Poem-A-Day #184 : Finches (after Eduardo C. Corral)

I often see the odd beauty in the brutal. I read Eduardo C. Corral's poem To a Straight Man this morning and it caught me completely. I was especially caught by this movement:

               the buttons
                         on your jacket
     are finches
               I wanted to yell
                         as you vanished

These finches blended with those that Charles Darwin collected. Some of these finches were stolen in 2009 and were feared to be used to make high-end fishing lures.


Finches (after Eduardo C. Corral)

Read the poem about the beating again
then again

Do you hear the sound of the finches in it?
          the are popping from branch to branch
               they do not hover like a falcon
          they do not create wake
     behind them in the air of this space

Then again
the beating poem

In the room in the basement of the museum
the case full of Darwin's finches is emptied

Use the displaced beak of the finch
                    as a needle to patch the hole in your jeans
the golden green of light filtering through late summer leaves
          is thread enough
     possibly

Feathers make lures for fly fishing
the glitter on the ends of these hooks is light
in puddles
on cobblestones

Finches collected during the second voyage of the HMS Beagle
Natural History Museum, London

Poem-A-Day #183 : Zeus in New Mexico

Zeus in New Mexico

The lid of the sky
and the lid of the ground

A half-open eye

The copper stream of tears
reverses itself

The day is a statue unearthed
in a field after millennia

It is missing its body

Its hand is missing fingers

In the cataract
milky self-rorschach of shadows

This thing sees you
and now seen you exist

The view from my patio

Poem-A-Day #182 : Incubate

Incubate

clear
bubble
crystal
an eye loosed
tadpole
glass on skin
the enormity of the eye

then the pupil spins
it jerks
spasms
tiny t-rex arms
gripping water
losing
working up to break the ceiling

froth
water at boil
bone broth and simple syrup
a tail is a hand
it clouds
bubble as locomotion
eye taking it all in

engorged
what does losing a tail feel like
breaking a crystal ball
it goes down the stairs like boom
it sinks quick
skin is paper
ripping

the feeling of it inside you
a bot fly in your neck
pillow
the sound of fans
fingers on metal now
what rebirth is this
blindness and seeing for the first time

Poem-A-Day #181 : Because I Am Spotted Every Day

Because I Am Spotted Every Day

When you asked about the gym with the monkey on the sign what you meant was that you thought it was gay because there was a monkey on the sign and that the monkey on the sign was flexing and what you actually meant was that the drawing was kitsch as fuck and that is has to be gay then right

And I think I said something about all gyms being homoerotic those bodies in such a small space sweating and pheromoning all over the place and watching each other and performing for each other and then taking selfies in the locker room half naked together and I probably just laughed the comment off in the end because I get it I do but let's be honest here straight men do gay shit all the time

What I really want to ask in the moment though is if you could teach me how to wear flannel like a straight man

Is there a way for me to hide better

Because I am spotted every day

Once in awhile I try stealth just to see how it feels and I only manage a few hours of it before I have to break the silence in the room and by room I mean my head because to be stealth is to actually hide something on purpose and then to have to police yourself constantly to make sure that there isn't a wardrobe malfunction

And I wonder if you have that same experience ever

And I bet you would say that you feel similar things but do you really

When you ask me about the gym being gay and then talk to me about some shit that's real straight I want to throw the pint glass and use the shards of glass to cut your face so you have something to be ashamed of for real

I can get real butch real quick when the weather permits

But only on days without glitter because if there is glitter I will stare into it and think about the light reflecting on my eye and then thick about how our brains invert the things we see to make sense of them and I will be too damn distracted to deal with putting on man for the day

Do you put on man

I check the mirror every morning to see how fag I look so I know how much fag I'll get

There are days where I can't so I don't

And there are days where I'm candy-colored pride parade

And I know there are days you'd rather not but do you know how not to because I had to figure that out at 8 so that I wouldn't be too this too that and I learned how to lower my voice a bit when answering the phone and I learned how not to accent myself I practiced that shit in mirrors and in public and I fell all over myself trying to not stand out to not be harassed to not end up beaten and or dead

And I'm being real histrionic but this is real history as well

But no that is not a gay gym it is a gym and looking at it now I don't even see how you could mistake this my understanding has bled off in the rains of late summer and frankly they have a phone number call them up and ask them if they're gay and let's see what they tell you and then we can start this conversation again after you've been called faggot for real

Poem-A-Day #180 : Modern

Modern

In the bent metal siding your reflection is a mass of muted shades hard to label as you
though there is want to see you in the not you

Broken water is what all of this feels like
stone tossed into the lake then gone forever and then all you want is the stone that is gone

This is not a breakup poem these are words about the self about the missing thing
the thing that never was anyway but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯


This is the curse of the bent metal reflected word the blobs of color across its surface are static
there is no nostalgia nostalgia is for nostalgia

I want to say you are beautiful but how do we say that
@--'--,-- I suppose or I like your colors reflected in this space tell me what they look like for real

Poem-A-Day #179 : It's Raining (After Apollinaire)

It's Raining (After Apollinaire)

A          t           h          b           i
 p           h          e          u           t
 o           i                       t
 l            s          s                        h
  l                        a          m          a
  i            b          i           e           s
   n           o          d          l
   a           d                      a           a
   i            y          t           n          n
   r                        h          c
    e            i          i           h          e
                  s          s           o          y
     a                                    l          e
     n           a          w          y
      d           l          a                        i
                    s          s           i           t
        h           o                      s
         i                        h                      r
          s            r          o          a          e
                       a          r                       a
           f            i           s          h          c
            e           n          e          e           h
            m          i           s          a           e
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             n           g          t           w
              i                        h          a           i
              n           i           i           v          n
              e           t           s           e          t
                            s                                   o
               v                       i           a
               o           c          s                       y
                i            l                       h          o
                c           o          t           u          u
                e           u          r           r          r
                s           d          u           r
                             s          e           i          d
                 a                                   c          e
                 r           a          i            a          p
                 e          c           t           n          t
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                 r           u          i                       s
                  a          m         s           l
                   i           m                     e          i
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                   g           t          t           k          o
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                                g                      w           s
                                                        n
                                                                      i
                                                                      t

Poem-A-Day #178 : This Is

This Is

Water that is air-colored

Expanse of grass in crescendo

The business end of the moon

Poem-A-Day #177 : It Has Taken Me A Long Time But I Am Ready

It Has Taken Me A Long Time But I Am Ready

His hands are the color of leather
                                        This is wrong I know it is because it feels like theft
He reaches through the empty space of the window
I hand him the three dollars that I have decided I don't need today
                                        I am cheap - smug - airing of family secrets
                                        I have come to my own words for absolution
                                        and perhaps this is the worst part of it
I want to tell him that I am sorry but I tell him to be safe which is the same thing as sorry
                                        My own fears of poverty - I am poor - will probably die poor
                                        but I have a roof and sometimes food
                                        and since I don't have hands that look
                                        like they are coated in coal I am obviously better
I do not tell him more
and I sit and wait to turn the car into traffic in a silence that builds behind my ears like cicadas storming in their trees
                                        Better than - all my life I have felt the pressure
                                        of somehow climbing a ladder that wasn't even before me
                                        a ladder that no one told me I could even climb
They are screaming
                                        I wanted to sound better and look better
                                        I put on that drag and do my business every day
The cicadas want me to know this as I drive my car into traffic
they need me to hear these words as I listen to my music
and think about my day before me
                                        It is a weight
                                        cheap - smug - and trying not to be noticed as such
I am like this man with the dirty hands sitting on a corner by a McDonald's
I am this man sitting with a cardboard sign that says HUNGRY / PLEASE HELP

Poem-A-Day #176 : Unfinished Thought On Malaise

Unfinished Thought On Malaise

                         and when I said that I just wanted to throw things to the flood
               and you broke into screaming fits and the skin on your forehead heated itself
     and your eyes reddened into sand

Sometimes we are bad people look I make choices look at all these choices I'm lousy with choices they cover the room in an installation of choices they impede progress and attempt to become life itself life of choices choices burning out themselves to become a star of imploding choices nuclear choices that will melt flesh

I don't expect you to understand with your ontology the way it is

-

     The impulse to undo everything is so strong

                    - put paint back in tubes - thread un-sweater - butterfly the goo-filled cocoon -

          Do not mistake this for destruction
though I understand that feeling this is more about what happens to things when they are un-ed

Do we forget them

When the city - which does not retreat it is not alive in that way - when the city cracks like a beetle under foot like exoskeletons in diatomaceous earth like the earth after rain -

                                        Do we forget that easily
if we want to I suppose we do - and when the thing falls and breaks on the pavement
we must either mourn or get the glue

-

Rust

Life lends itself to malaise

A sort of tentacled feeling
          suckers and all

     and all the things that might come with them
               the stinging ticks of a swarm of baby jellly fish wrapping on your legs
                         when I said it I meant it and I even intended to do it

Poem-A-Day #175 : Android Poem #1

Android Poem #1

I guess I'm an asshole
                                        I don't really care all that much
                              it's a question of design

     or
          of programming - I don't know
how to explain                                      

                                            this is not explainable
                                       it just is

Poem-A-Day #174 : Posedown

Posedown

Robert Frost in a bikini brief
flexing in front of a giant scoreboard

Poem-A-Day #173 : On This Day

On This Day

.
          Alfred Russel Wallace published his theory of evolution today
                    alongside Darwin's first findings -

Who remembers Wallace -
               getting to be forgotten is perhaps unfair -

History is quick -
a fog rolling in that conceals
                                        then masks
                                                  then disintegrates -

.
In Edmond Oklahoma a man stormed a post office
and killed 14 of his co-workers
this is the birth of the phrase 'going postal'

A response to tragedy
humor within the darkness
and his name is probably not on the tip of your tongue

And that is probably alright

Getting to be forgotten is perhaps justice -

.
Khalid ibn al-Walid defeated Byzantium

          The most decisive victory in military history

Getting to be forgotten is perhaps terrible perhaps alright
          it is perhaps chance that this victory opened the world to Islam
                    through conquest

Is history ever not through conquest

.
                    There is a part of us that finds that information
               perhaps
                                        too obvious
                                        too hind-sight

          History is a weather pattern out across the ocean
          that never reaches a shore without consequences

Khalid ibn al-Walid Mosque
Homs, Syria

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 #171 : August

August

Summer has settled into that soft green that is not quite ready to be tired but is definitely at the peak of itself

The idea of troubling the water keeps coming that the water can be troubled to be a force for healing that healing is something that one must be forced to do

Summer is sadder than winter each plant is going going going like it has no recourse and they will never get to their finish before being wiped out by the end of it it's sinister that the light and water of it is just enabling destruction

This is a negative view of abundance and it is probably toxic and related to mood more than truth

Healing is the thing the growing season is not a time of healing it is too active and energy-consuming to be healing you need dormancy to heal

We need to hibernate ourselves here and now take some pill or be beaten about the head

The breeze this morning is moving the trees like curtains about to part and the effect is one of prelude one of soon to change one of this has been and will be again but first it must not be

Every poet is wrong about the seasons is backwards is blinded by the glint of sweat on a lip

Poem-A-Day #170 : Becoming Full

Becoming Full

                    - here are the rules
for becoming full :

          1)       break your history and find the buttonhole
                         where the ashes
                              can be pressed into service -

there are tools for that - maybe
you could put them in a 3D printer with some resin
and then print out a button
it would be the color of slate

                    you'll need to find a shirt without
          but that's not too hard - you could tear one off
of the shirt you have on


          2)        after you've been erased
                          there will be a desire to immediately fill
                               resist

         3)         let the rain fall on you until you are purple
                          cold breaking like a land-locked lake crashing
                               on the crushed quartz shore

you're going to want to be summer
be winter
be a glacier's patience

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

Mango tree

Poem-A-Day #168 : Wood (Part 15 : To Pass)

I don't think this poem wants to go for 30 days. I will see where I stand on that tomorrow, but I think it might be over sooner than later.

You should start with Part One - HERE.


Wood (Part 15 : To Pass)

You're quiet : I don't want to give the impression that I'm all doom and gloom over here but that's what trees make me think of : I mean there's life too : so that house falls down and I can no longer stare at it from the foot of my grandmother's yard : but once it falls I mean really falls to pieces that's when things get interesting for real : that pile of house was holding space it was an ancient wanderer who managed to hold steady for who knows how long but there it was : and psychically it was holding focus : no one talked about it for sure I asked and people would sort of hmmm around it and no one would remember where it came from or how long it had been hurting out there : it was an injured deer on the side of the road it was a dead leg that gangrene had taken but it was being left to rot on the bone : and it was holding my thoughts and maybe that's why it lasted so long : I had nightmares about it I imagined being in its upper floors as it collapsed I thought about what it had seen in its time : I gave it life and it was my fault it didn't just go like it was meant to : I kept it alive when I should have also forgotten it : and that's not as sad as it sounds because I have obviously not forgotten it but I also have obviously allowed it to pass :

There's a meadow there now all filled with blooming flowers of all colors : and that's the point really : that sometimes you let go : you walk to the top of the mountain alone and you allow your body to fall silent and then to sleep : you allow yourself to become food for whatever is next because honestly you've taken space that wasn't yours for too long and maybe what comes next will be able to use what came before : this is beginning to sound silly : I'm just saying that things die and then there in that death will be the sprouting of something : not the same something never that : but close and wildly different and that new thing will path itself right through a new life and the old thing will eventually be forgotten by all but the memory of that spot will somehow collect those paths somehow : I mean that's why we go on right : because somehow we will be allowed to be forgotten but will also be allowed to be remembered :

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 #166 : Wood (Part 13 : Collapse)

WOOD!!!! Read Part One HERE.


Wood (Part 13 : Collapse)

Think about sand and how it gets in to everything it is near : kudzu does this : there are weed trees like Chinese Elm that rip open the world beneath the ground and tear up the stones of our walkways : there was tree in my backyard it was an apricot tree it tore open the sewer pipes and my backyard erupted in a monsoon of shit :

This is why we make wood into furniture : we need to tame it to control it to have it not be so wild : you could argue that humanity does that to everything : but we don't turn most things into something we put our asses on : nature is scary it is the only thing that could destroy us completely :

So we geometry out of it : pull it from the earth and turn it into grids and plots and eventually we cultivate it into things we want more than what it was : we table it until such a time as we forget it needed to be tabled :

I don't know what started the fire last night : there was a fire last night : the swarm of things that make up a building began to unravel and pull apart : a vine suddenly releasing its holds and falling from the wall into a heap at your feet :

Collapse :

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 :