Handiwork

interlinking fingers think
of space and time as
locked embrace,
one Homespun fabric:
lonesome restless tattered lace

Lesson

Sweet air of night
Who comes remote
Horizon, bled
In yellow drops
As sunset
Stripped
Until the naked
Eve revealed
Your shrill uncouth
Forgotten smells
God love me how
Romance has fled
Though in her wake
Is this instead-
The lilac grinning
Peeled of purple
Stark as bone
Untouched and steady
Rose as shadow, underbelly
Wind of lover sleeping
Puerile legs in curl
Night comes in dregs
Like coffee slosh
Through windows
Agitating dreams
To dervish, so-
Approach!
Teach tired hearts to seem
And seem again
And seeming steady hold their pens
Make threads of meaning meet with threads.

blue shift

In Tunis, we walked down the pebbly beach. After all, we have been beautiful in the past before. And will be beautiful again. On the farm it seemed to flow, the noon for example. But the afternoon would never end. Grain silos were streaked by tedious textures while the bristling tree frogs were getting out of hand. During volcano season this would not have been as strange as it sounds unless one is accustomed to sweating off ones intellect. I looked to my left and you had already receded beyond the terrace of palms.

When growing things popped up all over the place we figured we were safe. Imagine a thing like that: rays which could be left on tablecloths in smudges like bread crumbs or monsoons. Whole barrels of nightingales bathed you in their Petroglyphs. You came out like a glassy pool, a blue after image, and filled the water glasses. In the low lands the whole back side of the city slid into the sea. Now you bathe in moons. I said that I only want to hold you once without wearing out our elbows.

We felt our way across the dock. You thought the floor was a surface since you claim to have 'broken through' on many occasions. I supposed this was the effect of water droplets suspended in the atmosphere. Yes, it was the surface that consumed us.

The Philosopher’s Retirement

Now to best observe these fading verities
I shall incessantly orbit a rock
{of relatively significant table salt}
Over a cracked and tasteless spread
On the back of a singing silver spoon

hh guide to the galaxy

The real universe arched sickeningly away beneath them. Various pretend ones flitted silently by, like mountain goats. Primal light exploded, splattering space-time as with gobbets of junket. Time blossomed, matter shrank away. The highest prime number coalesced quietly in a corner and hid itself away for ever.

Things Melt

Guatemala City

The stillness of landscapes and the unevenness of perception like certain dreams leave sticky residue. A reminder nothing can come of a crowded room. The guests seem to adore the place, this strange meeting. For lack of feeling— either too much or too little, square inch by square inch under these well-built roofs. Sometimes it’s best to get out right away—out of the picture. Leave nothing behind not even mystery (shadows). And in the reading room we’re growing younger and madder. Sort of tangled. Maybe I’ll ride an elephant or vibration until awareness knocks me off. So far nothing. But what did I come here for? An evaporated well. A parallel existence I’m learning how to imagine.

COLLATERAL

Ex-boyfriends and relatives have risen to the rooftop and won’t let go. Emily tries to calm them with grace and simplicity. To go anywhere. This morning the ocean disappeared. People got hurt getting their taste. And all the rest you mumble moonlight. The shades of quietude

You are the least fascinating version of yourself.

Was I going for a walk alone? Don’t take your pulse seriously. There is the name and the thing, cut out. We arrived in shreds. I’d like to be able to speak exhaustively, but I got feelings without names, displaced. My experiment on breathing will take its toll on your generation. I know the difference between seeing and memory, lost and found. Now Emily’s gone and I wish I lived a more judicious existence, like larvae. She didn’t wish to live at all. Too much thinking or not enough? Messiness. After a conversation with my mother on dissemination, I gave up tennis. Thunder on the mountain but the clouds give no rain to our hemisphere. Mom said people are divided into dark and light. Dad says become anything but a secretary. My sister and I will run away and blame them for everything—dropping off and bursting open.

Boarder Awareness

BRAIN DAMAGE

A beautiful day and she’s right. She’s missing part of her brain. Words appear, disappear unambiguously. Trespassers. I was wondering when you’d get here. You look just like your mother. In other news, Scott is having an affair. I never liked his stillness. Words leak out, so I spend the day closed up, cancel my travel plans. It must be miserable, trying so hard. Should I come home with you? Start a religion. Her stomach aches from sucking in, she's seeing things. Like reformed emptiness. Epileptic weather patterns tap the windows, slightly. Go fish. I’ve got my theories. The memory of all my disappointments. The image of my head blowing off. The prognosis is solitude.

DEAR PEN PAL

Now over the bridge you forget yourself and fall into a book on rivers. Then the power plant exploded.  Friends offered umbrellas or a ride home. Another time I noticed the mess I made merely by reading in my lawn chair. You laughed at Faulkner and your brother's pot routine. Your failed marriage too. Divorcées everywhere! (Except your parents — the cheap bastards). 

Barbara had only just learned to draft promises and Billy whom I knew in the Biblical sense found a school teacher to fondle. We don't speak anymore-- we raise eyebrows. Our project was to prevent us from becoming who we are.

You must know when or where to stop. Line after line. Where disorder develops, a word is the first step (Confucius). Air is exhaustible, layers peel away.  The committee will find a way to ruin you. Are you going to change your mind again? Barbarians are just outside. Your heat recreated them.

Me and my backpack wandered the earth, our borrowed personae and blue jeans. In Costco with intentions to be genuine, we meant what we said and scaled the shelves for paper towels then petered out, lost in the mattresses. 

After a brief sexual encounter she changed her name. The dotted line stood for progress. But progress is forever prejudiced. Try this lampshade on your head. Do you feel dimmer?

So I went to the country where the trees were all twisted, all solid but the leaves came swimming. I was finding these needles in my hair. What are you looking at? I wish I could wow people with my unsightliness. Chuckle. You can really get lost in a cornfield and drive away the people who love you. It’s the anxiety, I never got that right. Heavy heat, drip of vermilion.

 

Tomorrow I will discover I am a lost cause –- best news I’ve had in years.

PUPPETEERS

1.

I understand more than I can say. The last firework went off, which does not concern you or me. Saying nothing can often mean more than something, something being anything and anything being echoes. Mercy, I need antibiotics or a detox on the skull. I brushed my teeth and packed a bag. Don't forget the camera. It’s possible I won’t write a single thing after this-- no one’s asking me to. In New York, with Emily, in moratorium we listen for sirens and watch the burglars. I don’t want to come down. Let’s stay here and eat bagels, just take pictures. 

2.

My neck shortened. (It was on a string). And my arms and legs collapsed. All the kids kept shouting in their cages— they wanted more. I told them to appreciate the small things and stop whining. They started crying, and their plump mothers came to take them away. Am I going to have to spoon-feed you too?

3.

In the sanitarium, we’re playing checkers. You like to watch thrillers at lunchtime and collect smiling faces. I tried to kill my stepmother with nail clippers. I should have used the lawnmower. You are tired of waiting, so many hiccups and delays. So much uncertainty. It builds character. What can I say? You have a strong jaw line and cherry colored lips. I will go to the presses and print you with my own hands.

One Time is Added Where Almost Dying on a Sidewalk is Concerned

Sometimes time is thin
only change the brain
a little, stir the body
it melts together

Like evening stars
through thin silk
blown and tossed
it breathes, or seems to be

Irregular- only look
and look directly
at the pigeons bathed
in muddied puddles

pull it back to watch
the grown or frozen face
of wretchedness
or glutted fleeting pains

(or is it beauty after all? and how to stay and who to call?)

these things evade
and look- just look
or peek and all abandons
all discharges

you, or even laughs
to see the looker’s
scrutiny, or hoping
for the heated orb

But touch, or even speak
and it confirms
the seconds, hours and minutes
turn by turn