Wednesday, March 5, 2014

untitled 1

/
There is a distinct separation where my heart belongs. A chested falling, a sliver moon packed in flesh. I fill up with levels of blue, the darkest settling around my toes like silt on the bottom of a lake. When I cry, the silt is stirred, I shake like a snow globe. Snow globe’s do not shake of their own volition. This means: I am acted upon but do not act. This is, of course, not true.

Monday, January 27, 2014

EmBodyIng poetics

emBodying
bod-y [bod-ee] : one. the physical structure of animal or plant, living or dead. two. a corpse, carcass. three. the trunk or main mass of something.

i have brought these limbs to you,
to show you the outline       of my nation’s corpse,
to        remind you   that this tissue           shows you a map of every place i have ever been to.
we are all central or main parts of something.

Embodying
em- prefix- used to form verbs (action) from adjectives and nouns (things and carcasses)
embryonic, growing myself inside of me again :     a promise of        fingernails                 and eyelashes and sensemaking                        from the sirens outside our shared window       pane.
we made a promise to        smell like many efforts, to smile after many failures,   to come close but never touch,
            we are coming and moving towards the central or main part of a personbeingthing.

embodyIng
ing / a native english suffix (not to be confused with suffering) meaning “one the kind of” or “one decended from”


lend my weight to the other letters of an            alphabet – we rationalize    our etymology with            ignorance of the             elements.       our first fundamental process is the art   of process itself.

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

begging the bees

                    quivering arrows inch → → → → → → across the cage. caterpillars toeing the
lime rimmed                     salt encrusted              Oh                     of the
goblet.

drop the gauntlet. they have less aim than we
                                                                   have purpose for
                                                                                               maiming
                                                                        saving graces
                                                                                             for before

the Dinner's folded napkin dabs the corners of
                                                                   drunk                   mothereyes

the replicated disguise                 that licks the spine

of every Encyclopedia Britannica from one

                                                                 to

                                                                       thirty-two.
crunching molars between numbers,
                                                     allow context to define
the
       angle
                 of
           the
sexton

                                                                 the
                                                                point
                                                          of the piston
                 imagine
                     the pain
                         of plant stamen

so                         much stamina                          in pollen.
 
                in vitro growing
                                                                                       but no showing

                                                                     how for we foul
                 f a l l
                         i n g                                                                          before pleading


                                  for Korsakov and his bees.

Monday, February 18, 2013

consumere


i am consumed.
sucked into. pulled under. plastic over
ducked lips, eyelashes beneath
leather heals, knelt beside the trough that is
getting emptier because I
drink and drink and drink.

you are squandered.
knit together with floss that was
pre-clipped for use before
dentist’s offices smelled like
insurance’s breath.

we are wasted,
not wasting away.
crumbling like the kneecaps
of dali’s elephants eroded
by the dynamic duo of
decades and disappointment.

no, we are wasted
in the city licking peanutbutter
from where it fell
on pavement because that is
the pattern we’ve created.

dents that clothes leave on skin
mean that maps are worth more than mountains,
plastic more than gold,
means that angles are better than spirals better than
angels better than dirt.

we have wasted circles
into squares stacked like
cartoon caterpillars, curious
to see how many bites you can
take out of the sky
before the moon notices.

Thursday, December 27, 2012

What is it to be clean? (Collaboration Piece)

-->
I am it.    
I am a map of skin covered lace        
I am something you may call a remembrance
Organs covered with the stretch of plant membrane
Of a mind once untangled—
It would be a shame to admire the
Not knowing
Picking up dismembered wisdoms   
The sewing of uncertainty into the brim of   
Beginning when I have confidence     
On how to arrive                        
When to leave                       
Remembering to begin again.
The séance of smiling and knowing that anything
Of for from by or related to the earth makes me smile that way
Eyes open, shoes on, I collect words
Strewn like old sea glass along the coastline.
And say that my mother suffers from the consequence of
Eyes closed— recall upon an image of the ocean at night
Reactions, sections and captions like empty words falling from
A body of stone carved mud,
This is the 4X4 compartment for the memory of vastness.

I am something that crawled out of a hole
Clattering on the floor that sounds like the consequence of silence
Plunged into warm water
Unknown, incalculable, impossibly small, incredibly profound
A bathtub.
She held me and promised only joy
Ranging from birth to death, the caress of a
A lie that drips chocolate so you lick and lick and lick.
Cloudy morning tongue across my sleepy cheeks
Mother was the most beautiful
She hangglides in the nude and laughs a lot
Awaken with the ache in my center that extends because
I don’t know how to organize these recipes for disaster
Pointing and smiling at the way we all strain to see.


the plaster from the ceiling falls when you walk above me
You (I) are (am) responsible
filling the birds nest of my hair with
the way she scrubbed and scrubbed
pieces of a whole that form significance
Hands covered in soap
together, I am the map of
plantlace membrane pulled skintight over mouth nose ears face
and I love to disintegrate.
What is it to be clean?


-The Shutter Muse (special thanks to my friend Sophia for doing a cut-up piece with me. this work is as much hers as mine.)

Wednesday, December 5, 2012

The Edge



There is an edge within me.

I saw it once two Decembers ago
When my lips were blue and my fingernails
Were hardened by cold, purple like ink stains on warped wooden desktop.

The edge was cold, but maybe it was just winter.

The edge was

The edge was

The edge was like the broken record of a tinny memory.
Like ducks circling your temples, bobbling up
and down like thought balloons, caught balloons secured by
the string of a kite
Slip the knot between forefinger and thumb to pull tight with numb limbs and lips but not from
Novocain, not cocaine, feeling the membrane of the
Parchment layers, onionskin eyelids,
If you cut them off you could pin them like butterfly wings.

Hold them up to the sun and admire the glow
Admire the different perspective
A collective of things that can’t shed any more tears.

The edge wasn’t warm, but as long as you stayed on your side (the side you started on) the edge was comfortable.

The edge was not a ledge for you to dangle your feet over, shoes dripping off the toes of feet, secure in the fact that it would take more than a passing breeze for you to try your hand at flying.

The edge was for remembering embers burning
Smoldering coals of bonfire I was conned
Into pretending nothing was wrong when we sat holding hands
My arm, a leash, connected to my heart which
I imagined
Would stop beating with your leaving,
if I stuck my hand through the ribcage, extracted the organ, would it feel like
anything? What would nothing feel like?

The edge is walking, inching towards dark abyss, cliff, gully, chasm, valley, volcanic

rock bottom and sinking without stopping you
                                                                                                Leap.

The edge is loving            leaving             begging            pleading            following             
hollowing out the inside of your cheek with teeth biting,
blood filling mouth
with a good source of irony, not knowing
what you’ll find
when you leap.

When you finally leapt, wept last tear, call it fear,
            The cold empties you pulling down
And sometimes your wings unfold, fully grown, you realize despite the cold
Your feathers needed airing out, the wind feels
Right to lick your cheeks, you might remember
How to speak clearly like the song of birds, to hear the meaning, not the words

But
Sometimes
            The wind is strong as you leap and when your body quakes
Your wings are not unfurled to fly, they aren’t strong enough to hold your weight,
            So they break.


The edge is after broken too, the unspoken, the tokens of kindness and wisdom, given to you like change from strangers, warding off danger with nothing but the will to smile still
            Beyond the hope of dodging consequence or one last dance or tragedy brought by happenstance.

The only thing I’ll say to you when standing on the edge poised, arms outstretched, lines of uncertainty
Call it fear of failing
Fear of falling
Fear of flailing
Fear of lies
Fear of flying, I’m dying to tell you
            That the only thing worse than the fall,
                        Is doing nothing at all.

Sunday, October 14, 2012

To Ghost and To Be Ghosted

-->

To ghost is to release your self like tar from lungs
out into the universe like a cloud unraveling from the night sky.
To put on the jacket of the invisible man, flipping up the collar to shield yourself from the whistling of the wind through
His two front teeth… Stepping out into the street
and feeling the grit
of gravel beneath your feet, keeping your eyes
at least two feet in front of you so that you don’t
miss the tiny landscapes and roadside attractions
between your toes: a shriveled worm, a half dollar coin, a ring
from a vending machine, broken glass that looks licked smoothed
by the desert and at least 5 dried flowers dropped from the diary
of a young girl who walked along this path not 15 minutes before you.

            To ghost is to guess how far away the ground is and then to leap,
            Keeping in mind that if you die, no one will remember your
            Smile or the sweetness of your shampoo that lingers like
            The smell of rain. Feel the disdain
            When you land with a resounding shock—the reverberations
            Rattle your molars into the back of your mouth,
            Swallowing them despite yourself, like when you learned
            To stomach the smell of flesh, the feel of it on your tongue
            The fleeing of life from another being
            Hoping their soul made it somewhere after its body was processed
            Compressed into shapes that we might find appetizing
Dodging our instincts to dominate our inner beast
Deepening the divide between our spirits and our minds.

            To be ghosted is to stand behind her, listening to the way
            Her fingernails sang over the grooves of vinyl,
            Tiny mountain ranges like the silhouette of her spine.
            It was divine to run my tongue along the topography of
Her body, I remember
Her cool salty taste like the sea in December and the gravel cutting
into my palms like
            The night we locked ourselves out of her brother’s apartment so I
            Stripped my shirt off, slipping it around my hand before
            Punching it through the glass window, feeling the crunch of
            My knuckles on impact. Red ribbons of pain cinching around
            My wrists like zipties cutting off the circulation, the sensation of
            My body thrust into the cop car and I could hear her sobs, wracking
            As I plead for someone to help her, hold her and simultaneously searching
For something to thrust into my eye socket,
            To hear the white noise, feel the static, dissipate this sensation
            Anticipating the return of musical memory, humming the melody into my
            Skeleton, vibrating my bones so I can remember
            Her breath in tune to the music, her hips
            Swaying somewhere between bass and vocals in a rhythm you can
            See but not hear, having the words form in my mouth
            And letting them fall flat, watching her move with the sway of
            An African belly dancer, cigarette smoke hanging around her limbs
            Like the fog caressing the peaks
            Of a mourning mountain.