Sam said Landfish. Mary Ann spelunking.
Tag Archives: animal
june 30, 2007
Calendar check 6:30.
Time check 1:30.
Skin check: itchy.
Wrist check: stiff.
Mind check: jittery.
Stomach check: jittery.
Throat check: thirsty.
Mouth check: worried about someone else’s leukemia.
Soul check: distant.
Pulse check: alive.
Poetry check: parallel universe.
Sky check: blue delightful.
Bird check: twittering and cheeping.
Smell check: corpse flowers.
Sound check: birds, flies buzzing, metallic clink, a flagpole, distant pounding, distant humming.
Air check: slightly breezy, warm.
Clink, clink clink.
Cars passing. Thump.
Cedrus Libani, Cedar of Lebanon.
Stone cairns.
Cedar needles.
Adirondack chairs.
Conversations hanging in the air.
Buzzing plane. Gardens.
Labor hanging in the air, remnants of sweat.
Dry tongue. Clink, clink.
Air belly, squirrel throat.
Darkness behind the eyes.
Mouth film.
Uneasy belly. Toast and jelly.
Uneasy eyes, ants and flies.
Uneasy legs, beans and eggs.
Uneasy hands, toast and jam.
Ordered poetry for the millennium. I am not a MicMac, not a Passamaquoddy, not a Pequot. Hanging conversations. I have made up my mind. Corpse flower, cedar needles. Aboriginal gardens. Poisons. Fatalities. Eco echoes.
Afternoon check: summer.
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.
like the turtle laying her eggs on the beach
trance tears running
trance tears trance tears
your 10-year-old body cannot take it
failure to sprout and
fail to thrive the spinach seeds
but beets and carrots are up in their rows
and
Max the black cat wanders in the yard
a wander purposeful
a wander graceful
and impressive
There is a subtlety in all this writing, subtle refusal to let go. Subtle refusal of the whimsical the circumspect the lack the luck. Subtle refusal to charge off in all directions. Subtle refusal to mentor the young self into immersion. Subtle refusal to merge with the white whale
Soil resting in the sun, plants are busy. Plants don’t need a path and nor do animals.
may 29, 2007
Hot page cool breeze. Birds and juice. Death in the air, creeping. Suicidal Ideation. Nothing but pleasantries, a need to scan the lines. Rustle woods, the deer step, squirrel shuffle. Peculiar disconnectedness of individuals, editors, the edited smile, the censored speech. Pileup of phrases. The litter of prepositions, the punctuation of punctuation. Texture of voices and air conditioning noises. The bands and patterns of tension. Often I ask: what are you talking about? What does it mean, the transfer function?
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
And this morning—wrapped in the cleanest sheets of calm.
And still worms tackling.
What is it? Questions. Answers. Paralysis. This is a point. This is a letter. This is a word. This is a story.
She is sad and discouraged, head resting in her hand. Head in hands. Objectionable behavior. Pressed into a diagram.
This is the geometry. This is the measurement of her. This is the slippery slope, the slide. This is the choppiness of commas. This is the desire to relax. This is hunting. Hunting for badgers. Hunting in puddles. Hunting under the microscope.
This is looking. This is devising. This is an insult. This is non-allusiveness. Allusion, illusion. Protrusion, contusion. This is desperate. Separate. Disparate. Apparent. This is desparent. This is disappearance.
I think you are crazy if you are seeing interesting, exciting things are happening any crazy where. The dogs of war.
The drains. The applicable.
The form is a worm.
Play Play Play Platypus
Par Par Par Parmigiana
Puk Puk Puk Pukaluk
Poke Poke Poke poke as a joke
Ha and you don’t have to like it.
Wash. Washington.
Wish. Wishington.
Harp. Harpington. The Harpy. How ground brown cow.
the desire for—the freedom from delusion. Investigating the nature of delusion from my chair—this is a joy—this is a path—this is a step—this is a way—this is my ignorance—this is the light—this is my death—this is my bag of skin—this is my suffering—this is you—you are impermanent—your attributes give rise to my reactions—there is flux—curtains of loose petals streaming past the window—sun—it’s warm—the lawn—it’s green—it’s trimmed—my neck it aches, how much money in the US goes to lawn care—how many ticks are out there, how many coins, how many undiscovered facts and how much data, how many cells, how many newborn leaves, how many petals and how many sprouts, how many hours digging and how many butterflies are born, how often have you watched a turtle in the last few days—and do you barbecue upon a tiny grill—what are the unique facts of your life if any and how can they endear you to me—how does one “pray” for others—what is the difference between compassionate and sunlight—how can we be brighter and more tender—how can we be burnished and more brave—cherished and with capacity to cherish—all our cherished landscapes in a row—and then—we’re breathing into emptiness—and then—another sprout
Stone woman, take it back. TAKE IT BACK! Zip—and nothingness; or emptiness and that is that. Alternatively peace.
and animals at all four corners and canopies of birds. Need Need Need Need Crochet a cap of need, I’ll make it up to you.
Simple. Simple. Simple. Sometimes your writing is so simple, you can’t do it, you’re stuck below the rungs of simple with your monkey-loving hands, reaching, reaching, fingerly grasping.
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.
Nothing simple here. No lily.
The frog lily, the toad flax.
Animals have not been aroused.
I can’t write untruths.
And speech becoming cleansed to silence.
Dishes—plates. Cups, forks, spoons. Bowls.
Animals. Rabbits. Wild turkeys dead at roadside. Flooding. Mouse in the kitchen, a dark brown mouse. Max was outside on the porch. Bill at home under the table.
april 17, 2007
The coldness of this spring to go out with the trash and breathe a moment in the cold air. To know yourself. I can’t really tell what’s going on. I feel an awful lot like a narrator. I have no story, just to let go of that tail.
The long tail, prehensile.
Happy tail, silly tail. Tail of my dreams.
And also—toil. And toile.
Old fashioned fabrics, what has happened to you? In Girl Scouts, I made a book of fabric swatches trying to learn their names like “Dotted Swiss.”
Not a damn thing prepares you for the Albrecht Dürer rabbit made of bronze.
Or the sadness of chipped paint on windowsills.
There’s all this lifting eyes up, all this lifting eyes up necessary.
And this from someone not a particle religious.
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—
april 16, 2007
Some sound of rain remains. Tremendous rain, hard going. No crickets yet. Peepers faint. Sky sound with plane. Birds are more fascinating than dogs.
Just to catalogue your options: details, details, sensory details, grace, the yen for grace, the absence, flaws or beauty or perfection, memories or dreams. Objects or abstractions. Happiest with objects, but they’re few and far between. And most are shabby. Mug of oolong tea—swampy, with no sweetener. The little aloe, fading in its shallow pot. The sensation of flaring from beside my eyes, a tiredness. There’s a mouse living in the kitchen.
See the margin where the lawngrass turns to weeds.
Deer in the weeds, robin on the lawn. Jill Chan. The extravagance of the mentally ill. An email—write to Ann. Some stillness in my face, my weary eyes. Persistent nagging from my taxes. Still, a stomachache. Desire for tea and toast. Bird shadow. Ear flick. Plastic bag.
A herd of movement in the gray-brown out the window. Deer move carefully in suburbia. I can count four of them, standing in their places, flicking the itches in their ears, shaking their heads, chewing. They look thin, their tails seem shaggy. One has settled down to rest, more relaxed in the wetland preserve than a human or a dog would be. I can see the tips of the other’s ears, flicking, shifting. White tails, brown tails lined with white fur, lined with black. Now two are lying down.
Some common words: fragile, frail. Some common vulnerabilities: fainting. Some common objects: robin, squirrel. Some common remnants, fragments. And some uncommon chipped up blue of robin’s egg.
I used to write to You, but the You has dissolved out of my life. Rinsed of starch, I’m limp, limp as a cuttle-fish, scuttling, color-shifting, many predators. Laying eggs and going off to die.
That’s strange.
The absolute arrogant daring of a teacher. The heartbreak of the curious student. The value of curiosity is discounted. Do not examine. Do not look in. I know what I think, I know what I feel. All is different, the lamb is a dog, the horse is a louse. House. The mercury, the mystery. Free write disjointed. What’s going to sell. Hyperaudience, overengineered society. Leading to exhaustion. Aspire to humility. What do you hear here? What do we hear here? In the giant auditorium filled with five poets. Oh my god. How much compassion do you need?
Questions overflow. Abounding, then melt away like fields of snow. Flocks moving wrestling through the heavens. Harbingers of arbeit. After all, it’s mesh, how much is mesh? I refuse at some point. Stop. Step.
Tracing. Battles, bombs, blood. And how we carry on.
In the household—there is nothing happening. The garden cleared of sticks and stalks, but not turned over, soft and warm under a thin layer of rotten hay. Earthworms fat, inert with cold. Occasional grub, dug up, in half moon pose, not something I really want to lean in and observe.
The penguin is in poor condition.
Animals. Lisa has an enamour of animals.
Very smart, very sensible. The horse is an animal.
The foxes coughing in the mountains. The evil fox light. Lost lore of animals lost lore of fears. Our superstitions are gone now, transformed into bombers from the air. Our strange fear of foxes or wolves following, met with turbans and robes. We do not learn much about any of this, we don’t push through it. We just take it as it lays.