I can imagine river living, living by the river,
the Willamette where it winds through Creswell,
life between the buttes when there was so much
more to uncertainty than there is now.
Calling calling Colorado Gail, calling on my
dead ones, death, calling on the red ones,
milk red spots or stains, the blueberry of
buildings, the gray of grass, it dominates.
What are we
what are we
what are we
waiting for?
What am I waiting for? Insinuation
explanation, manipulation, the ation nations.
What about imagination?
There is no discourse without reservation. The reservation
of Wade Campbell, fired from Colorado U. The Colorado calling.
White of river, rice, stiletto thinking,
harm and whiteness,
charm and lightness,
tornado in the tomato,
excellence.
Excellent observations.
Chasmatic divides of Colorado,
I am not sure of anything shaking,
sure shaking sugar.
This is more than less.
This is a venti no water Americano.
This is a lemonade.
This is without respect.
This is a poetry of abuse.
The abuse poem. The nirvana poem. The well poem, the ill poem.
This is a leap out of poetry the false well.
This is a heartstring.
This is a spoonrocket (K. Prevallet)
This is a landfish (Sam).
This is incapacity.
This is the rest of the beggars.
This is the consistent.
This is the technical.
This is your sip, these are your glasses,
this is your mirror, this is your window.
This is your sudden face,
this is rabid dog fear in the night,
this is jumping flea ukulele.
This is Mr. Killbug, this is a Burgher. This is a Beggar.
This is air, this is male pattern baldness,
this is a reduction, this is avoiding getting organized.
This is not a gnat, this is not a note.
This is the scent of your sweat and a sharp pain behind the eyes,
this is code, this is a tangerine, this is over but not over,
this is ooh and aah
this is lipsynch, this is lip stuck
this is father daughter day
and after all that okay
The smog. Bangs. Hairdos. Smiling beggars. Rabid rabid. Tomato. The youth in the closet. Older face and incapacity. As clever as advertising.
she lacks fluency
she is being careful rigid
she is being beside herself
she is soul shallow
she has a spoon to stir herself
she has a spring to mail herself
she does not have a skirt or shorts
slight hello
watery Monday
Victims in a Fiery Crash
Am I ready? No
Victims of a Fiery Vacation
Victims of a Corn Crush
Victims of a Cold Case
Victims of a Car Cross
Hello sigh hello
I see a caret, arrow, circumflex.
I see accents aigu and grave.
I see tomorrow but only in my mind.
I see the table and the paper.
I see vigor. I see sunlight.
I see a flimsy tissue, leaves printed on one side and a small saying on the other. Inserted into envelopes. Like bank deposits, or like cookie envelopes. Anything. Or in a stack of slips, withdrawal or deposit, anything.
Fabric rent. I want a shibori jacket.
Somewhere there is quiet there is desert, there are trails. Somewhere there is dust warming in the early sunlight. Somewhere hares are twitching, coyotes scratching, sage brush glowing scented in the air. Somewhere.
She went to sleep and never got up.
There is some appeal in books.
Thank God I never.
Sip of latté. Sip of capability. Sip of Venice. Second marriage. Didn’t work out well.
Poem: all the old-time ladies’ names gathered in one place old-timey timey.
Let’s make up something. Makeup. Kay’s story of getting made up at a birthday party. Merle Norman. Mary Kay. Cosmetics.
Cosmetics.
Cosmetics.
Comedone.
Comecontin.
Coumade.
Comrade.
I want to make a stanza
this is something that I want to do a stanza
this is what I want to do an ice cold water
this is something that I want to see a mountain
I’m seeking shamans and
I seek technique
I seek farewells and island life
I seek the brilliant obscurity
I would laugh out loud
and be happy to be so obscure
and never to share not to share
and not to say a word
a flaring silence
flowering
and firing
silence
there is the sweetest delicate salve
like flower scented
and it flows
it’s over all that
and the meaning—
My teeth will talk to me. Audaliciously.
Hair with comb marks, teeth with toe marks, toes with teeth marks, polished toes.
It was after her remarks.
It was on account of his smirking.
It was on account of being steady state.
I make afternoons. It was way past afternoon.
Cheeping and garbage, puddles in asphalt. I sip asphalt from the puddles.
Guess what? Guesses, guests, ghosts. Gosh, sits down. Gosh, go home. Gosh, stopping on the way home. Gosh prepares. Something on the critical path. Or Dinner. Or for an operation.
Flying into the air. Nothing here but words. Oh my ice tea, avocado sandwich, chocolate bar. 70%. Dietary happiness.
Stone blue eyes, steel and Georgian silver. All is gorgeous.
Markers. Stream of bubbles where it all went down.
Unwieldy Characters. Awesome characters that I will try to separate. An effort.
Grass on my sleeve
Gaze the hard g followed by the hissing z
Or gauze or geshe or
the thrashing doves The sign of
urge to travel I will travel and see wondrous things like towels and bats, howling cats,
prattling monkeys, whale skeletons and towers of ant with garbage backdrop and
insect afterscape
Children wearing gray and brown. Wishing for grey gardens.
You are privileged. This is a practice. I see my coworkers in their cars driving to work. I see them practicing. I see them wanting to be happy. I don’t see them composing. That’s how I enforce the differences.
Underwood. Undermountain. Mr. Undertree. Mr. Underworld. Underfish, undersmoke, under the weather. This is a cloud. This is a tornado.
This is an ancient cache of figs. This is early agriculture. This is unclothed. This is pristine.
This is what for. I will give you what for. What for?
This is a false mystery. This is a place. This is an aftermath. This is a play. This is a break. This is a logical diagram. This is handwriting. This is an effort. This is the chirping of a loud bird. This is a GPS. This is too bad. This is a memory. This is garbage. This is unprecedented. This is a portrait. This is a holocaust. This is a small village. This is incurable. This is this. That is that.
Some things I don’t have room for. Titles. Organizational structures. Some things I have a talent for. Some men are women, some women are men. I have my own clients now. I’m managing the project. This is my practice. Practice management system. What is manageable, what is unmanageable. What is your sentence? Linda saying. Job interview. I will ask you a hard question. Your job is to ask the hard questions. Change management. This and that. When are we on the same page.
Com mun i ca tion
Se man tics
It’s not just semantics. I will blurt. I will micromanage. I will be an addict. I will repeat the question. I will get the job done. Please.
Lost luxuries, lost goodbyes. Lost opportunity villages, lost forever. Lost and found. Once was lost. Now am found. Find a lot, lose a lot. Remember. The memory of forever. The memory of Rembrandt. The awfulness. The offing. The offertory. The the the How repetitive. Mind is cramped, contracted. How to land. Wanting to land on an object. Wanting to observe theory. Observe theory. Observing theory. Notheory. Nothery. Nothing.
The Amazon River. The big river, the small people. Adaptation.
Silences. I won’t tell anyone. I won’t tell anyone. I won’t tell anyone. Blossoming of lies like bindweed. This one doesn’t trust hate like a fool.
Let us diagnose it. But there is no diagnosis. Off my high horse.
Let the wind blow me off my high horse
let the derogatory blow me into yesterditch
let the white appalling bloom in my backyard
let the Geshe undertake me
let the mercury be done and married
let the soon be sooner and the heart be hearty
hartfelt heart fool fool hearty—
where did I see that?
Andalusia. Spells. Smells. Coffee bean.
I don’t want to be involved—I’m on the plane with you, I’m in the air, I’m living in the braided strands of synapses and emotions in your body—this is oppression—this is not freedom oh Pandavas
Stone woman took birth back. Stone woman got surrounded got compelled and crushed stonecrushed crushed crushed stone.
Longing for the quiet of the bustling morning shops. In the small town, does anyone arise before 6? In the village, do you encounter people on the street? In the English village, naked people with monstrous faces? In the white north, chanting lunatics? In the humid south, alligators are successful, polar bears are not. Difficulties among the animal populations.
Roof. The neighbor’s roof. The sad roof up the hill, its wonderful colors, its sagging on its frame, its mosses. Its sheltering aspect. The roof hanging from trees. The defenseless roof. The roof of disability, frightening in its height. Standing on the roof, under the roof. Falling through your vocabulary. Roof owns its pattern and its colors, we own its repair and its protection.
Let us go to the peasant capitals of Europe. Let us capture your imaginations. Let us harness all these capabilities.
Using the word “imagination” like there was no alternative.
And then the showers. Raindrops are individuals tonight. Raindrops, say hello. I can’t make this up.
New moon. New moon draws out subtle energies. New moon. This is the new moon night. I am supposed to tune in to that energy. oh your energy. Instead I’m resting in the flawed field, the field of fallow/fallen, the failed field, the coordinates are my face. I can’t describe this. I am alleluia.
I am eclipse. I am an-atta. I am not even approaching Sati. You have to watch out for me in my current state.
This morning I listened to stories about the golden carp. And stories about stories. And resistance to the fact of stories. And the sources of stories. Beyond. All I can tell you.
You enters shyly. You has been driven away, off the mountain path. You has flown over the cliff in a blaze of herbal fire and lifting smoke. I feel your cloud on my arms. I feel cold leaching down my arms. I feel devils on my arms, in my hands. I feel dust coming up, dust and ash, clouds of smoke from the charnel grounds.
Her laughter—can’t kill herself because her son would then have to kill himself. I listen and might be tempted to be afraid, temptation to be afraid, mentally ill like everyone one. Everyone one.
So here we go—
Traveling moon, traveling rainbow. Traveling before and beyond the shield of cloud. I am shielded by cloud. Embrace cloud. Toy cloud, come to me. Toy cloud, swimming in the bathtub.
Did you have to swim?
Are sounds more interesting than devastations? Where does feeling lie, where’s the trapdoor? Wily, wily, wily, Mr. Coyote, let me in. Mr. Desert, let me bring my withered limbs. Just bleach my bones after you nibble on my skin. Irradiated or non-irradiated, genetically engineered in a most horrendous tribal fashion, I am here now, yet a remnant, a recessive gene, a regression sans vitality, a lack of luck, a loss. And here I am considering the withering of my death. Listening to this particular rain in its accumulation, the sump pump hums and gurgles, the train whistles, New York-bound.
There’s no commotion. I have a half-page left. I take whatever happens, but do I even have to say that? Stomachache. I want connection, with Chamunda, stomach-body. I want my ugly greedy demons that befriended me. I want to stop, I want to read a book. I feel saliva in my mouth. I hear the air conditioning alive in these tall ceilings. I hear the heater ticking. Robin out there looking at the Wetland sign.
Fucking iambics. Jesus Fuck—this comes to mind at work. And if I came down with Tourette’s, it would come out of my mouth. A human being cornered by complexity. And with my mind-doors blowing open, flapping in the wind… and with my sense doors numb, encased in these materials …
sudden urge to pay a visit to the Beinecke,
where the walls are alabaster
Sunlight. The train lumbers in the opposite direction. Commuters. My secret commutation.
Sense desire—in its place—I don’t like a cold shower, nor do you. I have my coffee. I like my kids, like ducklings, in a row. I dream of tsunami or thunderstorm, the fast typhoon, the accidental candles. I will reread that chapter, Melville, about the lightning strike.
Talking about unknowns.
Something it is impossible to formulate.
Some negligible instructions.
A new Trek bike. Starting out with faith.
she is so happy
lifted on a chorus of balloons
she is so happy
harbinger of abernathies
she is so happy
melt will tell tomorrow
she is so very happy
lifted on a chorus of raccoons
Vacuum
Raccoon
Pregnant woman
Big
Band
Sound
Eskimo escapade
no one ever said that
I could easily have been married to __ or __ at this point—Jesus fucking God forbid—I could be a tourist down in Costa Rica tormenting monkeys, dropping trash, failing once again to speak the language.
I am accepting that it’s just okay to Not Fit In.
Visualize. Visualizing. Visualizing Kilimanjaro. Visualizing the bright shreds of sun carved off Vivasat. Visualizing nails in the floor. I took a washcloth, wiped the dirt fingerprints off the bedroom door. I arrested qarrtsiluni. Exacerbated. You can tell there is no channel carving here. You can tell the bird is disturbed and fluttering on the nest. Puffed up down against the cold. Chilly nest, someone might have to fly again. Taking care, how dare, not fair. She puzzles, then allows. A dream of behaving differently. Nice things for others, not to get found out.
Everyone is gone.
Everyone is gone and it is after winter in this cold café.
A need to relax the mind, heal the interaction. She is a poet. He is dressed in second-hand clothes. She resists friendship, the contaminant of it. He is studying in the hot, in the cold. She is working on images not words. He is dreaming of the garden. She is assembling her questions into a marble monument, he is handling rotten fruit and leaves.
Rust beyond the battlements, rusty sky and rusty shore. Apricot light. What is happening, what is the aftermath.
I am interested in—
Well, this is different. A nonsense counterpoint to every conversation. Beings of irrationality floating in the corners shitting with their pens.
Less salt and less murder.
The penguin is in poor condition.
My hosts, my hosts, my experience of hospitality.
The failure of my lights. The utter failure of my many lamps. They wink out one by one.
The eyes of disaster.
Yet not so bad.
I am late so late so finally late.
I am late to ask the question about mountains.
I am late to coax the answer from your stony lips.
I am very interested in your cavern in the mountains, the crevice where the sun shines one hour only.
I am tremendously interested in going into the mountains. The place where I will sit down to dinner with Arabs, my combed hair glistening. The charred fox on the platter, mistaken for dog, shot through the heart. The chorus of cousins solemnly uninvited, but still in attendance. The rugged rapscallions, the host with his lions, the pair eating onions, the service of truncheons. The bat is a velvet mask.