Saltire Side-step

I am without internet at home so unfortunately things may be delayed. So, here are todays:

Saltire (11/29)

Crux decussata – X bound and flying
Andreas – fisher of men – Patras martyr
Against a blue field – swipe of white
Crux of lines – void of clear – a hole
An eye staring out – hooking curiosity
Andreas – brother – X bound and blue
Two swords crossing – sudden moment
Scales interlocking – armor plates – men
Patras martyr – you crux – tied starving
Against the blue ocean – apostle white


And yesterdays:

Side-Step (11/28)

The problem is not that the paint is not dry – that the stirs are un-mended
But that you walked away from the mending

I peel the layers of lead and take each communion-like on my tongue

The carpet is threadbare and pearls of moisture on the walls whip our salts
into a fog of crystal that slices our throats

Our house is a shot loon hanging from a rafter – its windows are clouded
over and closing

The problem is not the paint that drips water – is not the buckets filling
But that you leave the buckets until they rust

That you pull curtains over our eyes and fill our rooms with insulation rolls

The problem is that you are gone – that this is a ghost house – that it’s my chest
empty and filling with water

Sovereign

Sovereign (11/27)

Out of the corner Constantine stares
Tireless stone-cut eyes of watching

What does he purvey?

Impeccably preserved coffins vases
Hercules with his broad everything and tiny head
A space fills with people snapping pictures

How many note him alone in his corner?
Does his name catch in the corners of their minds?
Oh ten foot tall head on a pillar! You are here!

They keep you dust free and cool so you will never crumble
They filter your air and fan you as if you still ruled over the known world
With a whole body with a voice

Your sights familiar and artfully arranged this Met keeps masses
interested moving rebuilding endless Byzantiums

Microinject

Microinject (11/26)

America is a withered cactus - a succulent in rocks - it's roots tumbling for water

It is a wrinkled scrotum - aged and sprouting gray hairs

Instead of rain - a moisturizer a botox - harsh winter is coming up in gales in furies

The wind of forgetting knocks leaves from the trees - the heady bone fragments fall
silently and weakly - the naked limbs bend for their clothes

America is a tired whore

She is standing on a pedestal holding a damn light and no one will look - we have killed
Pertinax and sold off the empire for slightly better wages

Our progress in the desert - our springing forth water where there was none - has led us
to salt veins that are toxic

We become pillars in our suits

Vacant lots become the only lots with substance - the plants whip furious

There is only so much ink available to hide the aging - only so much plaster to
cover cracks

America needs an enema - an injection at the cellular level - some sort of clean water - a
de-ionized hyper-mineralized love-fest to ourselves

We need a cozy blanket and some hot chocolate - a mother with a thermometer -
someone should shake their finger at us and say 'no' - anyone? - we need a time out

Roots flow over rocks - an over pruned bonsai - leaves grow stunted and clear - plastic -
breaking as they fall on pavement - slicing under feet

What rebuilding could un-desert the sand - could un-lot the vacancies - what let's us
lower our lights?

America we should turn around and look at our shore - shine a beacon into our own dark
contents

Carnic

Carnic (11/25)

When I was little I had Dinosaur sheets
Red Tyrannosaurus and purple Brontosaurus against a white field
Red being the color of anger and all things predatory
Purple being feminine and the color of eating plants
White the calm neutral place to plant them all
There were out of place palm trees tilting like Hawaiian Tropic commercials
And they felt like old t-shirts

The last time I slept in someone's bed the blankets were too hot
And the dog was all over us when we slept and when were awake
They were scratchy and starchy and smelled like sand
They were dark red the color of wine
And we wrapped ourselves around each other
The radiator hissed so loud I stared at the ceiling all night and smelled dog breath
I only thought about Dinosaurs roaming endlessly

Parget

Parget (11/24)

When I say that you are my friend - that we are in the same boat
That our oars are spoons and this is a bowl in a turbulent ocean...

I am putting up wall-paper in the rooms that you left

A can of paint and some plaster remake my emotions - turn
blue ones red and whiten the purples

I cover over the thought that I was wanting us to be perfect with the face of an owl

Curtains cover the window that condenses universes in winter
The heat of a laying body - breaking nebulae swirling endless above heads...

I smooth over the wrinkles of past papers - teach myself 'without'

There are new sheets to bed - carpets put down
Our little boat is cracked in the sink scuttled and washed

I watch movies that we watched and think 'what the hell?'

When I say that you are my friend - that the universe we made collapsed
That our old big bang became rapid drifting apart...

I mean that you have left us -
            That I want to see 360 degrees -
                        That I see cracks in the surface of everything -

Cavalier

Cavalier (11/23)

Oliver Cromwell is riding the hills - we throw about this idea that kings are made and then unmade - he is not hunting but wandering - kings are suddenly there - one day you wake up and someone older has died and someone younger is wearing a cape with jewels on their head - Oliver Cromwell took his cape and went riding - sometimes the old are not old but just boring or out of date - 'elections' might be held - coups held - will is rarely involved - it is an act of time - of the spheres moving as they do - he is not hunting but wandering - kings rarely know what they are doing when they are doing it - they just continue -

Non-labour

Non-labour (11/22)

Oh to be one of those men in suits!
            carrying their leather cases of paper
So fucking important - so filling those pointed shoes so well

Their crotches are filling their pants as well - slide
            fingers over wedding bands they
post annonymous on websites looking for hairless ass

So important - so on my televisions
            telling me how important they are
Oh to be idle in a penthouse - non-labour and bored to tears

Oh to be so bored - so unmoored - so shiny - so thinking
            how fun!
to be a mass huddled cold - a waitress - a cleaning woman
            carrying a canvas bag of groceries
So fucking tired of weeping buildings - of running eyes

Sich - bleeding - puss filled canker

Oh to be one of those men!
            teeth blinding and insides turning to mush
A tomato in a fridge - a goddamn Christmas tree in January

Pumpkin

Pumpkin (11/21)

Patch is filled with leaves - wet
crunching The smell of clouds
flits on the tongue -

I carve and make a nose - squish the tendrils
It is slasher fun

Walking late it's cold dark
and our pillow cases are filling with candy

The first snow - leaves go mush
a hush falls over melting corpses of Halloween
It's getting colder things start to smell
like cinnamon

I light a candle - it smells like cathedrals like
winter coming on

Chagga

My favorite part of this project is coming across words I don't know. It forces me to do research. There are days though where I am happy to sit in my ignorance.

There are also things that I don't feel like making up.


Chagga (11/20)

I don't know anything about Tanzania or its people I have tasted coffee
doubtful if from this region Americans like their Arabica from places
like Ethiopia It makes us feel reparations

Maybe I saw something on a travel program

I'm sure there was a nature special

The things I don't know about Tanzania fill a large room with leather furniture
I have written books to line the shelves about the things I don't know about Tanzania
They are free of words but picture themselves nicely with children's drawings of the imagined wonders of Tanzania I could look it up
make educated guesses

But I don't know even know where to begin so I room and book

Outliner

Outliner (11/19)

I draw a line around my eye and dot out the iris
I make tears in the corner of my mouth
I patchwork my fingerprints into new skin

There is a moment when I feel skin dulling blade
There is the smell of iron and other ores, of pennies
It is distant, like static

I draw a line around my eye dot the iris
I notice how white the roots of teeth are
I roll flesh

Transpose

This is actually a translation of the Lorca poem The Dawn.


Transpose (la aurora despues lorca) [11/18]


The dawn of New York has fourteen columns of dirt
            a hurricane of black doves that wade in rotted water

The dawn of New York moans on enormous stairwells
            searching between angles for relief from poverty

Dawn comes - no one takes it - it their mouths
            mourning and hope are impossible :

            Sometimes money clusters furiously
            drills - devours the homeless - the stray cats

Light is chained and buried in the white noise of cars
            a tantrum against science without root

Sleepless peoples wander through their lives
            it is like they have escaped a shipwreck of blood

Multicopy

Multicopy (11/17)

The leaf is leathering
                        It is a bosice on the sidewalk
arching its back
                        The skin is pulling
away from the bones
                        It is a deer
along the side of the road
                        The skin is moving plastic
going brown then black
                        The leaf is an exposed process
a fixed idea
                        It is a quickening

Picture Message (anasazi)

Picture Message (11/16)

Spirals all over the walls - outwards
Did old peoples live in whirlpools in these cliff cities

In New Mexico they left the plain and climbed the walls
Perched on ledges like puffins in Wales
They orchard themselves and slept in small rooms of mud

Above the spirals - a flute - shaft - filling with bats
They crayon the flight plan - map the winged rats?

Deep in their eyes are sucking pools
Hypnotized - moving - they leave their holes in rock

Fly-through

Fly-through (11/15)

There is a mirror universe
A mirror earth with 5 less days in its mirror years

In the bathroom with the pink walls my face looks healthy

There is a device called The Ghost Mirror that relfects everything except the viewer
You can see things behind you

Each thing on this world works because of distance

Inches
      A few feet
            Several thousand miles

The product of light dancing on skin is a mirror in your hands
Glowing fingers smoothing a cheek

In the ghost mirror you can't see yourself
You must face everything else in your world

And on that mirror earth with 5 fewer moments to deal
Everyone moves faster and takes things less for granted

Or they notice things even less
Or they are used to it and don't even know it

Fathoms over water
      Spaces between houses
            Nano seconds inside of skin

They don't know

Doubler

Doubler (11/14)

The branches are shooting in straight lines
In parallels - fathoms - across the smoothing ground
Arms pulling in opposite directions

It's leaves are fingers - grooves on hands
Writing - slipping - from your grip

This tree is needing

But it splits itself - intends to go down both roads
Kick up every piece of dirt in the way
Those branches are leveled and dancing

Praising its roots coming up - dirt rushing down

This tree is one person dividing
Becoming twins - a shadow - that is also the object

Big One

Big One (11/13)

There's that lie that is told about how much you miss how it was.

It's actually a missing of how you felt.

How eyes can only rest on something once.

There's the lie of snow on windows at Christmas at Thanksgiving.

The family sitting around a fire or television.

It's the missing of a holiday without cancer without coughing without illness.

That's the Big One, the one told constantly.

That it used to be better that it was ever something else.

It never was, it was just everyone's last time.

Principally

I finally figured out how to indent in a post. So now you will be seeing the poems how they were actually meant to be seen.


Principally (11/12)

The goal is to burn - break all the bars

It is not enough to mark

There must be indentations
tattooings

         it must bleed like hell

The goal is to hurt - to scar
your heart

It needs to be difficult for you to breathe

You have to feel
the spike
         inserted in your skull

Perspective

Perspective (11/11)

The glass has paint on it - a scratch - grease
but on the other side is snow and the darkness of late fall

So there's that

It makes the paint whiter looking - it was bluish to gegin
against the bruise of sky it's pale

The sky isn't really bruised - it's cold as steel - a sheet of
oxidized stainless left on a burner too long

There's that scratch - which looks like someone with
hard grating knuckles - tried to claw their way out the 4th floor

The grease is from hair - a head leaning on the pane

Not sure where the snow is coming from

Bad Romance

Honestly...has anyone been so fashionable and plain old crazy in the music scene lately like Lady Gaga? I know that she's derivative, bubblegum dance but she seems to know and use the hell out of it.

And she is waring those creepy as hell hoof shoes form the Alexander McQueen 2010 collection.

And she somehow gets away with it.

Armistice

Armistice (11/10)

Page - I ask you to leave me be
And by page I mean mind
I ask the blankness to melt

Mind - I ask you to cease whirring
Your gizmos are magnificent distractions
But tire me out

Ebola

Ebola (11/9)

A swarm of gnats
under your skin
Little black risings
move with your beats

This is an inner drum attacking your meats

It is visual slippage
at your peripheral
Inner eye infected
with imagination

And your insides huddle for lack of attention

A Single Man

A Single Man looks amazing:



It was directed by Tom Ford. Fashion man and fellow Santa Fe transplant. I couldn't think of anyone else to make a weird, stylish, AWESOME movie based on a Christopher Isherwood novel. AND, the art direction was done by the Mad Men folks. I mean...I'm there. Already.

For serious.

Antipodes

Antipodes (11/8)

40.673144105995654, -73.95416736602783

-40.67314410599565, 106.045832633397217

Overthrow

Overthrow (11/7)

Alone in wonder err I throw
and weave and drunken-ly go

I mist myself in piss and rain
crawling through alley ways

Each night I draw blood rare
and cut a language coat to wear

To keep my bones warm safe dry
the coat leathered history ribbed

I attach my thoughts to my blood
and weave a golem - mud

xkcd Common Weal

xkcd is an odd comic that regularly makes me feel good. This one is a perfect example.

Common Weal (11/6)

The crowd is the wing of a great bird
They are the undercarriage of an ox

The feathers surge and spread
Air wrapping around each rachis

There is lift - a hovering quiet
A moment paused

There is heavy wood on massive shoulders
Yet they carry the country on their backs

The crowd is a vast sprawling ocean
Beating against concrete shores

There is lift - hulking
Weightless it drifts up to the troposphere

The bird defied gravity - coasting
Sunlight and the back of people shining

But there is a spinning heavy feeling
Feet that still plant the ground - they are going nowhere

The crowd is a rooted tree - centrifugal
Is gravity coming

Photo-finish

Photo-finish (11/5)

Horse's eye
Pool of oil filling with light
Now they are mocking a blur
Now they are etched on your corona
They are nostrils
Holes into pure
Unblinking moments dripping
Melting currants
Hyphenated chess pieces
Covered in felt that burns
Sienna tails
Now they winnow the fields
Now they are driving too hard

Bonfire

Bonfire (11/4)

Upturn and break
across your knees this limb

The trees are blighted

Nooses magnolia
heavy and full of scent

We walk broken-legged
knotted one-legged racing

The leaves are daggers?

Everything is red today

Paradox

Paradox (11/3)

There is a break in the water
everything is rock and glass and sky
It happens on the edges of islands
mostly on Tuesdays sometimes on Sunday

There are things that build houses on these breaks
wait ouot the momentary lapses of rushing
The empty gourds of these houses are like
pumpkins are like bowls and twice as filled

Here there are places for toes to grip the undersides
the feeling is sad like sand but more like confetti
A loud sucking of the air heralds the arrivals and it comes
crashing back - this water that returns - a miniopocalypse

One Life To Live

I have to admit that I am entirely suckered in by this:





Once again in case you missed it
Michael J. Wilson = Hopeless Romantic

Fox

I'm a hopeless romantic, everyone go AWWW.

Fox (11/2)

I want a man who is creative but not pretentious
I want a man who is stable but not boring
I want a man who makes me think about wanting a man
I want a man who makes it easy
I want a man who is everything nothing and I don't expect more
I want a man who wants me
I want a man who will spend the day in bed
I want a man who I want to be honest with
I want a man who appreciates leaves
I want a man who likes my cat and likes that I like my cat
I want a man who will sit in silence
I want a man who likes bad horror movies and dresses up at Halloween
I want a man who dreams about Escher
I want a man who makes me forget that I want anything
I want a man who makes lists of things he wants to forget
I want a man who wears plaid and suspenders and isn't ironic
I want a man who goes on vacations to cold overcast places
I want a man who kisses like dying
I want a man who has eyes that glitter in certain light in the afternoon
I want a man who thinks in submarine
I want a man who names colors

Mellin

The Mellin Transform involves inversion and expansion. Perfect concept for fall. Though fall could be characterized as an inversion and contraction of things. Which also applies to the poem below:

Mellin (11/1)

Leaves touch the surface become boats for the Ibis to play sea monster to
Eyes have that way of reflecting a person as a lover and then you are sitting on a leaf in a bowl
Even when you are just friends suddenly you may be holding hands and feathers will pull
Water will act like ice and each will run in opposite directions buy only for so long
The Ibis will sit black-eyed he will be thinking about fish not about your succulent flesh
Leaves pull themselves back to their limbs and then re-green then bud