As mile by mile is seen
"Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash."
~Leonard Cohen
grow
like a nervous system like tension
grow like nerves like swallowing
not hunger like hunger. like heat
grow like wisteria climbs rafters
like ribs like bone growing bone
heal like your heart stops or goes
like transmissions thrills in endless
space like spooks lust like spokes
joshua tree growing : for contrast-
hold your hand against lamp light
hold together peace on your wrist
grow like you are wild
but do not grow
old
in response
she attributes smoking rates to neighborhoods
laughs and says
habits are harder than the street corners here
even parking spaces are hereditary
we need love like we love vice, and laughed again
like we need children to ward an empty home
see, these chronicles become our own death, she says
this smoke spirals back – it’s all circulatory, all terminal
and really, it’s all like with arteries, as with rocket tails
one day we’ll just ignite under a weary drinker’s thumb
stub our noses to his heel and hopes for his daughter
will keep his name
don’t misunderstand, she says
there is nothing worse than the unpleasant realization
that your [new] pet is actually an assassin, and laughs
like an addiction only god could hold, as your speaker
I can see the endemic on your lips from here, like cancer
we’ve grown our toes into our lawns, like tobacco rows
5 ways to reduce inflammation
apply the weight of hope. the silent
and violence enduring, a long and worn suffering alike
stay indoors, make cocktails with the herbs you’ve grown
in azalea pots on the windowsill
sit still and suffer. sit stiller still
correct your diet, stick to sweet grains dressed in streams of dusty sun
ignore the terrible, the reaping of stalks that fall like rain
your eyesight is inexcusable, see
apply proper doctors, endure prescriptive, and find your love
that I am your alter, your steel
examine doubts in the lamplight, and learn to walk straight
identify infections in bay, and at heart
(SOUNDtrack OF A THIRSTY TREE)
a bloom like cap guns, soundless by slow speeds
a thousand times delayed we cry for our appetites
when bubbles appear, when the trigger is pulled
if rains interference strikes seldom and smacks
our foot to heals
great spirit toed
stake to new soil
and newness clean
the records spin
do not try this slow, nor woken gait
in a need to timber sick, the dangerous and young
leave the spools of Spanish moss to skate the breeze
it’s only a matter of sound, before we’ve cured
our appetition for a little storm
and ourselves as well
be close or willing to travel
will you set your bearing once ,in motion
with tarmac holding your churning hands
the peripheral breathing, the digital ,past
the newly restored, implants of lightening
if you collapse miles in this modern doide
if out from quaking, our jaws ,if avoidance
of cancellation fees, I’m charged ,assured
my hands blink from existence each may
and I’ll tell you how my once lover ,once left
to travel, or may we just hold still ,and shake
dear betsy ross,
do your remember your ghost ramps in the early 70s?
how you felt to be incomplete
the children you buried on evel’s inclines
tolls issued in the opposite direction, I find that I have fallen
in love with your bypass, with your pay by play, whatever the cost
I’ll make sure your curve comes to ground
by night, the heaviest lanes are line of tulips
two by two rows of flush light flash lamp
your tiger jaws ripping with wind, some scrapyard fire burning
can you tell me how we go about attributing
who first made love a revolution, who sewn the first flag
but you, you beautiful little widow
who buried three men
and all it took,
was to alter the stars
genesis in standard time
the seasons between solstices share in agreement
folded as though they have shared a bed, roused
by a disquieting recognition in creased newness
the returning waft of dark roast brewing and grease furls
geese are in transit again. not due.. is that north
but who’s to say
what is being born today or what was grown
the garden is overgrowing
is hemming the lines of myself today
tomorrow I will till in return, but today
my fingers trace the shadows of bowing boughs
despite chalk’s natural waver shames trees
despite the tireless shaking of hands
no devil’s play thing rests, nothing resists
our tumble to earth, everything is predictable
in speed, if not distance
inescapable hourglass, easy chair, the places we fall
the sun cannot stay, we rewind clocks instead
hours arc like cresting tides, lift sea water to salt
inseparable from the wane, bound like flocks with no home
but who has found, really
another summer is lost, and found again in basins
clouded by both sand and sky
if there still light enough to see
our hollow chest, our tinder— see
how they hold their shape
how smoke lingers left behind in stillness
clenched toward light. by the stake. by seen
through curtains in this pattern, a pulse recognizing
how species uncurl, grow extinct or into another
into this intangible, until it is no longer
this space, stands tall by our guards
my lines, yours
today holds an hour, a promise to return in fall
sun closing around us
windows break and heal noticeably, or not
how willed and wild I grow, laid by points to ground
shaped by objections at either end
limbs spindle, entangled fall
truncate not for its own sake, so it’s okay
to occasionally say hello, right
these tiny infractions grow more impossible otherwise
turning soil for a minute swiftly to a minute. blink
miss the distance, by the sky time
petals fall
to follow this recipe on stalling rose cards
we are left growing our mother’s faces
this is not an infraction, seedling
it is not
please is a form of apology
this is to confess: I left the door ajar
let that the rain stain the spaces on the varnish sparse floor
where my fault lay. the items lifted and animals let astray. to say
I knew what I was doing, at the time
oversteps these sovereign grounds, these parallels
boundaries of contemplation and loosely prescribe lines
this particular string? this line sown in knitting of infinite
is infinite, and falls short
I confess I called the waters in. held your look and lie
head in your lap. this is no place to wake, or sleep
I dress in your regard, say
I’ll let myself out
bloom
what is it to say we died in the same spot
to say we are made of the same red mud
and in infamy return as unfurled souls to
the same puddles of unmuddled elements
who knows where we diverged from there
an end in a screaming steel of rounds sent
us both to this startling pause, trailing line
here. to lie beside each other, taking cold
what is to say we arced so far from a start
so similar in blood, a given name and form
to ache as if we are born knowing this end
hold the space between our limbs calling
the times between each blink, each sleep
life is worth its weight in time, to know it
goes this far. in death finds the only return
to innocence, once you’ve seen this done
who is to say we were ever but the same
our blood, our name, our grace, to hold
the same last lines to a common ground
to common end we make a set in motion
a headline bearing our semi-permanence
as we bloom back to stars, and this light
cannot hold us past our mothers’ tears
to bury a child, this cannot die.
entitled
“i title this poem: i really need to learn to think how words impact people before i so selfishly express my own feelings”
establish the scene
keep strict lines, define your horizon, set scaffolding, recall
acting is a droste effect, sentiment obscures intent
image and meaning fight restlessly as too many brothers in bed
Here is one for my sister, this one for the girl in Courtroom C.
caught off guard you are moved to suspend
disbelief is shown in the gradual empurpling of mouth
swelling of pupils signals intent — this is unintentional.
lay camera light on souls padding the red floors
just a night at the movies. glitzy little night life reanimated to death and content
enough to sit at my feet
lay haste, keep the pace, waste is cost, recall
currency is little more than a shade of representation
repetitive print of very little counting for much — what a thing is CALLED
skin and breath share shape of the body, like a bag
every action fractals in enough repetition
repetition on it’s own is much harder to end
helps an audience follow, to invest you’ll claim
as an infant loosely conceived, and is
not on it’s own
much
I went to San Francisco. I found someone’s heart. Now what?
In spite of what appeared to be the last gasps of a warm autumn, the winterseason officially started
in denver, at a quarter to 7 it’s 16
degrees and of course still dark
cabin and hotel rooms shuttering
in the low snore of warming waits
the solemn embrace of sheltering
and a finishing off of drifts in frost
wasting past spring, 12 weeks out
shatter; dies cast like cats in heat
wet whistle splatter of tires turning
to cars carried out like currents on
the frozen roads conducting strips
days of warmth, the hour of rising
sun that holds til a quarter past 5
light
that’s the thing
about equality
some pieces won’t be choose: ha(d/lved)
in the sanctuary of the well intentioned, informed populous
vote for unspoken consent
there is much to choose: d(e/i)(v/s)i(d)e. choice.
what is good? what is good to have is a car
if I have the wheel
and you have the choice: axe(l)
and we haven’t spoken to each other for years
bitter, too long married couple living unhappily
choose: (separately/together) on different floors,
this is hardly a car
choices are endless, but decision choose: (ha/i)s
(a timeframe/ an ending)
semantics, like politics, is grapefruit wedges with sugar
when we are old
in slippers and faded housecoats
we’ll recall with choice: fo(olish/nd)ness
today.
grapes of wisdom ferment to a low grade w(h)ine.
the truth of the age dissolved
like sugar in warm milk
and our young nurse feverishly on the tits
of our old wives.
tell me of time accounts for anything
when our clocks set to the god of
a choice: f(amer/ormer harvest)
our choice: st(alks/ocks) rise and fall
crops fortified with regulated surplus commodities,
Chinese imports and first milk
these fields grow choose: dry/tissue/chicken thighs/
homogenized/(flour/ide). seven days
without power then E, G & co. said
let there be (and there was) light
today: Some brightening
I waited all night to see you make landfall
imagined it coming after a long moment
final extended note ending to see the turn
when sound held its breath and the wind
folded knees to its chest and closed its eyes
the tension of the inevitable before it comes
I imagined you would push back my hair
as the open window was an easy invitation
if you were going to be here, come inside
to fold in with my sheets and pillows turning
loose pages, you are ravenous and consuming
peckishly across the land. wall street, the coast
towns this morning are left trembling. to see
the injustice of a neglected bonsai left out
on the fire escape standing right and defiant
though lifeless, still, in the burgeoning rise
Perhaps we dreamed this? reports back show
ion channels were uninterrupted by the storm
