Like A Gardener

I grow quiet.
Quiet, grows.
If there is hope here, it is not beyond a reach
one might take with the length
of a sigh heard; surprised to realize
it must have been yours while alone,
and unprepared for what’s always been there.
Unprepared for a moment, unmeasured awareness,
un-accessorized by what's prefered, to what is
Just there.
Just

here, shadows have moved deeper through my bones.
Longer and denser while I become lighter - hollowed around them.
Hollow as the scaffolding informing a bird’s wing.

A concentration of images, a murmur that shines,
a Voice that Thrusts.
I have absorbed the impact
And been left shattered.
The words they carried scarcely mattered.

These dreams still in my tongue,
awoken mid-sentence.. Steep slopes,
always easier
to climb
for me.
Coming down - I try,
try to dig in my heels and
lean back, but even still, still
I slide. Gravity’s mercy is capricious
- at best, and absent entirely
from dream - or reckless and
prone to breaking its own laws.
There is nothing to break my fall.

A river carrying tiny lights.
Perhaps reflections or something very real.
Buoyant stars lost on roads they themselves created.
My voice lost in echoed things I shouldn’t have said, now
Eternally repeated.

History’s pulpit:
which increment of time to worship?
A locked down anniversary.
This moment has been before you, before
returning to me - worn down or built up
ridges of a dune, shifting in the night winds
that grow so cold even where the desert
hoards more than its fair share of the warmth.

Memory is always a visitation.
You - a traffic area through my heart, dark and threadbare,
A love that was lived in.
To buttress my standing, I stand now smothered
and alone amongst my crowds of ghosts.
Most are friendly, or I’ve learned to overlook
their brusque manners
And raw habits.
Indoctrinated into my own disbelief,
they look right through me
and life itself, becomes the phantom.

i am the highway - audioslave (with lyrics)

wardrobes

field of dark coats abandoned
- winter now, and the warmth that made them useless
has long left us. held in place against the wind
by stumps and bramble, one frees an arm,
weakly waves -- channeling the breeze channeling
a lover. old or future?
I can’t see …

dip into my darker dreams.
my footfall follows no lead.
in a nightmare lonely,
a nightmare blind,
i hunt the false horizon
for a gap without lines.

at loss for other resource, i take
deep breath - one - and hold
at that place
just before release, where
breathe waits
to decide.

every link in this chain is heavy, but
weak. still, so convincing. it would fall
like loose change at my feet, if i could just
quit believing.

no fog on the mirror obscures my face
when breath’s held.
just hold. not a sound,
hold and listen - it is there. i await
its decision.

one finger for commitment, one to accuse,
and the one in between
all pointed at me - traced back to the same hand,
woven up like a vine, shaping
denial’s ridiculous heights.
an affirmative smile or adamant glower -
a top lip given place by the bottom
turned up, drawn flat, pulled open.

deep ache, i cannot touch or name -
it’s mine ,but it’s origin came long before me -
not of my body but part of my story.
i don’t recognize my self in this grief.
this is not amnesia, nothing’s been forgotten.
what good’s a jury of my peers if
the jury is the thief?
i’m most judgmental of judgment.

still. my heart judges … nothing.
vulnerable, but immune
to misunderstanding. it grows
large, but silent. held breath,
shed garment and somewhere, sans overcoat,
feels him exposed. he is there.
i would free him in one breath
from the cold.

Lyrics for Numb

Don't move don't talk out of time
Don't think, don't worry
everything's just fine.
-Just fine.

Don't grab, don't clutch
Don't hope for too much
Don't breathe don't achieve
Don't grieve without leave

Don't check just balance
on the fence Don't answer don't
ask don't try and make sense

Don't whisper don't talk don't run
if you can walk don't cheat compete don't
miss the one beat

Don't travel by train don't eat don't spill
don't piss in the drain don't make a will

Don't fill out any forms don't compensate don't
cower don't crawl don't come
around late

Don't hover at the gate

Don't take it on board don't fall
on your sword just play another chord if
you feel you're getting bored

I feel numb
I feel numb
Too much is not enough

Don't change your brand don't listen
to the band don't gape don't ape don't
change your shape

Have another grape

Don't plead don't bridle don't shackle
don't grind
don't curve don't swerve

Lie die serve

Don't theorize realize polarize
chance dance dismiss

apologize

don't spy don't lie don't try
imply detain explain
start again

Don't triumph don't coax don't cling don't
freak peak don't leak don't speak

don't project don't connect.
Protect
don't expect.
Suggest

Don't struggle don't jerk don't
collar don't work don't wish don't fish
don't teach don't reach

Don't borrow don't break don't
fence don't steal don't pass don't press
don't fry don't feel

Don't touch don't dive don't suffer
don't rhyme
don't fantasize
don't rise don't lie

DON'T PROJECT DON'T CONNECT
PROTECT
DON'T EXPECT
SUGGEST

i feel numb

Numb U2

(...heart is)

A wingless bird walks the edge of
shadow dropped down from a cloud.
His hurt elegance will shape the sky.
A wing disembodied, aloft and inspired
burns its image through my eyes. All I can see now
is half flight in the half light. Waking
to the wind crossing the rim of a careless night and
knocking the moon loose from its root.
It withers and falls, from and with
grace. A perfect fruit, never too ripe
and you needn’t bite,
to taste.

I keep to this street until
one of us ends. My address will not
go home (is where the … you know). A number, a name,
a code, returned to a sender
that also moved.

A name not lent to sound but taken shape and deep internally.
One softening key repeats as form itself: a form of speech --
skeletal, multilingual, calling open entire cities in me swinging
on their hinges. Past one helpless threshold, someone’s typing
while it rains. I can feel my eyes rising out of
brushed on paint. Art is in the making -- a still damp portrait.
There will not be a finished product.

There’s a door that cannot answer, it was left
UN-named. And a door without sure closure.
It’s without a lock. Ever interrupted, ever passing
through and through you, these two
become the same.

This landscape is best read slowly.
The growing season here, notable for its absence of color.
Some leaves turn black once they learn to fly
and their songs
rest gently on few ears. The bones of trees lie thick
across winter’s first hour. Their music doesn’t wait
on the warmth of the sun, but makes its own
beneath cold skin.

No leaves or roots belong to me.
My stripped spine‘s made of steam and
the forest knows this.
Autumn rises -- a thick flock lifts
in one swift movement
sent off in collective response
to my memory~

You thought an empty doorway
stood beside you. I stood there.
It was me. You felt discolored
stories: their definitions of me
that did not define, passing through,
and sought to shut out that breeze.
I was hinge-less with nothing to hold closed.
Not all doorways have doors. I passed only
into myself where you always, already waited.
You. Open fisted -- spilling autumn and
fragmented verses with room
to grow.

20/20

Generously educated by the one sound missing
from an otherwise perfect silence - I’ve acquired
absence. Sight sacrificed for a Vision and
I find, when I can, a way to climb
out of daytime into
Light - where I listen.

There, I who loves you
makes peace with your call
sent out long ago.
I can’t reach back to
touch our history any more
than I can escape its reach.
It touches me.
And I hear … now - finally and
too late to answer - your voice
as it was then. Mine,
in chronic echo,
mine, the ghost suspended and
haunting itself.

Your voice without want or
need of want -
Gallant in its humility,
air-born in its humanness,
ubiquitous as my heartbeat.

I tell myself:
“I’m no longer a child. So, if
the night’s made long
with loneliness, remember
your unimportance - how small
you are.”
That is why I love
the night. That is
why I love.

An answer, offered as a gift
unopened. A pile of still sealed letters
and my response, folded in and down
on itself - unknown to itself
in the un-spun galaxy
just past my breath.

Lyrics: Peter Murphy - Cuts You Up

I find you in the morning
After dreams of distant signs
You pour yourself over me
Like the sun through the blinds

You lift me up and get me out
Keep me walking but never shout
“Hold the secret close.” I hear you say

You know the way it goes about
It takes you in and spits you out
It spits you out when you desire
To conquer it, to feel you’re higher

To follow it you must be clean
With mistakes that you do mean
Move the heart, switch the pace
Look for what seems out of place.

On and on it goes
Calling like a distant wind
Through the zero hour I will walk
Cut the thick and break the thin

No sound to break, no moment clear
When all the doubts are crystal clear
Crashing hard into the secret wind

You know the way it twists and turns
Changing colors, spinning yarns
You know the way it leaves you dry
It cuts you up and takes you high

You know the way it’s painted gold
Is it honey? Is it gold?
You know the way it goes about
It takes you in, and spits you out.
Cuts you up …

You know the way it goes about
It takes you in and spits you out
It spits you out when you desire
To conquer it, to feel you’re higher

To follow it, you must be clean
With mistakes that you do mean
Move the heart, switch the pace
Look for what seems out of place
Cuts you up

It’s ok, it goes this way
The line is thin, it twists away
Cuts you up and spits you out
Keeps you walking but never shout

Peter Murphy - Cuts You Up

Big Ben strikes 12

Count Her Clock Why's

2/9/91



What is today?

I would like to ask that question and not be answered with a number. They’re out there - people you can ask, “What is … ?” They’ll just shrug and maybe smile in that sort of bemused way that lends itself to the acknowledgement of … no knowledge … only wonder.

For something to end, does it have to have a beginning? There’s a hesitation - but then, the obvious answer arises.

You do still have the choice to reject it, the obvious answer
that’s limited as a boxed-in day on a calendar.


It isn’t ‘Time’ though - is it? That we talk about at all, or measure? Measuring time - things we can understand - or think we can …

Measurement implies size. Size implies an ending. Those who never tried to tell me “how much” they loved me … they are perhaps the people who understood the word.

time in my eye - scratching there. Cruelty in it because time crushes ‘it’ out of us - though it’s not Time really - just our stupid misused, highly erroneous measurements of

It.
Is.

If you look up either of those words in the dictionary, neither has a very long definition. I’m not sure if that reflects how enormously language fails us - or our laziness - or fear - or lack of depth in care full thinking. Maybe it’s all of these and maybe they’re all the same thing at different angles.

I could accept a question mark. Anything more than that should be a lot more - and messy - and precarious. But the dictionary,
it is
not like that.

First time, then clocks to measure time, then
dollars to measure clocks. They have faces - that’s what we call them. Where are the eyes? The mouth?
i am a number there - a hand just brushed over me and neither of us
felt any thing.
Nothing.
i am
A number there and
You are late. I understand you gotta hurry but, by this time, doesn’t everyone
know better than to chase the white rabbit?
No good can possibly come from chasing time
while it tries to catch up
with itself.

When you retire, you’ll likely be given an expensive watch.
That’s customary. You can watch yourself with time on your hands running out of time flying or …
why? Why do they do that?

None of the clocks in my house are correct. I set them wrong or let them run down.
It’s sort of a promise I made to myself. I’m not late, I just …
Disagree. It’s a rudeness of mine I know.
I don’t like to be rude - it’s not my intent, so I really try not to ever be expected anywhere .
Makes it easier on all the mad hatter’s and white rabbits concerned … sort of.

If I were to dance down the street - even if I danced very well, just because I really needed to (which is a very good reason, I think).
I’d be in the way of ‘Hurry.’

How to measure worth

If it has a beginning,
We will end it.

We have imposed our mortal intellect in all its finitude on too much of eternity
by arguing about our limitlessness.

I don’t want to argue.
I just want someone to shrug and smile with.

Nine Inch Nails - Every Day Is Exactly The Same

Neighborhood Watch

2/3/91

It looks so much different
than it feels.

Down the hall a man is banging with a club.

Somewhere else, there’s a corpse of an angel rotting on a pedestal. I’m responsible. It’s not a crime. Down the hall that smells frantically like Lysol - or ammonia - a fresh coat everyday. And every day down the drain, drowning the roots of things up from the soil and growing in the sun and wetted with rain. We can’t see, but they've been through it all down there - been touched, effected - they shine for a time --may end up in dumps or sewers under the city again - because of us. It’s not a crime.

Something simple and good, still is that. Even if it’s covered in shit. Right? Under the city, along with the black ammonia water that’s left to make this hall smell yellow and harsh - too clean to be clean at all. It’s a cover up - and besides, I can feel the grubs in the walls.

Freshly scrubbed, I leave this place and go and go away from here - I think: I live in a Spark. Funny - it doesn’t always filter down. Above the art gallery, that’s where I live. Above the catered parties. I am going now - to unpack books or stand for artists - and the trains listen to me while they pass and

I am ok .

He’s been at it for a long time now. Down the hall … banging. I didn’t know anyone lived behind that old door. 4 big locks on it. The fragile staircase leading to it doesn‘t even look safe to walk on. It may be what holds this building up though.

He’s been at it for a long time. Whatever he’s trapped in has us both. Minutes and minutes and he‘s fallen into a steady harmless deadly rhythm - it seems to have forgotten why or doesn’t care anymore. He will never stop because he isn‘t even doing it. It’s just become part of the architecture. Sound waves - a continuum - you do not stop the thing: Habit. It’s lifeless, so it can not get tired. I wait after every bang for it to be the last. It is always just the first and there will be another. I hold my breath and open my door just a little. Shut it again, shaking. I’ll wait. He’ll quit. But he doesn’t. Someone else will do something. No one will. So I find him.

Locked in an apartment down the dark part of the hall - not even Lysol down here: “I’m not flipping out they were here 4 of them I had to get your attention somehow this our home sweetie I just want to protect it couldn’t quit til someone heard me they been out there I seen um through my peephole I been watchin I ain’t freakin I work all day I make 50 dollars an hour I ain’t freakin.”

There was no one there. No one had been there. But I knew what he meant and still believed him. I knew what he meant and I knew what he did. And, after the police came and left upon deciding he was a strung out nut (within less than 5 minutes), I knew why he went back to his apartment, locked the door, stared out his peephole, and picked up the club again.

Meg, Onions and Snow

[Poetry rises from weakness. Poets are flawed and weak and those who lack these particular shortcomings are punished. Shunned by beauty or god for lacking vision. Those who most need compassion are disallowed - due to their need. Can this be so?]


1/21/91

She has a picture of Jack Kerouac on her wall. I didn’t know that’s who it was or that she took it down here -- mural on the outside of an abandoned building -- which is where we are now but we can’t get in because they fenced it off. Meg comes down here (or she used to ... not so much any more) to take pictures. It was beautiful when it was new to her but now it’s old industrial garbage. Not the same and they are going to turn this into an amusement park with stores and astro turf. Steve told her, "Hell. If we have a Holocaust there will be a lot of ruins to walk around in." He makes art out of found objects but says he’ll never get rich doing it unless he finds a Picasso.

I know people live under the bridges. I’ve seen their beds and carts and world’s made out of boards and twisted rust and things that have forgotten what they were originally. Can something be found if it continues to reek of loss even as you possess it?

Once Meg’s friend found two bags of onions. She found one of them hanging on her door when she got home from work. They’d fallen off a freight train. Chris. That’s his name - Meg’s friend. Another poet who spends a lot of time under the bridges and he looks always a bit grubby but his wife is very rich. He loves Meg but can’t leave his wife. I knew better than to ask why - so he gives Meg found onions.

People sleep in the abandoned buildings. When it's winter, I suppose they could build small fires. Mostly all cement - fireproof, but they’re ugly - things that won’t burn are ugly. Kundera said ugly can be beautiful, but pretty never can.

And we have found that here. Please don’t ever tell me that I look pretty.

One night Meg and someone else went into one of the buildings. She said it was so dark she actually stepped on someone sleeping in there, "...but I don’t even think it woke them up.”

After snow, it’s different. The signs of the world below bridges are more subtle - or more pronounced - but with softer tones. You can see footprints - so many of them - travel logs, a symphony of dark commutes - staggered, pointless, turning back on themselves, driven on and protected by inane purpose, a fortress built by madness in a human mind. Networking. Lines from cart wheels meet and cross. A stand off, a missed appointment. A quiet odyssey that won’t fit in the words for a book to retell but I feel it.

An artist I know who makes bronze monuments for museums, and statues for wealthy people’s backyards told me that gypsies live beneath the streets in tunnels. The smoke that rises around manhole covers is from their opium dens. At first I liked that story. But walking under the bridge later looking at the tracks - I thought about it. I found it too pretty - his story - too pretty to ever be ugly - and then fireproof - and then, beautiful.

Meg, Oranges and Scars

1/16/91

Not all things that die are buried. If once it was a cultural practice, now the trash and the half-living and even the dead themselves scale or catch in chain link fences illegally, because no littering or entry are allowed - and this is what the poets have to speak about - so we are often just quiet. The blank pages go wide and deep.

He could not understand why I would let them have what I still needed just because it was inside what was worthless. My car. They took it -- towed it because it wasn’t working. There are corpses like this everywhere, but mine was near an unfortunate sign. Wrong place, wrong time. I told them they could just keep it. They told me I would have to pay them for storage. A ransom note that was meaningless to me. So much of what we fight for to keep alive is dead already. We’re surrounded by machines that make the system’s heartless heart beat - not a life support system … a life-less support. Our system.

But I don’t know how to explain this to him. He’s eating an orange while we talk and in this moment - when we talk - there’s nothing more beautiful than watching him do this. I don’t love the taste half as much as the labor - I’d rather watch someone else though. Their tiny cuts burning - the ones by their nails - their fingers, cold - juice - sticky trickle up to their elbows if it’s a good one - this is a good one. He puts the peel on his knee and asks if I want a section. I don’t. I just like to watch …

1-17-91

The gallery told Steve (Meg’s artist friend) not to use orange in his work. Really. He lives below me in a space beside the Spark Art Gallery. He’s good - if you like abstract and really, what else is there. Meg told me that most of the pictures she takes under the viaduct turn out orange-ish. She tells me this over soup that needs salt but I won’t ask for any because I still like it and my hands still hurt. I don't like the idea of salt. I’d fallen on them under the viaduct walking to work with Meg. By myself, I walk over the bridge. We went under. It was cold and I slipped on the water frozen across the railroad tracks. I stepped up and slipped back - my legs were gone. I fell hard and I crossed my hands across my chest to break the fall.

Meg asked, and I said “Yes I’m fine.” I felt like I was going to throw up. Dizzy. “Your hands are bleeding - the skin looks torn like crucifix holes. Those'll scar for sure.” Ah shit meg - hush - but I had to laugh and she asked if it was some martyr-type anti-war protest. I don't think I said anything to that. We’re walking again and I can’t make a fist. I can’t really move my fingers. Dogs are barking and Meg thinks people down here feed the dogs lead to make them mean. “I took pictures of the dog that guards that dump.” She points - “Even that one turned out orange.” I am listening. I bend down for a loose railroad spike but can barely pick it up. She gets it for me and puts it in my purse because I ask her to - ‘Ah. You found a doorstop.”
‘Nope. A nicknack.”

It isn’t good to get stuck inside your head like both Meg and I do sometimes. I know she does. I can feel. To get stuck there and how should I ... and what can I ... and it isn’t good to drink alone and lately I’ve been making a lot of stupid mistakes. It’s hard to believe that a locked door can change your life - but war - our war - nothing is different.

Meg asked me "Why did you come here - why would you want my old apartment? There are mice and bugs and the neighborhood and the smell and …."

"Cheap rent. Why did you move out?"

The disc jockey. The guy across the hall. She didn’t listen to music for three years because of him. Not just his station,
not any station -
not even a record or a tape.
And if a car pulled up beside her with its radio on, she would plug her ears. 3 years. We’re walking home back under the viaduct and I’m trying to imagine what he could have done to her and of course she won’t tell me - only what she did in response - only her response.

2/15/91

I don’t know how to talk about politics -- about war. The people who do are liars.

Lying defined by lacking bravery to ask just one more question - the one that would get inside a solid pseudo-answer and blow it to bits. When that destruction fails to occur, it manifests … elsewhere. We lie to ourselves, first - and then bury the incident. But that’s only the first grave.

So, I’m standing in front of the courthouse at 7 pm in February holding a candle with 20 other people I know from work and many more I don’t. We try to talk we try to be silent we try to pray all at the same time we are trying. Someone burns the hair on their hand trying to warm it over a candle. That smell of burning hair. A run of terror through me and I don’t know why and then, I do. And then more people come. Not many have candles. They’re supposed to have candles. This is a peace vigil. We light candles and call our congressmen. I thought that was the point.

A group of young men - boys - a group of boys come walking towards us. Unusually beautiful faces. My feet are wooden. The pain of cold has gone. I’m surrounded by visible breath. Mine rises to catch in my eyelashes. Mist lifting before losing its separate utility in a common haze. I’m looking through this at them: young, beautiful faces with chains around their necks holding dog tags and some of them look scared. There’s one though - he’s about my age but when I look at him he’s a child. I imagine him as my son. Odd thing to do. I can’t take my eyes off of him. A strange passion in his eyes, a wild woop of light in his face. He has an American flag on a dowel stick down the back of his shirt. It runs the length of his spine, though unnaturally unyielding and without the wholesome curves. It juts up so the flag is above the crown of his head, held in place by a rope tied around his forehead. The rope is secured a second time in a knot at the front of his throat. He’s lovely. Really. I watch him with an empty mind while he walks the perimeter of our circle with his friends. He walks with pride and more strength than I have ever felt when it’s this cold - this February. We make eye contact --. What would we say to each other? What we have in common: both of us want to believe in and do something right. I think neither of us have found a place for this. I’m with a bunch of people who can’t even remember to bring candles to a candlelight vigil. What would we say to each other. I don’t know how to talk about politics. He has a rope tied around his throat.

Cold War

1/24/91

I remember when I first heard the war had started. It was getting dark. Meg, Amanda and I were the only 3 left in the mailroom. That’s unusual isn’t it? Usually, by that time of night it’s only me. It was quiet. Usually the radio’s on. I was in the breakroom and when I came back Amanda handed me the phone. “It’s John … and Rick called. He wanted me to tell you the name of the war is Desert Storm. He said you’d understand.”

I can’t remember what John said. He called from work and we didn’t talk for long. Someone had turned Public Radio on. Serious low voices in constant stream. A man then a woman. No one paused to take a breath but they sounded very calm. I couldn’t hear the words. Amanda and Meg left soon after that.

Amanda hugged me before she left and I went right back to unpacking a box of books. I turned around and she and Meg were hugging by the exit - hard- for a long time and Meg hugged me too

before she left,

but the image of Amanda and Meg, there by the door, it stays and stays. I was thinking about Meg this morning. I worry about her. She hasn’t been to work for a few days. She crashes. I believe that’s what she does. Dark - crashes - gets as orange as her viaduct photos around the edges. I was thinking of holding her. People like that really need you to never let go. Of course, you have to. You have to and I was thinking of holding her and of her and Amanda. It was like they weren’t going to - let go that is - they just weren’t. Finally, and for once and for all of the embraces that ended before someone was ready for it to -- they were staying where they were. And even still, there they are. In my memory. When I’m 80 they’ll still be there in all their profundity - when I think of the war. Meg’s hold was the one that didn’t loosen. I’m sure of it.

Meg left a picture of 2 women - they looked Russian - dancing together. She left it in the closet (which was hers - and now mine) when she moved out. I asked her about it. She says she bought it for the frame. I hung it in the hall. Amanda’s been cold. She's just never been able to get warm since Sheldon left.
He sends her postcards from squares in Mexico.

A few nights after the war broke open, we were at the Wazee Supper Club and a man from Australia came up to us. We were talking about the war, which is of course the real reason Amanda has been cold, and 2 hours later they were making love in an alley. She tells me this the next morning as we’re working side by side. It was snowing last night. I can picture it. I can see the fire escape's and the purple skin, white rising breath and wet, black gravel.

She is so full and soft and clean as she tells me and she laughs and says, “Don’t try to picture it.”

And I laugh

How else do you make love to a foreigner when you’re lonely and cold. A bed would have been cheap. Purity is sometimes found only in the alleys. Other than underneath a viaduct, right now there’s no purer place in the world.

1/5/91

I am not entitled to these loves -- these lovers who pull the strands of hair from my face that they might see it better - that listen and admire. Uncommon callouses across the soft places of my mind. Numbness - mistaken as innocence, bland or pure. Sour can be pure, horror can … empty can.

Weathered wood staircase made from broken down crates. Ink words stamped here and there and that’s how you know it’s a staircase made of crates. The fire escape on The Spark where I live. The third stair panel from the bottom is made from a board that says “FRAGILE.“ I wore a black leather jacket and a dirty torn skirt with large work boots. My hair was dirty but my stockings were new and expensive. I covered my face and asked one of these men to take a picture of me standing by the staircase. He thought he understood. He thought it was artistic. I don’t think it was. For once.

1/8/91

Hardly any words in this place. Clean betrayal. No apologies and so right in our faces we can’t say much about it: “This is what I want - it’s what I’m going to do and this is how it will effect you.” Or maybe that last part hasn’t even been considered. We’re left to figure it out for ourselves. Clearly, I don’t understand the meaning of the word democracy or relationship or love. There are hardly any words available … At some point, I will have to find the word NO or ENOUGH or the actions that attach themselves to these words … in this place.

I can smell soot long gone into old red brick now brown and I can smell it in the thick light catching through the street lamps. Under the bridge a man is sorting through old boards - a pile of them - picking them up one at a time, then tossing them aside … as if he is looking for the perfect board -- a particular board. As if he could find something there worth keeping. At first, I hear the noise of the boards. It is a far away noise - but there he is. He doesn’t move as if he’s tired … or crazy or caring or cold - I am all of these things and I want to slow down and watch myself absent in his life. I wonder if he’s ever said NO or ENOUGH. Maybe he did and this is what’s become of him.

It’s dark and I’m a little scared. If I intrude on him, he’ll intrude on me. I’m walking home and I don’t know why. I’m not looking for perfect. I wouldn’t know the perfect board if it were given to me formally. I wouldn’t. But, there’s a large hefty trash bag stuck in the bare branches of that tree. I don’t remember that tree ever being green. That could bespeak my own loss - or maybe it’s dead. I wonder If that black bag will be there still by spring - flapping. It is sometimes a black living thing slowly struggling there forever - it will always be there - how would it get down - a strangling menace, pop art, my doppelganger, a phantom, a man, a big black bear.

Notebook Revisited 1

10/52 - Inability to Fly
Originally uploaded by LouiseKnight

December 21, 1990

I was in prison once. The guard refused to look at me.

In the cold, too far from anything but snow. Memory leaves thought behind when you're this cold -- becomes its own entity. A Remember of snow romanticized and crunching under my feet. Something different entirely than what surrounds me now. I can still hear it … crunching … but it's too late. My skin is frozen. My skin is wood. My skin is gone. The only thing that survives this is the essence of ice itself … is that what it takes to survive? Or is that what death itself will be - messages of frost from my mother - my ancestors - myself when I was six.

January 4, 1991

Behave as if my smile is enough … as if you believe I really mean the words I say. I finally grow silent. The light moves so fat and fast in front of mindless metal and there are some people around here that believe so much in what they think - they spray paint their words on dirty cardboard - or they put themselves up high, turn their back to you and expect that you’ll listen to their head for two hours. Don’t care if you are still there when they turn back around. Know you will be. Don’t care. Not Really. They KNOW they are right.

I think maybe they can see me up here - whatever I used to hide in a basement is on a pedestal. I hope I don’t get a lot of visitors. I’m still in prison after all. The guard won’t stop them but the guard still wouldn’t like it … too many visitors ... too much light. The sentence just keeps growing longer - I can feel it - a writer’s sentence to the sentence - no rehabilitation for the run-on. Shallow. Said before. Still unsaid. Maybe if I keep the heat low - stay cold - watch the lights from my window as it darkens - lights that can never hurt me unless I understand them.

viaduct notebook

racing the earth
Originally uploaded by hawkinsjosh

The following excerpts are from a journal that’s about 20 years old. One of the few that’s in an actual Blank Book rather than a simple spiral notebook, so it stands out. It also stands out for its place in Time - its time - my time. I was living over an art studio - The Spark. It was just across the 20th Street Viaduct. Cross that and you’d be right by Union Station -- not far from where I worked in a bookstore warehouse and too, the Art Student’s League - a handful of blocks farther into the city. This area had not yet been metamorphosed through redevelopment projects. It’s unrecognizable now from the place I knew. Most people would probably say that’s for the better and it’s much improved. I don’t really feel that way.

I was going to school and had a lot of interesting, thoughtful and creative people in my life. I tend to remember that time so ... fondly/idealized. Everything was just right. Striking then, the tone of this journal. Fairly dark (if that’s the word?). Something hurt and even a bit angry's conveyed . I don’t remember really feeling that. Something comes a cross a bit scared and …cynical ??? Not sure how to peg it. Such things don’t and haven’t really ever - felt/feel like a component of my constitution. I wonder that I perhaps tackled those shadows and darker forms - my “Hyde” side - using language - with so much upfront-ness … a certain aggressiveness, even - and in so doing was able to keep these aspects from really weaving their way into the pattern of my perspective or stance. I don’t know.

There’s a lack of artistry and disorder to the words that make them very ... artistic and clear to me as I read it now (of course). So obviously ironic that it isn’t at all. Some other author - vaguely familiar. What “she” says hits me pretty hard, sometimes. Talking about the people she works with and for - the booksellers and artists - and the strangers - and men - and herself - through metaphor or more direct narrative - she isn’t though … she’s not really talking about any of it. Just moving through herself - looking, I think. She’s only around twenty years old, after all. I shake my head at her - but still keep reading . So, I think I’ll be revisiting this journal for awhile here. Posting excerpts “as is” - keeping my sticky little editor that wants to change or add just a word or two - out of it. I think she has something to offer. I’m just unclear as to what that is right now.

So. Stay tuned.

Fireflies-Owl City music video w/ lyrics

My son "gave" me this song. Well aware of my unusual sleeping patterns, he thought of me when he heard it. He also told me that he tried not too like it (but failed), because it's almost too mainstream teeny bopper for his taste ...

I agree - and like it very, very much too.

being a shadow
Originally uploaded by Atomic Citrocity

Love has naught to do with
the here and now.

If I move into myself and keep going,
to my core then,
keep going,
deeper and
stepping back and back
from the back step,
will I go forever
in this moment, in infinity
or will I come out on The Other Side
and find that side
is you?

What IS in that looking glass,
Alice?

I disperse;
vibrating particles,
late, late left on television,
off the air
for the night,
someone in restless sleep
nearby, i’ve become
a swarm of fireflies.
Their ghosts, at least
...a hapless inversion.

I’ve no desire to return.

An angel of death,
an angel of life,
it’s difficult to tell
one from the other
much of the time.
And there is yet another:
The One that comes in need.
What you offer to assuage
his desperation,
saves you -

if you offer.

Love is not darkness,
not light, i don’t think, not
Something Named or
placed in space,
not timed, and certainly not
certain - nor a
gamble with an edge
or angle.

Not what you’d expect.
The Third Angel.

seasonal decor

liquid trances
Originally uploaded by owlgardens

a color,
a place to write,
slate with one side
that has no other. in me
- too clean for its off hue.
misled through fog off
track, off blue, green,

grey crumpled sheet of noise.
a crushing weight to fill space .
the emptied reserve where
desire served, where passion met in its garden
of projection and mixed messages,
in humanness, in rare finds and moments
made precious
as gifts.
a sight,
a second glance.

i am grieving, aren’t i?
a question, yes.
value exponential
when shared, so why?
you are not by my side.
you are in me, you are covetous
and covert and hidden
and unaware.

gentle arc and lift of a ball cast out to render
projected grace
from a swivel-lever wrist.
a temporal reach towards permanent beauty,
if only for a moment
unnoticed. saved by me - too flawed and stubborn
and beaten and
human to justly convey what presses against my heart.

It’s everywhere and then again, between these - each
and all extremes. it rises from the crooked dreams
of underground roots, gnarled tight like arthritic fists
pounding against frozen winter soil ‘til at last,
the earth can no longer ignore them.
appealing to the sun - fie on groundhogs -
blind them all - let winter be done and let shadows fall
like ticker tape.

if i could be eternally
brave and explosively
green and walk
out the door
and walk out
the door and walk
out the door … but here but
here diffused through oxygen -
my dreams - breathed in and used.
let out unrealized, in toxic sighs.
out of date, decking the wrong season.
a strand of christmas light's
coax comfort from my window.
an early spring, again up late,
i watch the night
fall like slate.

hunting

sometimes i wish i had never met you. because then i could go to sleep at night not knowing there was someone like you out there.
Originally uploaded by {katie}

My evening’s are octagons.
wide angles enclosing each other,
suggesting ... but never delivering
an exit. in their semi-dark, i seek
totality -- perpetual upkeep
of my translucent surface,
my quieted brow un-furrowed,
left calm, just shy of focus.

A small, concise flame
without smoke-crease,
without thought -- not
thought less ... just quite
different: using my belly
and the mysterious presences
in my chest.

Semi-folded, demi-
clutter collects beyond
duality. feature without
Face without feature peopled with
un-morbid ghosts and comfortable haunting.
your scent before it took on
so much of my own.

Learning to recognize myself
as something more than the place
where you are now absent
or the place that you were before, or
a place in waiting for some other arrival.

I've been my own rival.
jealous of an ideal held
as my better self
seen and felt so clearly,
yet polarized and far.
ever still within, however distilled
and thinned by the fact of
my own silhouette.

Trance Fixed Daze

Ferris Wheel
Originally uploaded by Andrew Curtis

Slackened limbs, heightened senses. A little weak but there’s a strange strength in that … isn’t there? Feeling so much while somewhat defenseless. A bravery to simple consciousness. Sleep always so close; held just at bay. I want to - and yet

I put off reaching for it. Which frightens me more - my dreams or consciousness? Which am I resisting when I resist?

Arduous eye movement across the surface of almost. Almost. Sort of but not quite failure or success. I fall short and shy in defining either of those with my life. Almost. Not quite. Feeling everything a little bit more in a tired body a tired body - lengthening space between shoulder blades - my collar bone bows like a bent crown crooked across my heart. The odd numbered lobes of my lungs put wind behind my sail-less bones - bone a bit more pronounced. The whole form pronouncing - speaking - saying something - shaking a little in the communication. The words - out between nerves like the electrical-hot charged fluid carrying messages there. Most aware of heeding those directives when it’s hardest to. Obedience to the involuntary flow of my own body is not obedience. I do not choose or submit. I am helplessly alive. My breath chooses me.

It makes sense that certain people fall in love with ruins. After the music, I could sit here in silence all day. I can’t see out the window because I’ve hung a bamboo curtain there. Between each stick, light squeezes through like a cat gone boneless and sleek for a tight escape. From where to where and why in my direction does the light escape ? From what? I stare at it until it begins to flash with that strange wavering energy of weakness. Optical illusion. The flashing or me. My eyes play tricks. I am their toy.

I am wanting to absorb it - the wavelength's gnashing - I will have to if I am to get anywhere today.

No Thing 2 +

Video - Autoportrait A
Originally uploaded by Neal Romanek

a fine-lined rumor -
a legend,
scaled back,
measured within,
in difference,
inundated,
in attendance.
implicit - the neediness
in storytellers.
telling wants audience.
i listen
and too, i myself tell into
impassive space where
unnamed emotion
stakes its claim.

territorial wealth of sorrow,
emptiness hoarded
and hoarding more
of itself, like a great fire beast
wrapping its wings round its jewels
in sleep.
bereft.

wrung out,
the sponge.
your hands,
like mine,
purple from
cold. cold as white
river water, but the
water’s change color as
you have and I
have. is that bad?

name one thing one
thing that doesn’t chameleon
or shift shape at least
on occasion -anything?
yes.
names.
there are. Yes.
not the same as constants though,
not the same as …
Sameness.

still, not enough is enough
to go around. the size of a fist,
just about … and spongy too.
- the human heart absorbs all ever
changing water’s someone else
wrings out.

visceral and delicate,
the shock simplicity,
the effortlessness of your colors
amidst a grey world,
dry and curling at the edges.

which body
of water
do i dream of?
you tell me.
lead me there to where i am
already. stream after stream, everything
branches - thought event inner working
nerves-electric information veins and valves
and oxygen -
all tracing back
to the heart.
tie in there.
tie in tight
to the trustiest limb
- something breaks down …
the rope, the branch,
momentum itself grows
tired.

on simple days when the air goes dull and dumb,
much is brewing on the other side
of opaque. lifted high, she looks like
an overdue mother, heaven does.
an undersized egg held up to a light -
something winged inside
a cliché butterfly wing.
deliberate, intricate veins.
all you have to do
is fill in the lines
and you can make
any word
you want.

or need,

if you’re telling a story.

silence then, settles into me.
the unasked,
the questioning left
as is, undisturbed
by words.
i’m riding this one out.
why? branching
Y i don’t know Y i’m
trying to y Y Y
believe Y build or cast or
hold the golden thread i am
poetry versus versing
… something something
sleeping in me. I misunderstand
the words. i am,
but i am, yes, just.
… the language .

Night Sounds

Night Sounds
Originally uploaded by RootsWorld.com (aka Cliff)

Bone deep.
Deep time
embedded in
each breath.
Each heart, measured out,
accounting and counting for and from
its first beat - pulse - thrum.
Aware of how many, how
many more to go, go, going …
It already knows - the heart
flowing, gone, wearing down lasting
until the last
Breath.

I listened to yours,
sometimes, my head
against your chest -
Stark still and rapt in sorrow
a bit, for the truth
in it all and the bright bliss as well.
The commingled, timeless limits in mortality …
My heart-swell. I would,
I would have given
to you in handfuls
flowing over, my moments, my
time to extend yours.

Bone time
deep bone stone-resistant
mineral rich
and slow to return
to dust. Stunningly suspended,
it is enough for me
to know you still
breathe - the world would be less
for me to find you gone,
even as you’re gone from me.
Somewhere, you are
counting down
bone deep.