Mettled

I saw the Joan Rivers documentary tonight.

I haven't laughed that much in ages.

It felt very very good.


Mettled 6/13

In the dream
your back is to us I'm folding
clothes the woman is screaming
tears flood cheeks
The other fixes holes
in a pair of pants

In the dream
as your back is to us
you are singing
and I tell the woman sewing
that she only does this now
that you are dead

On the window that you look at
forests of apple trees grow
You sing a song about railroads
The woman sewing throws yarn
at the screaming woman

I fold clothes into a suitcase
the train fills the room you are
singing with your back to us
it is about how you died

The tears rend the room blue
she is coughing
The holes in the pants grow larger
soon everything will be a hole

Multiplicate

This poem is the one I've most edited in recent weeks.

It is really about the project, but I think it's about life in general. It sort of captures my mood perfectly as we begin a new moon phase.

It's the Strawberry Moon.


Multiplicate 6/12

There are a lot of days stacking up
useless cartography
the landmasses are imagined dragons
that evaporate before ships
the compass spins idly

Those days sand themselves
levy then break in any drizzle
bury themselves in sorry

Those days make paper burn promises
pretend enlightenment in their folded
airplanes that they soak in tears

The roof leans inwards then allows faces to peer inside

Book-jackets for these days
convert themselves into folders
to keep track of the failing
They track a pile of books
in an empty office
a madman at a desk catalogs the waste
the evaporation becomes clouds
the clouds pour forth

What will pour forth...

Possess

Possess 6/11

Arms upraised wide-eyed shaking hands like claws
the bear is watching from the river bank and coming this way
the clouds rock in their orbits

Shaking fingertips like talons once more trees grow to cover the clearing
roots tangle in shoelaces and catch on pant-legs

A twist in underthings and a breaking to the core

Remediless

Remediless 6/10

Ten thousand words balled n paper still
cannot kill your cancer

I sit on the edge of a fire pit and press ashes back
into branches back in to trees into seeds
I bonsai the crumbs of your bones into miniature yous
Clip their branches once a year give them small
fields to pick daisies in

In the dream about work there are endless
piles of sand filling endless coffee cups
The roots choke n the waterlessness despite
Sahara preferences

There is no eye on the dead sparrow
only holes and things banging about beneath

Perspicuous

Perspicuous 6/9

Pink rabbit run like the pink sky
drip like suns and red plums turning rotten
Run like a shotgun shell over the Atlantic
like the steady movement of ants on a hill

Illyrian

Ancient Greek y'all


Illyrian 6/8

In the desert of trees that is the Balkans
The husk of grapes waits
Each eaten by a lost choral voice
The only words left behind :
snake
 :    :    :   fog
 :    :    :    :    :    :   pool of still water

Balti

This one is complicated. I will point you to the Curonian Spit for clarification.


Balti 6/7

Last Russian outpost among the EU
Sitting Curonian Spit, jutting westward
Maybe some sort of reaching
Maybe some sort of statement about holding on

The spit reaches across the Baltic
Forested, a finger touching Lithuania Kaliningrad
Holding the brackish waters back
Swirling phytoplankton blooms iris

Dunes thirty meters high roll endlessly
Some sort of statement about testing about time
Some sort of reaching out from the bowels of geology
Touching the faces of faster-paced shorter-lived beings

Plankton, green and moving across watery homes
Press against the spit, wash the sand
Cover the one road that reaches north and south
Connecting one Union to another...