moment - umms

a mother and her toddler watching clouds
wash time's back; aglow with the effort.
a slow passing between their eyes
and the moon - it looks as if
the moon is moving -
backwards -
and everything else -
everything that there IS -
stays still -
onlooking.

her belief instilled in his, seeing past
clocktowers and cuffed wrist
watches checked and checked again for time
and still yet, time is not found
- but there, at chest and at hand -
some human heart's persistently argue for
their enigmatic pulse inhabiting space between
tic and again tic where a mother whispers:
do not forget to wish (- a sweet form of prayer)
or that you belong ...
everywhere to everyone.

serendipity

Accused of aging,
I retract in whorls of renewal.
my fingertips reassert themselves.
if there is a line between wish and prayer
it's worn through; staccato-ed.
it's narrow and fine.
i make my appeals to a magistrate of children
while they play -
who should bear witness defend or judge?
it's a coin flip but
every penny has so many faces hidden
and none - or - few of them will
tell us anything - or much beyond
what we've decided to hear.
a spinning bottle pointing only to itself
and the message within;
revelation wavers and tips,
then holds in the bottomles tone
that rises from its disembodied throat
when held before humming lips,
just so.

Poltergeist Birds

filming of a flock of starlings

tarnish; no less lovely than
the silver where it clings. so, seasoned
with its subtle earth-bitter flavor,
i eat with my fingers
a symphony for breakfast.
i will never be hungry again.

i'll go walking; equilibrium entrained
to the wind's convention, which shifts then settles
through branches - their leaves filter light to mottle and
tarnish the soil.

my feet fall there - too light and
not-quite - a peril in each step,
while gravity forgets
or ignores me.
i trust the earth will remember my tracks,
however floating.
i've seen large, stoic
maps spread thick
with roads and tides and sojourn-rules.
my patterned wrists turned up
for consult; for guidance in battle though
fragile as a turtle's shoulder, fragile as
the backs of aging hands, nimble no longer.
the braid loses a strand,
unravels where each vein returns
to its singular motion - its motive,
the shape of a life.

when i've passed, will my path rise
sad as a memorized prayer
unheard; hands templed toward a star
whose light died thousands of years ago?
pray then, my steps fell graceful -
each a verse for each star wished on,
with all the hope that perhaps they too,
wished back at me -
roadless -
brief as light's path,
a flash meteor,
a trail line leading
not to where;
nowhere.
now here transcending
to where dwells
a sweet swell of poetry
that those far
enough away
might
read.

i climb
rounded smoke. i hang,
hung thru lanky light
planked past
my window.
i go
reckless and
crooked catching my angular throw
of form against this life, distracted
by almost nothing.
my body speaks me, to me
in subtle pains
and larger terrors.
act re-acts in
response to engine sounds on asphalt;
"our creation," so somehow mine.
i'd not choose any of it - it's not
mine to choose. how then, can i
be so sure? so sure and so
broken - thrown in
splashes against need for
subtlety, for
awe of a tree's patience with
thirst and for questions
about dream's stored
and restored and passed down -
kept in an attic box
beside armchair ghosts
that still remember comfort.

a small parcel
amongst so much baggage
shouldered careless
amidst too much sadness.
all the moments crash before and after
a time when there never was and never
will again be ... meanwhile,

i'm rising
to honor a deeper remorse or
perhaps only bending
great loss to fit the gaps where
promise's weave weakens and pulls apart.
god sleeps
in the first small
agony and wakes,
for the last.

at loss

what i lack ~
perhaps the lexicon to explain
action or paralysis;
both warp my solitude.

watching a phonograph record
in the white sun
melting - it was such a beautiful song but too,
something so dogggedly beautiful in its wilting -
losing form gaining secrecy and its song
will not be stollen - only absorbed by heat.

what i lack ~
perhaps manifest in my need for words that aren't
just vague longings still
indiscrete in their entirety.
i have always been blind- how could i
explain the absence of light to
anyone - least of all myself?
i lack counterpoint, so i am silent;
palpably stranded on one side of a comparison
i cannot make, yet
such a thorough fusion to its presence.
i am inextricably bound to its absence made
tactile in my ignorance aching
like a hollow tooth.

what i lack ~
even as i cannot grasp what
"it" is, i am of it
as negative space.
i am antonym.

there is a certain emotion, hidden
just shy of certainty. it persists, though
nameless, for those who named - all those
adams that cut the world apart at
harsh, unnatural, arbitrary joints into
things - were unaware.
they did not feel 'it,' so its existence
has been left unacknowledged
for the most part
but there are a few - a few that do
feel it and they often suffer a certain level of alienation.
only in closed circles do they speak
of it vaguely in slow circles
around each other in floods
then droughts as if there speech again fell from the skies
and hit hard; forgot itself like
so many amnesiac angels that wander here with
shattered mouth's and no way to shape sounds.
they do not always recognize each
other and that is sad; sad paling or darkened to anguish
- sometimes though
with much trepidation, they think
perhaps someone something
perhaps and so they sometimes
send benign codes out like a muddled whale
song and sometimes the code is
accepted and there is a response
response

sometimes the symbols are jumbled to begin
and while we strive to decode, even as we speak
we are lost at a loss and perhaps that
is the most important part

ode two no one, too, no won, to know one

held in silence beside you.
still. having heard everthing;
my heart, my skin, have far eclipsed my ears.
i listen to you once and then
harmony, once and then dissonance, once and then again
the occupied silence familiar to lover's and composers.

dug out of a shared dream - excavated - lifted
to this world - still wet - sunlight melting
rich across my full tongue - somewhere,
our dream continues still without me
- now your face against my back,
my light still dripping from your fingertips -
my whisper shaping your arms all night -
a night - last - at last still healing gaps between us
'til ragged scars become our atonement.

a reconciled union
now again whole.
what have you done to time?
what, in me singing?
each note learning the air.
your gravity's lips press me to earth,
blow me to words; i take to the breeze like a vow.

wake to gather sound around me;
singular and new building just beneath my skin.
an olive leaf storing the sun so relentlessly and
dense-hued from green to purple to black.
all a shine of ceramic absences and tethered crows.
my eyelids bruised somewhere across sleep's lengths
or waking's crowded flash.

with a fine-grained indifference i've watched
myself slip through my own fingers.
if there's a word or a dream or
a premonition ....just by chance,
by why - unasked,
by where - unventured
or when - unmeasured, there is
you; a victor returning
and welcomed before arrival -
a telepath, a memory,
a voiceless candidate waiting to
brush away the sheen of smoke that
never held well to frozen-over fire,
where forest phantoms skate to split the flames.

a luster to solitude, a space
within emptiness - so captively comforted,
languid and just shy of peace ....

ease into me; walk with me awhile today.
it's eternity already.
so much more than might have been;
that nearly missed, and if tomorrow, lost in mist,
we can no longer match our gaits,
walk with me just now and let tomorrow wait.

radiohead - pyramid song - Der Himmel uber Berlin

unhallowed saint; no less
for recognition's slack.
his doubled reflection
held in the gliding sky, he
sees himself absurdly human.
human and golden just like
the thief he dreamt himself to be in
secrecy, the tramp, just like that,
half woken from half sleep by
the smell of his own night sweats or his
belly's roar seeking something beyond even hunger.
his shoulder-angel turns her head - surely understands
and yields in wistful dissonance - a blessing.

too then, might i yield within circumstance, respond
to tireless requests with the ease of rhapsody, the
listening, the tolerance, the ache flesh exerts as a
fact against my Soul and how
the angels must envy our pain; its harmony's withheld;
doled out silk apologies and the colors of words.
what lie is white? one told in not telling - one to
hold my pulse within its curves like ringing ears
or a burned thumb. one delivering simple monotones
for comfort. simplicity in all its luster
is a noble idea as remote as perfection
and i am steeled in convoluted silence.
an amendment still cannot change the first word.
breath is not taken aback, only continued.
and i am made sore by the details.

Habitual Nocturnal

Sun through the window burned
an angle across my shoulder while
I slept over bright, flat hours while
I slept toward another wide night.
There, pacing its fibers like a thread
through burlap; the seam splitting
behind me as I sew, so shall I sleep
in the obvious absences; in
the margins discarded as space to offset
what's important. If you want to be heard,
whisper. If you want to breathe deeply, first
hold your breath. If you want to be free, do
not want. I sleep in the imprint of
consciousness, left by a willful lapse.
So grateful for any slumber, it keeps my
dreams to a thin stream punctured by your
incautious thoughts pacing miles from here.

Placebo - Running up that hill

I kneel down to lift you up
you who now
holds me. I ask
nothing, though I offer
my collateral need.

Need wanting the line thinning, thinning
line between the two: wish or prayer.
The stars can't bear the wait.
They fall through sore places worn
across the night. Unresponsive,
bruised and riddled with reckless light
cast back from the origin of dreams.
The first of these kept
vaulted in lead low mystery and
from its offspring; yours.

Countless moored sails and
waiting and questions I'd not dare to
ask you to ask no I don't want
to want. Don't.
There is no lost illusion just
a trade made across the horizon,
encircling where you will pass again.
A dark and hallowed circumference following
the shape's of hunger; one for
every mouth. How similar are ours or
miles apart? Deceptive.

I've never felt
your gaze yet still I wear its sheen
- a humid gloss across my humanity.
The snake-caressed soil reaches back
but nothing's shed so much as lost
to repetition - lover-body-anguish
pull apart to thrust just harder yet;
a moth against the light -
that ache. A wind against a sail-
that beat. Applause amongst the leaves
beneath my feet -
that prevalent voice of reverent thanks.

shadow tamer

i'd not want his power; his hands full of broken things -
yet still the king has among his treasures, something of me -
of his body taken to mine and made new - his flesh
transmuted; his shape in subtle shift so easy, tho'
my inheritance of his masculinity is brief.
a scent and taste so different than my own.
tomorrow he will look at me and catch
not even a visual innuendo that part of him is
mine now. transformed. i have softened
his angles thru my form and when i try,
i can almost still taste him
drunken on my memories of wine.

- somewhere between greed and reverence,
between love and terror, between
lust and child-like rapture, i taste the predator.
a musk sweet wash across my gentle;
its hunger passing over my tongue.

the lion tamer with his head set deep
past teeth and pressing down
the back of my throat. i am scavenged
by questions - who's dominant when dominance is granted and
infused by submission?

my form my intent my desire; untitled.
a first tremble; too young to understand
- the taste of a coin under my tongue - forbidden -
biting back where i might bite -
the infinite flavor of anonymous touch and
barter and acquisition - power again and again,
power is rarely thoughtful.
peace for a moment's assistance; i felt
the wide wants of language rising from
my slick belly, spinning up the staircase of
my backbone to tangle through
my throat and leave me
silent.

my form cast by my shadow. inverted.
i have licked the color blue
and know it now as a flavor -
the taste of my own skin, my fingers
ever returning to my lips to earn or
to endeavor; to claim the
distinctive hallmarks of being a woman
that i, at any given moment might otherwise deny.

So much of what I post here; what I find myself typing across the screen - it comes from notebooks I wrote in ten, even twenty plus years ago. Today, reading through an old journal, what struck me was how little I've changed - in some crucial or pivotal way. My 'voice' maybe, but also the content it surrounds. That surprises me - the ruminations and visions of my twenty year old self share my breath in this moment and still speak to me. I'd want to add, that juxtaposed to this, in paradox and tension, I've also grown and healed and changed in many ways. I'd want to add this ... and sometimes I believe it to be so, but then again ... then again, while reading these words from decades ago, I'm not sure. Most of the posts here are 'old' poems - resurfacing and surging in quiet, gentle violence - intensity when I read them and they feel - still - like me now - at least during the time I spend with them here. They touch me and they touch upon places in me. Sometimes its a place I thought I'd lost - but nothing is lost - the heart is self contained - if things fall away inside me they are still inside. Pieces move or get stuck behind other pieces but they are all still here. Not sure what conclusion to draw from this. "Drawing conclusions" isn't so important to me - too often they lend a false comfort through tidying things up that are just fine - and more authentic somehow - left 'messy.' They can sound good but they do little more than that. If I was worried about 'sounding good,' much of what makes up this blog wouldn't be here at all. There is something deeper - or perhaps higher - baser and loftier and vague and obstruse and incisive and specific -all at once ... all at once and then some - and it pulls and pushes and calls and informs me. It's says something about passion and hope but also honors the intensity of anguish and despair. Not all emotions or feelings as found in verse sound 'healthy.' Perhaps their unrest and dis-ease are part of their beauty - if only because they're real and stripped bare and brave enough to speak out - through whatever venue. So more than anything it may be my love affair with language. That is what it is. That is what persists.

commingled

your voice holds
in my bones. my frame held
up with echoes. my heart's weight
under your overcoat. your fisted hands hang
from my slight limbs and when i reach - touch
your face, you're heightened; made aware of
your own shape.

your eyes are green.
now, to look at heaven, it fills for me
with emeralds. it fills
with bright meadows in long abandon
from their rightful horizon.

lucid dreams
configure the stars and they dangle
constellations bespeaking our mythology.
a hunt in scratch-depiction on a cave wall;
a resolute face made supernatural by firelight,
telling our story, milleniums before we
came true and i came to be the place
for you to anchor.

my water; deep as space. be weightless.
use my surface to lift up your own reflection.
scoop me up with your body, cupped, you row across
and toward yourself.

my lighthouse, you are. balanced at that fine point
of ebb and flow's transition. annointed by
my high tide. i bring you gifts that belong already
to you. still you accept with graciousness.
i am indebted.

what are we? there is a fire at our feet. if i've turned
from you, my heart was never cold. it was smoldering.
wet green. i turn from you saying, 'this will destroy
us. yes. eventually.' the sound of your voice in
response; like tongs regrouping the dying coals in me.
the breath, let by your sigh - and all again, ignites.

Carina Round 'Come To You' Video

he'd tell you
he doesn't always get what he wants
least of all from me but
if the water's from another planet
were to come to ours and fill out
the complicated tributaries and
bony bowls which shape our oceans, our
lakes and waterways,
whose sea is explored?

he's in my blood
and so,
i am captive.

there's one thing we captives do;
a characteristic we hold
in common that holds us
in check:
we wait.
beneath or over-riding bars of steel
or concrete walls, our prison is
forged of time.

moths

usually i do not choose memory -
what or when to ...
recall sputters on or strobes away or
hobbles my heart - just now i remember
how sundays weighed heavy through my chest turning everything brown - something sad and far from rest - the too-thick kitchen smells; burned flour; dread-enhanced hour: four o'clock slightly soured and uncomfortable in its sadness. perhaps a room, a bit too warm with light too low and the suggested odor of roasts or stews - comfort foods - my throat thickened with words from a language i only speak somewhere between breath and dream. comfort. far into my preferences; my focus, my favorite trees, my inspiration - dead moths fill the fogged glass, bell shaped around the silent kitchen bulb. moths -through choice or inevitability or
inevitable choice - drawn to the light - again again again to beat their bodies burned and broken - burned and broken without comfort - but too, without regret

fearful and war-like in our obdurate obligation toward 'making
sense' - bottomless logic sealed off in unapologetic deafness - airless and seamless - jar without holes poked in the lid - wings fall silent in comfortable smother.

in gaps, in margins, in common corners and doorways where the faceless
sleep distracted by the senseless, the beautiful, the terrifying - i
keep a sundial in my basement, collect clocks with broken
hands and faces that can only tell me "now."
and i visit them often; offer candle stubs and photos
of stranger's whose faces have grown over my own.
i wait on either side of the aperature;
glistening and ecstatic within stoic rhythms
and i strobe-flicker for the hungry moth-spirits and,
i remember.

danza contemporanea - ex novo danza - bestia senza suono

aspects

as a woman - or perhaps in a broader sense, simply as a human being, i've felt myself divided, then divided again. different aspects and perspectives, internally in conflict. sometimes it's frightening; overwhelming, temporarily paralyzing. i watched the dance piece posted here, in awe. and realized i was watching it AS that inner drama - each feminine form representing a part of my 'self.' to see it played out with such stark grace and raw physicality did much toward articulating these times where i felt that lack of integration and was shy of 'peace.' more than i've been able to apprehend with language. in this, i felt the peace and acceptance and hope that such psychic dissonance may indeed be a dance towards wholeness ... if it's watched without judgement and with kindness towards oneself. the dancers do much to illustrate moments where my internal world is not kind and the different inner 'roles' in turn are hurt, stubborn, repressed, dying, dictatorial, scared ... these times pass. they are storms. they are dances lasting the span of a strain of music and they remind me that i am a woman. i am human. i am alive and my existence is rich if not always clean; easy. and the dis-integration CAN return itself to integrated peace. no one gets left behind.

Hauntings

An opening octave of light where he emerges.
All other shapes fall silent, shift to sand,
swarm down while he swims through my vision in
harmonic toning. What music is this?
Condensed to gather across his features like frost
on a long window guarding the cold at its night-side;
cracked by the bloom of heat from mine.
From mine, where memory curls its flat shadows off smoke;
falling from the plump plumes; all quiet disaster,
satisfied to shimmy up careless recollections ...
slow to dissipate.

Ever-unfolding memory of a plucked bow,
a shutted heat vent, a big spoon still tasting like
the last lips held then pulled across it.
Deep inside the beside of you, I whither in the old words from
a last time. The clamour of you; bell resplendant,
unhindred hammer-swish drone, drowning out
the hiss of air expelled from our slow dying tide.
Mine, still reaching and bringing,
bringing in shells full of what I would put there:
A wooden flower, burning.
An artist's mannequin changing poses
on its own in a dark studio - the artist has little to draw from.

Draw towards me, close in closer to me, open-handed,
my brushes fall to the floor.
My blushing pencil splinters lead and
fragments from something in myself,
they stain the incompleteness - a page complicated by
its own blankness, and all that implies.

Somewhere in the wise unforgotten,
where the moon's borrowed light meekly bellows its own
interpretation of the illuminated;
there, a memory hesitates, collects itself, resumes.
That light takes to my skin.
Skin melting into that light.

The deeper spaces of
my own purple-pelted-darkness melting,
until my darkness flames and readjusts to
my new, organless form.

The deeper spaces where
the void is cluttered and hunger is vanquished
by its own presence.

A weighted curtain covers a window,
now bricked over. Dark haunt of moon
reflecting its reflection from a pool.
I cast a stone at its belly,
perhaps to break the cycle, perhaps
to open my own cloaked heart and
lend that garment to you, as you're closing a
weighted curtain on a window now bricked over.

Our memories sticking across the glass
my eyes pass
over your eyes
recalling ... ah, but its no longer there.
I still see; seek to see through it.
I watch you flicker; can smell green burning.
Destroy the fire to salvage its wounded,
half-eaten fuel? Why?
When all has gone to ash, I'll dip my pen there,
or pull a coal forth, and use it
to write these words.

Anthon Beeke Alphabet Ed van der Elsken Photography

speech-less

Now with choice gone and chosen,
i cannot hear what's left to say
i cannot hear past my own words that
wait hunched within yours.
i would have you here;
hear my ineluctable heart as if no other moved you.
i would dream now, in and for you, a better ending
and lend my breath for its endlessness.

how though
how could i -
how can one swallow the promise of nourishment
while thickened with an emptiness in overflow?
you have ... no. not.
you have not. i have
no room left for anything else.
i am left, if i stay,
with my own ... left,
if i stay, with
my own absence...

uncommon vernacular
ovaled through the sound of
your velvet-cushion voice ~
i slip back, slide to settle through
tactile transcendance - here in my loose fist,
loosening now full; wide and wild
and endless ~ no end or side or length
no need for a window
where there are
no walls ~ sometimes alice doesn't land
~ in some versions, the story itself
is to fall in one's self.
that is All.

~ i'm supended
by whispers, upsloped through
stillness where my memorable amnesia
lives in the now ~ cast out by
my own shadow, my form conforms across
those shallow absences which
certain hours of sunday afternoons,
leave pocking across the heart's surface.

SWF SEEKING ...

lover's inventing each other's bodies; an alchemical flow of what's longed for from their palms. another's flesh - the caress itself inventing what it will touch. birds long for flight not because they've wings ~ the longing, first - then wings ... all is in answering. a common gesture; a reply never replicated - no two the same for language won't fulfill the inexhaustable silence of a distant wave. ...never say never... touch - even those accidental, apologetic brush-bumps with strangers; unlikely intimacy. a few nameless faces, i continue to recall and wonder - and what if ... where are they, do they remember and wonder, ...me? implicit familiarity of form, of voices and skin's scent. innately we ease through complexity ... my own, and theirs as mine now multiplied where numbers, mute and ignorant, retract and grow pale.

Super slow-motion popping of water balloon

Parallel Park-ing

A trade wind enhanced by a murmer;
something that
as of yet, is not.
Winds of change.
Is there any other kind?
Winds of history or comfort or presence,
winds of boredom,
winds that companion crimes of passion ...

Their origins are no great mystery ~
Human touch; the friction between lover's,
my hand across my son's hair when i wake him.

A breeze to pull a dollar from loose fingers
but only make you chase it a few steps
- Ha. Just teasing -
Got change for a big bill?
How 'bout change for a change
while I make old mistakes
in new ways, wondering what
lies on possibilities anterior.
All that's there; we don't think of 'those'
things if they are things at all if
they are at all there beyond our 'there,'
for 'no thing' encompasses much.
Much we cannot even doubt amidst our oblivion
of 'its' existence. Gaps.
Beyond doubt's shadow is not certainty;
beyond doubt's shadow is
the unknown.

Where my imagination falls short,
my hope begins ...
and my fear.

The simplest, most obvious 'givens'
are rendered foolish when moved
very far from their textbooks.

Parallel lines defined.

Equi-distant travellers staying their course.
Precise and never veering, never crossing,
of course.
But beyond a certain line of vision,
Out there
where
space is curved. Great implication.
It's a playground and how they behave beyond the
vice grip comfort of mathematical rules;
it's up for grabs. And while they do
whatever they do, in honor of our MIT grads,
they make raspberries and laugh.

We are on a path. Side by side. Parallel lines.
Walking to the park, my son and I toward
a swing set. And for awhile, we do swing and
we leave our stomachs to catch them
on the down turn; giggling.
But at some point, we stop and dangle for awhile.
It almost always happens, watch any child;
we start twisting. And we'll wind
the chains taut
to knots until
we can't hold
or counter turn one
more inch.

Let go.
Lean back into the spin
and maybe, for awhile
we'll have a sense of
something
just on the other side;
on possibilities anterior
and those swing chains,
those twisted to knots
parallel lines,
will wring out their secrets,
spill them down
render us dizzy
yielding against
and despite of
science's fearful obstinance.

Of this, a wind is born off the
space where they unwind.
I bless and call it back
in a brief prayer, that it might
return to him in later years; blow shut
a textbook and open his eyes.

White's Blacksmith

Animals sense earthquake or storm. They circle
its rhythms with their own. Beyond hearing,
music laps back infinite, keeping its shape
perfectly amorphous.

Were I deaf, I might feel music or
thunder or the ocean shifting and be unable
to discern one from the other. I hope this is true.
So lovely; when things return to themselves
beyond particulars. At one. At Home.
When the false lines of distinction, bleed off;
run together to rainbow through the cleansing
waters beeding across my brow.

In the half light; half lit by moonlight,
I remember his face only borrowed from daytime.
Once removed from day, then again from
time. Used by the night in an undefined
haunting. A blue collar angel pausing near me,
knealing and listening to loose window panes
and neighbors porch chimes.

Through some leaves more than others,
the wind sounds quite cruel.
When it's angry, it gravitates
toward these trees. And so he settles
next to me, or for me,
moving through half asleep. Divided
between his two worlds,
always.

Speaking into my hair; something~something ...
not really to me at all. More so, they're words
about me. A confidance shared into all the scents
and shapes that collude and collide
to inform and create me. His words are not
for hearing. Not
for sought understanding.
Sometimes, besides the background,
there is nothing.

His voice, I sense
as vibration streaming low
and awkward and true, between
the wind and the moon.

It's all memory. Memories that might not
even be mine. Spares. Wandering.
Steamy and righteous and acute.
Just a moment that holds me in limbo while
I'm here, why I'm here, what I hear beyond
the common sounding cluster.

An imposter. A sideline occurence, a reverent
faux paux. A page torn from a book; that may be
the whole story in itself.

Fortune Telling

I don't know her story. I just believe in it,
same as an amputee's physical absences bespeak
their former limbs. Lost now
and now, decades later, she calls
to me and calls me
"Girl!"
I should keep walking; not very good
at ignoring people - hurts too much.
It's her. She's old in a way no one should ever
have to be. Intricate skin pleated at
eye corner where vision's overflow spends memory
all across the present
in mad splashes. She's staring
down; fascinated by her own wrists.
And just above her elbows,
where she's gone heavy,
a place to get lost.

Palms upturned. Just up,
up from there, light and
life-lined; map set down thick.
No space between the roads. No
arrow pointing "You Are Here"
amidst forests of bone and vein. Still
a pulse insists and rises in curious
sketch orbit; human silhouette, fixed
and held by that same spirit.

She lifts
her wrists
up and says "When I was young,
my hands were birds. Huh. To watch me move.
I've a picture here of me ... here ... somewhere.
When I was younger ... my twenties. Well
... here somewhere
... you ... looked an awful lot
like you ... never know. Perhaps I was."

Behind me, a hotel sign flashes NO VACANCY.
The words bob off her eyes. Old. Spilling back
its light. Reflecting reflect - hand's
go to fist; arms wind private; soldier
across her chest. Reflex. Were I a palm reader,
I'd have refused her anyway. She already knew
too much. Keep moving; my gaze
travels; catching, slipping up, just above
her elbows, where she's gone heavy -
a place to get lost.

Jackson Meets The Grand Canyon

Seven wonders - one for each biblical day of creation.
Untitled - Adam has not been here. Naming
is forgotten in a glow of collapsing images.
Angel's occupy my distraction in gentle turns.
So gently, my heart moves easy from idea to
formless miracle - just at the other side of
broken, the pieces are made new and need no repair.

There, within a whisper sent - a pillow dropped
down a deep slow canyon; absorbing all echoes.
We're all tourists. Always. Look. I came to watch
you watching. Never sign the book. A name falls
forgotten; fluting across invisible
tracks left by bird song. I am here I have been
here and the worn down trail has witnessed
no journey before this one. Now has precedence when
a child is present. Your new footprints;
they'll leave the old path
untouched; renewed.

Our breath, scarcely discerned in its shift over dust,
travels light, just as light's continuum on and up while
heart and throat bent back to cast a gaze and witness
dark flocks moving as a single-minded ribbon. Adam
has forgotten to spill over this moment; just short
of Paradise's toll through seven days. Something pressing
arrived on the eighth. Words fall off; can't reach it.
My son wide-eyed; speechless.

More From The Viaduct Notebook

It's hard to explain some forms of wanting; hard
to tell if it's me wanting or you. Neither of us will
ever take or I'd take myself back or you'd take
me away to and from too late.

The forks in the road are historical,
fixed moments now breaking down in forgotten
rifts. Time is not what she seems; not what
he used to be.

Before formaldehyde - before we started shaping
metal; forging it ... being stuck back then, at least
was more organic. Despair was softer at its rim,
before the possibility of one wrench which
was just a shade too large. A power twisting
hard over a bolt, leaving it stripped.
Nothing will ever fit it again. It's rounded
and tight. Think of it; rounded metal.
It's therestuck forever.

Locks without keys. So many of them. Artists are
locksmiths; messiah's strewn thin across our
clanging planet trying to undo what never
should have been done or twisted
so hard. All this metal that glints
bright grey in the light. The sun does not shine on
mechanical skins, it bleeds over them;
a womb that should be quiet and dark. Everything
has an undertone of red now, everything's
a bit off color and too bright.

Is there passion without compassion?
Machine sounds - I always hear them grinding
back ground and heaven - that background noise;
their answer: Assent - a stiff
resounding yessssss - I cover my ears;
a child lost in a twisting authoritive crowd.
Pulled in through the echo's internal,
all heartsound in here.
It's heart-wrenching.

Over-arching Essence

If you stare at something long enough ... well, most of us have. I have; stared at an object for a long time. It could be anything. It doesn't much matter. Just some thing that's chosen my line of vision. Stared hard. Glazed over and then, shut my eyes. Still there. Its imprint over eyelid's underworld; that free fall of theatre screen. The outside world's seeped through and holds steady. A somewhat uninvited guest for all I did was look - for too long. I had wanted to dream with some bit, some piece of innocence. But there it is; its negative space all glowing - its light gone black.

On the floor, on my back with my eyes shut hard; biting the fleshy part of my arm. I'm waiting. Waiting for exhaustion to shift its weight in a fade towards enstacy. Explosions behind my eyes. A big bang almost daily; my world there like, just like a small pool buried in the archives of 'ago' with water salt marked ideas of legs and leaves and wings and worms brooding. Behind my eyes, the beginning of an altogether new life force and a planet all its own, to call home. First, an element. It will need breath - chromosome's split - something erupts - something hurts its way up a long hill - fibers split.

Something soft and tuberous breaks tenuously through an impossible surface; flowing. A simple arch. It is not an object; not a structure. Arches are not. Arches are an act. Arches flow. They hold up nothing, but much stands back to watch in awe. That's how they are. I arch my back and break my heart - snap - to let him in. I arch my tongue over all the empty space surrounding verse - there. Woven inextricably into that blank space - inaccessible - what I struggled and failed to say. My top lip in a crooked arch to empty out the truth I carry; to usurp the lie's domain - Sent out alone in a broken orbit seeking its central pull. It is no longer there. Sent out alone to arch over air, absent of gravity. A sense of Nothing on its back. Weightless, but it is; it's upholding
every thing
that will ever
grow
old.

An oval doorway with a name above it. Those who pass through, those who stand under, understand the evolution of forms illusion and the architecture of madness; elegant. Deceptively simple. Its negative space all glowing. Its light, bright black ... if you stare long enough.

Reclusion

Lead; bleach-white and floating amorphous motes here, at this place. Then, there's a hammer. It's not shaped by the hammer but by the sound it makes when moving through the air and at impact. It crumbles easily; lead does.

Everything behaves differently here on the other side of my skin. Under ice, under thin water, light and life itself, deflected. The elements shift; moody mutants. Some just slightly, so subtle, some shake apart, profoundly altered. You'd not recognize a twig for its atoms or a breath for its need. Time goes fickle; clots and mottles, slips its line, tangles through this other side of mine and sails purple rods over coarse thoughts-never-words, words never thought.

But something always lives, something is alive beneath the ice. I am trying to tell you; trying to ask after it but it can't hear me unless I speak to it while sleeping and now, I can't remember - ah God, I can't - remember what I said ... Still, it did, it did answer with a backwards deep voice I deciphered, at the time, with ease. It sounded angry but that was just distortion; ice, surface, superfice.

I can tell you this; the planets have come full circle, and back to 'again.' They are as they were just before beginning but have forgotten themselves and I feel them asking. I look to them, through the weight of old water and distance. Waiting, I have fallen in love with a rocket. It passes through the sky one time every night.

It only lasts a few seconds.

The rest of Time's become unbearable.

So I wait for the rocket here beneath the ice.
I will
and I do I wait
all day. The only other living creature's that know about the rocket are the whales. It's all they talk about anymore.

Video is an extracted clip from "Vivaldi's Nightmare" -

The Mistress

- You moved your furniture again.
- Yah. I, uh, ... yah.
- It needs something; that space there under the window ... something to fill it. You should put something there that's interesting; unusual.
- It already has something ... I mean, I like it like it is.
- But it's empty.
- No. Not at all. It's open. Open space.
- ... Nah. You should put something there that says something about you. One of your funky sculptures or a big ... I dunno. It asks for something more.
- Yes.
- You agree?
- Yes. Let it ask. That's what I like. It's a needed presence.

Silence. He stares at her in brief defense. A flash of something; dread, weariness. His lips move as if ... But he checks himself and looks away. Then,

- Whatever.
- Don't say that. I hate it when you 'whatever' me.
- Why? Whatever? ... It just means ...
- It's dismissive. It's a slight.
- Nothing of the kind. You over-analyze.
- I didn't analyze at all. I just felt. Open space.
- What?
- In case I want to dance.
- Dance?
- Or something. The place by the window ...
- By yourself?
- Maybe ... yes. Yes, most likely by myself. Unless you want to dance with me.
- There isn't any music.
- I ... sometimes. I mean, there is though. It's there. It's always there. But I could turn some on, if that's what you mean.
- No. No no. Maybe I'd watch you. I like to watch you move.
- Now?
- I'd rather watch you when you didn't know I was there.
- Spy on me?
- I have your permission.
- That would sorta be a waste. We have so little time together already, it's sad to think. I mean then, not only are we not together, but my privacy isn't even really mine anymore and ...
- Don't start.

~Silence~

- Don't. Anyway. I gotta go. I'll get you a plant or something. That would look nice there. A big plant. Something alive.

AS IF

A silent recitation in every step.
My feet are claws. I cling to the earth as if
it were a ceiling. My teeth and my bed are as worn
as the side of a cliff. By boot
and pick and clip, I cling here and dream here
of trees; one tree. I walk around it slowly; brush
my palm over its trunk. A caress. An oak.
We enfold one another.

I am wearing blue and walking the ground as if it were
a dying sky. I am a weakened wing and every moment
is my last thrust against uplift. At least, it may be.
I keep on to keep from (don't we all)
falling. I'm a cat burglar sprawled across green calm.
A place that cools my belly and throbs in bone. Sometimes
I forget I have them. A loose scaffold tangled through
with dull nerve. Thief or scavenger, I seek renewal;
the sensation of an oversized, hopeful memory
in reconciliation to now.

And then, a sound; predatory. I dream a leapord.
We are one and separate. A face off. Faceless,
both of us equal in our hunger but we're not
after flesh. Not really. He burns
away my spots with jealous, albino eyes.
He leaves me white
as a perfect picket fence.
I gleam across
his remorselessness.

Drowning is a terrible way to die.
The lines that defined my skin
as separate from his
or from water
or from air, were erased.
I thought it safe
to breathe just below the surface.
It is,
it's as if I emerged,
if I emerge,
from this dream,
with a cough in a gasp to find my skin
still damp and all my spots bled off.

when i became more draw-able

In my twenties, I was an artist's model. There was a course of change at that time where I became easier to draw. I posed less my (unmeetable)need for certainty; more, my reconciled fears. Everything in my life came out on that model's stand. I carried it there to let it out. I wrote less during that time. I was using my form and letting the artist's dictate - or translate from my language to their own and whatever they thought I'd said was ok with me. As my life became better - not easier or happier - but more aware - I became a better model.

I moved out of my cracker box apartment and a handful of other confinements, real or imagined, into an open handed, high ceilinged, ugly linoleum-floored (unforgiving to my many bare footprints), apartment. It was above an art gallery and just across the viaduct from the bookstore and Art Student's League; an old part of the city that had yet to undergo "progress" or renovation. I walked to work over that viaduct almost every day. 20th street; part of a loose weave over the highway, wide spaced from others, all rattling truckspeak; clattering angry machines. Above the trainyards with clusters of uncoaxable tracks, as stubborn about destiny as I was about watching the stars and believing in something I couldn't fix my gaze or mind upon directly.

I'd walk home under the bridges, picking up railrod spikes and stones; wondering at the dice-scatter of homes here and there made from torn insulation and crates and cardboard. Better building material near a trainyard, I suppose ... and always the stray shoe or pair of pants. Once my friend Meg, who also liked to walk down there sometimes, found a bag of onions: "A perfect bag with that red nylon netting. You know the kind? Ten pounds! Isn't that weird? Maybe it fell off a freight train. Wonder why street people didn't pick them up. Yah. Enough tears already ... huh."

A few abandoned buildings. Industrial is the only word I can think of. Industrial buildings. That flavor to them. Once factories or textile warehouses - something like that. Now, all the windows broken out; blind and leaning. It felt risky to wander in on them alone but - but they were covered with stunning, intricate art. Amazing what a can of spray paint can yield. The artists were called "taggers;" presumably gang members. Spray painting art on old buildings is technically against the law. Posting billboards filled with lies about politics and products and progress to go ugly against the sky, is not. Politicians and corporations have their own gangs. How are they any different? How better? Their ugliness is legal and fully approved.

These buildings and artists were different. Something organic occured to/with them. Something good. Property and people abandoned by pseudo-forward motion. Intricate murals I'd walk beside, turn a corner, walk some more. Lost outside a crumbling square. A great cubed canvas - wide and tall. Best use for an industrial building I've encountered. I fully approved. My heart and eyes grew bigger. I became easier to draw.

Accidental beauty (a term originated by Milan Kundra). Accidents where decay and neglect collaboratively become something other than ... - The wires bent out and branched into a rhythmic circulatory system for this undercurrent underworld. The rusty barrels piled high toward their own harsh yet poignant aesthetic. Junkyards filled with sunflowers and places for dusk to spill its buckets and glow in spreads. There really are junkyard dogs. I met one. He used to bay at the moon and at me in equal turn. He had a beautiful voice.

Amongst abandonment and enthropy. The hallowed accident; that I might fill up with whatever it was in me already, then fill up yet again. This overflow was necessary; it loosened an untapped sense of urgency in me. It gave me renewed givingness ... whatever it was that looked out from me to fall in love with this place, unadulterated and stark. I saw in ways I couldn't convey with language. It found its voice through how I moved through the world, and for the artists. In response to jagged edges, something in me smoothed, eased and opened. Something of spirit. Things find their way to speak their ineffables; to stand as testament for the Indomitable Creative Process and healing. If not because of circumstance or care or tending, then in despite of its absence.

Arvo Pärt - Pari Intervallo

Breath's Hinges

blown through broken seals around loose windows;
shade blown by the sun through careless cracks.
my shadow through my fingers. dust and ashes to flesh,
sand sifted through digits fated toward counting time
down and away though i doubt time itself is touched.
one "never" at a time. never to be a castle
or a kingdom, never to know freedom
in its wide arced elipse.

limits. i want my bone's distinct;
articulate - latin student's pronouncing
slow chalked words. tones long then flat
bone's connecting at the joints in ambient hums.
soon, there are phrases; just a word and a word and then
communion. soon there is movement. soon after,
i've grown; weeping silent right at the crook of my arm.
nothing really to buffer old shame in tactile, free float
memory, reeling and real as the fact
of me bending around its distinct shape.

sorrow's a very solid truth in its time, while truth
eludes me time is a very solid truth.
as a child still shaking in the awful, awe full
sin of realizing my own death would come it would come
oh god my god - mine - coming now, even now.

old faces made of silk. finely made. wrinkling easily.
at best, perhaps we all become instruments of our instrument.
choose yours wisely. art. harp. brush. string. another's
skin and bones. wrinkled silk and jutting sounds.

i can remember wanting to be woken alone; by bells. metal on
metal thrown high across sound, then down. deep. an easy weave.
a thread without needle twining through my sleep;
tightening to lift me out and across morning. harmonic,
but lonely, so i keep the single ember blown
behind their backs. my breath out; its life.
its breath out,
my life.
out.

refrains

We were in a wooden room. A victrola at its center. My mouth is full of memories; old coins. I can't speak. Bitter blend bad taste both sharp and bland. Dirty copper and silver thick with the grit of stranger's hands. A nickel's shape and temperature defies my tongue's soft warmth. It will always be round and cold and soulless. Put your money where your mouth is? Worthless advice ... You don't know where they've been, don't put them in your ...

Slots in life one can't get past without a quarter or two. You never know. In grade school sometimes I'd keep my lunch money safe this way. The bully's couldn't steal it. Jaw muscles are incredibly strong and when they tighten around their hinges, nothing save desire will make them slack. I am silent. I am still a child. I can taste this fact.

We choose a vinyl disk. Black and shiney and music all over it. I'm old enough to remember records, though the memories are borrowed. We crank the handle together; his hand over mine, firm, firmer. Crushing. And the music rises; steam pushing up around the rim of a man hole cover, though usually they hold their breath when he and I walk by.

And the music rises from a brick belly somewhere far from here. A throaty song that becomes a love song simply because we listen to it. Even from the first note. It bursts inside itself. My gut response; an empty stomach in recoil against the shock of almost overripe fruit.

And the music rises. Sing sweet. Sing hard to bend the walls back like water fired into wilted plastic water bottles. Something regains its original shape in me.

These are the rules: There is no rewind. No playback or pause. You just have to keep cranking. Listen well for you may not hear this song again. As it hits the air it destroys itself. These old records; they scratch so easily. Don't lift the needle. Too risky. But. Sometimes the risk itself is in not risking. Pacing and reserve can be treacherous. We are winding up for the great unwinding and I turn the handle as fast I can. His handhold loosens, barely curved around mine. He's just along for the ride now, but I want. I want the music. Too much. I want it to never end.

I can feel. The room sighs. He has, in this moment, forgiven me for being a child when he met me. Forgiven me for imagining I might be loved by anyone else as he loved me. He forgives me for what I will do. For what I didn't say. For what I will dream. The taste of old coins fades off my tongue while his arms go round and around me. We are danced in his dancing. For both of us, he moves while I stand on his feet; balanced.

And that's been true, always. He moves me. He moved for both of us but my part was necessary. I had to be light. I had to be willing. The handle always runs down no matter how tightly wound. The music's gotta keep coming. It would have had to come from me.

Sylvia's Memoirs (a baglady)

... A catalogue of dreams. I used to lay awake and whisper them toward his sleep. I fancied that I might be able to insinuate myself into his; his dreams - just a flash of my face or a brief background appearance. Enough to make an impact; leave an impression. He'd wake up thinking of me; maybe not even sure why. He'd wake hungry.

This need not make sense. It just needs to be true. Water and fire die in the same way. My words are wet coal. My story is of wanting; of waiting in his old anger. In his unresolved hate, I dispersed. A harsh word, but we won't shy away from it, ok? It made me evaporate. Or, was it love? Lust? How to say? Passion runs them all together; leaving little to examine as evidence. Even then, it's up for interpretation - versions - passionate improv; a night on the stage. A slideshow. And i'm the screen. What's showing? Sit back. Watch: a swamp and at its center, a long wick. A stream and look closer, its bed is leather. A girl dancing barefoot in an alley filled with broken glass; she's eloquent in her form - spinning amidst all that glinting. It's lovely. We don't even think to worry about her feet. Time lapse to her thirty years later. She's still there. But much older. It's just not the same.

Ever walk down a street in late May and catch a wiff and catch
your breath and stop? Retrace your steps for that scent.
You know it's rolling off boughs
full of blossoms; lilac or apple maybe but
when you go back looking
it's just not as sweet as that first
off-guard overthrow that took you over
for a moment - a lovely loss of self
control yes and I've done that with music -
there's a melody. A line of tones
I heard once - a song and have since
been looking. It resists retrieval. It's
lost in resounding shadow. A melody
I heard that doubled the fire
in me, set me back flaming
swamp stagnant water morphed lively and set
to a new pace from medium to slow to gone again
- the balance; the length. And so I've searched.
It's hard though, to ask after music,
I can barely hum the bars but I'd know
if I heard it. You know?

Or maybe I'm not talking about music at all. I search for
a face, for a certain skin-scent, for a place where I felt at home but have never been. It wasn't in a dream. I search for something but stay right here. I'll just light another candle and fill another stack of pages with words. Some things are best left alone or undone. I may still see them through to completion, but then, I'll throw them away. This letter. Perhaps it's a letter. Perhaps it's to you. Perhaps it's a love letter, of sorts ... it would want deciphering ... it would demand patience. And desire.

The candle is tilted. It won't stand up straight and the wax is hot. Too fast. It burns bent and rushing loose as an unguided monologue - like a baglady singing in a back alley. No one listens. It just happens that some of what she says is beautiful; there's genius to her madness. Maybe she's my muse. On bad days, I wonder if she's my future - or my alter ego. Nice men in grey suits have the decency to turn into caped super heroes in phone booths. - Me? I gather fleas and a shopping cart full of junk. I do it over time. My bags sport lots of candles and other people's old snapshots. But most noteably, random pages lost from letters. Words unaccounted for - My heroism; I'd deliver them to the rightful hands; whoever the "reader intended" was, that never read. I'd change lives - that would be my super power. That missing page from a life where she gets brave enough to tell him that when he's near her she feels so ... or the paragraph that pleads or amends or invites. I'd uncrumple them; tease back the wrinkles and tears as best I could. You'd be surprised at how many unsent, unfinished letters there are. And the weight of them. The sheer weight. You'd be astonished.

Set at angle. a crooked burning candle tired of its own heat mimicking the cold blue sky at the eye of its flame - watching. Next time a madwoman stands in your alley holding a light and sing-songing, you might pause a moment before slamming shut your window. You might notice something in her words. She is looking for something but it's something you need. The scent of lilacs.

Silence must be heard

Good Acquaintances

Words have less substance than scents.
I have less substance than words.
All I am now is all awareness in memory;
the smell of his skin, caught in moments,
sensed barely.

I know him scarcely. I know him at a strange
and wary distance. Once, I touched his hand
and once I touched his face because
he told me I could and then he left
me to pace and fret and hate the
strange laugh that for awhile burst out;
cut back, cut off and seized with a shock
through my throat.

Once, he leaned over me repeating
the lyrics of a song; it was water.
Water drowned by smoke and background
conversation clatter.
He had to tell me twice,
but even he didn't know them all. Not yet.
About nine words to go:

"Two steps behind the rest, one fingertip
too long. The hole in the box they carried
spilled sugar in the road."

And he looked at me as if he knew I'd know.
I tried. Quiet beside him, I tried
not to notice his eyes, not to notice myself
running out of the stocked indifference I used.
Stock pile going down, used up to keep
steeled pieces in place lest they fly off and hit
the asphalt in a fit of sparks. Light bits
rejected by the dark street. No embrace
just screech and dissonance.
Stark contrast to spilling sugar landing soft
just above a whisper, or that of touch, of skin
to skin, when it meets in a glancing accident.

Beside him, quietly. Going on and rolling over
from one desire to another and somehow,
in the midst of all this,
all i can finally think to say:

"Something more. There needs to be a spoon, perhaps,
in the lyrics, for the lyrics are ... something
... there needs to be ... stirring."

{lyric excerpt credited to the band "Throwing Muses"}

Peter Gabriel - Lay Your Hands On Me

Lyrics for 'Elephant Talk' by King Crimson

Talk, it's only talk
arguments, agreements, advice, answers,
articulate announcements,
it's only talk.

Talk, it's only talk
babble, burble, banter, bicker bicker bicker,
brouhaha, boulderdash, ballyhoo,
it's all talk.
Backtalk.

Talk talk talk, it's only talk
comments, cliches, commentary, controversy,
chatter, chit chat chit chat chit chat,
conversation, contradiction, criticism,
it's all talk.
Cheap talk.

Talk, talk, it's all talk,
debate, discussion (these are words with a D this time)
dialogue, dualogue, diatribe, dissention, declamation.
Double talk double talk.

Talk talk, it's all talk.
Too much talk.
Small talk. Talk that trash.
Expressions, editorials, expugnations, exclamations,
enfadulations, it's all talk.
Elepant talk. Elephant talk.

King Crimson:

Voices

a room; tall, thin metal walls,
windowless. vaccum blown
in pulled back by winds.
a billow, a jagged lung
billowing tin song. i did not come here
to this place but here i am.
hear? i did not come. i did not empty and throw
the bottles or crush the cartons - telltale signs;
trail's careless crowds leave behind. so much
garbage left to cover and let whither.
the fields gone white and glowing
in the midst of this green season.

one revolution ~ round motion; the shape
of a life. my blood through these
intricate wrists and ankles
to meet in my chest - a flock of small wings
scattering, meeting, communal and then again
lost amidst the clanking vowels of other's speech:
i i i i love i want i need i know i
need i love i think - steam forced
through a smoke stack that
smack-back sound, that pulse.

a circus of echoes - so much sent
through firey hoops, balanced on back hooves.
pre-packaged music worried into unhearable tangles
and words made unspeakably smooth -
without traction or distinction, i pace
these surfaces and fall again i fall, all alice'd
through the big top metalic smoke
stacked upon itself in vertical rows.
three rings in my ears ringing words
vast scatter of verbal dominoes.

Man vs Nature

Huge stone in the sky stuck and cursing us.
Strapped in place and spinning
trapped upside down like I was once
on an amusement park ride with an angry
old lover at the controls.

A meteor. An asteroid. Dis-aster on
a tracked descent - got loose
from its safe(for us)haven.
It's place in The Hammock;
a white spider spun it
to hold all the heaven's in place.
I saw her do it. I watched her lowering
down, coming off the sky late one night
years ago. She landed on my car antennae.
That's how I know.

This may be the one
or may not be - that's what the experts say.
Destructive or it might just land cold
and bored and lonely; longing back at the cosmos.
Either way, its fall will be beautiful to watch.
Its fall is of great interest.

Fall water fall wind fall land fall
you don't mind falling water
then rain - then add salt and
a half a teaspoon or so of carbon
and, that's us. There you go.
Falling all the time,
we all do - walking's just a fall
corrected over and over. It's really
just postponed. Same as all the swings
falling both ways, same as all the birds;
fight and flight become the same thing.

But what do we do about the meteor? Both
vegetarian's and meat eater's want to know.
It's cause for concern. We'd be derelict
if we did nothing. Still. It will be
beautiful to watch it while it's falling.

Creed - Lullaby

Three and a half

My hand cannot feel my heart but my heart, through my hand, feels.
Upon morning, one of the first things I touch will be my son's face. It is very important for me to wake him gently. So different from the violent shifts in consciousness that usually send me into a quiet dawn - a bit disoriented, sometimes weepy, roaring inside - my blood gone thready and purple.

I will spread thin yellow light across my ebbing fears now. I will open something; something hinged, latched, screened, and let a moth go free. It will open its wings. I'll settle through its loosening departure and say good morning and spread butter on warm toast. I'll hand it to my child, having first cut away the crust. His hunger will change its rectangular shape, making it flower. He eats clockwise, neatly round and round despite the crumbs and as he chews he talks about seahorses and tells me the different names of children he knows. I do not tell him to close his mouth while he chews. He tells me he's a baby tiger and that he painted the sky blue and then he roars.

Today, he'll collect feathers. He wants to "build himself into a bird." That is how he explains it to me. I help him find them without him knowing I am helping. We find only a few, some dirty and flight-worn from several different species. After awhile, he suggests we switch to pine cones - surprisingly similar in structure and they're scattered all over. Hundreds of them. He flew all afternoon.

THERE IS A MAN WHO DRAWS WITH BLACK INK. IT IS VERY THICK YET STILL FLOWS QUICKLY. HE DRAWS IN A BASEMENT ON WALLS MADE OF CINDER BLOCK. THEY ARE PAINTED WHITE BUT SEEM DARK. I CAN ONLY SEE THE ARM BUT BELIEVE IT IS A MAN, AND HE IS NAKED. MOVING ALONG THE WALL DRAWING LINES. AN OUTLINE. I SHAKE WHILE I WRITE THIS. HE IS STEADY. THE LINES MEAN NOTHING UNTIL I FOLLOW, AND I MUST FOLLOW. I TELL MYSELF THAT STEPS I TAKE ARE MINE BUT EVERY TIME I LOOK AT THE WALL, MY SHADOW IS FALLING PERFECTLY INTO THE OUTLINE HE MADE DAYS AGO ... FALLING PERFECTLY.

like no one else ever has or could
i love you i know
you try to find someone else that
does that and stays. i stay. i'm here
for you all for you
are mine and i will not let you go
and i will not let you though you are free
to say enough

enough

it will never be enough for me and i'll take
and i'll take care of you and i'll give
these things to you but
don't. no talking if it's
going to be about that. i know what you'll
say and you're wrong. what's wrong is
the difference between men and women and you won't
be a woman be a woman be
a silent woman and answer me
and why don't you? answer me.

it's not that easy
it's not that and
it hurts and
it still hurts and it
doesn't have to be this way
does it
hurts
have to be like this?

this is the way it is.

i can't.

you are.


and sometimes he still gets up right when i am talking to him. he looks at the time. he leaves the room and doesn't hear my eyes. he doesn't see; i do. i drop down on my knees inside - stay please - but this, to the sound of the displaced air re-settling in the space he left behind. if he knows me, he knows the parts of me that were invented by and for him. they take up a great deal of room. i am crowded and empty with all that i never was before but somehow in his presence i morph, and obligingly become. i dream about him. a lot. and when i see him, my eyes burn and i try to tell him with my face what total stranger's can read but he ... doesn't.

AND WHEREVER THIS BASEMENT IS, I AM. MY SHADOW THERE, ROLLING ACROSS THE WALL. IT HAS LIGHTS HUNG FROM THE CEILING. BARE BULBS THAT TURN ON WITH CHAINS. AND SOMETIMES I WILL THINK MY SHADOW HAS MOVED FREE FROM HIS OUTLINES BUT THEN THIS MAN WILL PULL ONE OF THE CHAINS AND THE LIGHTING CHANGES. THE SHADOWS SHIFT, SO AGAIN MY SHADOW FALLS AND FITS
PERFECTLY.

old notebooks

A big brown box with 'eggs' written on its side. Really, there are books in it. Notebooks. Dog eared, scribbled and spiralled. Or maybe dishes. Anyway, it's heavy. Dangerous. Be careful. Words and china both break easily. Hard to get a firm hold. Slip out of your hands like that. And the way they shatter; you almost always cut yourself cleaning up.

Listen. To. With. Hear. Me. A strange frequency. A hum being torn apart at the heart of each tone. It seems important, though madness often thinks that of itself. I hear it. It's almost constant. I'm a thin power line strung high in a place where there's nothing to fasten upon. High up above many other waves. And I'm catching things
and I'm trying to save them and I'm
trying to bring them home. My hands cupped around them. Holding. Bringing water from a spring at the desert's rim. A long journey back. To here. Here there is only thirst and I've only my hands. Through my fingers some is lost and some is lost as my own skin absorbs it. By the time I reach you there's precious little left to put to your lips but it's all I have to offer.

Listen to me. Upbeat hits hard. Downfall goes down easier. I brace myself. I cup myself to catch. It knocks my breath loose for a moment but when I breathe again, I'm reminded of this: Each one counts. I count them all. Not many left. I've lost balance - steady in my step back but still I fall like a cloth is meant to fall in a corner. I catch like trash in chain link after the wind's knocked free and broken down order. My hands are empty . My tears might be enough to raise the waterline and ease pandemic thirst. My eyes are dry.

Among the litter, cardboard boxes. One of them has something in it I need. Contents written on the side - water stained - black marker - just words - they could mean nothing:
This Side Up.
Handle With Care.
Fragile.

Poem By Jackson

(written by my son 4/28/06 - eight years old) If the world's to be nice, blackbirds have to turn into bluebirds, at least sometimes. Bluebirds fly over the stars, like a shining shard. Blackbirds fly over shaded light, their wings carry them like just a twinkle in the night. Eagles fly over the sunrise, helping to open our heart's eyes. They need each other. We need them all. Watch their wings, Hear their call.

Ellliot Smith

Born on 8/6/69. He died from stab wounds on 10/21/03 - It was never resolved as to whether the wounds were self-inflicted or not ... respectfully and as it should be, I think. From what I can tell, he managed to remain untouched by "fame (for all that implies)." That is, his music gained recognition and accolades but he also managed somehow, to remain safe in a certain obscurity. I think that's safe to say. He played a bunch of instruments: piano, clarinet, bass, drums and harmonica, but his primary instrument was guitar.

His music was featured in the film "Good Will Hunting." He performed "Miss Misery" at the Oscars. This, he said was "...weird ... pretty fun but I don't know if it would be fun to live in that world, really ... (The other performers looked at me like) 'Who is that guy? The guy in the white suit with the dirty hair. What's he doing here?' I was wondering the same thing."

He was working on his sixth album "Basement on the Hill," at the time of his death. It was released posthumously.

I want to say something - more - about his music or music at large. It's tough because right now that seems diametrically opposed to what I'm feeling; "saying something," that is. In poetry and stories, ideally, the words and metaphors cause a sort of tension; stretch their own meanings - transcend themselves. Music is - or can be - transcendence, in and of itself, already. Effortless. It's just there. It effects the heartbeat and pulls up emotions we've not even conjured words for - just the music. Add beautiful lyrics to the mix and - well - there. Yes.

I have a friend who feels harmony is/can be our one connection/experience of/with Perfection. As human beings, resolute (or not so resolved) in our im-perfection, I suppose there may be an inherent longing to catch glimpses of this - we tend to think in opposites - duality. So from this, rises the 'idea' of perfection and something we seek outside ourselves for a sense of ... something. Something of spirit - towards wholeness ... perhaps.

When I go back over my posts here, I sometimes listen to the music video's I've included while I read. And it 'improves' them, I think. It adds an element; a 'layer' to the experience of reading that's important ... to me. Over the past week, the artist I talked about here - Elliot Smith ... I don't know. I've known his music for years but he just flashed back into my up front consciousness ... for some reason. And now, his story, his art, his death, his ability to keep himself 'in tact,' and not be pulled into "all that (whatever happens to people who have 'made it')." I've been a bit haunted by him.

This 'blog' thing has taken on a life of its own - I suspected it might and so I'm trying to be open and follow 'its' lead. I knew I'd write here, but it seems that music and images have become an inextricable part of this ... um - this project ... this process - and so, I'm honoring a need to pay a sort of homage to this musician who died when he was 34... I don't know what he thought of perfection - if he sought or even believed in it. But there are some, maybe even many (he still has fan sites), who feel he touched upon it in certain songs - at certain moments. He touched and still touches other's lives; added some beauty. As for myself, I'd not ask for more than that.

If you like the song included here, check out also Miss Misery, Angeles, Say Yes ... go from there.

Elliott Smith - Between The Bars

cities

life draped loose over
opium-faced skeletons rubbing against
themselves, passing through
each other. they are trying to, not
to. not to think about it
while going so too-hard toward
... nothing. it's
it's
nothing, really ...

below our business, below
the cities, heaven is
moaning from glass-shatter depths
giving off a color;
i can't call it,
just a color chanting over
everything it touches,
glossing surfaces, then gone
like a monk on its way to
evening vespers moving steady looking
down, no reason to
look forward - the path is there
towards nothing ever changing
except the cold's shifting
tempo; how fast it turns across
the stone's, cobbled and meant for
getting somewhere.
just step - then step
with purpose
the purpose of this;
to wait.
life's loose drape;
one realizes, and suffers.
one doesn't think about it
and anything near you,
suffers.

lucky pennies

A birthright. A Secret. Belongs to all of us.
And it is kept. Kept in tact and undisclosed.
A sacred vow; a silence guarded through unawareness.
It is there. No doubt.
There for everyone and therefore, brilliantly hidden.

I've looked straight at it, while it stays lost
to me here; hear no see no speak no ... feel? no.
Hear no see, no speak no - so busy no one slows
to hear the sight of speech.

Bumped into it when rushing and
it feels so
slow motion so inviting so so so
pressing. Somewhere between sleep and waking.
Something to do with Time (I think) -
with memory ... maybe.

This day, anyone who looks
at me, sees a woman running late - late, because I spent
too much time ... feeling ... something ...
in a private flow the way a drum flows when
its skin is brushed, not beat.
The way water flows just before it turns to ice somewhere
between waking and sleep.

Daydream: memory meets regret and seeks a coupling;
at one at once atoned. They move a sense across my skin for
where it most needs touched - haunted by old lover's -
I still feel them, their hands; an impress left lingering
there, like phantom limbs. I still feel, I grow still
and tangled through their ache-rhythm running
still it is still now and it is still you and it is
wrong if 'wrong' can scatter through wishes ~ taint them.

I wish to be a memory of yours and when
you're a beautiful old man with brown
skin and orange-hued wrinkles,
I will act up and knot your stomach;
put a fever through you - ringing in your throat;
an unwritten, trapped song expanding -
turn you thirty again.

I wish I could be

soft pencil lead. It leaves large, dark
committed lines - something so satisfying
in the press-down-hard and feel the words-break-off
the tip. I would be this. You can't erase
committed lines. I would cross over
your empty white-paged now in a stroke and tumble loose
charcoal ground through paper fiber; deep groove left there
- an avalanche
of heart like
stone and
gravel down a
cliff to rest
there - resolute. It is done.

There are people right now walking ... no.
Plodding in a hurry. Waiting in a line, angry at strangers,
trying to get warm amidst rules and signs
that give off so much cold it is always October. I know them.
I know them, if you believe we are all connected,
however loosely the golden thread slacks between us,
however far the scope. I believe if you would
hold me, pull close now, absorb me,
it would help. For there sake. Of course.

Amidst the shattered glass and sirens, the suffering
gardens and phantoming trees mourning over fresh-poured concrete.
Hold me. A store for tomorrow's famine.
Memory hunger. I'll remember.

A penny falls from your pocket, takes off on a roll.
Do you ever leave it there for luck? Someone else's?
I do it all the time. Face up. Make sure.
It matters.

... something to do with a too well-kept unkempt
secret kept secret something to do with Time and
memory and hold me and ...

They need us ~ for comfort.