driftwood bar stool pool
and a drunken gull
are company I keep
with a sticky starfish coaster
long grass will sway as I lay dreaming
of shores so deep inside me
travelers from distant lips of land
come to stay the night beside
and sip sweetly of my compass
I feel waves of moments tickling
A heart beat stagnant trickling of conversation
Slippery as sand and seaweed’s grimey
Hands cling diligently to my ankles
Ship me out
full with abandon sails as pure as my virginity was
And as constant as I really am
A tide to my mood and the moon my lover
Stars that speckle searching eyes of truths
In depths of sailors hearts
They plant along the harbor
Flexing muscles to my docks of imagination
You’re not so extroverted are you?
Statuesque, with you I can’t complain
With you my patience is perverse
With you I cannot tell me true
And yet I do not divert my eyes
From your alluring shape
Your promise chiseled all within my mind
The desire to hope, the faith to pine
All for your hypothetical love
A taste of sheer divine
And envy all the same
You cannot move your eyes to mine
And so be captivated by my stare as I to thee
I know not where the pity lies
Cold stone or hot illusion
Your unresponsive love
His eyes were proud blue marbles
I could see where they were speckled
Where they were glossed
Like a polished rock
Strong, though lost amongst the thousands
I rubbed him round with eager thumbs
Admitted-
He did have silly pigment spots
But who could judge?
I didn't much
I reveled where there was weirdness
And who's to say it wasn't worth it?
Because his teeth were somewhat crooked
And he was even sometimes nervous
He had purpose
Don't we all?
If I had expected something perfect
I would have palled
That he was but a blending of past and present faces
Strange, but cleverly wrought
Clutched and hated
As a thing once lost
But found when insecurities are hot
The shriveled raisin of a childhood vision
Stowed in jars of apricots
With syrup's sticky stubborn residue
That won't ever just come off
But who's to say it wasn't love?
When he held with hands
My most tender guarded places
When I saw and kissed
Each one of his contorted faces
Imperfection made us comfortable enough
To know each of our most secret scents
Hey looky there, it’s Sgt. Pepper!
All velvet brows and ropey feathers
We know each other
Well, we did once through my mother
She used to spin him round and round
They’d dance together
When I was young and could not grasp the steps
I’d tap my foot, though I did not know
Why the beating burst from hearts exalted
Pursing the past with trills and ruckus
I would pinch my chin with shy white knee bones
Curling my smiling toes into little snails
He was a friend I could never keep up with
Or look back to
Still, he would take my hand with eight of his
All fabulous four pairs
And show me the flowers my mother used to pick
To wear with peaceful prowess
And ornament her untamed hair
Eyes
seeing Eyes
staring
into mine
black and white
they’ve posed
and now
their Eyes have froze
looking always
out of time
Eyes
of I alone
propped
removing caps
stopped
so that it lasts
photographs
are forming fences
with pretty
filtered
foggy
lenses
trapped
in what I call
a lie
Eyes
are staring back
glossy
fearless
still
and tearless
so that
Eyes
can know a moment
so that
Eyes
reflect
and do not know it
as seen from pictures
how we’ve molded
Eyes
forever
slowly
forming
cataracts
that we conform in
every second
Delicate Dust Beast
Why do you rest
Here at the crossroads?
You'll be smashed
By forces you can’t comprehend
Admiring your patterns
Trembling and torn here at my feet
I wonder why God gave you them
This world is so very dangerous
Even for beasts big as me
We drive too fast to notice you my friend
Sharing your last breath
We’ll pass and smash you into nothingness
My fragile creature
No one will remember you
Defenseless in the street
Most vulnerable insect
What is Death?
You seem to have no fear of it
Why chose you such a violent place
For the only flutterings you have left?
With wings like that
Why here without respect?
My soft, surrendered, beautiful dream
There must be someone to remember you
You must always remember me
Here, I’ll scoop you in my hands
Lay you upon this branch
Where you can see I saved you from defeat
Here, this tree will not move fast
Its leaves may fall but will grow back
It will remember you, your dust
And all that it has meant
Your metamorphosis will never end
So villain, let me acquaint you with yourself
And your elbows length convictions.
Do you drape yourself from truth?
Deceiving, will you go on as you do
Concealing from us all your ghastly image?
See that beast in the mirror of my eyes?
Its you, grim shallow shadow hound.
Ive come to know that cloak surrounding
The pretension of attractiveness
And precisely what is underneath the gleaming coat of it.
Its you, who wail of want to bite the hand that feeds.
You, who tremblingly licks your chops
At the idea that nothing will ever please.
You, of such wanton tongue,
Sharp wit for some, and gentle praises
For those who would succumb
To your feigned virtues.
What cause have you for condescending airs?
You deserve no more than to slink off
Into that sad den of desperate love you have
For no one but yourself you lowly vagabond!
O Sneering Wolf! You Treacherous Thief!
Who plucks ripe hopes from unsuspecting trees
Then discards with seemingly regretless ease,
Those whose branches billow out beyond
Preferring gnawing flesh and bone to fruit,
And seeing them as stumps to sit upon,
Those who would believe your iconoclastic love
I pity even more than you.
How dare you be so proud!
With nothing more than your own groin to lick,
Bad breath for living like a dog,
And always being a self-destructive little tick,
How did you come to master me as such?
Charm me to scratch and fond at every itch
Where you desired admiring touch.
How could I find it virtuous
And love an egodog so much?
You know why I like tea?
To sip, to sit, to steep, to sleep
Seem to be the things that come of it
So dignified and all the more intelligent
Besides, espresso’s so demeaning
Carving styrofoam and clay to anticipatory shapes
All the jumping jambling minds and legs
Compounded to this manufactured state
Not to mention industrialized nations drink it
Steaming urgent careless haze bubbles up
From jungles dark and dank
Where serenely green witch doctors reign
All wrapped up in cupped and capped transparencies
So sired by their domains that whip cream cotton clouds
Turn spines to maracas forcing eyes to dilate
Such potent sounds scream out from french vanilla streets
And mechanical mocha monsters
Its rusty grinds and itchy armies seething in sweet cream
Do seem to bring about demise
Of all enlightenment I find where tea so kindly compliments
steel spoke bridge
resting over water.
trusting structure,
making love with numbers,
hung above such shallow wonders:
marshmallow soft, bubble plunder,
deep sigh sunk,
sleeps like dead dogs at the bottom of
sub-edifice consciousness.
keep me safe. bear my weight.
i've had enough of nymphs and
sprite delighted dreams of
birds and mice with cottony wings,
lapping thighs like eyelash hunger,
wet weed garmented slime sheen
fish skin lovers,
swimming with decay sucked syrup,
sweet rotten birth water.
i only long for reflection from aloft,
skimming off the top of asphalt
laws and lines, tunes and times,
punched in clocks and eyes,
crystal salt swallowed bitterness
twisted into the licorice of God
and held together tight.
steel spoke bridge resting over water
keep that dampness off,
keep me high.
Its nice to think you leave a mark on your surroundings,
something hollow in your absence,
a stain or scar, but a lovely one,
a swoon of electricity, a sense not yet known,
fibers of your being strewn about and solid
on the ground where strangers walk pretending they dont notice
almost audible sounds, faint and poignant scents,
However woven, I'm still afraid I may unravel.
How marvelous to step out of the frame--and yet
Without a fear of looming things, how are we to be taught?
There's such a nervous thread to me,
How I'm tied to everything--
Is it so wrong to want and tangle in fear of anonymity?
To seek the solitude of unsown string?
I dreamt I was an instrument
My breath abound in verdant colors
Swam like gasoline, peeled orange crackling laughter,
And I could glow the sound of rapture,
Illuminate others, trusting hands to hold each other
Within these things we cannot utter.
I dreamt I was an instrument
we're old pink lungs
with arms and thumbs
rib cages smart and snug
our heart's a ruddy restless drum
rich and full of blood sweet blood
a love like slumber steady respiration
cured with oxygen and plum ripe rum
we dream each other's dreams
with eyes stitched up in floral sheets
unseeing through our veiny seams
we trust the ready course of things
and breathe and breathe
and breathe and breathe
seeing Christ before me
fingertip to palm
in the shape of a T,
Tellingmesomething.
I can't see his face through all the wet hair
yet he is holding the moment.
I'm skittish as a colt, faint wobbly
cold with faint wisps of hemp rope and rotten fish.
It's so still the buildings must be falling in
hammersplithammering-releasewithonelastbreath,
then dark.
I awaken lovingly to see
the remnants of lunchtime ravioli on the grass
and nobody,
just nobody.
Here is a girl with inquisitive eyes,
chin in hand and a piercing gaze.
She would love to spin you into some turn of phrase
like a soft skirted flamenco,
drown you in philosophies
strained through her pink-purple ripples of brain,
prone to relent she is just as content
to leave you alone.
One who loves
A sharp pointed tongue
Jut into the cracks of facade,
But then again soft velvet ones
With sincerity liberally lingered upon sweet thoughts
One who hates
Empty eyes without conscience
And pretentious papier-mache dummies
Of people with hollow hearts.
One who feels
As if time washes her silly
With up strokes and down strokes
of respect and possibility,
The ticklish brush of inspiration and creativity
Paying a visit, then wandering off.
One who yearns
For a flowerbed to blossom love
Full of delicate soil,
fertilized and considerate,
A place where she can visit all of her friends at once,
Set down roots and weed out rot.
One who needs
A rush of blood to the head,
A swoon of regret to remind her she isn't immortal,
One day she'll be quiet and dead
And she'll need to know what on earth she was for.
One who knows
The hurried beats of hearts beating together
For proof or a cause that things can be better
Should never be hushed for fear that the ledger
Of what is gained, what is lost,
will let purpose unfetter.
She knows some passion can never be bought.
One who is
Pushing and pulling the threads of her tapestry,
Praying that it will be beautiful, lasting,
But most of all that it keeps someone warm.
takes the left and the right of me
the loop-ti-loop-licked-inside-of-me
to tie me into ribbons of satisfaction
loosely strewn
The way we're skewed lets you step in
while I cum out from my dark closets
you hold me and renew, reglue, and reconstrue
my hollow places into being whole again
They say that love's a fucking mess
rolling in excretions, emotions
billowed out in loud fast forwards
only then to rewind
the in-out-in-out-in-out breath of time
Well it is
you fill my lungs and mind with knots
but knots of all that is sublime
when we make love
I almost loose my sense of time
But not Truth
I'm glad my bagel comes before sinister plots
and removing red wine clots from crystal.
without being told to.
without being conscious of the interruption during afternoon breakfast.
Sometimes I'm thrilled by licking cream cheese off of knives
and decidedly sitting by to observe light through dull glass
without an urgency to wash.
Parents say that these things must be watched,
but I can rest with knowing so far today
I haven't harmed a single being.
I know it's not as if organic milk and mini wheats
mean I have completely done my part
I've only merely thought of recycling all my plastics
which isn't very redeeming.
Yet in spite of how I tie myself to guilty knots,
I can sigh as if nothing can be too late
when the middle of the day has only just begun.
blasted at you dreamily, spreading those glass doors
like a queen to ride home on your green 2001 camry steed
but at precisely 8:58 PM your hopes are shattered by
a spanish wood and metal screen, it's 149.00 before tax
and he wants you to squeeeeeeze it in the back of
his tight black leather interior, if you please.
The Jaguar wags the tongue, but the tongue does not wag it.
Even without the box, it's still not going to fit. He BEGS
me to slide the thing deep down inside his feline pussy machine
and across my chest the desperate little hands of
my AGAINST ME! T-shirt lend nothing but several ruminated
glances to the general area from the man whose dome
gleams like a champagne soaked olive left out far too long for sampling.
And I refuse.
I don't care if he'll make it worth my while
I just want to go home where my sheets are clean
so I can wake up, charge back, and straighten shelves
with a little bit of dignity.
gaze out the window across the dewy Wild Basin,
seeing in the window's reflection someone
who isn't myself at all.
I see what are told to be eyes with one brown fleck
to the left to be sure, and yet
remembering that part as definitively me is like
fishing for broken glass with bare feet.
I blink twice and sway to test her, or I.
I'm not sure.
We mock each other, coyly embarrassed by the question.
That sardonic smile surely must be someone I know,
thicker than that pane of glass,
clearer than the light suggests,
not very surprised to be cloudy haired and leafy hearted
so early in the day.
I'm standing with sand between my toes...
Imaginary sand, sea shell breeze,
And salt hang in crystals off my nose.
It's not pretty.
It's not real.
Just delicate and thoughtful.
I still bury myself near the shore
Where the waves wash scars with foam
I'll never get them back.
It's wet and I'm dripping,
But they're gone.
Those briny gasps and curled up crustacean homes
Splendor lust that leads such seaside strolls:
Dust and barnacles.
I'm too old to pretend that rolling up
My clothes will make a difference,
Or that I'm more soaked than most.
I wonder why I recede, then crash upon myself.
I watch the gulls like they're my thoughts.
Scattered, listless, so close to being optimistic.
Forcing their beaks into tiny holes.
left-foot, right-foot-----
righthandlefthand-----andfootright
quick, I become a spinning discus
formed to behold just one straight look
spinning with the world
I make all still.
I roll my topsy-turvy skeleton
joints sucking tight tendons tight tendons
through the night, the black faces,
the rough hewn forms, the razor blade grasses
and glances of all our footsore souls
so many things jagged, become vulnerable
become smooth as river stone.
Through the glow of marigolds and candles
through the cyclical embrace of the earth
I allow myself to be held, in spite of it all
with the beating my body and heart takes
birthing indentations into the soil.
bald as an arctic mountain
lush as a bag of moldy bread
Three alien ships come to visit
with lights like white carnations
belonging to stubbly stems
One brings the thundering voices of Little Cottonwood Canyon
the spirits of dead pioneers
they come to clap and frown at me
I dance spitefully at them in my shower
but try to appear coyly appreciative
Because I understand the incentive
of admiring ghosts
and their doppelganger companions
One brings the roots of all the trees that have come
and passed on to another place
where they are categorized by relevance
that only trees know
The presentation lies before me like the bones
of all my decedents
The last brings all the eyeballs and intestines
of everyone I've ever loved
that only now reside in the space between my head
and this stellar contraption
They try to show me how what I reflect is digested
How I am and am not received and rejected
What I've meant and what meaning I've ended
Leaving me with a loss of self-sense
But the beginning and end of everything
Mended
As I live, when I die-
As an arrow is shot through my eye
of the moments in between, I
Spontaneously combust.
There is no rubbing of sticks,
no tender blowing of sparks.
I do not douse myself in oil.
I do not leap into a flame.
I lift not a finger.
I am not dying-trying.
I am one moment one person
and then
I blow up.
at three island lake?
I want to write your name
with chicken grease on a paper plate.
Sister, let's roll away on roller skates.
Can we drink wine again in zilker park,
singing sorrow into carpet burns,
crying like cicadas?
Kris, let's twist our wrists like angry birds.
Can I hide my face in front of your jacket
as you brush off all that isn't attractive
from my sandy feet?
With my hair held captive by the windy sea,
will you put these small shoes back on me?
Mommy, Daddy-
I get older, tougher, smarter
I spend my dreams mixing up these years
sorting through them with my ankles through the sheets.
Hoping to touch one of yours, softly
in the dark
as I sleep
makes the fact I can't hold on to any of it
momentarily.. more sweet.
swirls and swoops
clouds can move without hesitation
both full with moods but no questions
and i love you
i could write music
like god writes rain
(no i can't)
i could make you a clay pot
smoother than the mind can sustain
(no i can't)
and i love you
my clay's got bumps before it's glazed
and bump's still after
my music's more like a cloud burst
full of frogs and foul weather
and i love you
and i love you
and you might wonder
what all of this has to do with that
and i'll tell you
you see
a tree loves being a tree
and you can see it in the grain
the clouds love the sky
and you can see it in the shapes
clouds make for imaginations to gaze by
above all things
god loves us with rain
and i love you
but my music's a bit strained
no loving showers of sound can i make
the earth loves to be clay between fingers
you can feel it under your nails
but mine just can't extract the love
my ceramic somehow pales to the way you deserve
to feel it
and i love you
and despite my short comings
i can be humble
and love myself
i am not god
but i love you
and if god is love
then god loves you
which still doesn't make me god
but maybe
just maybe
you can see the love
in my smile
like grains of wood
and maybe
just maybe
you can see the love
in the way i move
like a cloud
without hesitation
full of moods
perhaps maybe
just possibly maybe
you can hear the love
in the showers
of my kisses
and if i'm just lucky enough
you can feel the love
in the smoothness
of my skin
against yours
and that cant be enough
and i love you
and i love you
croaked outside my opened window
and promised to make all
with his music,
to my mind,
a stillness .
My head was suspicious
but my heart was curious.
For a long moment
there was a singing quiet.
I stood squarely upon my own understanding
and flirted with the edge.
I was hoping that I might be reborn into paradise
once I had gotten off the ledge
and leaped into the rapture of his song.
His invitation had given me sway
and rocked me dangerously close to going beyond.
I silently communicated to him my choice
by sighing and closing my eyes.
He slowly, like the movement of a constellation,
opened his throat to the sky.
You never loved anyone, ERRRRCH
anything, GRRRRK
anytime, YERRRST
You only hoped.
SPLASH
And I was alone.
He sang to me my selfishness
piercing with a clarity
and resonance of a thousand Tibetan bowls.
It was exactly what I didn’t want you or I to know.
And there was no stillness.
I began to explode-
I stopped the ringing of his sound with the fury of my own.
--PLEASE!
don’t reveal my secret to the listeners of the night!
I begged him:
IT IS MINE!
I felt parts of me turn to stone.
I knew myself as I had never known.
I could touch myself as I had never done.
There was much of what I was made up of
that wasn’t love.
I forced myself so internally that
I hadn’t noticed I followed the frog’s maddening noise
outside and crouched beside his home.
I was a frenzy of activity beside
a small quiet pond.
This startled me.
I was naked like animal.
The moon shone luminous.
My skin, blue as lapis, had a radiant evanescence.
I was spotted. I was flawed.
I felt a bit like an amphibian.
That’s when I began to know
and abandoned my amputations.
There was a stillness.
Within it, I tenderly removed my calcifications
from my heart and from my bones.
I skipped the discus rocks one by one across the pond
with consideration and patience
for the loss and loathing I had disowned.
I feel the space it had made inside of me.
It occurs as loneliness
and it occurs as fertility.
I sometimes stretch out my powerful new frog legs to leap after them
but I pause.
There is nothing to better.
I am enough just because.
I see how I am the center of my existence.
I see how I am selfishness.
And I let myself be,
And I let myself go.
I breathe deep.
There is a stillness.
Strange how love transforms a thing
to be naked in the darkness,
how not the absence of selfishness,
but the acceptance of it
even for an instant,
frees us to do and be whatever we wish.
Funny how that is considered vulnerable.
It is tragic that we withhold it.
It is the shadow we hide from in the night.
There is a stillness, there is a love
in seeing ourselves
as wild, natural, and at rest
with our own discomfort,
with our own self interests.
Suddenly we can live on land or in water,
breathe through our skins
like a frog.
And there is a stillness.
There is a stillness.
He is pale, pock-marked, stares into the sun without blinking.
We think his is a shy type, surrounded by so many distant stars,
So silent, perhaps self-conscious of his roundness.
We write him songs. Our wolves howl to him his loneliness.
He has a secret friend most of us never see, unless we know where to find her.
She is dark, reserved, quiet for a young woman. Cold, remote, and beautiful.
They are inseparable. She is behind all that he does at all times.
He warms her where their skin mingles indistinguishable,
Deeply sighing together in the cosmic hammock of gravity,
As yang and yin, as obvious and elusivity, constantly in intercourse,
As teens are apt to do.
They are at it morning, noon, night, around and around the earth,
Around and around the sun. Despite their seeming seriousness,
They are quite cheesy, made of it even. The only fact we have right on.
This has its side effects we are not aware of.
Cheese gives the moon some stellar lunar flatulence.
Their sex is sprinkled with laughter over their soft little moon toots.
We never notice because we’re standing together in the solar wind.
And maybe we're lucky to never smell that particularly musky ancient scent of love.
Maybe not.
But they really aren't as mystic as we want to think.
They're just farting around up there, in love with themselves like the rest of us
They even get embarrassed.
But they've learned to hide beneath the covers of our night,
Eclipsing partially, fully, sometimes even blushing because of it.
They had to back before civilization, when the world was still very quiet,
And ears were trained to their movements so well that we could almost hear them queefing.
And so the moon is not really so mysterious
albeit sometimes awkward and sneaky.
