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

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.