Jackass asking me if I'll help pull a bike rack Onto Hennepin. Clang of metal on asphalt Is right and wrong, like screaming the answers during a standardized test. Jackass asking me if I'll hold the chain-link open for him To slide under, his face close enough that the icicles in his beard melt into my ear. He tags the concrete AMIR LOCKE Murdered by MPLS cops He tags Shoot back! and squirrels to anonymous safety. Afterward, a medic on a bike tells me that this squat embarrassment adorned in chain link is the 5th precinct. Then they give me a burrito I use it as a handwarmer. Night of suspicious openings. Wary of being kettled with that Helicopter threatening the sky. Amir Locke written in dust on a party bus Party bus parked sideways blocking traffic. A man runs out of Popeyes and joins us, bless him, most drivers avoid our eyes as we weave between their frustrated vehicles dragging traffic cones and recycling bins behind us like caught fish. Helicopter stalking us from 1700 feet, but Why won't they meet us in the street? Rarely have I felt as powerful than with J on my left and O and K on my right staring down stopped traffic and then Oh happy accident The gardener who tended the flowers In George Floyd Square Walks by on a Friday night date And he moves to speak of warmth and his everywhereness Our everywhereness Shivers come into me Until I'm dancing Amir Locke in the red paint someone launches over the fence at the precinct. Why won't they meet us in the street? There's nowhere to escalate, and the cold so we disperse. In the somber car home K moves to speak the truth: Our four white bodies should be background at an abolitionist protest. Yes. And- I would rather be background here Than anywhere else. Our numbers kept us safe. We keep us safe. This was a structure test - A test that makes us stronger. Reddit says there was rioting in downtown MPLS over the weekend - No. This was no uprising. This was a structure test - That day will come.
Tag: #poetry
lucid dream as transferrable fluid
I'm circumstance, inducting good luck out of ash snow. I'm lull, basement pianos sunk in rhymed windows. Sensitive is the cell that tells you right from wrong. Touch the thick hair growing on the shower wall. Festival, whose god is dead? Not mine. I'm the prowling countryside. I'm the living sculpture, the maternal sigh enveloping The built world The uninhabitable world The male world. Under ammonite stars Under amniotic waves Alert for parousia, which always arrives. My god is of us unveiling by the hundreds.
Note: this poem is in conversation with Luce Irigaray’s 1982 lecture “Love of the Other,” reproduced as an essay in the 1984 book An Ethics of Sexual Difference.
I refuse to get a handle on
Flossing. Fingers slip slimy almost as frustrated as a hungry Toddler armed with banana, But unable to peel, the snack prerequisite. Inchoate fingeys Flossing, and my teeth gossip blood, ubiquitous weak point. I bite my peel. Excited for the next life, sans teeth.
Parting of Be and Loved
for L + C.
once Be and Loved have split
because they needed space to grieve
Be recuperates within Himself
making familiars of limitations
like neck bones that greet each other
with pops like keyboard click
Burst & wait. Like typing "hey"
Be has:
nauseating
blood to the stomach requiring
cat-paw massage
and Loved, no longer responsible for maintaining
the identity of two-of-them
is released into present tense,
shivering Her bra off in a room
empty, at last,
like running and carrying nothing
like running fingers into snowmelt touches
relief into her face.
Be off in a bird's nest
in a nestled lock
As little children know they're gods
Loved moves in her own right of neediness,
casting manipulative spells on her friends
pride swelling like a bad hip
Loved Be
spines spit-rotating in sleep
the Beloved reunites
not yet
when fathers are recovered from stroke,
so maybe never, when separation rites
fail to blue the moon
not yet.
hold you down until the bubbles stop
Hear this dream-story of looking and finding. First I bathed in your curly river And I sealed my eyes with the mud of conviction and I sank And let the lack of oxygen calm me down, And the bubbles stopped. And then I came up My pores were clear and I knew that my purpose was To honor this river by finding its name. I begged you to accompany me on this mission But you refused. As a river you cannot move, except By slow accident, and your limitations Offended me. And so I left you Because you would not accompany me. And I compressed space with some money my dad Stole for me and like a cattail I summoned Many explosive comrades with my fragility. I asked and nobody knew The name of the river. Everybody wanted to know Your name instead. A question so off topic it offended me, and to show my displeasure I took off my pants and mooned them, A gesture that isn't as impressive in writing. And bearing skin is hard and I was thirsty and I drank a woman like a water fountain that blesses a brick wall, And when I was satisfied the blonde Hag took my hands And told me I am in love with distance, Which is as true as two waters that cannot be separated, Yet fell from different eyes. And I burned mugwort and I beat my fears Into the corners and I left home again Looking for the river. I found nothing but bad food Which I dutifully ate and when I returned home The river had made a mess of the carpet and From your elegant hair bubbles rose, Seeking sun as the jewels in the carapace of a turtle Seek sun, and I recognized you. And I knew your name like I knew again how to make bubbles. So my purpose is to we. The dream has spoken.
slobs
The carpet is crumbs the air is greenery the movies are drunk now tongues are giggly caterpillars crawling over metal stolen straw in a wine bottle pounce with a camera and the room flattens like a deemed dangerous spark. All the hallucinations cry ashes for our soonhistory pictures. Pre-used glitter flies for us, dustbunnyhead friend. Well oh friend. This is the last shuteye in the city where we met and partly died. We are lies that trust needs in order to trust, a mess heap always eats well. We confess with smoke that we were here. You can tell- oh goddess what a mess!
haiku for voluntary compulsion
thumbed from the brain stem salted with smoke. wrung for tears. evil uses mine. eyeball
equipment for a piss fight
The last time I fought disease in this room I pissed in jars and hid the jars in army rows of achievement, like good grades. I was supposed to empty them before I left but I forgot conveniently My mom puts her head thru the wall pleasantly inquiring after my soiled underwear snake tongues along her tongue blue and chandeliers from her uvula disease! I throw a jar of piss at her I miss and the hot piss blessedly steams me instead embryos of bleating mouths displace each other's lips, and hasty like rain all speaking of sleep I did not earn knowledge of what I dreamed but I scratched my sheets I wake the truthfulness of well-grown piss and my parents are urgently going about the disease. My dad for example is accounting the birds. I ask him for a rock and he laughs terror in a cul de sac he gives me man's clothing which gives my piss a human shape. My mom who was eavesdropping gives a rock to stroke myself with until I have skin. I enter the rock by eating it. Disgusted she throws me back in time, where I crack into water pure as water once was but we are now too angry to drink. Good! Now we shall see what we find in our anger
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.
cdzhouse 