Friday, April 30, 2010

i'm always going places, maybe someday i'll stay.

A sometime Saturday, I’ll drop the leather bag,
Drop the books and clocks and things,
Look down with tinted eyes and know
I didn’t turn these lights off.
I didn’t wander to this house.
I didn’t come here empty.
I forgot the emotion but the feelings still linger.
There will be many Saturdays
To pretend it might be raining.
Some day, I’ll build up all my energy
And take it back.

Sunday, April 25, 2010

skunk.

We’ve given up all our dreams to a narcoleptic Freud
who pervades all our inner selves.
All of our great conversations
will someday be reduced to sentences,
abridged to future lovers.
It helps that I had dreamt you up
the first time you stretched out your palms
and invaded my unconscious.

Thursday, April 22, 2010

primordial.

the long, lean chair
sat by the statue wall,
metal arms by his sides.
rubber feet drip dust into our
ceilings.
only great oceans can fix it.
those times when science gave up.
oh we were all young children,
reaching out, beyond the microscopic universe,
finding nothing there.

***

there is a place you can go,
beautiful learner,
where you can be what you are.
swimming in the burning stars,
all the lights on your hungry face.
there is a place for you
at the frothy ends of the
lace-like galaxy.
no prize for you, for all your work,
but echoes of it linger.
your thoughts,
little bundled roses entwining
'round the planets.
oh, to be what you are
and to go toward
what you will be.

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

new oceans.

stood on a black bay,
edges of the boats at night.
something like atmosphere 
running in and out of these fingers,
reading about magic,
reading about wizards and their doubts,
it is all so heavily scented.
distant twinkling lights bang
on a dark moving ceiling.
he ran in and out of these fingers,
and into the water somewhere
while our ship sails on.

just keep talking to me, i like these tones.
i want to write you down,
and to keep you in my pockets...

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Reading!

Ten-minute reading this Saturday at 2:45 at The Goods, TCNJ's student arts festival. Yay! I need to figure out what to read...

Monday, April 19, 2010

"cosmology knowledgey"

his shoes cut out the spaces between his toes.
embarrassed of his art, but she wanted his name to come catch her.
bohemic sunsets glittered particles to draw her eyes into focus.
little cloud of the orion arm spirals to his making.
the backbreaking cloudmaking notetaking.
his art predates your thoughts.
a little nail snugly stuck in its wooden home.
leaves his face open to the mercy of the atmosphere.
someone crinkles plastic wrapping of a hard candy in the back.
you can see it, he says, with your eye in the sky.
grandmother's story cuts out your eyes,
you wonder what you've become.
they won't-stop-breathing.
breathing in the liquid of their noses, the liquid of their eyes.
i refuse to breathe that way.
they breathe in while i breathe out,
making my smoke form that name.
the four-lettered universe man.
the three-lettered earth man.
the two-lettered china man who has nothing to do with it at all.
first man, tall, with gray hands extending out from his gray suit.
i smoke and eat this apple.
let's create disaster.

cacophonous sea breezes sit still on his spinning globe.
wait for him to play with them, touch them, make them move.
she is famous, sitting in his front row, analyzing galaxies.
dreaming of the origins of her characters,
coloring the tips of her fingers,
coming up, now and then, for air.

i am more likely than the sun to not make sense.

Friday, April 16, 2010

"I will not sleep here tonight. Home also I cannot go."

I want to be the deaf old woman whose happiness does not depend on a fratboy with half an eyebrow. I watch Nelson take a drag, suited up and tied up tightly for his job at the observatory. Dressed up to watch the stars, I say. I want my mother to know that I am more than an emotion. I want to stop and watch April walk by, to hold her hand so that she moves less quickly. I want to be an Orthodox and know the unconditional love that exists beyond drunken dress-up and work-worship. I want to stop thinking about how I should be, might be, and I want the peace of silent thoughts that do not exist, of silent voices that make words that do not exist. Are they happy? Sunlit fields are happy, dark cement blocks swarming with voices are not. . . My brain is growing old and now reads pictures over words. Oh, I'm so tired and need somewhere to rest my head.

Thursday, April 15, 2010

muskperfumed.

Ulysses, by James Joyce. People, seriously, SERIOUSLY, read this book. I am overwhelmed with how in love with it I am (and i'm still less than 1/6 done with it!). I wish I could share a million more quotes because I've written all over the text, but these will do for now!

"You behold in me, Stephen said with grim displeasure, a horrible example of free thought."

"The boy's blank face asked the blank window."

"Gold light on sea, on sand, on boulders. The sun is there, the slender trees, the lemon houses. . . . Paris rawly waking, crude sunlight on her lemon streets. Moist pith of farls of bread, the froggreen wormwood, her matin incense, court the air. Belluomo rises from the bed of his wife's lover's wife, the kerchiefed housewife is astir, a saucer of acetic acid in her hand. In Rodot's Yvonne and Madeleine newmake their tumbled beauties, shattering with gold teeth chaussons of pastry, their mouths yellowed with the pus of flan breton. Faces of Paris men go by, their wellpleased pleasers, curled conquistadores."

"His fustian shirt, sanguineflowered, trembles its Spanish tassels at his secrets."

"Disguises, clutched at, gone, not here."

"She is quite nicey comfy without her outcast man."

"My soul walks with me, form of forms. So in the moon's midwatches I pace the path above the rocks, in sable silvered, hearing Elsinore's tempting flood. The flood is following me."

"These heavy sands are language tide and wind have silted here."

"For that are you pining, the bark of their applause? Pretenders: live their lives."

"Waters: bitter death: lost."

"Makes you feel young. Somewhere in the east: early morning: set off at dawn. Travel round in front of the sun, steal a day's march on him. Keep it up for ever never grow a day older technically. . . . Dander along all day. Might meet a robber or two. Well, meet him. Getting on to sundown. The shadows of the mosques among the pillars: priest with a scroll rolled up. A shiver of the trees, signal, the evening wind. I pass on. Fading gold sky. A mother watches me from her doorway. She calls her children home in their dark language. . . . He prolonged his pleased smile. . . . From the cellar grating floated up the flabby gush of porter. Through the open doorway the bar squirted out whiffs of ginger, teadust, biscuitmush."

"A speck of eager fire from foxeyes thanked him."

"Quick warm sunlight came running from Berkeley road, swiftly, in slim sandals, along the brightening footpath. Runs, she runs to meet me, a girl with gold hair on the wind."

"A raindrop spat on his hat."

"--Wait a moment, professor MacHugh said, raising two quiet claws. We mustn't be led away by words, by sounds of words. We think of Rome, imperial, imperious, imperative."

AND MAGNIFICENT WORDS:
Muskperfumed.
Dewsilky.
Gorescarred.
Illdyed.
Contransmagnificandjewbangtantiality.
Brightwindbridled.
Cleanchested.
Bigdrumming.
Hundredheaded.
Creepystools.
Loudlatinlaughing.
Shellcocoacoloured.
Lacefringe.
Seawardpointed.
Outofthat.
Unsmelt.
Almosting.
Creamfruit.
Shefiend.
Dislove.
Shameclosing eyes.
Moustachecup.
Distinguishedlooking.
Lilypots.
Antient.
Hugecloaked.
Wideopen eyes.
Secretsearching.
Corpsemanure.
Blueglancing.
Quicklime.
The pleasantest.
Sappyhead.
Statelily.
Citronlemon.
Biscuitfully.
Wellread fellow.
Unshaven blackspectacled face.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Monday, April 12, 2010

become.

Orange melting fangs
On a hot sidewalk sweating
Candy perfume into our
Soles. Star people raise
Their fingers, swallow on
Their tongues, carry their
Metal feelings in a plastic
Flower basket.

Too much to know.
We are stuffed with bones.

Dear Mr. Newton why are we
All so physically attracted
To one another?

The doctor talks so quickly
And his movements so fluid.
But wait until space curves,
Wait until time slows.
Will we all think less of him?


blog awards make my day.

A big thank you to Saskatoon at http://idratherhaveacupoftea.blogspot.com/ for giving me my second blog award, the Sunshine Award!


Friday, April 9, 2010

Finally, it all comes together.

I am a small boy
whose heart burns from all the cigarettes that have been dropped into his stomach.
If I could be human with you, I would.
If I could be faithful for you, I would.
I have eyes like two-dimensional comic book windows,
and resort to wishing on worlds when the sky runs out of stars.
The grown men talk so loudly of the outside world,
speak so quickly in a language so foreign to me.
Hair floods over my mother's temples as a curtain.
"Take me by my human wrists," she says,
"and put me to music. Because the failing chalk-dust skin around my hands turns into sonnets."

The lemon-souled goddess of the coming night rips through the papers
on which I've inscribed my name.
(Whichever name it may be.)
The ghost stories were always the best, but she does not tell them anymore.
The lace-mouthed damsel has holes in her eyes,
and blinks only to her creator, mindless mister of the melting moonfall is he;
the small boy who marries his pens and makes brainchildren with them.
Pale and sideways, sickly visions entwine and repeat,
are real and then are not.

A small boy of twenty, forty-seven, eighty-three,
I will dress the way I always have,
in my mother's hands, layered in imagination,
adequately prepared for some storm.
She spins me so quickly on my chair that smoke rises out of my nostrils
and words create themselves out of my hands.
It is a solitary vision, now.

A lover breaks bread, breaks down, breaks into your most repressed goings-on.
A lover who can whistle out your favorite work of art.
She is me as well.
I invented her and trapped her in my wardrobe.
And she screams love, love, love through my fingertips, through my nails,
but her ears are stronger than her voice.
She is understanding if not patient.
All is always well in the thunder that never appears.
Through the hole in the mesh of a net wall that distinguishes us from our surroundings.
I am not my surroundings.
My fellow men are physiologists in thick blueblack cloths
that drape us over and mesh us.
All into one life.

I am the small boy who sinks with the sun.

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

all souls.

rocky petal heaven heaving whims of cherry. she asks your name. you are a boy on a block on a lake. you see the foul can of soiled iced tea drifting back and forth around your charming toes. some souls become dirty, letting life fall on them at the bottom of a lake. because it feels good. some are naked victims of nature, pushed toward the drains. some ache with hunger to be a part of it all. all souls are here, breathing heavily between your hands and hers. one hundred twenty seconds of staring. staring at a fixed thought.

Monday, April 5, 2010

missing you.

A pulsing dark underside of Earth fills with light; your light. I count to twelve thousand as my eyes acquaint to darkness. I am a victim to the forecast that predicts you -- will you rise again? I am a tree beneath your sturdy rays, silently faltering beside you. A blossoming something, closing my eyes for an empty night, without me you are purposeless. I am the night to complete you, jealous of the societies that treasure you.

Sunday, April 4, 2010

current [and forever] love.

i am absolutely in love with everything about this book and feel that no one will ever understand me the way james joyce does.

"wavewhite wedded words shimmering on the dim tide."

"Ugly and futile: lean neck and thick hair and a stain of ink, a snail's bed. Yet someone had loved him, borne him in her arms and in her heart. But for her the race of the world would have trampled him underfoot, a squashed boneless snail. She had loved his weak watery blood drained from her own. Was that then real? The only true thing in life? His mother's prostrate body the fiery Columbanus in holy zeal bestrode. She was no more: the trembling skeleton of a twig burnt in the fire, an odour of rosewood and wetted ashes. She had saved him from being trampled underfoot and had gone, scarcely having been. A poor soul gone to heaven: and on a heath beneath winking stars a fox, red reek of rapine in his fur, with merciless bright eyes scraped in the earth, listened, scraped up the earth, listened, scraped and scraped."

-James Joyce, Ulysses

Saturday, April 3, 2010

sophomoric.

take me by my human wrists and put me to music
because the failing chalk-dust skin around my hands
turns into sonnets.