ice cream truck
rolls out notes from the public domain.

Two open doors invite the wind
to flip through our songbooks.

A single thought skates across my mind,
gets caught in the motions and the music,

then dances into nothing.

7/2
Music Marrow
The red light is sharper
on each reflection &
the beer-tainted air is hungry for a lilting beat,
jonesing for music
—for that next crescendoed fix
can you feel?
can you feel?
can you feel!?
What kind of tinny sounds cradle your heart?
—put tension in those purple strings?

(the ink falls easy
with the help of ingesting
molten songs)
I'll make note of your musical preferences.

Recognition precedes distinction,
but only by a sip.
Dig out beauty from the scraps and skeletons,
the marrow is harsh and elemental:
the perfect starting point.

Rain

I can recognize it through the open window
on and off real softly
pieces of sweet summer sky.

Skirts not pants

decided to wrap the cool
air around my legs.
freed them from denim
and opened the windows of the skin.

Bridges

Our words formed over jellyfish,
the orange floated softly beneath us
cupping each secret with surprising accuracy.

Dropped a drunk poppy down to the surface
and gravity floated into an optical illusion.

Red petals breathed toward the bay
and the syllables fell easy from our mouths
as we waited for the bridge to call our names.

Beautiful day.

When swimming
through the dock's scummy underbelly
the water is always warmer than you'd think.

We tied our used-up underthings
into a sopping bundle
and tilted up the hillside
our shadows ferociously taking the lead.

It only rained a little
(from a suspiciously wispy sky).

Freed by the double-blades—
their angles closing in all the right places:
Now I've got summer's breath around my neck
and sunspots that cloud my eyes
with a silver lining
that dances through the darkness of a room
and remains shining
hours
after night has crept up her cloudladder.

Sun-drunk and glazed in afternoon rock'n'roll
we tumbled into bed
the air dancing happily into our lungs.

Motorcycle Music

We've got to do something about this music.

Dancing becomes the acquisition of daredevil glances,
feet smack rhythm all the way down to foundation
pushing music into woodwork.

Out in the yard our bodies dream in cartwheels,
leaving footprints sprawled across the milky sky,
the hours pass us by like motorcycles in the HOV lane.
We awoke just in time
for the morning to leave us behind.

Mosey

It starts with syllables
parenthesized between kisses:
"I'm okay with it if you are."
moved anxiety out of the body
lightness and laughter came tumbling after.

just a little bit

Lazy Saturday afternoon
the mowers are humming all down the street.

running

put off
the legs sigh and resist the pavement
laughing flowers distract,
brush pollen into sweat
gray holds back the angry light
creates a cool space
to push past the feeling of fabric getting heavier.

2 small ones

On midsummer's night
the myth will whisper to you
"crush posies
with the weight of your dreams."

A smudged stovetop
is worth the conversation.

Nostalgia

You say my poems play hide & seek
but my honey child,
I want you under my syllables
behind the word-furnace
& deep in that darkly hyphenated crawlspace.
Creation is the game
writing first to stash and reveal
papery inklinations.
most words don't make it home
the only remaining echoes form in left-over alcoves,
the hinging places
carved out by chased-away words.

You say my poems play hide & seek
but really
the game is done,
played out before the rhythm grew up
and made out with deeper sounds.
All that's left
is to climb inside
& imagine
what words hid there before.

Too Close a Comedy

pathos fractures
as the laughter scrapes bottom
with its newly heavy sandpaper breath
a humor run on fumes can foul the engine
create a thickness in the pumping of the lungs
distance is the only thing that keeps our sensibilities from bleeding.

Some Build-up

6/20
Backseat
The only way to know you
requires mutual rupture
eyes push through the rear-view mirror
coalesce closer than appearances.

6/19
This Sound
I’ll sweat for your music
push physics into every undertone
a guitar opens the throat,
& breathes a tenuous back-and-forth.
Night reduces,
sweetens like dark vinegar
copper notes pop,
smooth down the ear
drum-da-dum
the sound will get into lungs first
inspire shoulders & shoetips
small juts precede a full bodied reaction.
Unstoppable like the moon-fingered tide
The chance of phosphorescence
encapsulated in a flexible tempo
this sound—

It gets to you.

6/18
Avoiding it
Copper drops of sunlight,
pink and awkward,
exit the landscape
skirt the horizon lipped by lavender weather.
Hungry fish sleepily punch small ripples in the softening reflection
the ruptures wink away with all conceivable haste.
Loneliness resists
coagulates inside the pen.
When the lights come up they feel further away
Murkily,
Strength dances into the distance
lantern-lit bridge spans a quivering ladder across the bay.
scratching for distraction
the loneliness corks with a pop.
I am not a decibel of tangled formalities.
slender dogs paw toward the expletives
in the after-gasp
moisture creeps in
I’ve got mildew in my bones.

Not yet

skipped out
on expensive sensuality
to be more softly afflicted.

Empty Wednesday

A sharper version of sinking
floats through the ashy summer streets
small meals in small hours
wrapped carefully in tin foil
it wasn't exactly effective, but
bookish thoughts made their best efforts
still,
no reception.

deeper into summer

Dreaming about poems
harvested in a chronology of barrels
sweet and dark,
in those words
you can taste the passage of time.

Fire Ritual

translation by fire
pages oscillate in the wind
lightly swirled by the evening breeze
burned words thread the eyelashes
the fire didn't really start
until we gave it something so it knew we trusted it
heated orange fingers rupture, pull back, and hungrily consume
the tangibility of our evidence
even if you could
reach through the heat
words would crumble
disappear into the grooves of your fingers and hands
puffed my cheeks too far out
empty breath
no matter how softly blown
won't sustain any fire for long.
We drew or real names in the white ashes
stamped punctuation into the stubborn embers
& swept away any evidence of a fiery past life
fire leaves so much space
and I've become so hungry
I might burst
with any luck
strength will rush into me.

freewrite on the typewriter

pieces of the afternoon
steeping pungent in the sweet and beany air
puns gaining pluck and possible controversy
high shelved "i" sounds curl up to the ceiling
there can be no reverse of the things which transpire in this kitchen
June #23 is every bit as full as it could be
the punctuation is wavering in the sweet and slippery distance
the roundabout calls to every neighborhoodlum
"Come wait in the sunlight"
circular burns come from dancing in the street-side heat

skin peels softer and softer
bruisy knees beneath the backyard trees
shouldered sunshine is sweetened by blue fabric and gin

a heart is only contained by its chambers
four platforms of potential value
a jury of muscled pumppumppuumppump

wet green bottoms of feet
find earth through grass grown long through Spring
lush yellow roses outweigh their ambitions,
droop even under the touch of mother sun

tastes like togetherness
bowls cupped in six hands,
thirty fingers working toward the same destination
and it is delicious.

From the front porch.

A cylindrical echo
blows silver down the street
Sunday afternoon is smoothed simple
by the empty pbr
rolling toward the intersection.

All night

the afterparty spilled over
dancing through the bookshelves,
the footfalls of conversation seeped through a dawn
best ingested orange, on the balcony
sifted through a tangle of limbs.
Morning is not like an eggshell
even if the birdsongs try to convince you.
The sincerity of a sleepless night
is worth all the soreness and slowness
of a dawn that breaks in the company of lovers.

Overripe

This swatch of cloth is vulgar,
a representation if just how little you know.
Laced-up,
this ignorance is a talisman for words unsaid,
a mark of refused vulnerability
keeps your milky self contained.
When we pretended together
it was much more romantic.



this was one started by a friend and finished by myself

I'm

a little late
won't just fold over in the wind
last week is last in line
the engine takes life
itched by a jagged finger
hope shakes off it's dewy late-morning dreams
catches the bus
just in time.

SIZE

the objects of imagination are growing steadily
watch out for whale-sized typewriters
use buttons as dinner plates
and pencil shavings for sails
on your poppy-blossom boat.
In the alternate reality of big BIG tops
the universe is breathing amplitude.

3 poems in reverse chronological order...

Jazz Night
You were there.
Clear through an orbit of drunken footsteps in ill-fitting sandals,
We were there.
Fell into a rhythmic flashback,
the jazz beneath folded over pinstripes pushed closer
and lifted me through a stairwell
emptied my lungs
like only my body could’ve remembered.

Spiral smiles and the confused pressure of lead and follow—
music moved over every angle
as our bodies echoed through the barlight.

Caught you there,
before the moon’s universe
drew you out.
In that small eddy of rhythmic alignment
the sounds built up
and snuck out through lips
dancing closer and faster than the reach of silly,
drunkenly sandaled feet
(I almost
caught all the words).


Sunny FREEwrite
The sunshine isn’t green anymore.
Planes of gray have swallowed their own shadows
and blue is brave again,
knows exactly what to do in the face of June.

Hard and hot sunshine days unfurl
and the daring takes them on
no more small sips.
The angry rustle of overcast eyes has been rubbed brighter
& clarity is climbing through the glass horizon
a scribble of the unknown
is less than a smile on my mind

the dirt is becoming more than dirt
in the early breaking of June
possibility walks on two legs
& hope melts into a series of stained-glass windows

Shoesless feet and cloudless sky
The wind rattles the clock tower
both hands measuring only as far as the wind consents
A dancing parade of feathered intentions tick-tocks into midsummer
the yawn of sunshine stretches past any definition of night.


Lupine Horizon
We drove out to the water
and from the moist center of the thicket flying by
warm throats kicked a trembling a cloud of froggish gossip across the bay.

an approximated congruence of language and energy
unspiraled warmly out the windows of your Subaru.
meanings clicking like a clamshell’s profile,
a body of thought in motion
will run being into action
our legs made wet by lupine strides
in flowers head-high
we purpled through midnight.

someday
these eyes will find your sunset.

Sunburn

absorbed warmth pinks through the afternoon
the skin breathes hot and deep into the night
a red leftover
patterned in a negative tank-top.

blue twilight melts around you
and couch dreams creep closer every second.
Come to my dreamspace
we'll push down the clouds
and release the skin-collected sun.

Low saturation levels

the color of the sky won't sing to me anymore
a yellow falls voiceless from throat of winter
and a misguided gray tongues the horizon.
In softly screaming finger-streaks of cloud,
purple shatters into midnight.

Some thoughts on loneliness:

The burgeoning quiet in my head
is a bullet of memories mulled over—
sanded sharp by the edge made between accident & design.

Shaky red shoelaces
stay shaky
with nothing else I could say about them

to better enunciate this loneliness
sit at a large table,
with three empty accents,
be overly polite to your waitress,
and avoid all attempts at bookish interaction.

Wordplay (with a coworker from yesterday)

Trumpets lacking crisp eventfulness
clouded the air
like a thick layer of under-garlicked hummus.

Dezi

Beneath the overt becoming more overt,
through a cut-throat paper-trail,
and the hollow breath of under-education
his eyes were loaded with an intelligent cynicism.

Getting through

With 72 hours on my head
and summer peeking rainy through front door
I can taste freedom in the paperwork
(it's almost like flowers)

Almost there...

letters shake loose through the tense hours
messes made on the page
crunch as they puddle
impulses whisper about how lovely it would be
to fall through a different window
stew through unrelated information.

I went on hiatus

because the quarter got rough and some bad news came my way.
I intend to make up for missed days this summer (which I consider to be the end of the academic term which come up this Friday).

I intend to make it daily again.

Seeing

On the windswept eve of overflow
rain creeps in the window
pulling steam through our lips
with its cold afterbirth.
A window is cracked
as we escape the breath of over-ripe rubbish
in the event of being seen we make seeing each other known.
Each eye speaks to its parallel counterpart:
“Don’t shy away from recognition.”

With difficulty,
bravery reaches past the simplicity of action
and we become more than just mirrors.

How to keep from full-body paralysis

the beer appears to help.
At least
a little bit.

How to mock a gossip

fabricate a scandal
to be smoothed over
and hemmed in,
the little bit
of irony inside
pops out
with a sizzling of giggles.

Less food=less homework=less food

A spurned hunger undermines,
work ethic crumbles
into a taunting
cursor which
misbehaves.

Thursday so good.

Grapefruit in the sunny front yard.
sweetly pink,
nectar tingles the tongue
long into the mossy afternoon—
the acid afterbirth
of a season released.

Still behind.

Twice in the last 16 hours,
I bit clean through my lipskins
Need a hammer for my headache
or at least enough lipstick
to paint life into each of the excuses.

In the front yard

having fallen out of a handstand
the horizontal air
peppers with dizzied silver pink-pricks

Unfunked

the thickness of experience is dissipating
mind headed out in less-afraid directions
in search of
extinguishing the untouched
a flamed unknown winks in the distance
and I am ready.
Shove my comforts into my boots,
and fly
leave the upholstery behind
along with the rest of my doubts,
with each step forward
the fears fray into revealing themselves
The sound of anxious nail-biting
chatters into the past.

Poem that fell out of my classmate's mouth

Good ideas that don't have a place to go
go sideways.

teaching...

unscrambled metaphors
lengthen
and become pliabe
on young resistant tongues.

Procrastinating

Claw-faced, this force begins to gnaw away,
starts on the hands of the clock,
with a grind so sickly sweet
it will lock you into bed all day long,
coat over each possible action
in a film of the postponed.
Tick-tocks swindled from cracked finger-tips
sick with unwilling, the day flounders downward
in a sad pattern of sunlight
untouched by any variation of labor or play.
The clock hands are crooked with nervous teethmarks
and against the forces of accomplishment
the evening is cracked away from sunny-side up.

Haiku for Early May-time Weather

Between peeks of sun
and oscillating hail storms
more freckles emerge

Study session.

Tucked up
against the belly of the library
I steal sleep from myself.

Upset

Queasy
from the repeated consumption of trouble after trouble
compressed hurricane of doubt and lack
crucibles between the eyes.
Shoulders smoothed over,
worn over by tasks undone,
words unsaid,
feelings unfelt-
Jagged, I edged along like a machine
whose gears are losing teeth.

May purple

Found you there
purple in the sky,
dark leaves
tickled your belly.

Spinning Fire

I would dance around you in circles of fire
become beneath the stars and cinders
a dark-spined dervish of whirling hips
who looks unafraid into the drunken eyes
as the flames pulse through their orbit
the language of body dances the universe between us.
I placed my fire in the sky—
oranged the moon as it edged across the horizon
and followed it home
before its footprints paled into gold.

Last day... although I think I might just keep trying to do one every day...

Sandwiches and the rearranging of images,
a sisterly smile helps to decorate the room.
Music kneaded into the ear
with the help of raspy afternoon voices.

To all those who read and respond

(whether in the comment boxes or in their pretty little souls):

giant THANKS!!!!!!

I want to reply to all of you personally... but, um grad school....

LoveLife

If we were an ocean
the penguins would be flowering
(emperor penguins)
you make my heart bloom like a jellyfish
and I dream of leaving deep red
lipstick algae
on the crested-white wavetips.



This is what happens when you watch nature shows and think about boys.

I often end up hurting myself while writing

This time
I didn't poke myself in the eye
it was a success.

ugh... grad schoool

no moments to float
been drowning for 34 hours.



I freewrote about this feeling and may translate. We'll see.

All-nighter

I feel the weight
braced against
in the nightlong earthquake of the mind.

SO MUCH HOMEWORK!

the weekend has long since been folded into the horizon,
and the moonface pokes holes into any left-over enthusiasm.
Monday morning is bound to find its hallways
awash with the demands of work too-long undone.

Attempted Sonnet #1: A Dialoge Between Dance, Street and Sky

sun-dusted pink from dancing massed street-side
in muddled twists of body and drumbeat
the beasts on asphalt speak, they do confide
with elbow flashes, flurries quick and sweet:
"we are the place that you became." they said
with big bang punctuation, words begin
a churning mouth of limbs and fingers spread
the air is left no room to breathe, swathed skin
whose movements ramp a lovely skyward steam,
through sweat the mass breathes frantic steam-pressed streaks
against gravity's grasp, broke by light beam
before each fracture the beasts do speak:
A sweaty message made through cry and mess
through sunburned dance and pressed togetherness



parts of it are super contrived but I haven't done this in YEARS.

Improv apologies

Compression causes animal noises in the basement
numbers spouting from the mouth
like a fraying corner of carpet
I caught the length of each breath with a yardstick
wedged stories between every inch
and then let them fall through the bottomless measurements
devoured only what my ears could catch.
I'm afraid that when I give myself to you
the only thing left will be the sweat
of a hard day without thinking of you at all.
Can't stop
can't be broken from this sideways binary
that opens it's eye to nothing,
an empty oval compresses into a blind value
Next time
I'll try to keep the zeros out of my eyes.

Headache poem

brain bleeds forward and back
the pendulums aren't ready yet
and a symphony of clicking pens collapses
the words run out your nose
especially if you hold your breath
solar flares in the backyard of the brain
steal colors
pull them through the pinched eye of an hourglass
measure every grain of perception




OUCH!

Poem in 5 minutes:

So many sieved thinklings decide to make ripples,
a thought drops out
and uncurls in the rainless evening
the bricks become especially contemplative.
And an idea gives the blush ricochet:
One more red enlightenment

Kneebloom Bruise

aubergine petal
punctured by goosebumps
soothed purple in the bathwater.

On the walk back:

If in the smallest hours of night
your eyes linger too close and long
upon a blue heron,
it will fly to another shore.

also:

beneath the streetlamp eyes
discarded tulip tongues
burn bright as the freshest sashimi,
the blue bells look on
their purple eyelashes litter the roadside with distraction.

"I wait to be back on your mind"

I walk deep toward the bay.
Tilted back like a roofer
so the hill won't get the better of me and my backpack,
brimful with obligations.
A desperate twig begging escape
beckons from the storm drain.
When I reach the bridge
I always feel the crooked urge to leap from it's smoothness,
not from a hunger for endings
but for all the lovely skin stories I can never know,
cool air rushing past face and sandaled feet
the water that would echo out in choppy circles of shock.
I'm over the bridge now and past the supermarket,
the sidewalk speaks to my eyes in a chalky voice;
dirty love pressed into cement-mixer discharge
night cools it into a hard reality:
"I wait to be back on your mind"
wanted to call out, but I didn't.
wanted to be there, but couldn't.
I spent every stride undoing the knots on my hands,
my fingers became the nooses I used to drag myself homeward.


Didn't mean for it to be so morbid. It was a fine walk in fact...

this edit made me hungry...

Anxious balloon
in a lifted elliptical;
latex holds in the weight of the unspoken,
pushes against the social gravity.
The tension extends without the space to apologize
and walking silently together might be the hardest thing I've ever done.


All the other lines about day of silence were crap.

Short...

the forces of April make week-day neighbors
of my sandals
& my hiking boots.


the poem about Day of Silence experience is unfinished.

For yesterday

It was made yesterday but not posted because I was SO TIRED.
Constrained myself to 2 syllable words.

Every itchy eyelid winches;
simple twitches inside yourself,
become mindful about pushing mouthfuls into ideas.
Bloated via business
lofty ideals
impose endings upon every promised future.


PS I am participating in Day of Silence today and my next poem will probably be about that.

Mono-syllabic experiment..

A man drops rain words down the mouth of bus ride:
“The sun is not as bright as the snow,
and as the high lakes flow forth from the sharp blue dusk,
green makes much of the night.”

I did a lot of things today that I wanted to write about

but I spent my time doing them instead.

This is a scrappy piece from yesterday:
My poem won't hold still,
(like a baby who wants to catch a butterfly)
can't pin it between the pinch
of a ball-pointed impression,
It vibrated out
and the sounds dissipated in 8 different directions.
(the humbled, now-too-big images crawl back to their chrysalis)

This is what happened at work: 3

I found a three-legged spider in my notebook today
& sat beneath the shady legacy of a long-ago appletown prince.
Together, as insects, we devoured the weight of seven-syllabled endings;
a single word holding our mouths under a v-shaped spotlight.

Before being sentenced to a full-bodied crescendo
you breathe a rhythm dictated by periods,
a series of full stops extended into lung, abdomen and thorax
—rest stops on the road map to a lyric bellyfire.

And when the windshield fractures
your eyes become 2 halves of a three-pointed compass,
the image rose up and folded over into a tripled repetition.
And, as every insect will show,
3 is not enough to live on.

One is pretty and one is philosophy...

Drove into the deciduous yesterday
and ate every shade a litle lighter than usual.
A plucked-up priesthood of branches and wind-regulated wisdoms
lets you moving into morning—
inside an early velvet there is purple fog and raspberry birdsongs
each can be tasted through glass and baseboards and tuperware.
In the distance a relentless ocean pushes, pushes, pushes
Small rocks into smaller rocks
heavy blue hands cradle kelp in a meticulously effortless balance.
The crabs observe each occurrence without tilting their horizontal faces
and about all this, say nothing at all.




Subjectivity—what exactly happens in the process of seeing:
See the skin and the scales pulling back,
hesitate there,
don’t muffle it with calloused measurements,
sensations filtered through the lenses most raw
defy the 5-fingered separation of impressions.
Fresh skin responds to salt and temperature,
susceptible as the surface of a hungry tongue,
a small pang might translate into taste
or at least a new synthesis of seeing.

and then there came a few more (stocking up I guess)

A few things that happened today:

I had no idea about the curtains;
the green getting greener
through the creeping up of noon.

As an old crumpled box
leaves even older hands,
a deluge of checkers
bends us all under tables.

On the main drag
two magazines recline on the sidewalk
& gossip hurriedly as
a series of bulldozers pass.

Two poems with one thing in common

(last part is the best and I am seriously considering getting rid of all the rest)
4/7/10
Bus Stop Poem:
Soggy morning
heavy with hunger
you must wait as the bus galumphs forward.
Wait for a processed breakfast.
Getting to know the neighborhood stride by stride,
greening leaves flooded into understanding
thoughts sinking into a backdrop of chilled earlobes.
The neighborhood coughs
and I can just spot a flemmy retention pond as the wheels scuttle on
a burp shortcuts me back to my hunger.
Now fully engaged in a precipitous growl
I make grasps at interaction as we curve onto a detour.

From a distant windstorm
branches and their big brother boughs have descended
and lay cryptic like bones in a fire,
the lungs of the bus gutter and sputter
Stop
Exhale before the speed bump.


4/8/10
Freewrite Poem (started from my favorite line of the last poem):
A cryptic cataclysm of bone pickers and fanatic philosophers
make itching an act of ritual
& the meaning of a sneeze so goddamn clandestine
you’d think every virus expulsion a sin to contemplate.
But this shit is unconscious
& what is unconscious is unstoppable,
Like a mob or an angry mother who would kill for her children
Kill for the danger of ideas.
“Never hurt a fly,” they all used to say about her;
The air around the insect is subject to great violence.
Fear is so often fueled by the breath of the earth,
Wind can move anything
through the hand of the eventual.
Science undoes the subtle,
Overturns the minutes beneath the minutes
Seeks out the creepy-crawlies
Rips off the legs
And eats the underbellies with cold philosopher eyes.

today's poem is a joke about grad school (there's two punchlines!):

Q: "What is the ultimate consequence of accelerating all objectives toward yourself?"
A: “Welcome to hell."
A: "It’s not so bad.”




Kinda funny, but also kind of sad...

you get three today!

But they're pretty short (pretty cute though) the last one is my favorite:

Your feelings were wrapped in fruitskins
tart and taut
making colorful fools of us all.

Letters are flying into me
so fast so sharp,
their edges have no time to soften into words.

The deepened mauve of pomegranate
creates a too dusky tea-time
I am afraid to reach through the steam
and stem the hotness of purple steeping.

Easter Morning Snippet:

There is thunder on the radio
its rumble is punctuated by powdery gray light,
the dusty color filters through purple leaves.
I am finding a messiah in every smile this morning,
a half-hidden bicycle gears joy into breathing.

A moving poem for the 3rd

The drawstring on my days is getting less and less effective;
Been devoured by a handful of hours so full
you have to push a several events out of the way just to get a yawn in,
the energy could fuel you from New Orleans to Nova Scotia.
Moving
Moving
moving in every direction.
No body can ever move in only one direction—
when we crept into a 3rd dimension we lost all sense of focus
spreading out of singularity.
It occurs to me that identity behaves in this way
unable to move but to take several paths entwined by the magnetics of space and time.
With place-holders shifted
I left a jar of molasses in the empty cupboard
and forgot to dust every windowsill.
I sit with objects made apparent by being closed into boxes
A conspicuous shower curtain becomes more vibrant by peeking than it ever did when fully unfurled
I avoid the flirting eyes of objects in boxes.
As others, I’ve no doubt have found
It is a singularly strange experience to carve out a new home,
like a plant trying to pot itself for the first time.
So I breathe.
The leaning piano hides cleverly
How drunk it has become with the play offered from bumbling, wayward fingers.
And in the end pajamas help the most:
In flannel fields, pastel sheep eat numbers to help themselves into sleep.
When I join them, I laugh so hard I begin to snore.



I wrote most of this in my car on the way home (to my new home) by stuffing my mouth up to my phone and recording bits.
it was smoothed over when I got home and "finished" (for this blog anyway) at 12:30 last night (or morning if you want to be all sticklery).

If you'd like...

to suggest titles or changes/edits I would be more than happy and in fact pretty damn grateful!
kthnx!

This Morning I Wrote:

All language can be encompassed in gesturing cycles of consumption.
Two predators circling so close they have eaten clean through each other’s shadows,
teeth inching up to spine.

Morphological hunger churns, pulsates and deceives,
no pyramid or pattern can hem in the depths of this hunger.
Every conceivable sound becomes devourable:
Language makes us like coyotes,
bodies pressing sustenance from every scrap we manage to push through
the dime-sized drum-skins rocking just inside the ear.

You’d be surprised how much can fit through there—
But you’ll still want more in the morning.
The coyote is always behind your stomach.

Poets and lovers must have it the worst
(although the jury is still out as to the limits of “poets” and “lovers”):
They are hungry for baby snot and the wise thickness of tar,
hungry for acid rain and a toxic belly…

And upon being fed this hunger becomes more hunger:
You and the coyote circling each other
with teeth soft and loud and unapologetic,
we work toward a contradiction in physics
and hungrily whisper: “Let there be no shadows between us.”

A poem for the fool's day...

As inspired by Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself:

The scurried shuffle & whisper of the squirrel’s feet is accompanied by a clicking chirp
& the exhale of morning
as a feathery tail brushes against her dewy heartstrings.

Rock faces play at nervous chatter—
shifting rocks break the reverent mountain silence
like giggling teenagers.

All across the city
different decibels of pish-tlick-click-and-clack
are pushed from their respective keyboards
with hands reluctant, fervent & uninspired.

At 3 o’clock on a Wednesday morning
someone coughs and the stick of incense begins to ash,
resulting in a small, unnamable sound,
perceptible only over the sound of steam rising from my tea.

Getting a late start

I wrote a poem this morning and after sharing it with some of my partners-in-crime, they reminded me it is national poetry month which warrants an obligatory attempt at writing a poem for every day of the moth.
I have to confess: I didn't write one yesterday although I wrote 2 the day before (3/31) and am hoping to transplant one onto the first (which I hope isn't breaking the rules...)
I may not be able to write one every day ( have a crazy busy life) but my goal is to at least have 30 poems by the end of the month (and not to be writing 18 of them on the 30th). Some might be haiku. I will do my best.