BODY PARTS

2009-07-16T14:51:00.000-04:00

Handiwork

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

2009-05-25T21:39:00.001-04:00

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

2009-05-07T07:45:00.006-04:00

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

2009-04-27T23:12:00.002-04:00

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

2009-04-25T18:17:00.002-04:00

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

2009-04-05T13:57:00.008-04:00

Guatemala City

2009-03-20T09:55:00.014-04:00

2009-03-16T14:05:00.002-04:00

2009-03-15T13:56:00.001-04:00

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

2009-03-07T14:00:00.003-05:00

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

2009-03-04T09:48:00.003-05:00

BRAIN DAMAGE

2009-03-03T22:12:00.001-05:00

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

2009-03-01T20:21:00.001-05:00

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

2009-03-01T00:39:00.000-05:00

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

2009-02-27T21:13:00.001-05:00

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

PERCEPTION

2009-02-27T00:23:00.003-05:00

As I was studying the map, you took a detour to find a missing portal. There's a big round knob and a picture of Jesus. You know, there’s a chance I won’t be traveling or even staying. Someday I will tell you the whole story, but it goes backward too. Whole passages scattered. News is on its way, and I’m sunk beneath so many layers, sniffling. To continue on I built a new body, air tight and water resistant. I phoned my lover, a real actor with blue (green?) eyes and oceanic hair. He was just thinking about me, the official version. Perhaps my cover was blown, but I didn’t care. This is the internal world. It’s nice to be thought of, even in bad light and poor undergarments.

liminal home 2

2009-02-26T13:05:00.002-05:00

4.
A Back Alley, Minsk, Florida

Leningrad sways in the snow. The crumbling blocks are the sheer remains of what gathers at night. Everyone else apologizes: for what? That our empty closets smell like orgasm? That’s where I want to sleep. One is left, after all, smiling in bed, covered in sweat and saliva. And after the movie crew leaves, the whole town wants to see what remains. Some go begging. Some are found talking to themselves. It is not as if we were that famous. One simply continues in various tableaux, in whiles and outs: while we sit, sipping murmuring soup; while he licks her paws; while one eats bones; while another wears a dogie sweater; while I find you under my toupee; while he is found before entering her hair.

You are shown the door. I am cooking under the stars. We hold one another at the nape. We kiss. And now there is another sorrow.

5.
Suburban Living Room, Cairo, Idaho

How deep are the hieroglyphs I have turned off? How many times will I grovel in my sleep? The gold in his teeth weighs as much as a small moon. I return a few too many times instead of remaining in- doors. There are grayed pictures painted in coal dust on the windows. In these familiar vistas, highways ramp over hilly mounds into clover leaves. The place, after all, is husky. And we did construct one another from the transparence of the next hour, as urban as this is, or urbane. I slide myself down your tongue as I slide from my own throat. Outside: cars drive by. Lovers are totaled in love. As soon as I turn the key, I miss you.

6.
Secretarial Pool, Athens, Arkansas

Are you grateful to be licked clean every night by good-natured dust bunnies? An image works best when it is doing the backstroke. She toddles off to punch some socks. This is why her body shudders in unison. It is the difference between behaving and belonging. It is the same source of his dissembling. We are wholly unusable for anything else. Thus: I try to become completely entangled in what is left. I swallow.

DIAGNOSTICS

2009-02-24T23:56:00.002-05:00

I visited New Jersey once in the thirties. I needed distance. My uncle said he’d rather be a hooker or a banker. Sometimes I want to be a librarian in a glass gallery shushing the painters and poets and I better keep my eye on them. I have no thought of serving either you or my own glory, my daughter said damp with tears. I try not to use adverbs or adjectives or seek solace in others' misfortunes. Let’s get it straight. I have no further use for you. Drunk and drinking, the bath is being drawn and I am putting on my best act yet, complete with diamonds and feathers. I can hear everyone talking about me in the garden and laughing at my hair. Maybe you were right all along.

liminal home

2009-02-24T09:51:00.002-05:00

1.
A Hotel Room, Rome, Ohio

Lying over the satin couch, she reads historic novels. In the voice that she’d brought to her lover, she whispers, “nothing is either great or small.” Surely, no one has to explain this. We cannot be made to understand a thing when clothed or naked, at night or day, before or after, but only at dusk, with foam. Then I wake up and two butterflies are feeding from the milk at my breasts. In the shocking pink dusk the spires of a gray Cathedral dent the horizon. Curdle. The world comes after its husks. Distances may not be crossed. Yet the view always comes, even when we are afraid of the dark. This is how decisions are delicious. And each night is just a night: the nights the daughter hides in her socks.

2.
Old Age Home, Mount Olive, Minnesota

Inside them are the remains of rain. And these are as worn as what can be said. Someone once said: "If words are coats then I simply want to stay warm.” However, the thermostat is set too high for this kind of work, even when ‘work’ is an instinct which will not raise the roof. Remaining is all we can do. We cavort in the holes of darned sweaters while our ear lobes dangle as: loose ships, torn hems, minnow lures. The world, after all, is loose. And so is your breath. Then the sun rises in my blue throat like a cockatoo.

3.
Circus Tent, Minsk, Florida

Yes, I’d like to open and close your drawers while you are away in Minnesota, but the clouds smell. I’d give up mist stained blue birds if I were you: some surfaces are safer than missing years. It all depends on what one is wearing. Still, an apocalyptic starkness remains within earshot. “Time tell on a woman, particularly a good time?” Yes, I said, smiling to no one under the stars: and when space fits between specks of dust, we may mingle with their source.

Miscellaneous Notes

2009-02-21T15:37:00.001-05:00

To really understand, you painted the inner world, the arrangement of things. But eyes and mind and limbs are not enough. No color. You are going to collect firewood.

And a flower grew in your brain.

The cycle ends. Strange lands and separation. In the middle, irrigation. This back and forth. My heart is not glad.

Have you ever seen the skeleton of a bird?

I wish I had a real life.

The lake has evaporated. Hence the image of thorns. You wait to watch to gyrate as in sleeping.

One day you could find yourself reading on an airplane or in your kitchen in your bandeau. And you could wonder how you got there. But the captions are in Albanian.

Transitions. You took a trip to get away. Though it's well known you can't get away from yourself.

The men will whistle.

Are you going to return with curls in your hair? They will sprout into children and we will grow old and forget the names of cities.

I am more lost now, off the grid now. So I become your friend as far as you can take me.

GUITAR LESSON

2009-02-07T22:50:00.008-05:00

I've got my mittens on. We continue to believe each other, go on. Stimulate points. You are more nice than wise. An empty chest.

Appearance’s sake is out of focus. Colors and figures confused. Why all the whispering? She’s out of sight now.

Wait for the right shot. She ran to the corner store with her pallor and pillow, asking to rest.

I won’t tell you what really happened. There was a shipwreck. And mush, a pattern. In search of wholeness, trying to turn into someone. How happy does it make me? Work backwards.

She read her statement (nothing to do with you). It was thick. Is that what she intended? Her death was questionable. She got up again. Truth as a useful supplement. Her heels sunk in wet sand.

Eat, breathe. You are right to crave, apologize, cry. Drink. A prayer is offered, hymns sung. Still uncertain. Are you out there? Gone?

Am I jealous of you? A lightweight, a misplaced teenager. I know more, I know better. The air tastes sweet, syrupy, stuck to the roof of my mouth.

Alfred told me I was accessible. He didn’t think it was insulting to say so. He teaches people how to listen to music. He fell in love with a student over Petrarca’s sonnets. They had a bad ending. Everyone’s horny. Throw me over your leg. She sneered at the poet’s nostalgia.

I’ve started to wonder about friendship and what it means to grow apart. Move on, over The Delaware. My friends are worried about me. I hardly like them. I hardly like myself. I like making lists. Be kind. Breathe. Don’t drink the water. Don’t listen to them. Balthus. Why did I stop taking pictures? Dead fields.

There are infants to take care of, needing and pleading, mainly myself. I’m addicted to medical dramas. I wish I could finish the Golden Bowl. I’m standing on a hill where Romans are drinking and bathing. I’d like to be refined—in a refinery—wrung out. Watch your step. Replenish the source within. Will I sound smarter in ten years or just more lonesome?

You can hear the train, but you can’t see it. I’m locked in the bathroom, hiding. I thought I could get away with it. Why won’t you take me?

I have no conception of light. Night all day long. Sex. My stomach rumbles. I should be grateful, happy. Alfred tells me to move beyond myself. He’s moving his hand up my thigh. This is wrong. I could be sleeping. I have to call someone and tell them what I’ve done. Don’t you know how long it takes to drill through granite?

I’ve never organized my sock drawer or received hate mail. The trip is centrifugal. I lie. It’s the wine and the fact you make me nervous. I’m waking up now. It’s time to go. Everyone’s waiting. Don’t ruin it for them. I’ve got high hopes, so the trees break my fall. I’ve got my snowshoes on. Follow the airways. Just words.

Proud Hand

2009-02-04T16:52:00.000-05:00

Waking

2009-02-01T18:55:00.002-05:00

In the glittering morning gaze
ligaments and arteries rearrange around
in itchy lanes, and roundabout the heart
a traffic of irritated blood, ready

The bones stick still, encasing
still reminding organs
of their hymnal cadence-
senses leaping in the pews

A music known by some mad sparrow
quivers towards this stretched-out being.
In the routine ordering of systems
both imagine a fluttering edge.

There is no sun yet, no current
save these candles’ thin frayed satin
in her eyes, a self-seeing
through bleary and unfiltered shadow

before this stark strange light
the world unmade by contrasts
blessed a budding printed
play of semblances: the dust, the dawn, her body

her birth-splitting silence
rendering up to the earth and air-
both forms of self- the body and-
inflamed and anxious recognition move.

Five Characters in Search of an Exit

2009-02-01T18:54:00.002-05:00

broadcamagnetfitzgasticerald

2009-01-27T20:39:00.003-05:00