For those seeking my body as Passage:

I am sorry.
I am not a proper vessel,
I sometimes allow the swells to toss me
to and fro
just to let my barnacles breathe
a little bit

I’m sorry
but I do not turn
when you twist your engines into me
I am sorry
that the smoke you planted,
hot & coalful in my belly
is now a rising stink
emptied of results intended.

I am sorry
but your cargo doesn’t fit
& we are taking a detour,
so I can deepen my bonds with the whales
& sirens.

I am sorry
but I will not tell them to soften their voices.
That uncontrol you think you are feeling,
that magic they sang into your skin,
only unhinges the clasp
on your own
unpracticed accountability.

Some might say its your own fault
that your ears were just
unprepared
for their moonsong
but not me.
I know how truly innocent you are;
how the shift from silence to siren can feel so sudden & small.

I feel your fear.

& I am sorry
that the whales will devour you
& your raw untightened eardrums.

I am sorry I put the force
of you in danger
but this is what you face
when you board me
with your brawn
all hung out and blazing.

My Butch

My butch is budding.
At night my butch crawls out,
& curls up in my bra to suck out the long day’s yellowing sweat.

My butch loves meat
& would nail your body
hot and skinfull to the nearest wall
if you bought her a cheeseburger.

My butch guffaws proudly at farts.

My butch can be both tender and creatively rough.
my butch will ignite the sweat between your breasts
her eyes will dance at the changes in your breath.
My butch has a firm grasp on your shoulder.

She’s not afraid to clutch ankles
or use your hipbones like a turning fork.

My butch always keeps lubricant handy
in case the gears get thirsty.

My butch is budding
beautiful and large and proud down to every follicle

my butch smiles knowingly
when the pedestrians notice
her fuzzy undercarriage.

My butch is irritated by underwear that is anything less than comfortable

My butch tells me that my cock
looks better
with a little bit of belly hanging over.

My butch is all push back & crafty syllogisms
my butch makes love like retaliation.

My butch is still recovering from my father’s displeasure.
My butch tells me not to downshift

that the pain my ass will ache when morning comes
is worth the climb.
And that my legs
deserve to be bigger.

My butch tells me
that being a happy mussel
is more important than suffering pearls.
And then she laughs like emptied abalone clacking.

My butch tells me
that sweat is the evidence of love and dignity.
My butch loves the dirt.
My butch thinks that poppies
about to burst
and look just like nipples,
throbbing fuzzily in the breeze.
My butch is budding.

"See Something? Say Something."

I see senior after senior pulled aside

each apologizes for not removing

from bags packed with care & wrinkled fingers.

items certain to be incendiary:

deodorant,

lotion,

a bottle of water she'd meant to drink while waiting in line.

I think of my own grandparents

and let loose a shudder

noticeable to those who stand directly behind

they look me over with the disdain
that's become the comfort of the modern traveler.

I see their anxieties bristle into xenophobic bitterness

I see my thoughts curdle at the sound of their french

at the sound of chinese.

For a moment

The security theatre begins to work,

and I despise them for their difference

for their compliance in this dignity-stripping ritual.

I see massed ritual submission.
I see the blind
the resigned;
A gangly teenager raises her arms for the machine,
Smiles big
& shows how much she's bracing.

I see my own resentment
Tensing my body
tensing my face.
I teeter,
soul tearing slow & terse away from skin.

I see them step into the backscatter machine

more than half are herded between its black box theatres

most assent easily

to its effects untested.

Don't want to cause a stir, see.

After unbuckling danger from my body

& placing all traces of agency

into plastic
ad tongued bins

I see that it is my turn.

I see the precipice between

metal detector and backscattered invasion

I see the waiting

I see the shabbily uniformed agent
before he notices me.

For a moment I hope

Maybe he wont.

He sees my naked feet first

his left arm waves toward invasion.

And quiet like a child's under discipline

I use my voice to see my feelings and say

“I'm not doing that.”

I see exasperation in his eyes

my teeth see the fear in my lip

and push it back in

I see myself holding up the line.
With fear-colored pupils cinching smaller

I see my own refusal as the problem it is causing.

“I see.”

After a wait

he provides me with a TSA agent

who matches the gender he has perceived me to be.

I see the X where she tells me to stand.

I see her mime the twisted ritual

her brown hand calmly script the forced intimacy

“back of the hand across the buttocks,

twice inside of the thigh.

Raise your arms

face palms to the sky.”

I see

the gloved hands hover

under arm pits,

blue behind my shoulders

where their hovering becomes

the seeing I do with my skin.

Muffled under my preemptive leggings

the pressure is slow

intentional

suspicious.

After hosting Sunday Brunch

Today was a series of delightful devourings

Crisply climaxed in feelings nappish on a sunday afternoon

In a tumble of dreams

I churn my legs like a dog.

I pile my dreams like pooches snoozing together in weather too hot.

When the dreams finally get me

I am a mixed metaphor

running amok

in a run on sentence.

In response to the slightly aggravated question: Why are there so many bottoms in Seattle?

In all honesty I am over the whole top/bottom dichotomy
if you are not some sort of switch,
or at least into flexibility
chances are you will only half -interest me.
I bore easily under the spectrum of such narrow sexual repertoire
and yes I know there it’s a lot of depth there to be plumbed on either side of that coin
but I am more than just a spelunker in one kind of sexual experiences
I am fucking astronaut
When I play
I like the entire universe as my playground
it's important to have a well oiled rocket and
a basic fluency in the language we're going to use as sexplorerers
and within those parameters
I want to be able to go anywhere,
and to have each of my crew members capable of holding any post
and even sometimes
taking up more than one position.

But it’s not just preference I am frustrated at failing to court;
There is something about Seattle
something about which I find myself confusedly reticent.
It’s a habbit
the way some folks bury their intent in a nervous pile of being polite.
In this beautiful, briny, salt-breasted city
it sticks like a burr to my skin
adding to the geography of my story
and I don’t want no more of it.
It happens in bars, at parties,
This toxic hesitance floats out over drinks.

So, while I don’t know why there are so many bottoms in seattle
I worry that for some
being supplicant is so much easier than being honest.

This does not appeal to me.
Personally or politically.
Come forward only if you are sure of you.
I no longer find such shyness or compliance attractive
I have taught that flavor out of my palate
and no that doesn't mean that I don't want you
but unless you say it in words unmistakable that you want me too
I might have to turn the both of us down.
I don’t want power you didn’t ask for me to take
I don’t want to give you anything that you didn’t ask for.

So yes I want you
but I am tired of being the first one to speak so freely.
I know it is scary but I am tiring of this anxiety.
I am unwilling to endure or delivers blows that have been softened.

Demure is a fashion I feel I am continually taking off.
I want to share our truths unburdened
under the flickering light of our hearts going wild
fluttering in double-mouthed authenticity.

It is okay to tell me that you are afraid
I want
to be with you in moments of vulnerability.
I would cradle your words between my lungs
and let those concerns be rocked by the solid pumping of blood

I want to be with you
and you being with me requires courage, honesty
and clear consentful words.
maybe more courage than anything else
But that’s my price of admission.
I want your consent flush in my ears before I get any closer.

Smoke

Nauseous and incomprehensible
my stomach reaches up
turning over my lungs.
The fire alaram tickles into screeches
and we rush pry windows into crossdrafts.

I'll vacuum tomorrow (4/25)

All day I mired by the window
forced wonders at what I might
maybe get to doing.

Soaked too long int he tub
with water too hot
but I mired anyway.

If from afar I saw a loved one
practicing such self-abuse
I would scold with advice well meant
and take their body out to the world
where suddenly they'd remember the delight it is to be;
where they could sweat their souls back in.

But
unfortunately
I am not a far off lover
for whom I would delight in heroic rescue
it's just me
putting things off,
watching a fourth episode of Law & Order
while mired by the window.

Written 4/24, in response to a poem read in class called "dis-pelt"

 Dis- :

A prefix that shuts down the word which it begins,
passes between teenaged streets
that crack at the corners
of disparate ideas
& disperate forms of dress.
If you can hold a dissonant symphony of thoughts
between your skull & jaw & your knocking explosive eardrumbones
you might just be able to
 resist the power of the dis-

It's mechanics are more than that of simple negation,
it's the exponential depreciation of the integrity of syllables.
I always feel sorry for those unlucky enough to follow "dis-",
those trembling alphabetic glyphs,
You're meant to look not at them,
but the rate at which their meaning degrades over time.

This 3-letter prefix
points a spotlight
at the spectacle of words losing their dignity.
Beware.
Casual use of this prefix
may lead to dystopian futures, reality TV, & sever disappointment.

Sexy Spring Poem (drunk edition) 4/23

This spring
the daylight has become a series of chasers.
Hot laughter bubbling up
through the fizz of sunshine.
I am refreshed.
Repeatedly refreshed.

As my skin gathers up its bright red hangover
the sun is drowning like a grapefruit
& the vodka is coming,
certain as the moon
the robust bottles,
they are coming.

The wine will turn your skin-based sunshine
into freckles & brown flaking skin.
Tonight our sheets will be a blizzard of skin
that springtime is shuffling off.

Burns cook off in the night,
like the lilac vodka you soaked out french toast in.
The calendar is widening her eyes.
The horizon has got infinity on its breath.
We duck that florid purpling afterglow
& begin fucking in the blossomed yawn of a cherry tree.

I find you in desperate need of muddling.
You cracked so beautifully
when I poured my intoxicated body over you.

Ladybug

Having spent too long alone in a park,
I extracted a ladybug from my cleavage
It was shuddering spotted and devine.

Drunk at a bus stop last night.

Midnight Strikes me at the corner of icons.
I just wish the bus would come.
& brandish my headphones against the night
and its mouthful of wanderers.
Seattle's needle fingering my eyes
with orange-drunk nostalgia
I imagine the saucer as a wildly disproportionate hamburger,
Its bottom bun is jellyfish lettuce
all held up with a matrix of toothpicks
and in the center
one phosphorescent spine
stabilizes my appetite for combining disparate genres.
Space travel;
Ground beef;
and submarining.

Love Letter to the Beacon Hill Library (If I could I would slip it into their locker!)

Arcing innards,
I am pressing my vision against the exposed beams
and the naked weavework of  your clean unvarnished wood.
I imagine I can smell the belly of a ship,
my eyes leap up and imagine what your form imagines you must be.

You cause stutters and missing syllables in the words I speak for you.
I love being beneath the roof of your pale expansive wordworks.
oh to be a pine weevil in your body of thin, tawny twists & squiggles.
I know it is creepy but I dream it anyway.

For this I am sorry,
and ashamed enough to bend my upcraned neck
back down to where it should be
and burry my face in a book,
looking for some sort of consolation.

Fremont (4/19)

Pink child-sized fingerprints of spring
stick petulant to the small red speed of the Mazda Miata.
The rain will ambush you,
even if you hide your convertible beneath the trees.

What comes to light (4/18)

Don't you love
the way glass looks
when strange light shines through it?

I've always noticed odd refractions of light,
the way the shadow of a fountain dances & seethes.
Like my eyes are giggling
or experiencing some sort of hiccough.

Light is a funny thing.
Don't you wonder what its agenda is?
Why it follows the ethics of science
when deciding what to reveal...

the Dignity of Work (4/17)

Joints sparked nostalgic
by tragedies personal & professional,
My bones keep cracking
with the weight of the words
"the dignity of work".

Dignity,
as I experience it,
is a rectangular number,
in a rectangular box,
on a rectangular piece of paper
waiting in the rectangular mouth of an envelope.


When I hear those words about
work and dignity
I feel my joints like wet gunpowder
My bones detached with edges perforated.

Under this sort of dignity
life becomes a series of
If; then
statements.

Ouch

Today I practiced my best learned habit.
Overzealous concerns
about money and my body
poured together in a dizzying display
of conflict and gore.
My eyelids droop
at the behest of these two uncomfortable neighbors.

Post-biking One-liner

My joints are screaming in a powerful course of the day I conquered.

Freewriting in the Sculpture Park

After turning on the bluetooth
I bend down my neck,
and push the letters like pedals beneath my fingers.

In high afternoon
the sunlight is too violent on the water.
Can't look at it all directly
I need wide-framed sunglasses & sideways glances
I need a toothpick to carve the last of winter from between my wisdom teeth.

I stopped to think a thought
& got lost in the fabric of a swaying dress.

Spring

This spring I am looking to get a sunburn on my neck, have pollen gather in my mouth; I'm looking to grow a flower in my throat. I want steam to rise when I tear my helemt off. Happily, I am becoming more and more comfortable with the damp residue of hillclimbing. I've been selecting layers for sweating in and having youngish, impratical thoughts about casual sex. the kind you have in 7th grade, the ones that made you giggle with shock & lonely embarassment. This spring I am looking forward to the dull ache of pushing my spokes past too many miles. I am ready to soak in the tub for reasons other than warmth. I am ready for my worries to lift away like fat bumble bees. This spring I am looking forawrd to engaging in pains quite delightful.

Two unfinished pieces from class (for 4/11 and for TODAY!)

Chthonic Voice

My voice is in the earth
My voice has demonstrated in laughter and despair
a spelunking depth & vivacity
that would rival the sunken tale of Kubla Khan.

My voice is in the earth.
It's got sound-sensitive skin
like the webbed ears of the bat
that keep its company.
The bats slather screeches
on its chords
my voice is well camouflaged in muck and soil.

My voice is in the earth.
Fallow.
Hibernating the toxins away.
waiting for the weeds of apology to grow themselves away,
waiting for the deprecating syllables to break
& become more usable soil.

My voice is in the earth,
you can use a metal detector
to find the most condensed deposits of meaning.
Dig them up,
wipe away the dirt,
shine them.
Show them to your friends
Tell them your trophy is actually a part of someone's soul.

But that is getting the mythology wrong.
Those are just my favorite collections of elements.
I pooled the sounds there for finding.
So please
I invite you,
hover over me
waiting for detection,
my voice is in the earth.



<3

In the museum of the body
the heart is the most staggering of bio-mechanical marvels.
It's the Mona Lisa of the our soft organ world,
because it is and can so often
be stolen.

Although not the oldest piece in our collection (that would be the digestive tract),
nor the softest (that would be the liver),
nor the most sensitive (that would be the tissue on your lips and genitals),
it is perhaps the most often damaged organ;
the piece of the machine
that is susceptible to the widest array of possible pains inflicted.

It is important to note that because of the high sensitivity
the heart has developed both
marathonish endurance for painful activity
& an incredible resilience seen nowhere else in the body.

The four chambers of the architecture
was designed specifically
so the organ can support itself
when one of its four rooms have been
ravaged,
poisoned,
or
occupied by dangerous intents.
A heart with four intentions will never fold or break,
it can only be bruised.

Gender In My Body (written 4/10)

I am not alway certain what I am.
I wane.
I wax.
I want to be something that is not femme or butch,
but I'm not sure how to build it.
I want to find a beautiful way of being.
I want to articulate all of this beauty in my body
which is so potent
I need to paint with a brush in my mouth.
I am mouthing the colors,
with shapes indistinct and only slightly glyphic,my canvas is giggling wildly green and orange.

I want to be broad shoulders and big squishable tits
I want to be swopping tender sockected hips,
hard curves packed with horsepower,
I want to stride like a cowboy,
I want to stride like a strumpet,
I want to stride like 4th grader on field day
footsteps full of popsicle laughter.

Fuck feminine
fuck masculine.
I am not a tomboy
my gender presentation is squishier that.
I am part freckled farmboy,
part sparkling debutante lips drawn down red and simulating you-know-what.
I want to be a rusty old tomcat
so that when I arch my back and stick my ass in the air
it is a sign of my physical prowess and the relaxed way this body takes up space.


Once someone told me I seemed to be some sort of radical femme-bot
I told them that it was a chassis I could pull off
easily
like a suit jacket or
a skirt with an elastic waistband.

Your Body is Not a Temple

I once had a lover tell me
"Your body is a temple."
He was wrong.
My legs are not pillars
my spine is not a stack of altars
or a series of benches waiting for piled up salvation.
My teeth are not stained glass windows
My body is not storage for the glorified relics of your partron saints
My body's caverns will not tolerate
the crowding of innocent voices.
I am not a house for continual coming and going.

He was wrong.
My body is not a temple.
My body is a religion.
My body is up for interpretation.
My body demands rituals
physical and otherwise.

My body demands that
patellas know the grooves of my name.
My body circulates parables
instead of blood.
Clotted meaning swings my heart harder than church bells.
My body is a collection of unstable elements.
My body is not a temple.

Easter

Let's shoot the moon,
together make a slingshot against the odds,
power ourselves with the flowers exploding,
feed our engines with the pigments deepening.

I harbor the husk of previous seasons
itchy in my throat.
In the spring sighs
begin to lighten
and gather slight harkenings toward melody.

Let's shoot that moon,
break it open its craters
like an egg on the corner of our countertop.
We'll combine our hands into rocket ship algorithms
and take our chances on this most serindipitouds of seasons.

Bathing After a Ride

I am pearling
silt gritty in in the mouth of a mollusk
A tide repeats
washing knee to hip socket
muscles and sinews
hot in the washing water.

Motion

Today I am basking in the idea of sunlight.
Like a theoretical cat
I am learning how to be many places at once
learning to harbor dissonace in the softer parts of my being.
I am jointed together flexibilities untold.

Within the human body there are four kinds of motion possible
bend;
twist;
the same concept polarized by compress and release;
the fourth motion doesn't even have a name
it requires floating bones
kneecaps,
rounded elbow petals,
and pebbles attached to the wrist.

Dreampoem

In the middle of everywhere
you awake
at quarter to 5
birds already dampening down the darkness.

The churning furnace opens it's throat
and belches in harmony with the jet over head.
looping dreams & notions together like a paper chain
words lost with each closing circle,
rounding out softer and softer
until I can't even hear my own breath anymore.

This is a dream
whose name you are already forgetting
hold tight it's non-being to your chest
feel it soften and thump
like thunder trapped a mountain range away

Neighborhoods.

With fingers peeling and a cool breeze winding up my skirt
I scuttle around the unexplored nieghbohoods of Seattle,
pump my pedals in the shadow of I-90
before she skips across the water.
The sun is brash like summer.
I can just about feel the possibility of burn on my skin,
--impossible in so young a spring.
A gust pushes me back
I push the pedals harder
and celebrate my grim I told you so.

The gaps between my sleeves and gloves are still too much to handle
I never trust the weather in Seattle,
it is too safe a topic of conversation.

To keep from chattering nervously
and to keep my mouth warm
I hum, sing, scat a little bicycle song,
still
I am shivering and sweating
like the way your body does while fucking.

Cold and hot take up residnece in seperate territories of my body
there are some neighborhood where the temperatures mesh
and those are the nicest for living in

After I arrive
I look up all the neighborhoods
and let my fingers draw my routes upon them.

yesterday's pantoum (written in class)

4/3
Bearing Witness

Carnage fresh & drying in my mind's eye,
I have borne witness.
My eyes forced canvases for trauma,
I lodge those twinges between my lungs.

I have borne witness,
watched my sister's friends stick their fingers in her heart.
I lodge those twinges between my lungs
and tell her she's better than that.

Watched my sister's friends stick their fingers in her heart,
& whispered to myself "It's a good thing I'm assertive."
& I tell her she's better than that,
making sure the consolation heals on both sides.

& whispering to myself "it's a good thing I'm assertive."
I peel my friend from the arms that caused her rupture,
making sure the consolation heals on both sides
The safety recedes

I try to peel my friend from the arms that caused her rupture,
my eyes forced canvases for trauma,
the safety recedes
carnage fresh & drying in my mind's eye.

Getting a late start on Napowrimo

4/2
I am a constant interruption,
Haltingly my body ride on the hoof beats of apology

If it's not right I'll let you talk over me
because someone once told me
about how oppressive my voice can be
and ever since
my lips flinching has become an intrusion.

I worry about what is expected
not like the old echo
you see
you say

Now I just don't know
when my moment is coming
like to only person at the bus stop
without earbuds & an iphone
I don't know when it is coming.

My body in an interruption
like a ship creaking across an alien sea,
my rib cage groans
& I let the conversation wash
salty & foreign
through the waxy cracks on either side of my skull.

Poised and indistinct,
the rules of conversation
laugh like wind chimes coughing up April
with too much enthusiasm,
as whatever personal anecdote curdles
& the awkward burbles on my belly.


4/1
I watched her
use her elbows as a metronome.

To My Red Rust-honey:

I missed you all those months
you hung in the dark of my parents shed
I wanted to tell you:
you are so much more than a forgotten frisbee or broken roller skates.


I want you to know that everybody compliments your saddle
with words like classic and gorgeous.
You've got me habitually tucking my laces in.
The day won't even start without a cuffed pant leg.


Yesterday I gave you hustle
and we whistled though all of the lights.
In south SoDo
when we whizzed over the pavement gaping
and the steel throated railroad tracks
I could hear your spokes buzzing and fuzzing and showing off their integrity.
Your mousy calls let me know when you need love
& where to apply the appropriate fluids,
I'll need to grease you soon.


I know the rain might get you down
but I am here for you
my lovely unnamed frame.
Your rust spots are just freckles
absorbed from the only kind of sun this gray battered city knows
I love you vermilion.
I love you when your churning parts fall through.
I love you even when my stupid hands can't fix everything.
I love you fenderless
and rain and ruble dusting my chin without apology.
When you spin grit into my mouth
you let me know that the street is still beneath me.


Perched precarious
I push your balanced propulsion down and down and down.
Your return motions tenfold like the hollow magic of moon gravity.
My calves are starting to resemble rockets
and that nook between my ass and hip
(you know the place)
it's aching in the shape of movements we make together


You've spun a history into my muscles
built up lactic acid releasing in tensioned patterns spinning
my body is a geography of all the slopes we've scaled and plummeted.


I push
you carry
I push
you carry.
together we will fly down to the thick of it.


I've been making time to love you every day this week
you dizzy me with spinning spinning spinning
I am wet with the journey of us,
my darling red rust-honey.


I dream of you asleep in the basement,
not laying down but tilted slightly
front wheel cocked,
sleeping on the sly
like a glittering red sentinel
your angled repose calls to me
dreams spinning up through the floorboards whispering "ride ride ride"

"...you're tired, you're poor"

Meet me in the margins
bring your world-weary fingers;
bring me your smile 12 hours old;
bring your favorite copy of your favorite book
the corners folded down.
Point me to the passages you have edited yourself.

We'll pull up raw full stops.
Make jagged our most precious sentences.
We'll dress down all our paradigms
and exchange naked stares over coffee.

Bring your bluffing nicotine fingers
sling me your coffee stained witticisms
Meet me in the margins and we'll dance down the hierarchies
pressure our light though each textual prism.
We'll make the angled words less comfortable

I've seen those stark distinctions cut with horizontal certainty
I've seen them hold you hostage by your own compassion
And I saw the way you never gave in.

Meet me in the margins.
Find me there,
all sputtering syllables and jellyfish skin
and I will sting you one thousand briny confessions:

    I love the way that it itches & aches
    when I want to look at everything
    But my eyes aren't small enough;
    & I think I want a microscope instead of a mouth;
    I want to listen better;
    I'd like to listen like a hawk in flight;
    I wanna listen like a rainstorm;
    I want to listen the way the Arizona desert
    opens her mouth to monsoon season.

I need a place to try out my mouth,
I have a million little teeth in my brain
that I am just beginning to call ideas.
a thousand plankton sized mobius membranes
all teething with spring loaded electrical charges.
My thoughts are what they mean when they say the words “live wire”.

So please,
open those margins to possibility of soldering circuits.
I know that you're crackling too.

Meet me in the margins
lean your voice against my voice.
I promise to cherish your vulnerability
to hold open a hollow for your wild body of dreams.

So if you can,
please meet me in the margins
and we'll soothe our mutual wounds.
Let's press together the holes in our shoes.
feel the miles seep together
matching our distance with journeys overlapping.

To Be Sleeping

Tonight you, my lover, are finally sleeping.
December wreaks havoc on all things circadian.
In such limb-slunged slumber your bedded body swallows its rhythm
I can hear you calling out dreamy-mouthed
Lips sticking & parting:
“Refuge.”
Breath quickens 

with the blanket slipping,
unraveling rhythms circadian.

The two of us spend our winters trading insomnia & adventure.
tonight I am watching you, my lover, slumber
I look up to find the tongue of morning brushing my body,
the highways already cradling their early workers to more productive dreams.
School buses are making their pickups.
The city belongs to birds and dumptrucks
and my lover's pushing freckled dream breath
back and forth over the bed.

It's raining horses.

When it rains like this
newspapers slush
into pudding on the sidewalk.
When it rains like this
I have no doubt
that you would still love me
if you let your intentions run wild
like the horses they are.

Obedience to Authority or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Dissent

(this needs a LOT of edits but it might be a slam piece if I reduce it some)

They did the experiments in 1961 and again in ‘74
Every time the people decided
to let their limbs and appendages be overtaken by the machine
Fear dancing violence and risk through their fingertips.
Really now,
Listen folks,
I know I am not wearing a lab coat,
a badge & sidearm,
or a dashing broadcaster’s blazer
my teeth aren’t aligned or white
& sometimes I love the wrong ones,
girls cluttered with freckles and brush-fire eyelashes.

My uniform is unloaded,
empty of emblematic shields
empty of colorless technical certainty
When you see these outfits on the street or on TV
Your gut knows that they know more than you.
that’s been the rules since you began drinking
sugar substitutes with the glowing babysitter.
Newcaster voices soothing your teeth splitting in.

And today the miracle of modern science says
get that wisdom out
rip it from burgeoning in the back of our jaw
you listen because you suspect the headaches aren’t quite wisdom
& hey, you’d do anything to make the pressure go away.

But they’ve been stuffing violence and our trust under their lab coats
beneath those shiny seals of JUSTICE
An like they’ve so graciously been taught
these uniform wearer will run from responsibility even after they have been hooked/cuaght by the truth
they will point wildly,
above their own head and shout
“I was only doing what i was told was right.”

Teenage religion lets their other hand (the one that isn’t pointing to god’s breast)
cut bruises into the souls of all they deem
unseemly though their godspectales
IN Michigan you are allowed to bully as hard as you want
as long as you say it was your religion that told you so.
Fear dancing violence and risk through their fingertips.

I am a tool for His work.
I think when they say him it’s not just god
They mean the proverbial
Man
Could it be true?
Does god live in our worst overarching cultural notions?

Last thursday our senior citizens got peppersprayed in the streets,
tonight one victim of that same seal of justice violence
lost her baby because of the toxins and the kicks to her belly.
At UC Davis this week
the officers pointed their canisters downward
sprayed fire into the eyes of citizens.

“It’s just the job.”
Their service, used as a tool for silence
Violent compliance tactics are necessary for public safety
they point above their heads, at the rules.
Obedient to authority.
Most unable to tell
we are STILL in the throws of that social experiement

So listen up folks
listen to my words and not my uniform
Being concerned about the rules
is the opposite of being concerned about your fellow human:
in 1961 65% of us are willing to follow instructions at the painful and potentially lethal cost of other
Being concerned about the rules is being concerned about yourself
and your place in society
being concerned about the rules is about self preservation
we stop living and start merely surviving
we begin stuffing our neighbors, their grandmothers, their unborn children and their hopes under the violence of the lab coat

Authority channels through our bodies
dancing risk and violence in our fingertips
and we then become terrified of our own agency.

Our limbs become echoes of the of the heierachry.
So please. Listen.
Question authority,
and laking that please
please
at least
question your obedience to it.

Your Voice, My Name, Love Letters

Your fingers find music in my ribcage
like a child meeting their very first piano
words bounce like quarters off my sternum
coinslot sighs caught in the latticework of lungs,

You say my name like rosebushes  
climbing, 

ambitious past their trellis.

Your voice is a train whistle in foreign city
Your voice is a fever comprised of equal parts mathematics, alchemy, and hearbreak
Your voice is a helicopter heartbeat 

all four parts conjoin a centrifuge of THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP
Your voice is cedar burning thin and clear.


Yesterday in the shower 

when you asked
how I’d feel if you took my name
Your voice hit my bones like a tuning fork

my body became water over riverbones.

You say my name like rosebushes
Long-stemmed words exit out the throat
Ten letters running skinny-legged in your signature.
Take it.
My grandmother told me
the root word of our name means.
Home
And I want your voice.

You say my name like doorknobs and evergiving hinges
Take my name
open all of my syllables
on dotted lines and after each expectant X
Our matched signatures will be rosebushes burning.

This is not a poem!

I am participating in Nanowrimo and making my first attempt at noveling since I was 15. Post here have been less frequent leading up to this and will remain sparse during the remainder of this month. I am still writing poems, but they have less time to be sculpted and honed for such vicious bloggery as this.

Kissin'

I swear your breath feels like a birdsong.
I am looking for shortcuts to your face.
I want to be pen pals with your taste buds.

Please, put this ink in your mouth.
Inscribe your fetish tooth by tooth.
Unloose your alphabet.
Steep in mouthly feelings.

Don't hold hostage the magic in your throat.
My mouth is dancing,
crazy to chase your music.

Fever Poem

These glands are pulsing
cruel like a pendulum
pinching salty in the corners of my eyes.

Reason buckles in a flood of chemicals
I want to write.
I want to wrangle down a poem
I want to keep the words from collapsing.
I want to found an architecture
better than this fevered skin

I imagine my neurons dissolving into mud
my thoughts fossilize
poems become only shadows in the rocks
like a series of shaded pendulums
marking time between periods of devastation.

In better days
when things are lush again
someone will dig them up and trace the stories
back to their original intent.
I want to write
I want to sort out
some sort of poem.
I sort out the wanting
and mud becomes
some sort of poem.

Another missed connection (not exactly a poem but eh)

To the cell phone hero:
Black sedan
black wide-rimmed specs
delightfully nerdy.
When i dropped my phone in the middle of the street and yelped,
You held up two lanes of traffic
& saved me from a world of fretting and being incommunicado.
You are surely a very kind & generous soul.
Thanks for helping me out.

WRM

River Stone Physics

Our lungs come together like river stones.

We make smooth sounds against summer’s dying breath.
this is my season.
I shift gravity around in my body
use my tongue to press down the constants of the universe.

Gravity pools half-arbitrary
in nooks and bends of my body.
Forces begin to course and flurry
catching in eddies behind elbows and knees.
And now I feel it
the wind pulling off my kneecaps
as light as rose petals.
I am not ash I am just power.
A body of power coursing.
Autumn rivers overrun their casings.
I am a cask of physics overrun and running amok.
Afraid my limbs & fingers & appendages
might just start breaking off softly,
floating up to the ceiling fan.

I am afraid that the bends in my capillaries are becoming round and heavy like lumps of mercury
I feel their weight perforate my skin
and burrow into the mattress.
Thrilling fears push it even further
The separation of matter leaves holes burning in the sheets.
I might end a pile of gasping ashes.
The sheets pulled crooked on the bed.

I need you here
to hold down my wicked skin.
My heart is losing meaning
like a bullet burrowing through it’s backside
all the heavy parts are coiling together.
Say my name and anchor this body back to this world
smooth over the cracks you opened when you opened my mouth too far
You knocked my body off its axis,
You left my moons spinning and opening their eyes like hurricanes

Suddenly a rupture
and that deep-seated well of pelvic gravity was upended
thrown off kilter completely.

and I am floating.
with this river always within me.
When I die my descendant will rub river stones together and think of me.
My name will mean to them what is between the river and the rocks in the riverbelly.
My name will mean ripples in the air
and a cathedral of trees opening their lungs to winter.

Your mouth moved stillness into sound
Convinced me my body
is more than just a random series of kite strings:

“You are birds & church bells & early morning;
a crucible for compassionate action
I don't think you understand how big you are;
how filling the whole room you are"

A Few

List of signs that summer is dying:
Riding bikes on broken pavement
while the sky flames pink and tangerine
sky closes up shop early.
Conversations stall,
and nobody brings up the weather anymore.
Citizens use too many modifiers.
You can taste nostalgia even in those last hold outs:
 hot ham sandwiches,
 beer cold enough to rattle your teeth,
& kisses in the park, with cold water running over your feet.


Body and Bones
My body came to this spot
to free the world from sentience
to taste that back-of-the-mouth ink
that is not so easily held down
by the loud philosophy of wax paper
I am trying to talk about
shout about
all that it lost in the repeated reprints.

Holding what's lost begins my tongue buzzing
something hooked and honeyed pulls taught in the stomach
these butterflies have become long & loud
and now are cable cars tracing electric circles through my system
Sounds pop coppery from my mouth

 Reality hangs light & shifty like a kimono.
and between frantic diaphanous breaths
words start breaking down
fractures abbreviate into a periodic table for meaning.
She's so—

 Heavy

 You make my marrow aware for itself &
in a cascading moment of re-alignment
my bones begin seeing each other as neighboring countries.
Bones cry out throaty in deep rattling celebration
Bones celebrating their interdependence.
With cores condensing we are starting to shake off gravity's hand.
You make my bones feel power,
like superman could be their sidekick
or climb as high as we might ever wish

 There is gravity in your mouth and it want to crawl in and get unspun.

City Girls
The sweet smell in the air is complicated by something rusting
I smell the city making noises outside.
The skyscrapers shamelessly shout out their own names in the angled amber light
Tonight, I have traffic lights for eyes swirling red-yellow-green.
I am no longer made of mouthfuls of forest.
I am not made of trails in my backyard
and cardboard sliding down hillsides are only glimpses of my childhood.

We are city girls now
 and in my naive kind of way I sometimes want it all back
I want it to unfold like a lion yawning
like a spire of light bouncing out from mountainy teeth.
Instead, I will write you letter from the thicket of my childhood

Writing 5 Poems at once

Plaid runs hot on the roof of my mouth
Screaming and scrapping perpendicular
colors getting more and more confident in their contrast.

I love the red pen
proving there's life in writing
things unfurl and beat like a paper bird
in the wind
that is strong enough to rattle the wind chimes.

I am swallowing the expectations.
and being run by my typos
I want to pull and spit
And then I want rip a bird from my wind chime lungs.

Talk

Networking
In conversation
those eyes were dancing like two sparrows on a chain link fence
open and round and swaying like an amber thicket beneath the moon
mouths moving in pink agreement
we ended like an unfinished sentence
or a greeting card whose punchline is waiting to be opened.

I think about your throat
and hope you don't notice the forwardness on my face.
beneath the shadows colliding like breezy lace
our tongues press down the angles of the sun,
is it night already?
I am thinking and you make me think about
how telephone poles must keep each other from being lonely
when they live in the desert.
So many lines pressing up and marking the belly of sky
like swooping bars of music

Ghost music whispered though the blades of a ceiling fan.
I can hear your voice from all the way across the country
summer heat boils into syllables and anxious talking over talking.
You're my favorite one to interrupt.

IT'S BEEN SO DASTARDLY LONG AND I AM SORRY!!!

(but more poems forthcoming!!!)

7/27 (listening to a friend work on a story)
Silvery fricatives bouncing out in a tonguish frenzy
sharp notes telling stories
that carve out spaces in the dark.
It’s not quite music
but there are those who sway
& close their eyes as if it were.
Your body in this story
is a crow’s beak cracking
& your hands are a lucky blanket with a few holes worn into it.


6/28 restaurant poem
Butcher paper flakes and flails
bunching like hide beneath the palms.

This love note is for high high kite flying
—for anchoring lightning to your heart keys
—for making science of electrical storms.
This love note is meant to be turned upsidedown
in the answer key of your calculus textbook.



6/29
Your kiss pulls the fire alarm in my lungs,
whistles & bells become a beehive between the ears
& every sensible adult fiber of my being is running about,
Wild with the notion of fire.

8/12
The moon sees right through me tonight.
Quiet and timeless in her lavender stockings
she thumbs around that flat pastel landscape,
and makes the adjectives run rampant over a tumble of timorous thoughts.

The evening is just staring to grow out its beard,
Jellyfish torn up & pressed against distant mountain shapes.
I am simple & slightly sore in this story on the island at twilight
& in this story all of the light bulbs flash then die out
at every gasp of emptied lusty breath
our throats pull what they can from the smoke-filled air.
When we come together I begin breathing like a light house.

Sinews push action electric through the skin
Our moon is burning brighter now,
swinging like a single breast waiting to be bookended.
I’ve always thought that the sky should have at least two moons
like the sky is actually just some big cloth wrapped around a woman’s body,
at most a single breast slips out once
maybe twice a month.

We would swing that other moon into action
Smashing out new gravity.
Catastrophic tidal changes would ensue,
Our bodies becoming flooded coastal cities.
Thick red algae washes up on street corners.
Between crashes of water & light
I watch your skyscraper eyes getting their feet wet.
And when we open out mouths to speak
Only the low grinding of whale song comes out.

(I think this one is really yummy but it needs some working over before it is book ready!)

It's been a while

7/16
Neglectful birds become red clumps of feather on the highway,
bodies bribed into forgetting danger.
The dive begins
At the end of the day you're lucky to end up an aching heap of joints and mumbles.
We're like two lost marbles symbolizing the mind gone mad.
Are we still bookends if there are no pages to be bookended?
I need to have us bleed stories in between
& have a little breath making spaces in the salty air.
My footprints are yearning for meaning
heels coming awake all pins and needles.

Sometimes being with you is like that
pangs tingle like the fourth of July hot in my chest
chambers pumping blood like flaming arrows
the veins come untangled and
(almost) too fast
my heart comes awake to you.

Just outside summer is cracking up the sidewalks.
Loud green fingers
tickles though the rubble.
Beneath the stoic patches of asphalt
hoping energetically
"We'll get there!"
Now the story is not about eventuallies
This is about in the in between pushing up
green every day
making known the summer on your tongue.
Because being with you
my sweet & hungry summerling,
being with you is canaries waking up in my rib cage.

7/19
Up on the Hill they are pulling down the posters
using backward hammars.
The telephone poles have grown thick,
six inches before peeling down to tar,
strips of color
paled pastel pile up like half-hearted confetti.
Leftover shows crowd the sidewalk
higher than Seattle snow ever deigns to fall.

7/19
Twisted season
bent away from the sun
you can see the heat in the air.
Summer weighed down cloudy
& hot like a runners breath.

7/19
I saw him
sharp hat and tan suspenders
and he pointed me into a giggling coincidence.
"I wish I could take a picture."