hardleave

 i know i don’t look normal. i know i never have. every time they cut me i look more unusual

not even of this world

She continues to challenge me every day

because she’s finished -she goes and I get to stay.

don’t really belong as an enigma 

every minute sort of a torture.learning how

to commune(icate)

learning.how 

to be quiet.learning.how. to listen. 

i’ve been alone

.

BOUNTY

 heard the Sirens are raged. the oceans will not reveal.easy.there’s pressure down there. pressure behind pressure. steady and gentle, respectful like might work. money means nothing to the sea, all is always held under the neath. all the gold. the knowledge. the seed. the cities. the bones. the ever after. the blue prints, the original water, the fire, the currents, the star dust. all of it in utero. in her. bounty.

Aaron’s Rod

It’s December let’s keep it popin. Some vitrify just before they fall off. At the blindend no questions are asked. We all work all the time, with the body or inside where it’s freezing. Give me a lighter. It’s like that guy just mind raped me. Sometimes at night I watch flame for hours. In all weather tangent waves ride the edge of yellow and blue. We have been gathering ourselves home for generations. Promises and fattened fingers. This is not a joint or a cigarette by the way. It’s Aaron's rod. I love to tell people that. It’s only a little tiny piece of it.  Not everybody’s always flying high.  There is no way to push the river. The wind blew the fire to us. The water will come too.

the last time

last time i tried to quit i put things in the right order.  confusion broken down is mostly earth and water. just a shower and clothes to put on for a job. one hand in emotion, the other in money feels like cheating.  i stick to what i say.  questions and history and structure stay private. mother and father sleep in a rose colored house with two dogs.  they are in the tenth spring and it’s confusing. there’s a field of clover, and a car on the side of the road. you think how he thinks. you act just like her.  forget those mistakes.  who told you they were wrong anyway. the pillars are tilted. a mudslide slew everything and they are unrooted. you can not create through his mind. because his mind is his world.  word up. fish swim in patterns. shadows solidify what is known..circles in the sand. tell the children that a new one is set inside every morning. build and tear down. head on easy. swimming helps. i linger in the spinach patch when it rains Iike this. we used to live in the desert and here there are puddles.

three suns

there are three suns here.  i don’t know what to do.  a while ago they built a new house. over there you still feel afraid.  turn around and remember who has your back.  Saturn puts a strain on, but that’s not the point.  the fences at the north need mending.  it’s okay to think about the other side.  loops crescendo. you know the real.  nothing is nothing all the time.  the deer is cautious and listening.  you may never see it.  watch anyway

Elemental

_
charcoal cylinders
ululate winter's ingress
still forests wait
_
swarms of pulp and fly
freckle the vellum mantle
light trickles in
_
wind luffs
my nightgown
tight as skin
_
the sky expands
a wire of seperation
over bare land

Owl Remembers

the black wolf
comes to eat at night
blankets and looms
the thicket hollow
pitch few can navigate well.
a.lone.ness
is a deep pool
buried beneath ecotone
a baldachin that webs back
ungulates detritus
velvets the wind
and notches bones 
from the yawn.

SEED

My dead eye is a sacred vestibule
an old eggshell, a single reach
of stem rise and leaf spread.

Her body is the mother of me.
A body married to expansion.
A body I can not control.
A body that swells to perpetuate.

Seed in me becomes
the surface of the moon split on it’s quarter.

I am a mirror of darkness. 

My left body remembers
a solitary voyage
through the firmament
a diaphragm pulling air down to root.

Each hair bristle, each naked dusk
calls back. Expand.
Expand and come into form.

We Are Blue Folk Under Our Skin

The whole of cellular syrup
is jumbled with salt.
It clings to the underground
with longing for drink and food
it hungers for a body.
I watched the moon resign her pool of milk
to give the earth order and edges.
The memory of it gathers flowers
beneath last years wild
and quenches the short forever

for now.

Clearing

my palm counters clockwise, looses shades of green from corners out open windows. we t(w)o pursue center. seeds and hulls and flower shaped systems spiral from the heart to the belly, pervade soil beyond the roots of trees, beyond bedrock. our fence is sway and faded. pressed by the rheumy quiet of transformation. wisteria has twined itself around posts. each night an opossum balances the pickets, toes twisted for grip, bobbing in and out of darkness. breath goes to all the places breath is supposed to go. i see silence, feel vacancy. in a meadow an amethyst sloughs it’s crust. follow grass Love, rustle blades, open each sheath, and spread to the becoming..

Migration

tanagers whistle toward the flock
criss-cross mountain range
and follow marsh.
precise are the skies
abundant the earth
refuge is quiet and waiting.
to harness power is shortsighted
the grids are laid out.
when they open to a field
the sky is
wrought with red
remembered.
most rise silent.
there is an order of return
when the time comes
wings break way
and the path is known.

Friday Morning Fire

Sparks blow to the confluence
0ur fire burns to shard and ashes
ice is on the ground.
Iris stalks are thick with buds
pale from lack of food
the absence of sun.
One week sooner
might have staved off death.
This year’s openings
mistimed
too tired and too broke.
I’ve never told I want
to skip over lines of the labyrinth
am afraid to cheat
haven’t watched an owl
fly through the window
or been to Scotland.
The way you’ve grown into
your body is beautiful
never thought that would happen
or that I could reconcile

me growing out of mine.

Mockingbird Review

Incite one call

that growth matters.

A swoop of eyes

machined to watch

nature appear again

and the world buds

dark sisters

green shadows

that work best
under intense radiance.

They recognize curtains and linger on

numbed down pathways

ripped out coastlines.

They mark water

and adopt kindness

pretend not to salivate

all intention fixed

beyond the wire.

THE FEVER OF STARS

Before rain, flies cling to the window screen
and the under side of leaves turn up
wide to take on water.
There cometh a shower, the bible says
and a fierce wind will blow.
I can bend simple enough
pass through prism and sky to pull
the blunt force of sun as it strikes a raindrop.
You are refracted light
and I emerge eggshell above blue
reaching and reaching.
The right choice will come to pass
for no one can really see day
until it moves on the horizon
loaded with reasons to keep wholly alive
every nuance outstretched for the fringe
every wonder pressed into a deep brow.
We scream for the stars to come closer
to our avalanche of complacency.
Slow and private, they are on their way.

Absolute (Joshua Tree)

The sun conceives ground


curled north enough


to move stars


longitudes that must


be plod alone.


Each left stroke


ignites summer


swells the sky.


The air


a benediction


of immutable days


questioned.


Calm 


transparency.


Wholeness is chosen


then remembered


fluid.


Words lie


past care


altogether


so we are silent


and sacred


and solitary


on the rocks.