Monday, September 21, 2009

one hundred starlings writing words with their wings

i like the way the streets are deserted at 5am; how you can barely tell it's morning. you can walk and hear nothing but your heartbeat and your footsteps. wisps of dream drift like smoke from sleepers in their beds. the sky is particularly mysterious. and if you are awake enough, if you are paying attention, you can hear the faint murmurings of some secret being whispered, meant only for you, in only that moment, and you never can hear the whole thing. but i think it's a process; that you gather all the bits you can find until you have enough to put it together. and that's wisdom. like saving up for a piggy bank. i think if there is anything we are meant to learn, it's that.

Saturday, September 5, 2009

god's fingers on the spine of autumn

there is a certain perverse beauty within the slow strangling desiccation that ever accompanies the whistling rhythms arranging and rearranging themselves so resolutely inside midnight's blinking posture. just beyond the frigid air forcing itself upon the starlight, there is warmth. it is beneath my corduroy blankets. i will meet you there.

Monday, August 31, 2009

sling your guns sir, this is a revival

don't listen too loud. there aren't many safe sounds around here. you're clearly a person of great distinction. i wouldn't want you to wind up in a situation you couldn't read according to familiar maps. things here are not what you used to be used to. it will take some adjusting. now the first thing is, you have to focus, concentrate real hard, you have to remember dying. you have to remember your own death. otherwise you won't believe. see we've all done it. but it's such a shock that most of us don't remember it. memory loss is known to accompany severe trauma. until you remember you won't be able to see the way the sky looks like a marching band. you won't get to hear the way the flowers sing like lounge singers. you won't be able to feel the riotous orgasm that lives inside music. the thing about death that nobody realizes while they are still alive, the thing about death is, it is the railroad to god. and i don't mean god as the living have conceived of god, i mean god as god actually is, ineffable, indefinable, the very limit, boundary, end of any language's ability to know, to articulate, to encompass. see, you wind up here, and once you are dead, there is no need to talk, because understanding, knowing, pervades everything. you have endless time to explore the intricacies of the world you never even glimpsed while you were living in it. i have spent years just watching dust settle. a century watching a sleeping woman breathe. ten thousand years inside the wind. do you understand how many different faces there are to a single leaf, a single blade of grass, a single drop of water? no, of course you don't. but you will.

Sunday, August 30, 2009

glow quietly and scream moonlight, this is our last kiss

The rhythming of my lungs bellowing a slow motion projection on the inside of my chest, the tracings of silver on the edges of my heart, my arteries weeping helpless and lost. We are stuck here. Stuck between living and dying. With no instructions, and no test to tell which voices to listen to. The city an orgy of tangibles in an ocean of invisible. Our prayers find themselves caught in the brambles of each other's anger. We wade through floods of cash, useless, an absurd facade, liquid power. The burning cities are the last kiss between two people who are not special, who have no clear future, who are strung out on their own ambitions, who dream in black and white, and never question the ways in which this cultural violence is carried out. It is a mutual suicide. A lack of imagination. It is death by neglect. Dead flowers. It is done.

to wrap arms about the sunset's daughter

tell your dreams to me. i want to know the way sleep enfolds you. i can see you sleep-eyed and slurring beneath the summer sheets, your smile a blessing in some unfamiliar language, your body a dream the flowers have forgotten. i would like a bouquet of you to decorate my rooms, that all my days might hold beauty.

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

evidence of disarray

the trashcan fires have overslept. it's as if we are all lit matches trying our goddamndest to be the sun. i can burn down a building if the conditions are right, but i will never heat a planet.

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

put the door locks on the windows and the windows on your lungs

begging for Egypt to turn purple will not solve your problems. the asylums are overflowing with people who aren't witnessing the same world as the majority. all conflicts are ultimately disagreements about the perception of reality. when what i see, doesn't match up with what you see, i kill you. the funny part (but not like funny-ha-ha) is that neither you nor i are even capable of seeing.

Sunday, August 16, 2009

how i met your mother

when you start feeling like your skull is a shallow grave that the violated remains of your brains have been buried in, it is time to go for a walk and get some fresh air. the sad truth is that we are insects. we scurry and fuck and multiply and build anthills, but we are not as big as we think we are.

Friday, August 14, 2009

stomachs are not vacation places for food

sometimes when the birds sound particularly lovely outside in the trees singing against the overcast sky, i flip myself over so that i can walk around on my hands, and, if it's even possible, they sound somehow lovelier. what is happening inside my brain is this: at first all the red inside me moves like slow motion snails, and for an instant that seems like a moment that is really just a second all the squishy gadgets inside me are wondering just what the hell is going on, and then my veins turn into roller coaster rides for my blood, and every single blood cell has its hands in the air, going round the loops and turns and screaming 'whoooooaaaaaaaa!" and then wham! all at once they cram into my brain like spelunkers dropping into some sort of upside down underground cave and their sudden entrance creates a momentary vaccuum which results in a sonic boom that instantly eradicates all the thoughts that are normally careening around in my head like futuristic Tokyo hovercraft traffic, and in that miniscule fraction of a second that is already pulling away from me, my ears open up a little wider and convey that far off singing to my brain a little clearer and those little tiny creatures singing their great big songs that used to just be the backdrop to my all-important existence have suddenly become the purpose of the whole entire thing and i remember what the word 'lovely' actually means.

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

shout stoutly at the volume of slow motion into my somber seashell ears

in the fleeting forest of your glance, my skin gives birth to a thousand buzzing bees. i have seen men dig into the earth and take residence of the sky. i have seen the hacking and the hunger; the quiet crowing of cities at twilight. the life will be spilled from us yet. we know this. it is writ. and in all we do, there is a question. a sailing ship. a handful of bone. drunken wizardry. the answers are why we continue. and yea, though i am lost at sea most moments, when i am laying in the tall grass, as the light declines, watching the pink hills curl themselves about my shoulders, while the bats beat blindly through the ether, and the crickets make music of their bodies with the meandering melancholic notes breaking their own hearts, in those last hours, at least, there is some comfort.

Sunday, August 9, 2009

broken trees marching to war

the way the heat sits, you would think the whole of the land was a furious kitchen. the sweat and the dust and the crumpled paper smiles. We fling ourselves through this world, bouncing off of each other, just to see where we will land. The music crept inside me last night. It jostled these rickety limbs like forests of muscle and bone in a thunderstorm of clanging guitars and harmony. The lesson here is simple: no matter how hard you dance or stomp or crash yourself against the ground, you will not move the planet. The trick is to do it anyway, as though you can.

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

birds in mid-flight over an ocean of enormous, believing in the place they will rest

climb down into my ribs. there is an aching. put on your boots for the dank and the wet. be sure to bring your tools. bring the adze, the auger. bring the hammer, the saw, and the level. bring wood. there is much work to be done. do not concern yourself with silence. when you are inside, you will hear the rustling. light a match in the darkness. you will see it, hulking there, quivering in the flickering chamber, wine-colored mass of pulp, whispering meat flailing in that humid cavern, murmuring in an alien tongue long ago lost to us. you must fix it. you must reach your hands into the machinery, and let it resonate through your bones. you must build the scaffolding high, venture into the inner reaches. ply your trade. i am trusting you. you must help me. you must.

Sunday, May 31, 2009

Sex, Like Death, Like Apples

It always starts with a word...

A syllable or two,
Just a guttural hurricane stumble,
The larynx boiling over,
That primal vibration earthquaking the throat
With the molecules rubbing each other tectonic
Between two lips and an ear:
"Hi!
It's nice to meet you!"
Spoken like dry sand,
And then an avalanche of eyelashes,
A smile like land after seven months at sea,
A hand against the collar bone,
And a couple of hearts
Crashing around like caged beasts.

And just like that, we become cave people again,
Inheriting meaning for the first time,
Writing entire dictionaries with our bodies
And grunting with the weight of the momentous occasion
Of the discovery of a voice.

It always
Starts
With a word:
"Hi!
It is so nice to meet you"
And then in another moment
That is another now,
I am tasting the sweat of your inner thigh.
And it tastes good.

In exploring the topography of your body
I have become a mapmaker.
The canyons of your finger prints,
The ocean of blue beneath your wrist,
The hollows of your hips,
They are the moment that the beat drops,
They are a painting that can stop me in my tracks,
They are the ways we have taught each other to build light.

Because the sky is constantly roaring overhead,
and because we have all felt that silent, empty ache on our shoulders,
and because death is always in the room,
and because the terror and the beauty are one,
and because there is something holy in our touch,
for all these reasons we must touch.

We are rhythm, movement, and measure.
Call me clock, and you time,
And let me hands move inside of you.

They are selling fruit in the marketplace.
Pears that drip
Mangoes sweet to the tongue.
Your tongue is in my mouth.
Someone is rowing on the harbor
His muscles taut
The sweat between his shoulder blades.
You taste like the sea.
The white curtains billow from the open window.

Somewhere a tomato
Pierced by a knife
Gushes its juices
Onto a wooden cutting board.
Our clothes are grinning at us from the floor.
A garden is growing in slow motion.
Your breasts are rushing toward my tongue.
The scent of lavender is lifting through the window.
Your skin is growing goosebumps.
The ocean is swaying its hips.
A seahorse thinks
A beehive behaves
Your nakedness surprises me.

In the next room
A telephone is ringing.

I want you.

At a middle school dance
Two kids sway together
Without ever hearing the music
Playing around them.
Their stomachs touch like electrocution.

The air is swollen with heat.

A mockingbird shreds the night
With a song drenched so heavy in sweetness
That the heart swoons to hear it.

The room is melting around us.
Your back is arching.

In the slanted light of afternoon
Through the window of an empty kitchen
Two dust motes chase each other
Around and around
But they will never touch.

Your orgasm is the fall of Troy.

You gasp.
Your body jerks and spasms
With the dying throes of Achilles.
There are gunshots in the distance.
We both hold our breath as flames lick the walls.
A moan escapes you
Echoing the screams
Of the murdered innocent.
From the street
The wail of an infant.
Across town a paramedic
Presses his palms
To a man's chest wound
Trying to hold the life inside
From spilling out.

It is all in the touch.

All our muscles are tensed.
Priam is weeping
To watch his great city burn.
The sweat glistens on our skin.
We are welded together.
Through the wall
We can hear the laugh track
Of the neighbor's television.
Our eyes are locked like a bank vault.

I have not used this body until now.

Paris returns his arrows to their quiver
And you shiver in the exposed air
And for just a single
Moment
The silence
Is absolute.

And then
We breathe again.

Saturday, May 23, 2009

teaching angels how to breathe like touching

Burn bright. She told me to burn bright. We all have to burn a little, she said, it's just a part of all this, but when it's your turn, make sure you burn bright. Let the pain of the flames that consume you also be the fuel that moves you. Flames have a tendency to engulf, but burning in light is better than drowning in darkness, so move your body like you are gasoline and everyone you encounter is a lit match, let your prayers be crackling embers exhaled up to kiss the stars. All this living is bound to hurt some, she said, so you might as well make the hurt worth something.

Saturday, May 9, 2009

the copper in your bones is calling for blood

giggle, grin, and kick. when the rules are being re-written, there is always a period of mild anarchy. remain calm. stay indoors. do not, under any circumstances, riot or loot. don't drink the water. good. you're doing good. when it is over, there will be plenty to buy. you can resume working again, and the cycle will be complete. produce. consume. produce. consume. good. you're doing good. forgive me. my mind is running in circles again. there appears to be some barrier that it cannot get around. strange. oh well. i wonder if anything good is on television...i should not be writing in this state of mind, it seems i am far too filled with rage. good. you're doing good.

Monday, May 4, 2009

The Death of the News

When books go extinct, I will replace my eyes with computers and my ears with headphones. I will have my heart surgically removed and replace it with nothing. I will think about how much progress we have made.

Saturday, March 7, 2009

the myth of light

your kisses fling disembodied birdsongs through me like i am a basement staircase that cinderblocks are crashing down, into a darkness that is heavy with rusted bicycles, old birdcages, and teenage memory. it is an engulfing darkness, shaped like the insides of your arms. if human-kind is a flurry of short-lived self importance, creating monuments to its own destruction, reaching to extinguish the light, then i will walk like a clam, straight into the darkness, holding your hand in mine like a rare treasure.

Saturday, February 28, 2009

on the nights when the moon is like the sky's brain thinking too much

you wonder. you wonder what the hell happened. you wonder how the tumors and the ice bergs came out of nowhere. the sleet sticks to your face and it burns like goddamn. you sit on the front stoop, while all the illusions drain themselves from your head and go swirling into the night, and for a few brief moments you are empty and you can see the world for what it actually is.

Friday, February 27, 2009

you, in your new boots

the sex is amazing. it is a storm licking the ocean. it is a lighthouse burning down in it's own ecstasy of light. it is film run too fast, melting on the reel, all emulsion tongued, bright white resonance, bursting onto the screen. we are just a couple of farm loving, punk spattered, academic rogues, turned loose and let be, burning down rooms with conversation, blaming the media, with pockets full of excuses and hands full of fingers ready to push any button we might encounter, yes, the sex, it is amazing.

Thursday, February 26, 2009

too much coffee

the city swallows up the days like a dinosaur. it is an endless haze of humanity, bubbling over, wondering where it all went, ticking off the seconds. there is no right way to bleed, you just do it. these are the rules. and when the garbage and the graffiti are strewn across every empty space, there will be peace. when the blank walls are filled with art, there will be peace. when money stops mattering, there will be peace.

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

red

don't fire truck me, son. i been all through that bloodstream and it's built like bricks. no amount of fisticuffs is going to paint that place proper, so just set back and stir yourself a bit. the swirls, they come and they leave, it's just nail polish on a pretty girl's toes. what i need to know is how you can just couch it? i'm tearing up roses over here. it's a regular candy apple parade. come on now and drop that curtain down, we're all just tossing rubies anyway, and the front and the back of it is a rather bleak blend of the good stuff gone bad, so don't go all volcano on me. i'll need you on this before the end. we'll get this thing fixed and the maple leaves'll glisten like cherries and that red jello sunset'll tear down the sky at least one more time, so we might as well shoot these shotgun shells while we got 'em. you never know which robin song will be your last.

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

tampering with the mail

cotton hearted and polyester-veined, i was staggering, sweating some sort of wool blend. there were hookahs, guitars, and houseplants strewn about at random. the big, thick wrinkles on my forehead were all bunched up and scrunched together like a five-car-pile-up, my crow's feet were dancing, the smile-lines were frowning, and the rest of my face was just rubbernecking it at the carnage. what caused it, though, was the letter. when i read the letter, i crumpled up on the floor like paper. then i found the gas can and the matches, and after it was all over, i didn't have to think about it anymore.

wish you were here.

the last twenty five

the roof keeps letting the rain in. i think they have made some sort of deal. so we sleep together in the same bed, the rain and i. it is a strange love affair, very serious, like half a funeral. i awaken suddenly in the early morning to a damp pillow, and for a moment i think i am crying. i squint at the grey sunrise, laden with the feeling of train stations, my dreams still pawing at me from the purple. not entirely myself, and not entirely anyone else. and in those spectacular, gloriously bleary moments, peering through a haze of sleep, out the window onto a world that is half made up of dreams, i am a little bit sad and a little bit ecstatic and i don't possess the proper machinery to process the feeling, so i nudge the rain over, lay my head back down, steal back some blankets and fall back into sleep.

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

self fulfilling prophecy

oh those salted wounds of the epic battles we hurled ourselves into that no history will remember and no one will sing songs of, with their taste of iron and hickory smoke, marking our guilty flesh that we may remember the bodies of comrades left and lost lingering in our dark places, wearing death masks and painting with finger paints over the gaping eight year holes the images of their never to be lived futures, their could have beens, and the child faces their ever closed eyes will not spy again. we are healed now. all the books say move on, march forward, be brave and act as a soldier should. the televisions have wandered to more interesting stories. the rhetoric says what it always has said. we are good and honorable. proud and many. strong and willing. we will find a way to paint this positive. we will ignore the truth. we are very good at that.