SCRATCH PAPER

1). '09

i was a deep idea in an aging cloud.
licked by its rough charge then dismissed,
wingless, damp and wanting. conducting
electricity: sculpted without rehearsal,
without error or forethought.

a liquid lightening rod fighting
fire with water. the victor's title
caught by currents - flipping the breaker,
waved away. a quiet thread of oxygen
run through to full fill a heart
given shape by forces informing
weather, accumulative and dissipating.
structureless, restructured,
buttressed by compassion and anguish -
by inertia ... grace. faceless
til fashioned just past horizon,
itself a temporal, yet distinct face.


2). '94

If you're there, beyond
the conglomeration of my memory
and imagination, in outreach
I'm here, immobilized and
calling. Inscriptions between
fibers of muscle and dream,
definition - the details
beyond language enunciated
through flesh and the unseen.

canonize the unknown,
balance on a para-conscious rim.
Skim the surface, push
the depths beyond their deepness,
round the curve so it finds a way
back to itself. bend the straight bar
so it touches end to end it. It takes
all my strength and they meet but
for an instant, then return
to distance. Still, the effort
hangs mid air, unable to explain itself,
detached from explanation's strife
and worth it.

3). '07

Somewhere, the idea of perfection
humbles me, reflecting my flaws
so perfectly in tact and tactile.
my soul amorphous and ragged
and whole.

4). '10

between every firing machine my
wet heart falls.
my acts of activism form quietly.
tired of saying saying
speech talk talking beliefs amidst
sparcity of those so few who simply
live them and let speak speechless
for itself and i ask the empty air for
you where are
you i will pull you
from dream across
reality's horizon if
that boundary exists
i'm uncertain where
it lies and rises
and wavers like the shade
that takes on shape
and becomes shadow
in motion slow
across the speed of
light broken into
moments unbroken and singular
rolling over and
pulling me in while
poured from form
and spreading like milk

slight lifting

through gentle vehemence, i guard
my innocence. without it, i'd not be
able to speak so freely within the
inarticulate. a seizing haze. imagine me
into existence against time's tyranny
and obdurate dogma. make me real
in ways i fail to realize for myself.
imagine my secret moments, my private flux
through surplus and deficit of spirit.
my ordinary instant awash in music, dancing
unconscious, self consciously brooding, falling
in love, aching
across morning. Now
imagine all this
taken, turned to dust,
suspended for a moment
in the sun
filtered
through glass,
then caught -
dispersed
across
borrowed breath.

nothing except memory's smooth gasp
steadied void, bereft rippling energy
coiled in strife. a blade that blinds but
does not cut as it's struck by dusk's
last subdued brilliance, muted plume
in repose. sorrow's tender rituals:
seeking mirrors through other's lives,
made new through empathy, kept moist in green's irony,
connoting the growth of decay's perrenial youth.

recurring dream: the floor caves in
to reveal an unfinished basement
without stairs to escape either way -
many huge lions. a ragged ledge;
just enough room to balance.
barely enough is still enough.

all i need, a code word, a name i can't pronounce,
secret alliance, a scrawled message left
beneath a magnet
waiting for one compass
to respond.

i have forgotten the season's names. i will not call them.
freed from dread, i learn to forgive them.
extended and quiet, grounded in the beginning where
there is no word and no
misunderstanding.

unnamed season.
burnished tapestry, emptying its reluctance
towards autumnal aging.
branches push back sky until the view's left
empty. i don't want to see for miles. i want
vision obscured by color - leaves braiding across
cold winds lending illusions
of warmth. old cloth, strands
of light dripping through
gaps between stitches,
illuminating past's inherited
futures, immune to destiny.

elemental. i feel Air below my rib cage answering
Water's repetitive longing - waves within my
hip bowl spilling. My shoulders pour back;
my heart rolls open. stability glows, contracted between
always and always, unlike any other.

voice in my silence, urgency nested
in stained, buckling pages kept boxed
and forgotten. many of them many of
them filled tight and buoyant:
wound springs collectively
shut down and wait for length,
afforded through a gaze
moving; interpretation takes me in,
transforms towards rebirth the countless
mini-deaths i could not save.

i'll bring the sea with
sky cradled across it - mirroring
a mirror - draping shore, like a woman's arm;
resting branch round the shoulder of a man
or boy who sleeps or moves within
her comfort; her strength, dormant and coiled
in waiting, should he
need it to keep him
from falling.

mute ant agony (title does not at all fit but made me laugh)

find the calm i will
pull the sky down with the
crook of my finger so you can
touch the stars as we
lay here.

restless birds rise from
standing water in a
blurred cone upward pulled toward
mild infinite and the gravity
of every heavenly body above me and
you and you.

me:

my lips kept closed, my tongue
pressed hard against the high curve
of my mouth to hold back words.
i shut my eyes; your glow still
winds through and turns inside lids
orange and blue.

the habit of scent: i sleep within
memory's folds, breathing
your skin; another time line abandoned
for spirals and shape-nameless
trajectories. time with legs and wings,
a dragonfly moving through places
before this life's sleep and dreams,
turning someone like me into almost like
me, into dreams and turns within folds of
a scent recalled. blankets and calls
remembering what i cannot possibly
remember: the color of pumpkins and deep
waters imprinted on my soul, my spirited
depths draw deeper with each day
more permanent, with each day more
permanent than i will ever be someone like
me almost
like me.

mightier than the sword

textureless and cool,
or crushed-tin-jagged. either way,
his attention -
relentless.

wrapped in a shield of glass, 360.
both protected and surrounded by the enemy -
a single crack
would be enough - just a matter of time
splintering.

a slipping verse - slow - motion - lapse -
falling. i watch it
snap in half;
ends clipped shorter,
no longer
fit back together.
the words invert like a mean star's collapse
into its own pull heavy and i drop into its cold
mouth yawning. breathing in never out, ice
inhaling itself, moving the blood from my hands
until winter contracts or expands its domain -
it cannot do both. it does not care
which it does.

i see every word he speaks at
me, written, not typed - child-like
long hand, one at a time, floating just
off the surface of my eyes,
moving with my vision, bloating
then constricted.

the word YOU is in large letters - or other names
he calls me, except my name, which is very small
and very seldom. the words accumulate, take on
the appearance of chain link or netting.
an oily snare: nylon ink sinking its teeth into
the space before my eyes, permanent and worn
across the tender place beneath my breastbone:
my solar panel where i store old summer and
brace for his long winter; cold needle
tattoo inscribed against my will and during paralysis.
i am not paralyzed, though there are places
gone numb, i am not paralyzed
and i do try
to resist,
for a while ...
at least,
at first.

my words: soap bubbles: wet, colors, reflect - there and rising, then
and gone. placed inside them, i might lift off, catch an upslope and go.
i am too light. light is too slow to hold me
and i lose myself - enmeshed
and being trapped becomes
so easy.

bubbles form reform clean
water and air. 'hope,' i want
to tell him, so i dive deep
and i see and i feel
everything.
i speak
quickly and my voice rises, falls in memory, in
tidal premonition - i ride them all. small
and light and desperate - these words
i have caught
one by one,
won by wanting
communion enough to
risk and return.

words kept salted when they could not be found fresh.
words kept honest when they could not be found clean.
words gone deeper, far out of reach.
blood vessels bursting, a clear humming
in my head - striving to strike out of the dumb,
the eloquent.

take these: i will feed them to you, then speak to me
- no talking - loosen your tongue, scarf in the wind.
what beautiful
things we might say
if we were free from
speaking redundant
assumption across
the surface.

there is a moment - a night energy waking
within falling veils of sleep where hurt
is forgotten. i do not remember where
the pain is or why. a second of second
consciousness that is clarity emptied,
that is me without memory or experience.
animal warmth dissolves darkness.
darkness remains, but
altered and bending
toward Being: a stem bowed
with the weight
of stranded
rain that will ultimately give it strength
still yielding.
what can grow, will.
that includes us.

however however however but

the grey city and its heart lost to appetite and history,
it forces its way between vision and seeing - i hear the
roar of resentful energy and the misery under it - it comes
from far away. it saturates everything. the moment i move,
i become just one more noise, each to each locked off from union.

let the sun come, let my heart ache, let my raw sorrow drive me to break
sense into nonsense and swim where there is no surface - deliberate.
i will not come up for air for the air has been poisoned. i will breathe
a new substance.

the shadows of ruined towers fall hard on me - denser and more palpable
than the structures themselves. they swallow me; i am under
construction; a nocturnal anomaly shattering my own instinct
to sculpt an existence in the broad and endless day time, in its
grainy, harsh brightness.

portents from my otherness open in me - delirious, absurd
messages - unreadable - i am too fast, too soon. fissures spread
in the self and beasts climb out. other laws apply which i cannot
obey as i can't understand. i just see them
floating before my eyes
in child-like long hand.

sometimes i feel this way: moments
elongate the back of my heart opens flesh
compresses to a pinpoint beneath
touch a fingertip barely brushes
surface yet embraces
everything

ink runs low skips through my
words fading in out in rivulet let
up i am nowhere near done with broken
thoughts strewn together quick grope slowed
down to care full chosen
one word
at a
time some
times i feel this way: my spirit perplexed
by my gender my
soul genderless air and heart, steel
and fire wildly gentle a fistful of tender
nestled deep in kindled
need to
offer

3 Libras Lyrics - A Perfect Circle

Untitled Wave

1).

i will find words
that belong to you
and return them right
fully. i've have been looking, back
logging desire in my quiet
skin's candor - not asking
to be more than it is - as it is, it is
largely underestimated - a ceiling sealing gravity to its limit.
just passed the past, perhaps time exists only
in us and like god, needs our relics, our reverence, needs
our sentry's securing its edgelessness to each century,
sure as sorrow desires
my eyes and daydream sustains me.

2).

susceptible to self hypnosis;
likely to abandon ruthless monotony for what i create.
daydreaming. easy.
and so you are here
- immediate, transparent and yielding,
solid and fixed to distinct inked-in outlines,
all touch and tactile air rifts between us.
I feel where we aren't and my spirit goes flush
to heat the space where we are. your wet eyes
and dry throat soft, hoarse whisper made moist
when listened through, towards my long silence,
unfolded into more of itself.
barrenness - no questions to answer or answers,
questioned. no abbreviations or run on
sentenced-to-criticism. no witticisms
or humble apologies. no healing
hesitation - this is not convalescence: wounds,
unacknowledged and unwinding. dreams, smeared
together into blank space blocking slumber.
bad patterns exist in nature that we might
seek beauty, but this silence skips, repeats,
plays back, stares blank and unlooking.

3).

in a distant yard an alarm goes off:
broken chain, lost watch lies obscured
and loudly unheard by its owner
beyond earshot - does distance exist without movement?
she is still and far and lost to dawn,
with one hand around 20 sheets
- empty pages, while each voiceless vignette paces
the length of countless small acts waiting. waiting
and down-breaking by unbroken silence.

4).

a newspaper thud-bounces off steps into bushes.
it will rot in the fisters and serve good purpose.
a curtain is opened, but hung over stone wall - still,
light finds its way through blind effort.
an empty office with flourescent switches hitched off.
only now, with human absence, it feels human
and shadowy and soft and the desks hunch
like gentle sleeping beasts, except for one,
piled raw with books bent open while their owner deep
and distant falls far into further urgency.
alarming: the speed of apathy and gentle, unlaundered silence.
light years ahead of shut down, down, downloaded

add send save
cancel

retrieve
return

and delete.

Run-on Sentience

pacing the tight light that spills from
my finger tips and falls
before my feet. Toe to heel to kneeling,
my body bent in posture’s
supplicant to approach itself;
I approach to ask - as I feel it always speaking,
But do not always understand

body language.
Lift the slack and rise from my failings.
Understand me.
I am asking deep into your speech.
Arms wrap around my own shape
just holding on the brink
of comprehension.

~

I measure my dreams against what doubt will allow.
I measure my dreams in suspension - tip them
on their [not] this end up;
feel the content shift - mix against the
loose wrap between all that is their's and
so much that is too close,
a swelling eternity just a bit too far off.

My eyes open - such small muscle's control
the portal between two worlds
keeping both unaware - maybe - just barely -
so thoroughly protecting ‘reality‘ -
though we’re all just guessing
… really.

~

He considered me
juxtaposed to delicate bands of practical, practiced motion.
stagnant water; its lovely shade of green
from a distance - don’t move - stay right in this small ring of heroic
theatrics - when is it over merely when is it over more than
?

~

words align unlatch bead strand the only jewelry I will wear my naked throat the anti-emperor my armor my quiet unbreakable definition is just several words for one and each sublime and suddenly, we are speaking a language but he and I change the meanings they are changing already and have from the beginning and whatever I may have meant shape shifts in the arms of his dreams he hears he and I am speechless.

~

Breathing underwater without
interim - not in a series of breathe's -- a singular rhythm and
It does not come from me but is all
I am a pattern a junction an unabridged account and now
I am sighing and I am never able to catch my breath while life itself
has caught me and when I was four I stood up in a boat and some
balance larger than my own body’s took me I was deep in the water
for my size and found no fear there and found I could breathe
it was easy - one only need to not try.

Next, my father’s face:
concerned and scolding and I tried to tell him and he said
I hit my head but I don’t remember that.
He seemed not so impressed by my newly discovered
Secret Ability. He seemed
not to believe,
but I knew
- and I still know -
though I’ve never tried to breathe underwater again. I like it too much;
just knowing I can.

gestures

anchoring the unspoken to words
towards him - matching a rhythm,
my voice cadence shapes its
dance round the scent of his skin.

i am too delicate before time
and too protective of that which undoes me
slowly. he and I were all
in the timing.

i remember this man with large hands
and long Listening: he’d just let me
spill. he’d just let me search my own reflection,
trace the lines, follow them back to
deeper origins than a silhouette
might suggest.

conversations on the backs of napkins,
water rings slipped off the bottoms of cold glasses.
leftover condensation in our conversations;
we exchanged those. i still have mine and
elbows on the table … still there
in rapt attention. sometimes minding
your manners is very rude. sometimes rescuers
create their own victims. sometimes love is a wish
made and dropped down the well where we search
for ourselves, sharing loveless questions: do you -
will you - don’t you … answer - cloaked in
what one asks themselves with a good, silent Soul as witness.

napkins and glass rings and silence and
big hands directing wide arms
in closure behind by back while my heart
poured open. i was the bottle with
the corked-in message and the one who threw it long.
i was the island, i was the ocean - all this, and all
this we had in common.

he knew my story,
even the leak that
let the words turn
to clouds in
the water rising
like a storm around
our anchor.

Mach Apple Phi

Time built a city in me,
all abandoned buildings.
forest's spread behind their walls;
nobody believes me.

I recognize the warnings;
thoughts don’t come together.
presence blurs, snaps back, collapses,
slips the golden tether.

The time machine: my bone, my
breath, is barely held together,
spread through points of light and absence,
no clear line of travel.

I find myself behind who’s eyes?
unclear who’s even seeing.
a child with an ancient’s mind,
lost in apology - despairing
unanswered prayers, and fists held up
to heaven by someone else’s angered fear.
what god did they petition?
one of their own making, and one that said “No”
by inventing me.

A moment punctured, then next, and next
. . . procession past the watch hands;
little needles wound to wound, little
by little, mistrust deflates memory;
mist rusts even metal eventually.
no wonder fog comes over me;

i miss Wonder, deeply.

in my own time,
recall goes to a light
long wand waving through
unanswered questions,
perhaps because
i was not brave enough
to ask, i was not
Brave.

gone to thickly moated light,
iron ghosts press out against
the outer rims deep shadow;
slow stars and souls
skirt the false light of
lampposts, hung there by posse’s
formed to hunt down the formless, to
disembody darkness - with disembodied
mob mentality.

dusk and its followers sentenced to exile
by throngs of neon.

something rebels in reverent anarchy - - moves
to flood out lanterns and floodlights.
mystery steadied, withheld and held in tact,
that the dark hours, little by
little, might heal
themselves.

Lyrics for Destination -- The Church

Our instruments have no way of measuring this feeling
Can never cut below the floor, or penetrate the ceiling.
In the space between our houses, some bones have been discovered,
But our procession lurches on, as if we had recovered.

Draconian winter unforetold.
One solar day, suddenly you're old.
Your little envelope just makes me cold,
Makes destination start to unfold.

Our documents are useless, or forged beyond believing.
Page forty-seven is unsigned, I need it by this evening.
In the space between our cities, a storm is slowly forming.
Something eating up our days, I feel it every morning.
Destination, destination.

It's not a religion, it's just a technique.
It's just a way of making you speak.
Distance and speed have left us too weak,
And destination looks kind of bleak.

Our elements are burned out, our beasts have been mistreated.
I tell you it's the only way we'll get this road completed.
In the space between our bodies, the air has grown small fingers.
Just one caress, you're powerless, like all those clapped-out swingers.
Destination, destination.

The Church Live 1988 - Destination

These thoughts, voluptuous
and wholesome. This heart
runs a light line forward from its vertigo
to anchor in creation.

I’ve not outgrown make believe;
Long lingering in ideas not
as yet, made flesh. I imagine,
and all through my imagining,
a temperature that does not speak
to mercury.

Is it a huge emotion or small moment I will carry ever
with me - to find a Soul and safely shared
unspoken mantra - a few words to remind me of
Everything … call me to
just
love
more

what was left out, what fell down as the sky flipped over
restlessly, while I took my time drawing near and catching
what might have been dismissed as debris,
believing and speaking from there or just moving
from there
or just …

Just easy. How easy it is sometimes and I am so simple and simply and
sometimes the answer is just all about
loving, never mind the word. The word doesn’t go there,
but we
are there
already.

wet feathers

A feather across my skin,
memory of a man or maybe
just a dream bending over me, dreaming:
us, while we were off being
unconscious of sub-
consciousness

Hunger is an energy

A feather across my skin,
ribbon of water almost too hot and never
hot enough. filling the tub with ribbons for me;
he is fully clothed. i’m shivering,
listening to the sound of too much
music. can’t separate the tones while he is
rolling up his sleeves

Hunger is a need that wants
left alone

Feather floating beside me, catches my thigh,
melding to my skin.
we are flying or just
remembering. he is bending the dream over,
rolling up his sleeves. intent and tending
me like a simmering pan,
stirring -- soap through his hands
catches colors that aren’t even in the room.
quiet as a bubble, we’re not speaking. silence pops,
exploding, the colors go everywhere behind
my closed eyes and we,
he and i, are exposed
equally

Hunger ruined by first taste
and it can be a long wait
for its return

i have learned to stay hungry

The feather inside my skin,
sky inside it. he is stepping
across the horizon, pulling the hunger
with all its colors,
sleeves rolled down,
into the water

Not empty, the evacuated heart.
Something always stays behind --
goes down with the ship stark naked,
even with ice on both sides of the glass.

No one even tried to catch the bouquet.
From hand to hand the tray passes,
hand to mouth brought around, garland draped
down a long nights hunger, I fall
from loose lips,
crumbs for the rug,
swept under.

There is no room behind my eyes for their
outlook. All crows - and they are so
rude and loud and they shove to gather
and borrow my tongue in talk about
what is not
even really
there.

I carry this glass dream on my shoulder.
Please don’t let me stumble.
Have a prayer, half waiting,
I will fall and drowned like water drowning
in the fine shatter-pieces of my myself
no longer.

Running down the inside of a bell.
A lagging, lost tone. Unheard of,
the sky that calls for me and would
give everything,
has left everything,
has nothing to give
but space and that
is everything
I need.