Poem-A-Day #357 : Bathing every vein, etc.

Bathing every vein, etc.

In the horror movie the man
with burned skin uses the tendons
of the teen like puppet strings

We are meant to laugh
at least smile it's hard to say
it was the 80s

There is a moment of tightening
around the heart a beginning
of disease that will kill you

A metaphor in that and in puppets
muscle twitch and horror tropes
what beyond the shore calls it forth

Is the only question
here - a sort of answer:

you will be stolen in the night
the thief will be your dreams
you can die there can be reborn

Poem-A-Day #352 : Weary As Water

Weary As Water

                                                                 The sound
                                                                                    the sky makes
                                         as clouds overtake the sun
                       makes me
                                         want to leave my body.

Be weary in this.

Allow the water to soak your fingers until you can no longer grip the mug of warm tea.

Cranberry sage. Then everything is colder, right
here the rook

moat yourself.
                        Scream into the paper bag.

                                                                     Let's pretend to be pangolins.
                                           Break our skin
                   plate the bone
                                           until we roll like cinnamon.

Let's be cream and just as weary.

Light,
          from star to starship.

Resist the impulse to build a city on rock and roll.

Fingers are less prune, more drum head, they hold things. Again they feel.

                                               Dandelion seeds
                                     must
                                              have a name beyond pinwheels.
                                                                                                  The sky is a seed bank
                                                                 endlessly emptying
                                                 the body.
                                The body.

Poem-A-Day #347 : Ritual

Ritual

waking
the crease on your nose
becomes the sign of roots
in the pipes

a growth - twitches
there is a need to cleanse
the night from us
enter newness

shed the pillows and
down water over
shoulders over heads
pop the bubbles

in the dim
of shirts and pants and
you will seem less
but also more

Poem-A-Day #299 :The Hand of Glory

The Hand of Glory

All the locks - this one
the one in the dream about the abortion clinic bombing

There is the room - it smolders
bricks as rockets as pieces of living tissue
raining down on screaming people

If only everyone had been sleeping

*

I fear that I am not done with you
that I have somehow cursed myself
to think about you too often

There is a stability in forgetting
the atoning of it - cleanliness - like sweeping
up after winter

I dream about you often
they are angry dreams - are biting
I wake up screaming or crying or both

Somehow the circle was drawn around me
the salt I laid and the sage I burned
did not rid me of you

*

You take the hand of the killer

It will be puffy and damp it will bleed

Into the bucket of piss and salt for a month
you should know the herbs you 'll need

It must dry in the sun

Rest as a crossroads

Be nailed tot he door of a church

You did keep the killer's fat as well
you did make the candle according to tradition

His hair will be the wick

*

The sound of a lock engaging

Finality - safety - it is the sound of sleep
the eyes lowering as gates at the tower
a sort of dam against the light of the moon

Here is the hand of glory
it has powers to render all motionless
static - a stasis from the terrors of night
about to and already come

*

In the dream about the abortion clinic bombing

Everyone stood at the barrel of a gun

Your face was there - it was terrifying
because your face was there

The killer held the gun like a candle

No one had the milk to put it out

Poem-A-Day #241 : Everywhere / The Dream

Everywhere / The Dream

It's hard not to see apocalypse everywhere

The dream of drowning again - the one with the boat
and the attempt at fleeing - the one where your arms just
give out and your lungs are only shrubs not trees

The one with the darkness of water - the tingling
necessity of cold - spikes of jellyfish tentacles
never teeth not sharks this isn't that kind of thing - it
is a gentle death - so fucking quiet

Remember when you dreamt of bees all the time

They would land on your cans of soda - somehow find
the hole in your jeans and sit on your flesh - tongue
the salts there like miners looking for veins

Those were good times - less cold - often so full of sun
that you would wake up needing aloe on everything
feeling itched like poison oak - you drew oak leaf
patterns across every page of every book you read

At 7 AM the phone alerts you that a child has been taken

It is the sound of alarm - a sort of bleating in the darkness
that also resembles the klaxon of air raids - a unexploded
bomb in a churchyard - the mine your foot just ticked

The child is traveling in a beige car - are there
still beige things in the universe that do not travel - that
do not move constantly towards being less beige
do they all have children in them

Then at 9 the notice of a bomb downtown - a robot
lobster clawing at it - digging in a trash can or a strange
backpacks large pockets - there is a question in the sound
of alarm and that question is not why

In the dream of drowning there is a moment where you want ice cream

And that is natural - you probably want to go back
towards the kitchen - the boat sinking breaking falling apart
about you - you want those churned salt-licked milk crystals

There isn't anything clear in all this is dark - it is night
will continue to be so - the bomb will not be found - will not go off
the boat will sink and sink and sink because it is an unreal
a fractal inside your brain of what a drowning looks like

Poem-A-Day #172 : light / The dream

My walk home from the bar was less and more than the night warranted.


light / The dream

Awake from the dream to the room bathed in blue full-moon light

The dream was about bloodied people in the street a woman drug behind a car

Full-moon light is about underwater colors and the fractals of time crashing on the walls

Your eye will take this all in simultaneously because we are able to hold two things in our two hands

The broken evening will become the fractured skin and blue light will stand in for red blood

Her blood was possibly purple and the street was colored in sodium vapor yellow

And the cars were just steel on tires moving endlessly forward in space

Poem-A-Day #167 : Wood (Part 14 : Continued Collapse)

A bit late. Start with Part One - HERE.


Wood (Part 14 : Continued Collapse)

The halo of light around the fire has pulled back in on itself : has turned red with the lack of fuel : we are in the moment of liquid fire : when the flames are red slime glittering across the surface of the charcoaled wood :

There is that moment when the carefully constructed tent of limbs falls in on itself sending a spray of sparking light into the sky : this is perhaps how fireflies are born : though I bet they come when lightening hits bedrock and the world is showered in anvil sparks and sand glass :

Think about collapse : that three story building that stood behind my grandmother's house and was all peeled siding and holed roofing : always too afraid to get too close I managed to stand in front of the sagging porch and place a foot on the first step once : the boards were so gray and cracked with tiredness that I couldn't bear to put pressure on them :

Yawning windows is a cliche but a very true one : though I think these windows and doorways were more open-mouthed horror than anything else : this was a very long death and it seemed to hurt : You could see into the house the doors were just gone : the entire thing was the color of ash : I wasn't there the day it fell but it had to at some point : the trees around it hushed like watching one of their own : the other houses clenched and refusing to look :

I fall into bed on a Saturday night and I wonder how my body will sail through it til morning : will the restless dreams come : the visions of a world flooded with water and the last few living on strange rusting islands built atop the tallest parts of the lost cities below : will I run through these close tunnels and feel only the salt of it on me :

Now awake I realize that those cities : all cities : are built like they will last forever : but anyone could poke that balloon open : the metal will salt corrode will rust will collapse and if not already the buildings beneath the surface are going to go down : that isn't bedrock :

I wonder about the looseness of life : the fire in the apartment building that flooded the other floors with water in its own attempt at survival : the ant that I just squished as it crawled across my table because I didn't want it on my new computer : our mere existence is the collapse of someone else's :

Poem-A-Day #63 : Character Sheet

Character Sheet

Fill out your name

          Add your race

                     Your gender

          What are your motivations

          Think about your weaknesses

That time when you were a child and you sat in the garden and the small mouse touched your hand and you panicked and hit it with the book and it crunched under A Wrinkle in Time

How you wake up sometimes thinking that your body is failing and you have cancer or AIDS or are going to die young even though you creep towards less young every breath

How many d20s do you roll to figure out how to move on

          What armor is enough

Here is a backpack you do not get to say what is inside just know that it has an inside

Rope enough

Initiative will change

Dream Theater

since I think
          that the real
          is in no way real
how am I to believe
          that dreams are dreams

- Jacques Roubaud & Saigyō Hōshi

Jacques Roubaud was the first person outside of the founders to join Oulipo. He has written mathematically structured sonnets, seven volumes of an autobiography that he refers to as 'the project', as well as translations of English poetry into French.

Roubard's goals in writing his 'project' is to discover, "My own memory, how does it work?" To "destroy" his memories through writing them down.

Saigyō by Kikuchi Yōsai

Hōshi lived 1118-1190. He was a royal guard, a Buddhist monk, and a poet. He spent most of his life after becoming a monk in solitude in various monasteries. He also went on long journeys that are believed to have inspired Bashō to write Narrow Road to the Interior.

I'll forget the trail I marked out on Mount Yoshino last year, go searching for blossoms in directions I've never been before.

These two are in my mind because that opening quote is the epigram in a Georges Perec book I'm reading.

That book is for my work so I won't be going into too many details BUT it is about recording dreams.

About what reality and fiction are. Especially inside our minds. The fictions we tell ourselves. That we don't even know we are telling ourselves.

I am reminded of Joan Didion's long essay The White Album:

We tell ourselves stories in order to live. The princess is caged in the consulate. The man with the candy will lead the children into the sea. The naked woman on the ledge outside the window on the sixteenth floor is a victim of accidie, or the naked woman is an exhibitionist, and it would be 'interesting' to know which.

That essay, along with Anne Carson's Plainwater, make up the foundations of my views on writing these days. I have found myself as I get older thinking more about those stories we tell ourselves.

Carson's book could be viewed as a long essay/poem. It is about a relationship, several relationships, many that didn't exist. It is a book about loss. But it is about loss that we see coming.

Didion is talking about the end of the 1970s. The death of the dream of the 70s. That phantom 'idea' of the 70s that I will never understand, being a child of the 1980s.

Both works act as elegy.

But they are telling the story so that they keep going.

Dreams are the psyche resetting itself. Formatting the hard drive and other such metaphor that we could tweet about. That statement is snarky, is overly self-aware. But I will leave it.

The real. We tell ourselves stories in order to live. In order to get dressed and go to work and type on a keyboard and send an e-mail. We tell ourselves this is what we do. We invent a rationale for it. A reason. We are happy because we make X dollars a year and we make X dollars because we have that job that we might not love but we don't hate. Or, at least, not enough to run away from it.

So we weave these daily fictions into our reality. To make it work. Without it reality is not there for us. Emotionally, I mean.

Dreams are the fictions we tell ourselves in order to reboot each day. A screen saver. They are there to keep our brains from frying.

Perhaps we need the one because we enact the other.

Joan Didion with her Corvette

Nox Equus

When the weather starts to get warm and humid I sleep less and what I get is restless and full of strange dreams. I wouldn't go so far to say that I start to have more frequent nightmares, but I definitely sleep lighter and remember more of them.

Recently I dreamt a long winding dream about a caravan of vehicles traveling somewhere. My family and I were a part of it. The dream held no clues of where we were going or why. Another dream involved working in a bar mixing up colored potions. The floor of the bar was dirt, and the stools and bar top were rough wood. The dream was mundane in its plot, but felt somehow ominous.

The lack of deep, restful sleep comes down to one thing. No A/C.

The air becomes damp and heavy, hot, it grows harder to breathe. Sleep becomes more difficult. Breath is shallow.

The Nightmare (1790) Henry Fuseli

Nightmare is a word with its base in Old English. The Mare is a goblin in Germanic folklore that sits on the sleeping person's chest and controls their dreams.

Henry Fuseli found the concept ripe enough to paint not one, not two, but four different versions of what is still his most famous work.

The Mare also was believed to ride horses until they became exhausted and in some cases died. The creature, which was always portrayed as female (naturally) was also responsible for twisting tree growth. These twisted pine are called martaller or mare-pine in Sweden.

Mares are also responsible for a strange matted-hair phenomenon known as the Polish plait. This is what that looks like:

Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland

Take a long look at that thing. It is a 1.5 meter (METER!) long ball of hair, pus, blood, lice casings, dirt, and skin. Yes. All of that. On your head.

It was common in Germany, Poland, Denmark, England, France. Everywhere. It is a result of poor hygiene. In other words, unwashed, uncombed hair. Many would not cut them off because it was widely believed that it was an illness removing itself from the body. Some even actively encouraged their growth by donning special caps and rubbing lard on their scalps.

So yeah, I'm thinking about those things lately. Because nasty, humid, weather does bring to mind gross hair. Gross bodies. Dirty streets, etc.

And I certainly feel like something is sitting on my chest at night. Maybe it's my cat.

Drew Barrymore's soul belongs to that vaguely cat-shaped thing.

Senator

Senator 7/29

High stick parapets
blocking Lego wall of China
inching down the greenery

                        Castle your inner thigh
                        IHOP invasions and skidding griddle
                        butter and slide over your walls

This is a sticky coup
peeping marshmallow blood
Please remove your panties it’s time

Swindle

This was an attempt at a mood more than any real narrative.

Though I suppose there is a story here.

There's always a story.


Swindle 7/12

You take off the purple shirt when the sun goes down
Placing the iron in the cupboard while it still glows – you’re
            using the mister on us – the fan’s
going at gale speed and I’m putting on my leather

Lacing up the back – taught and crushing ribs
            The purple on the sand looks like water in moonlight
Puddle of t-shirt – spoonful of sun
There’s that song about it weighing a ton – Superman
            couldn’t pick it up

I did think it was time to get on the boat
The tourists will all turn their heads when he says September
            11
They take pictures with their Sonys – save ones where breasts
look pendulous – bronzed

You leave your clothes in on the shore – denim breadcrumb
I will pick them up and wash them – wait for you to grow legs
Swim like that fish in that movie for me
like some koi in a pond in Santa Fe
They’re just expensive goldfish – just enlarged morsels

Non-smoking

Non-smoking 7/1

The haze over the city blinks pink
and the pink is masking lightening
The pop of the green fireworks
ignites the air around lower Manhattan
I walk through the thickness
a light wet on my arm slicking me
I'm knifing down Sterling Place
and watching the booming in the clouds
So like war tapes on the news
and I imagine that I'm in a terrified future
that the streets are blackened
by tire tracks and glue
The gunmen stalk alleyways and disappear
the mothers and sisters in hoods
At night when I am asleep
the vampires of this future come into
my room and splinter the edges of
my door frame
They rub it down to smooth and
create reflection in the roundness
They unhinge the battlements of dreaming
and cannon until morning

Pitot

Henri Pitot invented the pitot tube in the 1700s. It is L-shaped. Like an arm bent at the elbow. The tube is used to measure fluid flow.

Dreams are a sort of measure. This one was definitely a nightmare about the end of things that I care about.

Side note: I notice that some of my lines are too long for the posts. If it looks like the word should have been on the line above, it should have been. Like in this poem.


Pitot 6/22

They all come walking into the field with their elbows bent outwards like pitot
They are pulsing their blood flows and making their eyes bulge
Somehow they control the dropping of bombs on the assembled guests
This is a barbecue for everyone you've every known
They have all assembled and are eating hot dogs hamburgers
Zombie Nazis are coming over the hills your guests sing your praises
With their akimbo arms and popping faces they are eating across your family
Your friends are rising an army of undead people you love they come at you
Elbows bent pitot the pressure coming up as the bones melt under the weight
They are coming up the hills a terrible history of somehow some when

Confessional

These strange surrealist poems are what I consider dreams in word form. They resonate in a strange deep place for me. There are connective threads in them but they are tenuous.


Confessional 5/28

I say I want curtains to keep out the sun keep the rooms cool protect ourselves from summer and the bracing swarm of humidity

Dark wood-lined and smelling of oranges the box is always this damp - a tomb - a calm sigh from my mother - a metal grate a preacher

I crawl through the sharp inclined tunnel of blackness in my sleep and see into a valley of searing greens there is a tree filled with pears

What I mean to say is that I find myself thrashing in water while I sleep that the water is my bed and my bed seems to be made of bones

Pear flesh feels like sand soaked in cherries - harder - pearls - smaller - spider eggs - I feel like I am popping everything

And the sun always comes in year round it is light - a growing thing - but it does blind

I am n love with the idea of being in love I don't understand a picnic from a parade - there s a rose bush taller than Empire State and I am clipping the thorns...