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.