Refuse/d words built into infinite forms of bodies. This collection is unedited; done in one sitting; sometimes daily, frequently infrequent.

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

tapping into-

There are fences, wires, electric
light fixtures and alarms;
invisible sound waves and
pulsing energies
that placate bodies,
our minds made useless
in the packing noise. 

at the museum

I am called Misko by
my dead mother like feathers
on a furtive animal-bird.

The kind that rolls in underbrush
like it can’t fly
but it can fly in a flapping beat.


Friday, October 21, 2011

borrowed

"The sands whispered, Be separate,
the stones taught me, Be hard.
I dance, for the joy of surviving,
on the edge of the road." ---Stanley Kunitz  

Thursday, October 13, 2011

V. (shoel)


The sliver of shaded dirt
where people wait
and waiting remain speaking
through their aching dreams.

In cycles, the moon is cold
on their limbs, their faces;
Not quite the day-night
but still time
moving like a sifting sea coast.

There is only dulled feelings,
opiates in stilled bloodstreams
a canonized set of sweet sense,
the only remnants of living.

No more names under the world
the heaviness of hurtling matter
through forever is constant
and silent-- our shadows slip
in between the earth and our fingernails,
the half-moon scratchings
of children in the dirt.

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

IV. (sermonizing)


The smell of living is distinct
and absent from America.
A fear of death
dictates that beginnings
be coddled like favorite children
while adulthood is lost
to routine.    

But the beginning of anything
is weighed down by
everything. There is a false
freedom in a new idea or body.
Experience is a full range
Of (e)motion and it gives
moments of immortality
to the whole
of a human.   

Monday, September 12, 2011

III.

Being oblique, the buildings
of the city pretend to be military.
They sit rumpled in approximate lines
encroaching into each others’ space
like old men and women on the tramway.
But when has streamlined, gridded picture
ever freed a place from culture-weight?

I will take the approximate
order of the everyday-
the kind of city that fleshy hands make
that brains stained by woodland sun
and turquoise water create
one generation after another-
a free metropolis.

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

II.


It is not
calling aloud
to god that makes
god open one eye
from infinite rest.

Setting off alarms--

bodies falling into
the clean, ravenous
space beneath cliffs

too young mothers
birthing purple babies

teeth without meat,
lips without balm

war, war, and hate--

These things break
life but do not
invite reverberations
from the oldest foundations.

It is satin silence,

the touch of chimes
moved by breeze
on back porches

Bodies sheltering bodies
waiting for the bus

In imagination-
taking space and shaping
it temporarily, forever

seeing the ghost shape
of birch trees against
winter skies

It is planted in the stomach,
(the deepest part)
that does not bleed
or die or change.

The smallness
of strength is
remarkable.

I.


I hit a limit
with my teeth,
the stone
of a cherry.
Definite centers,
contrite and
oaken-true, define
the fleshy shape
of ripe. 

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

After hearing Natasha Trethewey's poem, "Myth"


The poet speaks about dreaming
of dead mothers and I
wide-eyed feel exposed
in the solemn quiet room.

That night I dream
of you, as if the poet’s words
are an incantation.

We are leaving
a library together,
you wearing a pale
linen suit and lipstick,
and I walk ahead
because it has been so long
since I had to
wait for you.

And looking back,
you had fallen and lost
your shoes.  I come
and clean off your
muddied pant leg
with my hand
and lift you, your
body the battered
softness of mother.

I remember now
what it is to be
a daughter, to have
someone to wait for,
crossing whole
cement plains of a
city’s inconsequence
Together.
You ask questions
that are not malicious
but soothing, exploratory-
a reminder that there is
someone that does not
look to damage your
pride but build it like
a kingdom
kept by all women.
Our stone legacy.

You tell me
you would like to see
Finland before
you die. I know you
are dead because this is
my dream but I start
booking night flights
to the deepest snows,
to the kind of country
I imagine Finland to be.
I consider the toughness
of boarding trains
when your leg is so swollen
and heavy. I consider
your hydration, your
bowel movements.
My plans disintegrate
into sickness-
your stomach hardened,
a mass of coiled tree roots.

In the morning,
I lay in bed with thin
lines of daylight coming
through the blinds,
falling across
my belly, greening my eyes.
I hold onto you
for a few more minutes
and try and memorize
your outline, I try and
build a body out of sun dust.

I walk to the library
and drink coffee in the café.
As I sharpen a pencil, I watch
the curl of the shavings.
I feel treasured, suddenly
I feel full of meaning,
remembering what it’s like
to be a daughter. 



Tuesday, July 12, 2011

J.

I favor honor
above all other
extremes-
a decision
to pass on the
realist, cubist
composition
of bodies
moving,
mouths
moving
throats of
ghosts
their
sounds
moving;
and once
stopped in
floridian color
a smooth gather of
suited statics and finally
silently, the history of composition        recedes.

Monday, July 11, 2011

I.

I want to
transgress
into a    whole    space.
clattering image
stutters me,
struts and dis-
embodies me
but a sky scape
could moleculize
me so that
body and
memory
were vapor,
a weightless
global blanket.

Sunday, July 10, 2011

G.

I love the idea
of mastery
but I have seen
what mastery
does when
mastery wants
to master
the world
even though
the master will
never hold
the whole globe
nor own the
wholeness of
new.  

F.

he drowned

swimming-

drowning-

words changing
when states
change like
chemistry
but unlike
chemistry he
is rotted by
stagnant
grammar
the small
sign posts
of correct.
he died in
pale blue
the water
like sick skin
without breath
and sunk down
to roll sweet
with lakeweed.
In private
silence,
the end
like autonomy,
the mastery of
concise.

E.

the meal
was ruin,
a pie
crusted
         reminder
of over
and under.
a drowning
of years
the stories
sopping.

D.

mouthing
bread with
old gums
slick with
sour,
like a
baby
waiting
for first
teeth.
break red
through
and make
meals like
wonder.

C.

I think
he was
the whole
throat of
mountains.
no sound,
nor light.
nearing the
still that
makes
gods open
awe mouthed.

B.

which letter
is able
to give
          a way,
                  a home less
dialect?
summer
in the throat
to relieve
one person
from
rust.

Sunday, July 3, 2011

A.

eat honey
that drips
from trees.
swallow
the red
amber
down
until your
throat is
soaked
with
sound.

dust comes
up
pollen-yellow,
breathing
chalk wisp
to paint
words with.

And then
I am a
locality:
frequent,
patient,
and a
product
of pieces.

Thursday, June 30, 2011

blocks


tied tongue
            the beef of teeth
                        gnashing at relief

stilled time
            the stop top
                        feel that climb

towards the craving caving inconsistent
weave.  Break and sneeze through
to the sweet softness of singing.

Saturday, June 18, 2011

shutter stop, and vanish

very suddenly
            I missed you today
My eyes became green and wet.
The city
and spare,
use-empty time ticked away
tiny images of you in succession.
They came skipping
like old moving film
dulled color, composition
scratched up. Hello-
And goodbye, please,
           please come again. 

Friday, June 17, 2011

so many people


I receive you
            the human palm of a thousand years.
that true weight, soundless, sweet and stone-like
is familiar: I too have been here before. 

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

XXIII.


Heaven weathers like
any pattering day rain
it crimsons the skin
with holy hope
and wastes away
like stale paintings
waiting. 

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

XXII.

ancestral blood let
wonder woman
mitochondrial
might beating
the flood with
children that
pound the earth, first.

Sunday, May 22, 2011

XXI.


I never fly in my dreams
Outright like a bird or superhero
I rink a dink rumble into the sky
In a miniature green airplane
Like a character in a cartoon.

XX.


Taking a break from writing
Results in a day of laboratory
Thinking. Testing the sound taste
And determining theoretic hypothetic
Rules to live by. It takes me a few tries
At the same experiment to dissolve
Down the sugar pills and get to the
Real. Medication like blessings,
Reaching inward through the spider
Tangles the seeping tree vines
Themed and labeled into sink jars. 

XIX.


What is the
exigence in the
floating circle of the
rhetoric chasms compounding the
inordinate amount of mashed words in the
sweet sour bucket of none sense that expresses me sometimes?

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

XVIII.


Sometimes
I am perfect

The spindle
of my machine
ticks like
meant- to- be
making material
to weave with.

Sometimes
I can sustain

All things like
a delta,
a bleeding river
of sweetened soil.

Sometimes
I am nothing

The tiny spaces
between atoms
expanding
until my matter
dwindles
to a few spots
of ember

And sometimes
I am everything

the wind, steam
and brick, raw
and domestic
the dirt and drapes
constant and
inconsistent
and everything

sometimes

is true.


XVII.


Looking back at old work
does not please me.

The gods in our bellies change
as they do their infinite studies.

Their understanding
widens like a mouth-
a canyon yawning into completion.

Monday, May 9, 2011

XVI.

how many prayers I put up
on a cluttered cork board
papers of words fluttering
like frantic wings pinned
until they resemble nothing
not my breath
not my close wish
just a thought,
detached and soaked
in melancholy.

Saturday, May 7, 2011

XV.


Sitting next to my grandmother
with an unreadable box of letters
was the most tragic thing at Christmas.

We sipped soup
and ate strukli
at the tiny table

with the snow falling hard all around
the veranda and my socks drying
on the radiator.

The radio goes,
plain and serious,
the evening news is in
and I am sitting with
my whole self
weeping.

the relief
of places
warm, slow
and shared.  

XIV.


Are the deepest roots
of the oldest trees
the fingertips of God
or a riddle?

XIII.


my fingers produce
minute vicissitudes
on your skin:
a porous
and perfect
material to
signal with. 

XII.


You will need to
anneal your skin
with irascible memories,
the stinging
cut tugs of experience.
Only then will your body
be unburnable,
even while the Earth
shatters to potsherds. 

XI.


I am pretty sure
Tofu Pups
Are worse than
Any squishy
Ammonia meat
Produced in the
Heartland of America.

Their rubbery existence
Makes me sigh
With snobbery.
Why shape soybeans
To resemble
Your moral dilemma?

X.


I wonder what yellow ghosts
Linger in limbo
beneath the stairs.

Do they breathe the dust
And blow out like bulls?

IX.

Thinking
like a callithump,
a jumble of prizes, colors
and noises, a jungle of images embellishing.

VIII.

Cooking with thin grease
snapping at wet potatoes
just sliced and salted.
Cool salad and the cicadas
going and going
in the late haze.
Finally, cevapi
ground up and grilled
after being to the butcher
only once the whole summer.
And the sincerity
of being alone
willingly,
the deep breath
of womanhood.

VII.


Digging while dirt-covered
we become the dirt digging itself
into and out of its own hole.

VI.


Working through fear
is a swampy trip
into the green frizz
of the memory maze
that settles in the brain;
Mustard gas residue
from the great war of
stuttering adulthood.

V.

You are new,
A peaceable diplomat
Some kind of advocate
For the place I could inhabit.
You create an apartment
Where I stay for a few minutes
Each day and start to understand
What things I could have
If I could be
A better me.

Be patient with your briefcase
the hardness of myself is rustic
the oldest oak waiting
in the whistling whips
of sapling-thin pith.  

IV.


Rain
            Saves
                        Everyday

the washing wetting wielder of health.

III.


I depend on an unusual budget
Of space and time and words:
a wallet swelling into whole
countries of infinite richness.

II.


Elasticity, the gum stretch
of puttied people
wearing, wearing until the
muscled arms and legs
twist and pull,
mangle and melt.

I.


A heaving heaven:
the ironworks of depreciating cities

the long wait of living
of moving and feeling frequent
feeling famous in the criss-cross of human crosswalks.

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

counseling


Can I with them combat
the sense of sedative,
the white powdery pauses
between street noise?

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

I haven’t the stories To Fill the family



My men are scattered,
Their pictures locked, burned,
And flooded: lost.

My women are few
And community-less
lessened by loneliness
and loss.

Legacies slow
to a simple wheel squeak
then silence.  And in the silence,
footsteps, walking away from fire.

Saturday, April 2, 2011

systems of justice

There is no need
For confessions in
companionship.
No contracts;
There is no theft
No Hatred, nor
Suspicion.

Your company
Will not alienate
Nor bruise
Like old skin fruit.
Us friends
Will not be made mean
With hunger
Or desperate
With thirst
Or sick with
repeated defeat.

Our trials pass
over the mahogany
of hope and verdicts
are sparrows
lifting
from a long,
cool river,
a momentary echo
swallowed in
water.

Thursday, March 31, 2011

observations


he eats peanuts out of his pocket
using his fingers big and bruising
shucking salt nuts like nothing,
like habit.  

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Mr. Modica's wake

waking waking one hand
shaking the wax shoulder
of a being once breathing.
Beneath the coffin, a
profusion of flowers
whets noses like
strangled and careful
summer.  

Friday, March 25, 2011

(untitled)


Mothers wringing
hands beneath eaves waiting
and listening to the town
talking low toned and talking cool
            and daughters ducked and abstaining
            from being properly deceptively new.

Sunday, March 20, 2011

training


rounds around the gym
for fighter conditioning
placement repeating punch
in switch combinations the
numbered beating repetition
of praying, counting, breathing
reaching to the 1-2 basic
pounding against everything
against the day, against death,
with death and finally
tirelessly, I am free
and I breathe raw
and sink beneath the
buffer between each
part of me. 

Thursday, March 17, 2011

ascension

bunches
of grocery
daffodils,
cut loud
and clean,
butcher
destitution
on the empty
counter

deep decline

sliding down
a muddied hill
with heels locked,
with nails scraping,
and searching upwards
the sweet last light of the world.

Monday, March 14, 2011

ground technique

I had a dream I am
in a house like a
maze and I am
running up
and down hallways
opening and closing
doors, jumping down
flights of stairs.
When I wake up
I am exhausted
and my covers are
on the floor
and for the first time
all winter
heat drips from
the radiator.
All over my room
pieces of clothing
hang like fallen leaves
eerie in the half light
one more morning
wet and gray
in this fruitless
boundary between.
Sitting up I
remember other
parts of other dreams
which reach into things
ladle out insides
make you crave
a physicality
that could kill you.
I lift and set down
my coffee cup
more than necessary
feel the warmth
like a creature
sleeping
The spoon is a
metal tool
as basic as a hammer
newspaper with steady
newsprint no snaking
living lines creeping
and making me consider
my location,
making me imagine
a house like a maze
and me running
until I hit the bed rock
in the basement-
until I see the furnace
burning and beating,
howling with
moving picture.

Friday, March 11, 2011

(untitled)


I took the bus to the beach
on a Wednesday night
in the winter

I stayed in an empty house
and still heard
old conversations

The wind blew
through the skin trees
worn with the cold

The picture window was black
but I was picturized
for Bill next door

that night was fitfull
full of misplaced
meaning
Thinking on centuries
of single days
Filling like quick
water

the next morning
I walked on the beach
and collected

white, wide shells to save
and held them against
my belly

I watched the sand ripple
and change
with rivulets of winter sea

and in front of me
suddenly
was a gray seal

I breathed in
and stood still
an old friend
in the kelp
and frozen foam

defined
creatures both of us
alone and real
for a moment myth
fills us

and vanishes
him into the waves
and me into the wind
and wet grit





Thursday, March 10, 2011

(untitled)

The planet
         on a long plain
                  stretching its last light

(The most honest ends are the trading illumination of cycles
No clutter, no noise, crescent practicality, soft shadow punctuality)

What god isn’t made of heavy heat and the deepest of stone wells?

Monday, February 28, 2011

Be


Being good
            Being strong
                        Being true and truthful
a smattering scattering of belief.
Being is habit-forming
            a treadmill of tendency
                        and accuracy and passivity
                                    despite the creativity of everything.
Being being being
            each decision a consideration of history,
                        cursory theory, and composition
                                    or simply a carrying on of feeling, being.

Thursday, February 24, 2011

Doubt


          Will get trained on you
like a follow-dog.
It will chase you
until you are ragged
and thinned out
like wick wire.