waiting on the baby’s lashes
to dip & stay dunked
like a pebble tasted, skipped & sunk
the taste of gardens, secret
& the funk of nontrivial algae.
baby, a vagina is
two held hands that bleed.
I’m crazy, I jump poems
kicklessly like frog’s legs.
begging poems like bubbles of kiss
look for lips
bliss
waver
pop.
softly, baby, bleed upon the earth.
it’s nothing more
than a pebble heading home,
striking water, landing near.
Category: Writing
prison guard
Don't climb the fence, But why miss cate,
Kid eating foxes, fangs, hungry mold, evil witches,
No don't lick the fence, Miss cate
Yes, What's evil, What do you think?
A lot of emergencies outside today, Yes,
That's evil, Maybe, I had a dream, Yes?
That my daddy got fired, A dream, Yeah,
and then he took a poop on the floor, Oh no,
A real poopy blowout, Let's line up now, back
to the symbol room, designed to stupefy
with comfort colors, what is awe but a paralysis?
my senior teacher pulls the shades,
shuts out a UFO cloud, frustrated kids abandon windows
and clump on the books, rifling for answers
fills me with joy and dread, denied the real,
they seek symbolic knowledge, like a prison guard
I bring them news of the outside,
woolly cat caterpillar, red ants, beech leaves, we identify
evil, the smell of gasoline and the sweetmalted air of cereal factories, we cooperate
on mysteries of addition, and doorknobs, bumping heads too large like hydrangeas,
Miss cate, I miss my mommy, I know you do baby, gentle,
Miss cate? Why is your name that?
Why is your name E? Because I miss my mommy,
That's a good reason, A prison guard is gentle
so the ideologies of social control can reproduce
within kids, without them noticing, Don't squeal,
Eat your mushy crackers, Culturally sustained brain damage,
that's evil, Eat your boiled trash!
but we're learning to read bit by bit,
that's progress, we're learning to share,
and one by one the parents come in exhausted commutes and I report the joys
of our day, ten hours in the symbol room, memorizing symbols,
and they leave in twos and threes, I do not report my sociologies:
if you do not exist within a coherent village,
you do not deserve to raise a child, I cannot report that,
the communeless kids are already born, confined to capitalist families and comfy prison,
a prison guard is also in prison, even when I go home,
so I go home, the daytime people
exchange places with the nighttime people
to avoid overcrowding, last jangle of pinktambourine sky
and first prick of cold stars, so I find you in bed
already, and we want and fuck and fall asleep so fast
my legs still cloudywet the next morning
and this is all there is, legs and life are sticky, hope that's not a UTI.
Max, found
affection for a bald spot bobbing on a bike below me making neighborhood inquiries Have I seen an old white dog? Have you checked behind the RV? No, And he makes his way to the squatting lot, muttering anthropologies and rosaries, and I stay here, muttering, poetries and the trees fall down leaf by leaf the way paranoids lose their memories. Talking to yourself up there! O good you found your dog! Max likes to run off where no one can see him drool, He needs me to wipe his mouth, A friend said something similar to me just the other day, Yeah? says bald spot, tugging his Max along, Yeah, I am thinking of J barefoot the day before his trial, J said "I need a friend to defend me but everytime I ask for help I drool," Get your friend a rag, That's funny cuz J drips rags and honest fear, punk that he is, facing down more jail like a house already gutted offers her windows to thieves, dare, Well, thanks for the help, No problem, Enjoy the roof, I mean to, there's nowheres to go, & I mean it there's a peace here like good dirt in a graveyard (graveyards have good dirt, & yknow why) & he bikes away & here it ends.
some language fragments found today
gray fog underbelly sky feeling
like a kiss dispersed over timelines
that is to say , mist
!mystery, mapleleaves cusping the
pretense of purple
fragile as a high
veiny neurons veined with impressive
, dying
anyway i gotta go , , , work.
the new boss: oozing, with her slug-tongue
behind heavy doors: "these people don't work very hard."
she means, 'trust my good intentions
my power , over.'
no. i put her words in my pocket,
sticky with slime.
the old teacher: with her frazzled:
"that boy is from a nice family."
she means: 'that boy is docile , white
and I see his dad behind the corner
at Wells Fargo.'
no. i put her words in my pocket,
and they hulk like a plucked toad.
the dogged comrade: with his historical ears:
"I am the only one with the skills,
and furthermore I am the only one that will."
he means: 'democracy is beyond me,
sustainability a stump.'
no. i put his words in my pocket,
hostile as roadkill eyes
drenched by semis
and me: i tell you, "i feel heavy."
i mean: 'i'm roped in ideologies.
let's talk ourselves clean.'
, you know what i mean
so we empty our pockets.
preschool in the fourth dimension
the steady holy
rain falls steady as trust
til it doesn't (trust)
(rain)
and flies resume their maddening
and the sky resumes cobalting sincerity
and likewise the trees and we resume eating the sky-
after that rain, which washed our feet dry
and tumbled down the mountain-
all my desires leaked earthward (like worms.)
and we unroll vertebrae from desire's floor
(despair.)
and you turn over a stone and find my lips
saying, "friendship is a curiosity (in faces.)"
and steady clapping it resumes to rain again...
(irises. eyebrows) sane as time!
Calvino encounters O’Keeffe
flowering black for herself in the desert. And he asks her- he asks O'Keeffe, expert in doorways and illusionary doorways- "Which way to the bus stop?" And her eyes are a mirage of home abandoned, (but he never had a home he liked.) She asks him, "what can you give?" "a feather, never flown, pocketed impossibilities is all I carry." "Lucky, eh?" And her eyes are a mirage of orange water. So, then she asks him, "where are you going?" "I hear the water of life runs downhill, I am going to the valleys." "Chasing, eh?" And she points with her paintbrush to the sinking sun. "The bus stop is that mirage." And never tiring he trudges on his way.
spring break (edit)
two suicides & a lie
head fake
if a wise friend tiptoes out like a melody leaves the mind break the ceiling with your pillowthighs and rain wine- quick, grab a cup! you're thirsty like a liar drink your good luck! they wisely have shown you where to gamble your roots- and not on them! once again there's nothing ahead. don't look for the future open us nowly instead. now i won't speak more of R, of us; language cannot touch that touch.
cdzhouse 