. . poems

Subway

2012-02-11T19:05:00.000-08:00

subway, moving toward
home
moving into and out of space
I can see it.

The girl in black tights the print
of wallpaper lace
and boots
or coffee suede
a black beret
laughs as she falls toward her friends when it
brakes.

The music in the station
comfortable
on an unknown instrument,
wooden and big
like a salad bowl with
light, twangy strings

I have never written of the
lightness of winter.

In Detroit

2011-11-08T21:12:00.000-08:00

Folks talk about the city

Like a body

A fallible, human thing

Whose weaknesses have been sought out

And blades run through chinks

In its armor.

I don’t know how they spoke of it before

Its “decline”-

The exodus of so many

When the manufacturing went bust.

Now it seems they talk of it

With severe compassion,

as though it were a wayward cousin

Whom the family loves but who

Has been into so much shit

That he is only regarded

with sighs.

Like the city is a young man

Whose strength everyone used to speak of

And now nobody will mention.

Meditation

2011-07-18T22:22:00.000-07:00

Melodies to construct realities

That are never everyone’s realities.

We control only half of how we express ourselves,

the rest irreversibly borrowed.

We control nothing

of how others understand us.

Funny, that love might depend

On how ingenuously I used a symbol

From a quill of symbols -

how deftly I fired it

Into the river

of speech or music

The stones underneath

So smooth

Choosing to change

instead of leave

To make oneself anew

Rather than be unmade.

One morning

2011-03-01T16:30:00.000-08:00

First, walk into a small cafe,
preferably one named after a woman.

Next, find a corner seat
where your back can find support
against a wall,
and you can see and hear what's before you.

Then, sit and watch;
Don't create your own story,
Just watch what's there.

Hear the music and the names
of the regulars (this morning
there are two named Joe:
one with a small coffee to go,
one with a blueberry muffin).

See the way the manager
clucks and attends like a mother hen.

Hear jokes that aren't funny
but for which everyone smiles.

Morning buns that stick crystals
of cinnamon and sugar
on the inside of the glass case.

A woman's bright red jacket;

the sounds of castiron from the kitchen;

the morning demeanors
before the coffee
and the morning demeanors
after it;

And if you're lucky,
jazz on the radio
that splashes like a sheen over the checkerboard floor.

So it is,
belonging all to itself
one morning.

Into the Forest

2011-02-27T09:44:00.001-08:00

They went to the coast to play

As they often do,

To the house a mile’s walk

From the water.

Through a wet meadow,

Fragrant with heath that

Crushes underfoot, incensing the ground

And over the dunes, otherworldly,

Rendering all footsteps mysterious,

The land deserted and wistful.

He had brought it with him.

She made all sorts of jokes

Obliviously.

Where was it? In the heath?

On her Halloween costume?

In his pocket?

She acted like she knew, but didn’t,

Which enabled all the teasing.

They spent the weekend

as they often do there,

Among friends, concocting feasts

In the big kitchen made small by twelve sets of hands

And innumerable bottles.

They threw pots and set them by the fire to harden,

Made eggs and tea,

stoked the flames, read, laughed often.

When Sunday came, a lingering group wandered once more to the beach.

They watched the puppy chase gulls,

Laughing and burying her in sand and kisses when she conceded defeat

And collapsed down beside them.

He was relaxed and playful,

She was calm and warm-hearted;

When others had left,

they stayed a little longer.

They drove home at sunset,

Stopping where the highway turns inland, eastward into

Deep stands of redwoods.

Wet green canopy, dry carpets of red mulch on the quiet forest floor.

Steep cliffs cut the road sharply around the point,

Yielding thin slivers of beach below.

Where the road turns east against the water, flowing out to sea,

There is a vista and an overlook.

From the vista you can see south and northward,

See the thick froth of waves closing out on the sands,

Spreading to gray turquoise swells they watched build offshore.

The sun burst through patches of splotched gray sky.

Light reflected off clusters of stratus and shot in beams toward the land and water.

They held each other, watched the sheets of it stream down and change color in the dusk:

Deep orange, amber, purple and gold.

Blue audience beyond.

His nerves gave him away.

They were standing, she with her head on his chest.

“Wow,” she thought, “he’s really tachycardic.”

She could hear his heart beating, buzzing like a dragonfly.

She was considering having him lie down and put his feet up,

When he spoke:

“So, do you want to get married?”

“When?” she said, thinking it was another planning talk,

a question with no decision required.

“Well,” he said, laboring on, “I think we should decide to get married

before we decide when to get married.”

Oh, a great response! her mother would say later. The best stuff of an engineer!

He produced a small box,

Handed it to her along with the tachycardia.

For an hour afterward, neither of their cell phones worked,

Silenced by the redwoods, and for our purposes,

Love’s sporadically perfect timing.

A small notch of space was etched out of the whole for them.

They spent it well,

Driving smoothly through the redwoods,

Always touching, not speaking of much:

It is that moment,

The one just after history,

Of simplest intimacy,

Residing in memory and time as one sleeping lover in the curve of another,

A moment after remember, which is only for them,

Driving smoothly through the twilight,

Deep into the forest.

Swinging Bridge

2011-02-27T09:33:00.000-08:00

I move in the space between looking at the clock

and forgetting about it.

Afterward.

I know how long five minutes can be,

In the same way you

Sometimes understand

When you sleep in.

Here, in the space between being and going,

I know my limits in a finer resolution.

The commuter’s grace, relaxed

On the wire, wringing

every minute to not

ruin any moment.

I have confronted the greed of time

and found it placable,

even predictable,

though I admit it only in a whisper...

The bridge could be up, the ride two hours longer.

I am like that swinging bridge, flexible

To the last point, and somehow

the point changes.

What are the spaces where time is extensive?

For better or for worse?

Points of tension signify too much.

Think of it:

A space in which time

Is made of essence

And is not cut short.

The train will come when we want it to come.

2011-02-27T09:29:00.000-08:00

it's a poem day.
is it raining there like it is here -
powerful, fat drops that change angles and trees swaying at different rates in the wind?
The pines are a slow blues,
the bamboo something cuban,
the magnolia is rock on the edges and folk rock in the middle.
And the lime green tree with spiky leaves that I cannot name,
I just watch and wait for moments of stillness;
so that one must be jazz.

By boat, maybe.

2010-12-21T16:33:00.000-08:00

Ran ran ran to the train this morning, got caught up with home and forgot about extra things like lunch, home keys in the car that had to be retrieved and brought back to lock the door, the busy-ness of 10:30am that means so little parking, parking four blocks away instead of one, running, running to the train, cursing the lights and the unhurried mothers making eventual lefts on their way to spending money on Fourth street.

Ran to be sure and make the 10:29 and got to the platform at 10:24. This always happens, on account, I think, of forgetting that I am perpetually setting my clocks to one minute fast over and over until now they are at least 5 minutes fast. I could have missed it still, I guess.

The knot of breakfast begins to loosen, sweat dries and body regulates; the sun comes through the window stark and bleached the way the rainclouds make it somehow unpleasant but warm. Green grass shined slick by the rain like new leather oiled; brooding bay, the new houses already drab, all tinged with gray - yellow stucco turns brownish, creme and beige already brown. I wonder if the squatters' camps really suffer in the rain or whether they have equipment and protocols for bolstering their makeshifts against the weather? You see a lot of tarps but most have holes or rips and it seems only a matter of time before mildew or mold start to rot things. Just passed the biggest beach ruins: a queen-sized mattress, a gray couch, a wooden flat with a small Coleman laying on its side on top, and a 20 foot radius of debris, particulate collections, strewn around them. I suppose these were judged too heavy or too worthless to take away.

How the hell did they get the couch there in the first place? It's probably safe to say that I'll never learn the real story of the camp and its former inhabitants, the story that has already come and gone, but I've got another year and a half of watching, and intend to see what becomes of it. By boat, maybe...

Two Month Truth

2010-12-14T22:43:00.001-08:00

There are certain truths

That don’t translate well

Between telling

And living.

Certain things that,

When read or heard

are accepted as wise,

Received openly, and felt that way.

We tuck them into saddlebags

And ride off,

Carrying them along for when they come due.

No less true

When they’re borne out in living,

But no one seems to translate the vividness of them in the living,

or the intensity.

Living is visceral.

The space between telling and living truth is like

What happens to a yell in the canyon.

It is not the yell; it is the echo

Resounding and then repeating and then thinning,

Thinner and softer until

It seems there was no yell at all.

Just a spectrum of echoes

Reverberating.

Between a scream and an echo,

Drained silence in the canyon,

This distance between telling

And living.

Building a Trellis

2010-05-03T17:30:00.001-07:00

Chill in the air

Bright blue glass air.

Windshields from the hills show up melting.

Morning light is of a compact fluorescence.

Walking quickly, shedding layers and

Putting them back on, sweating

At the armpits and the back of the neck

The willow boughs press into

The wet earth with smooth, satisfying contact

They make firm foundations.

The elastic bones

become a superhuman framework

For the sweet peas already volunteering

Sweetness out of place in this season

Without a thick peel, bitter skin, bright colors.

Bend willows back over themselves

Considering being a weaver ‘till they break,

Playing Goldsworthy,

Playing spiritual with materials.

Checking to see my breath, another layer,

Listening to scavengers rustle the fig tree,

The branches and leaves in the wind

Casting around for advice, praise,

Working the boughs, braiding, reinforcing,

Checking the tension, tight, stable,

Pursuing a kind of aloneness,

A kind of not being alone.

New Salt

2010-05-03T17:18:00.000-07:00

A curve of light swings

around the sticking, beating road.

Blooms peel off the flowers,

bending down to the earth.

Blooms are sown back into the underground,

breezed over.

Liquid beads over licked salt paleness,

new wounds of light.

We came to the cool green of it, to the foam,

drinking and speaking easy.

We came for sharing

the salt of the day, freshly made.

The day is moving. The hills stay green.

Drowsy backseat, passing understory; I exist reflectively.

Out the window a mother and her daughters pose,

smiling for a colder holiday in a spread of plump lupines.

We go home to eat the bread we’ll buy on the way,

flavored with the new salt, hitting the grindcrunch of wayward sand in chewing.

Licking lips pink and raw, burning cheeks in warm kitchen,

washing it down with cold leftover beer.

Billow of thin cotton, lying still and almost thoughtful on the bed.

Whir of the table fan, sounding the waves.

Fall again

2009-10-07T20:32:00.000-07:00

the bed, warmer than the room.
the room, warmer than the house.
House, warmer than the street
wet with rain
glittering crisp and cold.

Burning candles on the dresser
fresh ink in pen,
the electric space heater
glowing warm and practical
against the wall;

I am the hanging scarf on the mirror
waiting to catch fire.

From Vernazza

2009-07-07T11:26:00.000-07:00

frizzante
the sort of oxygen
the lengths of drying cloth
fitting even more easily
and messily
than would be expected
here,
thank god,
the worst messes
being staged ones,
found a green metal bench
in the shade
watching
this canopied place
that smells of salt
and hears daily from the sea
brackishness that is not
the greysickgreen I thought it was
but warmer
like a red too many times washed.

And sea water that clings to one's skin
so ambitiously,
graining fast in the sun;
I suppose
this town is of the same disposition,
to cling so confidently
to the cliffside
to make messes with such ownership
to leave characterizations
to secondhand thoughts, and
to pay them the heed of Thursday gossip
at best
when the market came and left Tuesday.
Also, there are cats.

Tomales

2009-05-25T22:47:00.000-07:00

sharing
firelight,
we
brought
red wine and
s'mores;
fresh
stories and
hot
oysters;
sore
shoulders from
the rowing,
belly
full,
heart
easy.

Exercise 3: Draw and Write

2009-03-04T18:48:00.000-08:00

When thinking to draw something freely, it’s best to start with a memory. This way you have something meaningful, and you probably already have a technique worked out. It’s better to begin with memory anyway, because isn’t the point of drawing therapy and isn’t all therapy a kind of anxious and painful flirtation with the past? Sure. The therapy of drawing also comes in doing, in the act of drawing, and not in 15 minutes of wasted anxiety in wondering what to draw. My memory brings me a cherry blossom tree, like the ones you see in Chinese paintings, done in what I can only assume is octopus ink. You always see the brushes that painted them too – fat delicate brooms of brushes with bamboo handles, soaked with black ink. Rarely the artist’s hand, but always the brush is seen. A strange credit.

The way the lines are drawn to make out the branches and twigs of the tree are the real memory. I still draw them as I did then, starting the line and letting my wrist give in all sorts of directions. It is a technique for the realistic effect. Letting one’s wrist give simulates the actual growth progression of a branch. I didn’t think I was good at texture so much as this technique was one of so many small pieces of magic in the world I was let in on. The way your bent kneecap fits almost perfectly into your eye socket is another. Knobby knees of branches with the tiniest sprigs of blossoms. The world is like that. Things that may not even know each other anymore still fit like spoons or siblings.

My cherry blossom tree looks less like a flowing display and more like a cracked leaf as I add more and more branches. If they were veins they’d be varicose, like my mother’s. What a phrase. “Like my mother’s” could be the beginning to any oily drama. “Like my mother’s…,” cue a shadow, a curtain falling, and a mysterious, wistful orchestral tune. So wistful I have to laugh. I love my Mother. We’ve got some love between us. We’re friends. She’s so embarrassed about her veins from childbirth that I haven’t seen her wear shorts in years, even though her legs look like a 30 year old’s and she’s gorgeous. If anybody ever laughed at those veins, I’d probably hit ‘em. The marks of motherhood might be the most sacred of any.

Once the branches have finished it is time to put a little more planning into things. The branches have to make sense as arteries of the tree. Since a cherry blossom tree flows, the branches have to also. An “X” or a straight line inadvertently placed are hard things to accept, and if there are thicker black lines, they probably mark where I’ve drawn over these to add some texture. Sometimes I put one or two in deliberately to prove that I can. There are spaces for wind to blow through the tree and wiggle the blossoms. They are so delicate, they shiver and flow the same way any blossom might if you placed it in a bowl of water for your kitchen table and pushed it.

I’ve realized that I don’t know how to draw a cherry blossom.

I’m afraid it’ll look like a daisy, dry and unlush, waiting to be old. A cherry blossom is fertile and I imagine it might be easier to draw one half-closed. Rosebuds. Do cherry blossom trees have leaves when the flowers open? As I draw flower after flower I use almost the same technique I did for the branches. The blossoms look like birds, or leaves, or lilies, or fire. They are all blossoms. The tree’s trunk is thick, almost gargantuan. Cherries can’t be that heavy. I could cover every branch with blossoms and still the weight would be minimal. The point must be the importance of the offspring. The flowers are tiny but immeasurably valuable. Cups of ambrosia. Thimbles of blood or light. Petals like the underbelly of a lizard or a peach. Sprung from waxen knobs of wood, set free.

I can’t imagine my drawing would have been much better if I’d done it continuously without stopping to remark. There’s still work to be done; the twigs behind the branches are still the wrong kind of sticks. The blossoms need color and I need to slip into more of the time-honored habits of my own childhood artistry. All of it, I realize, revolves around a belief in importance. The pen is held too tight between the fingers because the project is important. The tip of the tongue puffs out like a prisoner between two bars of pursed lips because the detail deserves it. Leaning closer to the paper than is necessary is important too.

Blossoms on paper are both more and less than those on a real cherry tree. Paper flowers are clay and dream - they look nothing or everything like what they should and still they are. Transcriptions of emotion tonight. Paper asks to be superimposed upon: Draw. It is an invitation to anthropomorphize. To imitate freely may in truth not be to imitate at all, but more to create in a way that makes you feel better because of a semblance and a difference, which are valuable. Can’t you see how desperate my tree would look without blossoms? Have you ever smelled a paper flower? It smells like what you were feeling when you made it. If you cried over it, you might think it would recognize your tears for the sheer similarity in the emotional source of both. But it won’t. For crying, you need a real flower, unpicked. A real cherry blossom is like a hot tear. They will recognize each other. Your tears will be absorbed in the plush white petals of the blossom.

Modernity isn't

2009-02-25T19:08:00.001-08:00

Modernity is a clock.
Modernity is a whip.
Modernity is an atlas.

Modernity is anachronism.
Modernity is ignorance.
Modernity is endlessly traditional.

Modernity is a line of blood.
Modernity is a voice.
Modernity is abusive.

Modernity is a cell.
Modernity is power.
Modernity is a broken set of scales.

I want to remember
What modernity isn’t,
And choose
The most complex of loves.

Pastoral Modern

2009-02-25T18:48:00.000-08:00

long legged rays
tanned a golden brown
walking surely across wheat
in the deep afternoon

red rust
splintered clapboard
corner store
in the small market
next to
the driving range.

the body electric
slung between
coiled, geometric
cousins of Eiffel-
pastoral edifices.

mother and child
shivering, bored
in the field
full for now.

bubbled words
namesakes of adolescence
glimpses of the urban
on lonelier, self-conscious barns.

Palms next to oaks;
railroad churches;
traditionalist
hues.

What to make
of the new congruity?

Eraser

2009-02-10T21:53:00.000-08:00

Before seeing it, I see the tiny rolled jams of gray rubber

across so many desks

Dispersed mistakes, alleviated.

I see its function.

I think about its source,

certain Taiwanese trees, a factory,

the price of my mistakes,

not entirely erased, residual.

I can pretend a perfect line, decisive,

the lines of history being forgotten.

Should I have left my mistakes?

Would it have made a difference? The right kind of difference?

What is erased seems more important than what remains.

From Noah

2009-01-03T14:37:00.000-08:00

The window seat on the city street is wide, and clear.

The note on the flowers left for the neighbors this morning
Read, “Don’t forget me, Dodds. I won’t forget you. Noah.”
The neighbors are a couple,
And which Noah wants between them is a mystery.

The flowers, poor magenta and mustard things, were never brought inside.

Drove all around looking for a tarot reader,

Found Graham Nash instead,
Someone else’s reading, subsumed and protected
As if it were my own.

The flowers brown on their edges and Noah probably wonders what impact they had on Dodds.

Sometimes the greatest clarity brings on the most urgent forgetting.

depending on

2008-12-28T23:40:00.000-08:00

red winter berries
a little bit of frozen
and a little bit of living.

Just enough to remember
What the leaves were like
Last season;

The sunset,
the shoulders of Summer,
The fresh new birds of Spring.

Yes, like he said,
So much depends
Upon

Red winter berries,
Red wheelbarrows,
Against the white of snow and chickens

And especially

Against the dull, cracking
Ordinary-the frozenness of what is seen and heard the most-
To see that which is seen less often,

To recognize a winter berry
For what it is,
Growing happily, burning red, amidst a vast, still expanse of snow.

for a friend

2008-12-20T11:35:00.001-08:00

Leaves, I wish you wouldn't blow away in Winter
When you go, you drain all the color from the skin of the trees
All that is left is a skeleton,
the pale shadow of twigs along each skeletal line.

I worry about you, I can't help it.
I know I'm not supposed to; I know there's a good chance you'll be back in Spring.
But I wonder what has become of your brightness, your lightness,
I ache even to see it swirling in the gutters.

If you come back in the Spring, you will have changed
If you do not, will I have been able to do anything more than worry?
I feel so far away from this season
unable to call you back, to recognize or affect; you won't come 'till you're ready.

Yet I would give so much for that power
to take one small crimson stem,
or a deep auburn, a ripe purple,
and graft its tiny root back into the etch of the branch it fell from

To smooth my fingers firmly around it, press delicately, and watch it grow again,
glowing like an electric light on the bough,
signifying, stay,
Spring is coming soon. Stay, fight, it will be here soon.

2008-12-08T22:51:00.001-08:00

before a new friend,
new coffee,
new cream.

2008-10-05T22:09:00.000-07:00

a night of crying

ends with

a silent moon.

leaves in the Fall-

hot tea

with brandy in it.

Rare quietude

I'm happy

just to be gentle.

Commute

2008-09-30T23:06:00.001-07:00

The view from the train is surprisingly scenic.

Make sure you sit on the left to see it best.

The tracks run right along the coast,

less than ten yards from where you sit, looking out, coffee steaming,

the sage cool waters of the bay lapup upon the moving sand,

the moving rocks, the moving green watergrasses against the streak of algal blooms,

now brown, now an oak tree, now a moving picture of the morning scene

split by black slides marked, "Union Pacific."

The train is a great fleeting divider,

a wedge between the water and the shoreliner cities,

between the gray flaking docks of Crockett hosting dingies and smokers instead of fishing boats,

and the life-sized models, painted three shades of some universal shell, two designs,

and planted awkwardly, like boxed trees, young.

The tracks are a borderlands.

They host thousands of passing stories;

they're where the hobo camp, ruined, is:

a collection of crates, boxes, bottles, and a peeling armchair. Such stories.

You are exposed through a new window, you pass history in a new way.

What before you saw only from the highway, such a searing distance, until now.

Without the crass lustre of neon lights, it is certainly here, still here.

This older place, still here, invisible to me, until now.

Or rather, it would be wiser to see,

that I was blind.

Without Songbirds

2008-09-15T15:11:00.002-07:00

Over the years, I've received nearly fifty CDs;
Thousands of songs, each chosen for a particular purpose.

He's chosen them
For their melodies, and lyrics, and for their place in the current story
He's telling me,saying
"Take it, here," saying so much
through softer, deeper, stranger voices.

How can he know, though,
How can he know the world of meaning newly alive in me-
what I engage with them,
what spaces they set aglow to venture into,
what grooves they move in my body, what
tears they draw?

To think, it's so much, and it's all without a word
aloud from either of us.

We have a story.
Both of us read it in our own language,
and use others to speak and sing it,
entrusting so much of love to ballads
and self-professing songbirds.

O songbirds, do you know your power?
So often I don't want to give the tears you take,
So often I seep tenderness from my skin into the lonely kitchen,
Not meant for you!

Meant for him.

And oh god, does he know it?

Does he know it?

2008-09-15T15:11:00.001-07:00

What season is it?
A woman ties a man's sweater
around his shoulders.

2008-09-15T15:06:00.000-07:00

Jack Kerouac
only enough time
for three lines.

Leaves of Unknown Colors

2008-09-15T15:02:00.000-07:00

Just past rush hour
the calmer travelers on the brick platform
look at books
instead of watches.

The lacquered floor
hosts a waxen cup,
strips of gray newspapers.
The evening breeze blows in from above.

None of us can tell whether
it's summer, or fall,
late or early;
Least Heat-Moon knew it: the stasis of travel.

2008-07-27T23:04:00.000-07:00

"There is a way to express oneself in terms other than 'I'," she laughed,

"But I don't know it!"

So it goes.

2008-06-22T13:47:00.001-07:00

I dreamed
that I was running
that there was one left in the drawer for us
that the dishes were done
that I was it
but none of these things are as yet

You dreamed
what I cannot tell;
what I want it to be
is in fact probably dreamless

So many ways to dream at night.
So many ways to wake, dreaming.

lavendar

2008-05-26T00:47:00.001-07:00

Late night
dried lavendar on the desk
holding itself up against the fan.
I relish these warm-cool nights
of late Spring
invoking Summer from the air.

2008-05-24T19:53:00.000-07:00

I said
I don't like
haikus!

Salsipuedes

2008-05-16T12:52:00.000-07:00

I remember

This time when I was young

And a boy and I escaped for an evening.

We went to the sea, to a place unlike home.

We picked our way to a flat rock, overlooked it and found a sea gull: newly dead, wedged beneath two rocks in the tide.

Pools of water swirled beneath its white, sopped feathers.

New waves rushed over them again, and again.

Death sat nonchalantly and life came around it. I sat and watched, silent.

Life and death can float together in rippling waters.

I know; I watched it happen then.

The essence of each can meet the other in a place that knows how to harbor both.

I know; I watched the ever-moving ocean breathe around and around its brother.

I thought about how close I really was to death myself, and at once no further from living.

Especially, perhaps, in Baja, where the houses of the poor blaze thick with color,

Where the day of the dead is one of celebration.

I come from a place where wealth, industry, and power enable the minimization of mortality.

There, in Salsipuedes, I encountered my own death

through white, sopped feathers,

And I felt as though I owned the blood in my veins then,

For I knew how fragile I was.

2008-05-14T22:45:00.000-07:00

There is a girl in the airport.
She reminds me of you.
She has the same kind of gaze
while in thought, pen ready.

I remember that poem you wrote
for a friend.
You asked me to look it over
I didn't understand why - I wasn't its recipient.
I thought you had feelings for the friend;
It's what I would have done.

Now I think
that perhaps no matter who a poem is intended for,
a small piece of it is always saved
for its creator.

So poems are of the utmost romance
because they are for a friend, and for you, and for me,
and no value is always more worthy than another.
It is a small miracle
that every poem is reserved
for those who read it.

In the Airport

2008-05-06T14:37:00.000-07:00

Remembering you, friend
is like

remembering,
after a long time travelling,

that one has a home.

Poetic Thought, Activist Thought

2008-03-06T19:16:00.000-08:00

The drive over began them, or even before. Truthfully, I don't know what triggered the feeling. But it was a feeling that moved me to want to drive, to slide through the night with the dark all around and music inside. I wanted the music to be poignant and clear. I wanted to think. I want, have wanted, can't get enough of wanting to be soothed.

Driving I did this, and reflected that the songs I wanted and was choosing were often "sad" songs. I began to form a poetic thought, an activist thought, that feeling is so often only allowed in happy or sad terms - and the sad stigmatized. But there are so many important emotions that are not happy and certainly not sad, that appeal to the ambivalently poignant. These feelings want somber songs and care more about their tones than their lyrics. Passionate songs, music analogous to making quiet, powerful love while the rain beats a constant rhythm against the windows. I thought, "Poetry can allow this." This diversity of feeling is what poetry is for. These words in this way can always be for whatever depth you need! This is allowed!

Hours ago, right now

2008-02-28T11:29:00.000-08:00

Jenna Rose Klatchko is present.

4 hours ago

Benjamin Migliori is back in the lab but in a really good mood.

PJ Masterson is watching some lacrosse this weekend.

Vikram Iyer is Bless your heart Ralph Nader, you just don't give up...

Barry Tong is BOBBY ALL DAY!

8 hours ago

Dina Sklovslaya is glad to be back in Barcelona...Paris pictures soon.

jR bachmaN is drowning in words.

Kelley Ramey is officially going to Spain!

14 hours ago

Kailey Page Songer is yes-ing.

Greg Murphy is still writing fellowship applications.

Reid Snowden never wants to launch.

15 hours ago

Carina Moss =e^(pi*i).

Malika Morar is in love with Angelina Jolie and her entire beautiful family.

Emily Gravett is a thousand kisses deep.

Trevor Rose is in shanghai...pace of life here is: push, shove, faster, faster!!!

Keren Freedy is the future freaks me out.

20 hours ago

Kathy Sepulveda got sick and its all justins fault.

Holly Thompson is jean.

21 hours ago

Gwen Chang is feeling a bit uncreative.

Michael Phung is living in the library.

Tina Slagel should be doing anything other than what i am doing.

Heather Kroll loves rainy days.

On Sunday

Margo Winton is OSCARS!

On Sunday

Abby Cannon is pouring like an avalanche, coming down the mountain.

On Sunday.

Labyrinth

2008-01-24T19:14:00.000-08:00

My life is a half-written poem
recopied again and again
a new mistake each time.

The lesson from each is a poem,
In truth, it is easier to argue for poetry than against it.

A half-written poem is always what you feel,
It is half-full and half-empty

The sensation of poetry is not a riddle
any more than these words are,

Because if life is a poem, emotion is its labyrinth,
shattering the limits of glory and redemption.

Anthem

2007-05-30T22:10:00.000-07:00

Pour me another glass because I’m rolling
Write it down
To test the viscosity of words
Do they flow, just so
Nicely below the tongue or with spice we
tipped it forward but the words hung…
Stuck.

Unfortunate. Awkward.
The flow of the viscous
Can’t break it ‘cause it’s already broken
It’s us, us starting smooth, ending smooth,
But harsh, ever possibly harsh
“Having very high resistance to flow”
No.

What do I love?

2007-05-11T16:34:00.000-07:00

I can hear the sound of my sister’s laugh upstairs,
And in it the bright blue
Of things that sail, through and through,
and in my own voice the sound of something full,
Of a hit and a nerve and immutable tears to virtually any music.

I can feel the sound warmth of the hands of my love,
Benign, firm,
And behind my eyes the sting of exhaustion
And the burn of too many looks
Through wind, under water.

I can almost touch that silence of a quiet room filled with classmates,
Caressed by the soft sounds of lead pressing paper
I am rocked by its softness.
I am in on a secret that only compassion
And a back-breaking, coveting sensitivity can tap.

I would cry so soon.
So soon I would sleep to the gentle hands of love or silence.
I would love for the quiet secrets that are almost not even here.
I would love them because they are more worthy,
and less ready, than a tear.

Conversion

2007-02-28T23:06:00.000-08:00

Here is the village
Here are its people
And here is the church, complete with its steeple.

Silver and shining,
With green all around
Higher, of course, than the earth on the ground

And higher the people
for they're in the church, though
Their feet remain stained from the brown of the earth.

-

The lord will forgive you the brown on your soles
the bamboo of your huts
your rice without bowls

But will he forgive you the grace of your land?
The color of life
When it's this close at hand?

The silence of thatch when the roof catches rain?
He cannot forgive these,
I'll try to explain...

-

To give, one must have
And he'll give you his Word,
There's grace in that too, you've probably heard.

But he cannot give earth,
and if you are a slave,
The soles of your feet aren't the soles he can save.

So here is your village,
And here are your people,
And here is the church, complete with its steeple.

10.3.05
India

2007-02-28T23:03:00.000-08:00

15 minutes of fame.
Where'd it bring me?
Back. Back to beginning when I started wanting him back.
To Thanksgiving.
To the airport where he drove to pick me
dolled up (for him? for him)
Notre Dame meets red polka dots and courdoroy in the Camry.
Boy meets girl, doesn't he, and well, well, well.

10.2.05

2007-02-28T22:57:00.000-08:00

Hello Beauty I see,
Goodnight vast day of life,
Wide and stretching circle of mind
taste of my youth, blur of my age
torrents, gusts of heat blow through
this doorway of a window
the dawn pours in, the stars overlook
the flame of night and the dust of day,
the beauty and heat that swirl around us
as arms of the earth
Encircling, eclipsing, enfolding us in our small and earnest hopes.

We are so fragile and so human
but we stare at the night sky and its milky way
and we believe in a beauty larger than our hearts,
at the same time give that beauty life.
To aspire and to dream
to measure sorrow in hearts untouched,
peace in rivers flowing,
depth in a gaze,
and balance in all.

How immeasurably ambitious we can be
and how powerfully humble.

If we could know the beauty we reach
by touching the petals of one small flower,
we'd grasp in vain for the stars no longer.

9.2.05

Crow Canyon

2007-02-28T22:55:00.000-08:00

Ashes on eyelashes
Look at the sky
No, close thine eyes and feel it
the air and the ash
warm and cool
as the string-bearded boot clomper tells stories
to the applause of thunder.

Origin

2007-02-26T00:51:00.000-08:00

How can I be happy?

Well, I figure I should know what I want in order to be happy.

What do I want?

Well, I suppose I have to know what I believe in order to determine what I want.

What do I believe?

Well, I need to know who I am to decide that.

Who am I?

Trying to Write Clearly

2007-02-10T18:38:00.000-08:00

And how much I've missed the ocean
since I, landlocked, travelling
crossed a continent widthwise in the rain

Now I'm back, two years since that time
I'm five minutes away
And only yesterday did I reach it

The ocean is a wise mentor
that makes no sense and complete sense at the same time
And because I'm human I can feel this way

They say wisdom is the ability to embrace two contradictory truths simultaneously
I think it's a good idea regardless.
Perhaps wisdom is regardless.

I have been held many times by the ocean,
simultaneously disregarded.
I miss it well,and I feel deep like the ocean in my sickness.

I call it the ocean and not the sea because the sea is in other places
Blue grey, choppy, and unbridalled
waiting
for no one.

21 and what to say

2006-11-30T21:23:00.000-08:00

21 and what to say: I wish I had a song instead of a letter. Something shapelier, colorful, vibrant. Who I am. What is me. This. Little change but that which is imagined in case a lot what comes out is what works yes it does. 21. adult. Alone. Myself. I wonder often if Im meant to be more alone. To feel more that way. In many ways I am – independent. Say it however youd like. I’ve departed. I am here. I’ve gone and come again. On our way to the store to buy beer. The corny, humored gestures of an occasion. Worth it. For the laughs. To spend time – to be and to do together. That’s the point. So independent, so necessarily social. All dependent, not knowing the difference but in feelings laid bare and lonely. Each alone, one after the other, each other. It is all the same but for the emotion you give it. I am myself, passionate, for myself? For what I could to for to with in love of others. You go through a day and wonder what you mean, what your steps have to do with the leaves and the smile from that phone call. It seemed so shallow. Common ground. You just walked it, yet you know it not. You’ve created a gap from feet to heart that only the bravest leap (or is it the most practiced?) can jump. Two different kinds of jumping. I intended to focus on myself – what is a birthday but for the healthiest narcissism, self-reflection, special-ness? But again, arbitrary. I am nought without others, yet I create my own. Love. Family. Familylove. My peace. Not over. Not close – all fragments waiting to be spun and woven with fantastic threads and hideous detail. It is a life I’m making, nose pressed to the process, craving the exhale, the lift up, the sight of the whole. The hope is to sustain happiness, love, peace, and to create something of immense worth.

Sometimes I feel I am the greatest obstacle to my own path. I inflict upon myself. I am pained and injurious. I judge and judge and mince and doubt. It is torrential and battering. The control comes painstakingly. Conscious progression. Arduously slow, and so real as to be unglorious. It is only in nostalgizing, in sensational retrospection that the world is brighter amidst these progressions. The slow growth of rapid youth rolls along in waves, but as a medium, is mostly gray. Or is it? Do I believe what I say? The doubt talking. Bastard. Bitch. Ha. I have color. It’s here in my cheeks and I can write it and it means something. It may find a mellowertone with age, so as to elude doubt, sell its reality. But I believe. I believe in magic. It’s around. It flecks colors like an oak does leaves. Out and across the breeze, floating everywhere, coursing through veins of energy and existence, sacred vivacity. Burst. Bow. Joy.

Homecoming

2006-11-30T21:17:00.000-08:00

I appreciate the warmth of that house, looking back
I was announced as an invalid coming, and I was.
Strecthed too thin, and too stubbornly absorbed to ease the tension.

Cold night, windy season,
Whipping leaves and icy smoke in the sky
Behind my eyes I felt them weighing

I came; I took the chance of letting myself
And why I needed it so much I couldn’t tell
It seemed the day had been short, but
I was so
Desperate.

Welcome. Welcome lights fond and soft in clear windows
Calm biddings released me into a long exhale of a moment
Pie, peppermint tea warmth I felt I amost could havecried but for being so relieved,
So accepting of acceptance.

To be ready for warmth and to have it felt rare.
I wanted it the more.
I was swathed, overwhelmed in a womb of home.

Could you know how much that house meant,
Made up by your smiles and enfolding arms?
Those tricks you showed me that Hank had learned?

That shower.
Those sheets.
I was a leaf falling.

Could you have known the love I felt.
Yes. You are.
The prayer of the night nestled in, tucked softly, listening to the season.

I slept with soft eyelids and cheeks, only, ever, everything grateful.

11.18.06

My India

2006-11-30T21:15:00.000-08:00

The world a jungle forest
And India its floor
Teeming,
Packed and pungent

We arrived in New Delhi
I saw fireflies out my window
Green, fuschia, violet, bright and butter yellow
Tiny bulbs of color bursing against the blurs of open sky

They were women
riding sidesaddle on the backs of motorcycles
Fireflies buzzing through the city.

I saw the Khasi Hills
And learned the color green
And then looked so hard, I lost myself,
And forgot it

Thick air, dense heat
I do not belong, but I cannot deny, I cannot withdraw
Neither the air, nor the heat,
Especially not the stares

Waves of India forever at high tide
The rains of Meghalaya make waves in the forest
And how much I’ve missed the ocean

Red of smiling teeth, White of curious eyes
A blue saree, a blue sky
But I do not belong
And I try not to try, so I can listen

There is magic in the forest floor
In the place where things come together
It is love hate,
it is bittersweet,

Terrible,
vivid,
living beauty.

2006-11-09T22:47:00.000-08:00

Listening to Stevie Nicks sing to her daddy,
Singing along, I think,
"I could take the low road
Drop into my throat
Kick up the gravel there."
It's so much sexier than a soprano.
I'd have to start smoking,
but I mean, jesus,
If you need a way to say what you mean,
Say it like that.

8.8.06

Winslow Trains

2006-11-09T22:43:00.000-08:00

The trains were methodical in the way they captured attention and erased memory. With memory went the capacity to turn any small issuance of the imagination into something more real. The travelers were thus limited to staring, sipping good coffee, and going to the bathroom while whistling conductors, imported goods, and the nostalgic mysteries of further places blew in one ear and out the other at 15 minute intervals.

This wasn’t exactly undesirable. The trains that rolled, belaboured, in and out of the station were as mobile as anything and full of life. To watch them was to lend energy in great currents under their heavy wheels, to breathe in their rhythm. The wheels struck a pattern, and even when resting they too appeared to be softly, deeply, breathing. They breathed with life and patience and anticipation – the way an old widower might await his second marriage to a widow awaiting hers.

There is a patience created by a thing repeated many times, no matter how special or dangerous or ordinary it may be. The widower twirled a loose nut as he sat in front of the station display, thinking in turns of nothing and something in particular. He stared through the mirror of the window pane, focusing on the reflections of leaves, blowing and tumbling, some crushed, across the tracks outside.

He has been here for many years, cleaning old tools and car parts, degreasing and re-greasing bicycle chains; the occasional cogs of a clock. His customers know he won’t be moving. In fact, they are so far from considering it that many of them leave their appliances for weeks after they have been repaired. When they come, the widower says nothing. He doesn’t mind, and doesn’t mention that a cleaning paid for in January was repeated in March free of charge. There was no hurry, really.

The trains rolled in and out of the station, exhaling with long, moaning whistles. They moved for a reason; they carried the material pieces of large dreams. It would be ironic and correct to call them American. As they watched, the travelers could almost see the dreams being realized. Each material sheltered in each car represented one piece in a puzzle of flowering success.

The widower marveled at the cars through glazed, clear blue eyes. For it seemed that with all their promise, they would never stop. Not for good.

8.24.06