A Prayer Or Curse It Is Hard To Tell
I press my hand into the earth
and because my hands are dry
I can feel every grain roll over me
It's a polishing
Like pressing yourself into a tub of dried lentils
bare feet on the roundness of river stones
My hand in the sand
fingernails on roots and begin to spread out
I say something intelligible
a mumble into time and space
that echoes but never deciphers
A prayer or curse it is hard to tell
Showing posts with label roots. Show all posts
Showing posts with label roots. Show all posts
05 September 2016
16 August 2016
Poem-A-Day #169 : Wood (Part 16 : The Curse of It)
I decided it was time to end this thing. It felt right. You can find Part One - HERE.
Wood (Part 16 : The Curse of It)
I didn't even ask your opinion on Christmas Tree farms : a 7-foot tree can take 12 years to grow : think of that space all those rows of Christmas just in a field somewhere waiting to be cut down and packaged : the seedlings start their lives in a greenhouse and they stay there for 4 years until they are allowed into the field to fully develop :
Christmas Trees are weird : in Europe they favor sparse trees with long branches and here in the US we like dense short-branched trees : we don't like the idea of sparseness : we want things so full to bursting that we can't even move : we are a tree farm that is over full and in need of thinning out : the US is a garden with too many plants it is abundant and beautiful and amazing and all of those things but it is also only going to be that way for a few weeks before it all collapses in root-bound thirst :
Is that what I planted back there : I mean we all want to be cultivated to grow as perfectly as we can with as few deviations as possible : as few broken limbs and overgrowth spots as we can muster : we want to leaf and leaf and leaf : we're all looking for resurrection after the fire :
I'm sorry I asked you here I feel like this has only circled a drain and not risen above : this wasn't the poetry that you were expecting what is this chatting nonsense about life cycles wasn't this about wood etc. : and you're probably right and I will put my hand on this one tree trunk and yet : and yet : I am deeply aware that beneath us the roots of this tree are intertwined with the roots of all of these other trees and that they seemingly are holding hands beneath the dirt : they are dependent and getting along :
But of course they aren't : they are engaged in a slow war they have centuries to do this : they are trying to choke each other to death :
Life is a slow war against not mattering : is that a dismal outlook a sort of nihilism : look outside of this : mattering isn't being famous or important in any real sense mattering is just doing yourself to the best and that sounds real self-help and is probably a good place to say let's go home we're tired and sun-stroked but fuck that I hate those kind of pat endings so...
What I want you to take with you : if anything : is the thing that I planted : and here it is pushing up from the floor of this space through the pine needles and wood shavings and larvae and debris of life : here let me get it up from the ground let me dig with my fingers it is good to touch the dirt once in awhile : did you bring a can or a bag or a jar it should be protected but it probably will not be and that's ok too : and this is also like a Hallmark card it's so much like a poem hovering over the image of a misty mountain : but it's also dangerous because it seems like love when it's actually like death : this thing you are holding I've put it in your hands I've given it to you and there are no take-backs : you have to think about it now and care for it and figure out what to do with it because I'm giving you nothing else to work with
Wood (Part 16 : The Curse of It)
I didn't even ask your opinion on Christmas Tree farms : a 7-foot tree can take 12 years to grow : think of that space all those rows of Christmas just in a field somewhere waiting to be cut down and packaged : the seedlings start their lives in a greenhouse and they stay there for 4 years until they are allowed into the field to fully develop :
Christmas Trees are weird : in Europe they favor sparse trees with long branches and here in the US we like dense short-branched trees : we don't like the idea of sparseness : we want things so full to bursting that we can't even move : we are a tree farm that is over full and in need of thinning out : the US is a garden with too many plants it is abundant and beautiful and amazing and all of those things but it is also only going to be that way for a few weeks before it all collapses in root-bound thirst :
Is that what I planted back there : I mean we all want to be cultivated to grow as perfectly as we can with as few deviations as possible : as few broken limbs and overgrowth spots as we can muster : we want to leaf and leaf and leaf : we're all looking for resurrection after the fire :
I'm sorry I asked you here I feel like this has only circled a drain and not risen above : this wasn't the poetry that you were expecting what is this chatting nonsense about life cycles wasn't this about wood etc. : and you're probably right and I will put my hand on this one tree trunk and yet : and yet : I am deeply aware that beneath us the roots of this tree are intertwined with the roots of all of these other trees and that they seemingly are holding hands beneath the dirt : they are dependent and getting along :
But of course they aren't : they are engaged in a slow war they have centuries to do this : they are trying to choke each other to death :
Life is a slow war against not mattering : is that a dismal outlook a sort of nihilism : look outside of this : mattering isn't being famous or important in any real sense mattering is just doing yourself to the best and that sounds real self-help and is probably a good place to say let's go home we're tired and sun-stroked but fuck that I hate those kind of pat endings so...
What I want you to take with you : if anything : is the thing that I planted : and here it is pushing up from the floor of this space through the pine needles and wood shavings and larvae and debris of life : here let me get it up from the ground let me dig with my fingers it is good to touch the dirt once in awhile : did you bring a can or a bag or a jar it should be protected but it probably will not be and that's ok too : and this is also like a Hallmark card it's so much like a poem hovering over the image of a misty mountain : but it's also dangerous because it seems like love when it's actually like death : this thing you are holding I've put it in your hands I've given it to you and there are no take-backs : you have to think about it now and care for it and figure out what to do with it because I'm giving you nothing else to work with
 |
| Mango tree |
12 August 2016
Poem-A-Day #165 : Wood (Part 12 : Roots)
Trees want you dead. Trees are plotting. Read Part One HERE.
Wood (Part 12 : Roots)
I had a dream that I was pulling out the roots of a tree with my bare hands : they were worms snakes tentacles of difficult that curled around my arms and tightened until my skin turned purple and the veins burst : my blood poured from my arms like stigmata and I collapsed in the now red mud and rolled like a baby in tantrum : earth thought about swallowing me but felt nauseous with the heat of summer : it was pregnant was fighting a cold was full of other bodies : I was too much for it and the roots let my limbs go and I sailed into the night laying in this un-tomb :
Then I got up this morning and dug bricks with the names of the dead etched into them out of the hungry soil : the names stared at me oddly as if I could understand them if I just looked more but their histories vanish as the dirt is wiped off :
This is an AIDS garden it is forgotten and it is drying in the sun : I think about my arms open to the light and air and I think about being able to do this without dying : I imagine myself as a succulent in a window box stretching my one finger-like stalk towards the sun until the tip pinks and opens into anemone and feelers : I think about AIDS and how it transmits like ideas : a meme of unimaginable power : you learn its name and then it is inside of you and then your skin will harden and your eyes will pucker : we all have AIDS some inside of our bodies and some inside of our thoughts :
Pressing marigolds into the earth with my grandfather : the coolness of the dark soil between my fingers and under my nails : the faces of the plants have yet to open they are thinking about opening they are paused they are unborn :
Please hold this for a moment : it is the end of the root that tried to kill me : it has been pulled three meters out of the ground the skin is paper and falling off and underneath it is white and looks like raw potato : it is bone : we will keep pulling together until we find which tree it belongs to : which hand it is the pointer finger of : maybe we should taste it and see if it also is starchy and dense : I remember chewing on raw wood and feeling the sensation of it being green and dense and like what I imagine a finger would be in your mouth :
I want to eat the world : and this hole opening up that was in my dream and is now in this garden and now also involves you is becoming a mouth that could do that work for me : I drop bricks into the maw until it resembles the insides of a shark the face of a lamprey :
Hold this root against your skin until it inches itself under it and into it and to your blood stream and then to your heart like it is a clot finding the center : what do you suppose happens once it is there :
Wood (Part 12 : Roots)
I had a dream that I was pulling out the roots of a tree with my bare hands : they were worms snakes tentacles of difficult that curled around my arms and tightened until my skin turned purple and the veins burst : my blood poured from my arms like stigmata and I collapsed in the now red mud and rolled like a baby in tantrum : earth thought about swallowing me but felt nauseous with the heat of summer : it was pregnant was fighting a cold was full of other bodies : I was too much for it and the roots let my limbs go and I sailed into the night laying in this un-tomb :
Then I got up this morning and dug bricks with the names of the dead etched into them out of the hungry soil : the names stared at me oddly as if I could understand them if I just looked more but their histories vanish as the dirt is wiped off :
This is an AIDS garden it is forgotten and it is drying in the sun : I think about my arms open to the light and air and I think about being able to do this without dying : I imagine myself as a succulent in a window box stretching my one finger-like stalk towards the sun until the tip pinks and opens into anemone and feelers : I think about AIDS and how it transmits like ideas : a meme of unimaginable power : you learn its name and then it is inside of you and then your skin will harden and your eyes will pucker : we all have AIDS some inside of our bodies and some inside of our thoughts :
Pressing marigolds into the earth with my grandfather : the coolness of the dark soil between my fingers and under my nails : the faces of the plants have yet to open they are thinking about opening they are paused they are unborn :
Please hold this for a moment : it is the end of the root that tried to kill me : it has been pulled three meters out of the ground the skin is paper and falling off and underneath it is white and looks like raw potato : it is bone : we will keep pulling together until we find which tree it belongs to : which hand it is the pointer finger of : maybe we should taste it and see if it also is starchy and dense : I remember chewing on raw wood and feeling the sensation of it being green and dense and like what I imagine a finger would be in your mouth :
I want to eat the world : and this hole opening up that was in my dream and is now in this garden and now also involves you is becoming a mouth that could do that work for me : I drop bricks into the maw until it resembles the insides of a shark the face of a lamprey :
Hold this root against your skin until it inches itself under it and into it and to your blood stream and then to your heart like it is a clot finding the center : what do you suppose happens once it is there :
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