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.

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.

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.

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...

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...

"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.

"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.

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.

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

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!